Birmingham, Ala. • A year after a book on the brutal slaying of black teen Emmett Till revealed that a key figure in the case acknowledged lying, the federal government has reopened its investigation of the 1955 crime that helped build momentum for the civil rights movement.

A federal report sent annually to lawmakers under a law that bears Till's name said the Justice Department is reinvestigating Till's slaying in Mississippi after receiving "new information."

The report issued in late March doesn't indicate what that information might be.

But the 2017 book "The Blood of Emmett Till" by Timothy B. Tyson quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, as saying during a 2008 interview that she wasn't truthful when she testified that Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a Mississippi store in 1955.

A potential witness with the 14-year-old Till in the store that day, cousin Wheeler Parker, said Thursday that he has talked with law enforcement about the case in recent months.

A Mississippi prosecutor declined to comment on whether federal authorities had given him new information since they reopened the investigation.

"It's probably always an open case until all the parties have passed away," said District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose circuit includes the community where Till was abducted.

It's unclear what new charges could result from a renewed investigation, said Tucker Carrington, a professor at the University of Mississippi law school.

Conspiracy or murder charges could be filed if anyone still alive is shown to have been involved, he said, but too much time likely has passed to prosecute anyone for other crimes, such as lying to investigators or in court.

The case was closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead; a state grand jury didn't file any new charges.

Two white men — Donham's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam — were charged with murder but acquitted in the slaying of Chicago teen Till, who had been staying with relatives in northern Mississippi at the time. The men later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview but weren't retried. Both are now dead.

Donham, who turns 84 this month, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. A man who came to the door at her residence declined to comment about the FBI reopening the investigation.

"We don't want to talk to you," the man said before going back inside.

Paula Johnson, co-director of an academic group that reviews unsolved civil rights slayings, said she can't think of anything other than Tyson's book that could have prompted the Justice Department to reopen the Till investigation.

"We're happy to have that be the case so that ultimately or finally someone can be held responsible for his murder," said Johnson, who leads the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the status of the investigation. Relatives of Till pushed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reopen the case last year after publication of the book.

The government has investigated 115 cases involving 128 victims under the "cold case" law named for Till, the report said. Only one resulted in in a federal conviction since the act became law, that of Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale for kidnapping two black teenagers, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, who were killed in Mississippi in 1964.

Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said it's "wonderful" her cousin's killing is getting another look but she didn't want to discuss details.

"None of us wants to do anything that jeopardizes any investigation or impedes, but we are also very interested in justice being done," she said.

Abducted from the home where he was staying, Till was beaten and shot, and his body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in a river. His mother, Mamie Till, had his casket left open. Images of his mutilated body gave witness to the depth of racial hatred in the Deep South and inspired civil rights campaigns.

Donham, then 21 and known as Carolyn Bryant, testified in 1955 as a prospective defense witness in the trial of Bryant and Milam. With jurors out of the courtroom, she said a "nigger man" she didn't know took her by the arm in the store.

"He said, 'How about a date, baby?'" she testified, according to a trial transcript released by the FBI a decade ago. Bryant said she pulled away, and moments later the young man "caught me at the cash register," grasping her around the waist with both hands and pulling her toward him.

A judge ruled the testimony inadmissible. An all-white jury freed her husband and the other man even without it.

In the book, author Tyson wrote that Donham told him her testimony about Till accosting her wasn't true.

"Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him," the book quotes her as saying.

Till's cousin Parker, 79, said he is "pretty sure" an investigator asked him about what happened in the store but the conversation occurred months ago, and he said he has a hard time remembering details.

"We don't know anything. We're just like everyone else, waiting for new information," Parker said in a phone interview from Mississippi.

Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

The modern confirmation process for the Supreme Court is full of rules: the "Ginsburg Rule," the "Biden Rule," the "Reid Rule" and the "McConnell Rule." Often their definitions and their relevance are hotly contested. What isn't contested is that the court itself has a widely recognized and easily understood rule: the "rule of four." That rule is key to understanding the full impact of confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the court.

The rule of four holds that for the court to grant certiorari to hear and decide a case, four of its members must vote to do so. This is a crucial hurdle for the 7,000 to 8,000 or so petitions for certiorari — requests to be heard—filed with the high court each year. Of those thousands, about 50 will be accepted and decided quickly and another 60 to 80 will move to oral arguments. The rest, unable to obtain four votes, are simply turned away.

We don't know how often Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has withheld a vote to "grant cert" in the 13 years he has held the job, leaving his three generally more conservative colleagues without the necessary fourth vote, because the chief justice worried about either his own or Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote going the wrong way when it came to the merits. How often did discretion rule when the chief's vote was cast not to hear a case?

Roberts (like me) was in the Reagan-era Justice Department when then-Solicitor General Rex Lee (the father of current Utah Sen. Mike Lee) would begin his monthly briefings to the attorney general and Justice Department staff by reminding everyone that he didn’t want to bring cases for which there was no path to five votes for the government’s position. He didn’t want to lose cases. He wanted to win and to avoid creating lousy precedents.

So self-selection took place inside the Justice Department, and then, via the rule of four, more self-selection took place inside the conference room of the Supreme Court. This double-filtering decreased the rapidity with which "major cases" of great consequence would reach a final decision. Caution in the Justice Department and caution in the conference meant caution on the calendar.

Assuming Kavanaugh is confirmed — and it looks like a done deal if his hearings go well—suddenly Roberts will be presiding over cert votes in which his quartet of more like-minded colleagues are for hitting the gas, whether or not he wants to tap the brakes. Cases involving religious freedom and especially cases of regulatory “takings” without compensation can go from near zero to 70 in a hurry.

Thus the strategic dynamic of the court is vastly different come October with Kavanaugh among the nine. Want to put an end to the vestiges of government-sponsored affirmative action sooner rather than later? Grant cert in the fall in one the 8,000 petitions in which the issue is presented. How about returning some certainty to the rightful role of the states on matters of redistricting? These five justices might well decide to tackle the doctrine of "Chevron deference," which obliges federal courts to genuflect to agencies' alleged "expertise."

It takes a world of pressure off Roberts not to have to worry about Kennedy’s often unusual and solitary views of the jurisprudential world. Roberts has been a great guardian of the court’s reputation as an institution. But, if he is reinforced now with four like-minded colleagues instead of three and safe from being on the losing end of 5-to−4 rulings with Kennedy on the other side? It has been 30 years of waiting for the chance to return the court to its common-sense moorings. The promised land is in sight.

I don’t think it is prudent to minimize that, while Kavanaugh is very much a center-right jurist, the court has been laboring under the handicap of Kennedy’s whimsy for a long time. Roberts is an excellent captain of the conference, but there probably will be four colleagues come October who will want to row faster and in a much more direct fashion than did Kennedy. That’s the rule of four, and it’s what matters most in the new era the court is entering.

Hugh Hewitt, a Washington Post contributing columnist, hosts a nationally syndicated radio show and is author of “The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority.”

A Utah judge has ordered the therapeutic oils company Young Living Essential Oils LC to pay competitor doTERRA Inc. about $1.8 million in attorney fees and other costs related to a long-running lawsuit over executives who left the former company to start the latter.

Young Living lost that lawsuit last year; doTERRA argued the suit never had merit and Young Living should pay its legal fees.

Fourth District Judge Christine Johnson, on Tuesday, ordered the fees be paid. In her written ruling, Johnson agreed with doTERRA that Young Living pursued its lawsuit in “bad faith.”

Mark Wolfert, general counsel for doTERRA, said in a news release that he was glad Johnson found Young Living filed an ill-advised lawsuit.

“Nevertheless,” Wolfert said, “we look forward to a less contentious relationship with Young Living and a time where both companies may now focus on their respective missions and sharing essential oils.”

In its own news release, Young Living focused on how a statute of limitations prevented a jury from hearing some of its assertions and arguments.

“Young Living appealed the verdict of the case, as we fervently desire the full truth of our story — and doTERRA’s — to still be told,” the statement said.

Besides assertions that the doTERRA founders violated their employment contracts and ran off with Young Living’s trade secrets, there were cross-claims that the rival companies contaminated their products with chemicals. Young Living once sought $12 million in damages.

By the time the lawsuit reached trial in June 2017, the only remaining claim was the breach of contract. Young Living reduced its request for damages to a token $1.

After an 18-day trial in Provo, a jury found that doTERRA executives did not breach the terms of their employment with Young Living.

In her ruling in doTERRA’s favor, Johnson wrote Young Living was wrong to even file the lawsuit. There is a three-year statute of limitations on claims of stolen trade secrets (doTERRA was founded in 2008; the lawsuit was filed in 2012).

Johnson found that Young Living tampered with a computer to mislead her about when the company discovered a business plan had been accessed. That extended the case — and doTERRA’s legal fees — for years, Johnson wrote.

Las Vegas • What once was a summertime curiosity has become the NBA’s most important offseason gathering.

As Las Vegas Summer League teams shuffle in and out of hot gyms, so too do the NBA’s biggest power brokers: owners, general managers, agents, union officials and more. In the stands of Thomas & Mack and in the hotel ballrooms of Vegas, deals are being discussed and struck, and the future of the league is being hammered into place.

Of course a good deal of that happens on the court as well, with the NBA’s future stars getting a crack at their first minutes against professionals. Here’s what’s been happening in Vegas during summer league:

Who stood out

Fans of the New York Knicks know a special kind of agony over the years: a moribund roster, constant changes in coaching and management and an owner who famously played a concert on draft night last year. But it looks like the Knicks finally got something right: Kevin Knox.

The 6-foot−9 wing has been arguably the most exciting player in Las Vegas, reeling off big dunks in every game and playing solid defense against summer league competition. Averaging 23.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and more than a steal in his first three games, Knox has shown a tantalizing ability to attack the rim, and his jump shot has a solid foundation — enough to think that it might develop. The Kentucky forward is hoping to blend in with established Knicks star Kristaps Porzingis to form one of the East’s most intimidating front courts.

One of Knox’s fellow Wildcats is also having a breakout summer league: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been the standout for the Clippers, averaging 19 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in his first four games. His all-around ability to stuff the stat sheet has helped justify the Clippers moving up a spot to get him in the draft, and some consider him the best point guard prospect in the class.

Meanwhile, it’s been a good test for second-year players: The Hawks’ John Collins, the Lakers’ Josh Hart and the Wizards’ Devin Robinson have been among the top sophomores in Vegas. Specific to the Jazz, rookie Grayson Allen, second-year center Tony Bradley and two-way player Georges Niang have all averaged 16 points or better in Vegas games.

Conference balance

With LeBron James moving to Los Angeles, there’s a comic imbalance to the league. Need proof? Just try filling out an All-Star ballot.

Even beyond the loaded Golden State roster, which just added Demarcus Cousins, there are a lot more All-Star candidates in the West than the East, where the Heat’s Goran Dragic got a slightly dubious invite last season, and such inclusions are likely to continue.

But even beyond that issue, there’s one of competitive parity: Is it fair that the road through the Western Conference playoffs is so much more rocky than the East? Commissioner Adam Silver re-engaged discussion of seeding the playoffs 1 through 16, but the hang-up with increased travel seems to be a deal-breaker for NBA teams (Silver estimated between a 40 and 50 percent increase). At the very least, it’s not some “we can do quickly,” Silver told an assembly of media this week, without a total re-examination of the playoff system, including the TV package.

As for Golden State’s continued run of dominance, Silver refused to cede that the league is disappointed with one team being a cut above every other.

"As I've said before, we're not trying to create some sort of forced parity,” he said. “What we are really focused on is parity of opportunity.”

End of one and done?

Since 2006 when the NBA raised its age limit, the college game has had an influx of so-called “one-and-done” players such as Kevin Durant, John Wall, Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns.

But for every one of these big successes, there have been other one-and-dones that have not found a foothold in the league, and the NCAA has been rocked by related scandals and controlled by players who have no great interest in higher learning.

Not many people seem to be happy with the arrangement: Condoleezza Rice recently concluded through a commission that players who wish to go straight to the NBA should have the opportunity to do so. It seems that the the league’s thinking is shifting that way, too.

“I mean that sort of tips the scale in my mind that we should be taking a serious look at lowering our age to 18,” Silver said.

The change, if implemented, wouldn’t come until 2021. Silver said the league would soon look to negotiate with the National Basketball Players’ Association to see if the age requirement could be lowered.

CBA players set

The NBPA extended the contract of executive director Michele Roberts on Tuesday for four more years. While Roberts has been criticized for allowing a 2016 salary cap spike that resulted in record spending followed by much more fallow free agency periods in recent years (the NBPA declined a “smoothing” approach that would spread out the spike over several seasons), the extension reasserts Roberts as the person who will negotiate big deals with the league in the next four years.

One of those big deals is the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which runs through the 2023–24 season. Roberts’ extension has her poised to be the primary figure helping dictate the terms of the next CBA when negotiations start in 2022. Since Silver was recently extended by the league, he’ll be on the other side of the table.

Washington • Behold, a new breed of Republican for the Trump era.

Seth Grossman won the Republican primary last month for a competitive House seat in New Jersey, running on the message "Support Trump/Make America Great Again." The National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed him.

Then, a video surfaced, courtesy of American Bridge, a Democratic PAC, of Grossman saying "the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap." Grossman then proclaimed diversity "evil." CNN uncovered previous instances of Grossman calling Kwanzaa a "phony holiday" created by "black racists," labeling Islam a cancer and saying faithful Muslims cannot be good Americans.

Grossman gave an interview claiming that he supports diversity in part because he likes "to go to Chinese restaurants." He called the oppression of African-Americans "exaggerated." And this week, the liberal group Media Matters found that Grossman had previously posted a link on Facebook to a white-nationalist website's piece claiming black people "are a threat to all who cross their paths."

After weeks of delay, the NRCC finally withdrew its endorsement.

Many such characters have crawled out from under rocks and onto Republican ballots in 2018: A candidate with ties to white nationalists is the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia (and has President Trump's endorsement); an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is the Republican candidate in a California House race; a prominent neo-Nazi won the GOP nomination in an Illinois House race; and overt racists are in Republican primaries across the country.

Many will lose primaries, and the rest will lose in November. GOP officials have disavowed this crop of unsavory candidates, though sometimes hesitantly. It is an indication of where Trump has taken the party that Republicans need the support of people like this.

By the president's own standard, it is fair to identify these candidates with the national Republican brand. Trump has called Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., "the Face of the Democrat Party" because she advocates harassment of administration officials — an irresponsible opinion shared by few Democratic lawmakers.

Some of these candidates go well beyond the bounds of anything Trump has said or done, but many have been inspired or emboldened by him. Corey A. Stewart, the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia, said he was "Trump before Trump."

The party won't back Stewart, but Republican lawmakers are tiptoeing. Rep. Scott W. Taylor, R-Va., declining to disavow Stewart, noted to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that people won't see him as racist because "my son is named after a black guy."

In California, the Republican facing Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, John Fitzgerald, has appeared on neo-Nazi podcasts, claimed the Holocaust is a lie and alleged an international Jewish conspiracy. In Illinois, the Republican nominee against Democratic Rep. Daniel Lipinski, Arthur Jones, has a campaign website that mixes anti-Semitic propaganda and support for Trump, and has pictures of him speaking at a neo-Nazi rally for Trump in 2016.

Russell Walker, Republican nominee for a North Carolina state House seat, is a white supremacist whose personal website is "littered with the n-word" and states that Jews are "satanic," Vox reports.

Running in the Republican primary for Speaker Paul Ryan's congressional seat in Wisconsin is Paul Nehlen, who calls himself "pro-white" and was booted from Twitter for racism.

Neo-Nazi Patrick Little ran as a Republican in the California Senate primary, blaming his loss on fraud by "Jewish supremacists," according to the website Right Wing Watch.

The party establishment has no use for any such figures, thankfully, but it supports some with other eye-popping views. In North Carolina, nominee Mark Harris, in the NRCC's "Young Guns" program for top recruits, has suggested that women who pursue careers and independence do not "live out and fulfill God's design."

Another Young Guns candidate, Wendy Rogers of Arizona, has said the Democratic position on abortion is "very much like the Holocaust" and the Cambodian genocide.

The Kansas GOP asked state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a Republican congressional candidate, not to repeat his claim that Planned Parenthood is worse than the Nazi death camp Dachau. Fitzgerald did it anyway — and also declared that “outside of Western civilization, there is only barbarism.”

What makes so many think such exotic views are welcome?

Maybe they see the wife of former Fox News executive Bill Shine defending racists on Twitter. Her account was deleted when her husband became Trump's deputy chief of staff for communications.

Or perhaps they see Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, retweeting a Nazi sympathizer, refusing to delete it and saying he doesn't want Somali Muslims working at a meatpacking plant in his district because they think people go "to hell for eating pork chops."

Is it any wonder the likes of Seth Grossman think this party is theirs?

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics.

An interview between a Brigham Young University police officer and a former leader of the Mormon Missionary Training Center accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the 1980s should be made public, the Utah State Records Committee ruled Thursday.

But there’s no guarantee that the recording will be released. The BYU police department has asserted that it does not have to comply with Utah’s open records laws because it is part of a private university.

This assertion is central to a pending lawsuit that The Salt Lake Tribune filed in 2016, where the newspaper argued that the police force should be open to public records requests because it has “full-spectrum” law enforcement authority under state law. This means BYU officers may stop, search, arrest and use physical force against people, just as any other sworn officer in the state. But currently, BYU police do not face the same requirements for transparency.

A judge’s decision in the case is pending. Whatever 3rd District Judge Laura Scott decides will affect not only The Tribune’s request for records, but the requests from three petitioners who on Thursday all sought the release of a 2017 audio recording of police interviewing Joseph L. Bishop about an allegation that he sexually assaulted a female missionary at the center in 1984.

BYU police had declined to release the recording to the three entities – KUTV-Channel 2, MormonLeaks and Washington-based lawyer Corbin Volluz — citing privacy concerns. In the denial, Chief Larry Stott also noted that BYU police are not subject to the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), but fill some requests as part of its internal practices.

The records committee found that the recording should be made public, but the release was put on hold until the courts decide whether BYU police is subject to GRAMA requests.

No one from BYU or the police department was present at Thursday’s hearing. Paul Tonks, a lawyer with the Utah Attorney General’s Office who represents the records committee, said Thursday that he spoke with BYU attorneys before the hearing and they again took the position that they are not subject to records requests.

“They believe that issue is ultimately going to be decided in the courts,” he said.

Ryan McKnight, MormonLeaks founder, said after the hearing said that while he won his appeal, he hoped the records committee would have ordered the recording to be released, despite the pending lawsuit.

“The idea that BYU [police] is not a governmental agency is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard,” he said. “If we’re going to say they are not subject to GRAMA, then how are they being held accountable by the public, who has entrusted them with this responsibility as police officers?”

According to a BYU police report released in March, Bishop admitted to officers that he took a young woman into a small room at the Provo campus in 1984 and asked to see her breasts. Police were questioning Bishop after the woman, McKenna Denson, reported to officers in 2017 that Bishop sexually assaulted her in a small room in the MTC Center.

Denson in April sued the LDS Church, saying the church placed Bishop in charge of the training center despite “red flag improprieties” years earlier. Bishop, 85, is also listed as a defendant. He has denied assaulting her. The case is still pending in federal court.

The Tribune’s lawsuit centers around a separate issue. Its case stems from a public records request submitted by a Tribune reporter in 2016 amid allegations that BYU had disciplined students who reported sex crimes if they were violating the school’s Honor Code at the time of the assault. The code bans alcohol, coffee and premarital sex, and it regulates students’ appearance and interactions with the opposite sex.

BYU police released some records, but refused to release records of communication between the department and the Mormon school’s Honor Code and Title IX offices.

The university police have said they do not conduct investigations for the Honor Code Office. However, The Tribune has obtained internal BYU documents that show a BYU police lieutenant used his access to Provo police records, via a countywide law enforcement database, for an Honor Code investigation into the conduct of a student who had reported a sexual assault to Provo police.

The Department of Public Safety spent a year investigating how BYU officers access and share their own reports and the records of other Utah County police agencies. While their investigation was completed last July, the Utah attorney general’s office has been reviewing the case ever since — and the findings have not yet been made public.

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday, July 13, 2018. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

He’s Just Putin Us On!, Boomstick Rights, This Is Not Fine, Trade War Collateral Damage, Good News, Bad News, Declaration of Independence (abbreviated) , Dog Days of Independence, A Murder of Crows, Violence Against Journalists, Trumping Justice

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Why did White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly shift and grimace in discomfort when President Trump spoke about Germany being "totally controlled" by Russia?

"[Kelly] was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Washington Post.

But it was nothing the president said, of course.

Kelly no longer hears anything the president says. Trump's words are a kind of soothing low dog-whistle that plays in the background at all times, a sort of mosquito hum that he checks only periodically to make certain it is still complaining that anyone not from Norway would have the temerity to come to America seeking a better life, and then goes back to ignoring.

The reason Kelly shifted and bobbed uncomfortably in his seat while the president spoke about Russia and Germany, the reason Kelly wore the facial expression of someone who had hungrily devoured a mouthful of expired egg salad, was certainly not anything the president said. It was not shame or chagrin that we were saying this right in front of our allies. It is just that Kelly was enraged by cheese. And pastries!

Kelly had been insulted with a continental breakfast — Barely! Barely! — rather than a full, hot one. The organizers of this summit had clearly treated the critical problem of breakfast with scarcely more regard than this administration gives to reuniting children with their families. It had been an afterthought — or less! Kelly was right to shake with rage.

Someone had "or whatever-ed" the essential question of what Kelly might consume that morning, instead of saving this laissez-faire attitude for the fate of children, where it more properly belonged. No wonder he quivered with discomfort. No wonder he shifted gloomily in his seat as though he wished the earth to swallow him whole. No wonder he looked embarrassed and sad, like a dog in a sweater.

That expression of shock and distaste — one that normally a chief of staff might wear when the president said something that embarrassed us on the world stage and alienated our allies to no clear end — is one Kelly reserves for the thought that he will not have any access to an omelet station. Think of being denied an omelet and see if you can make any possible face other than the one Kelly made. He had no English muffins, nor any French toast.

A pastry and cheese. This was as insulting as being told your country belonged to Russia, hypothetically, if anyone had said something like that. But to Kelly's mind, no one did.

John Kelly sat writhing in the unspeakable agony of a remembered breakfast. He is not ashamed of the president's remarks at all.

Alexandra Petri writes the ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.” Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.

What do Marie Osmond and The Used have in common? Music, Utah ties and a drop Thursday of roughly 11,000 Twitter followers apiece.

The social media site announced Wednesday that it planned to purge millions of “locked” accounts, or user profiles that had been frozen due to inactivity or suspicious behavior.

By late Thursday afternoon, the effects of the purge were visible in the numbers of accounts following politicians, media outlets, celebrities, athletes and other notable figures in the state and across the country.

“Follower counts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal counsel, wrote in a formal blog post on the site.

Utah’s two largest newspapers, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, shed 1,875 and 1,543 followers, respectively, from their official accounts. The News’ sister organization KSL, through its @kslcom handle, lost more than 2,000 followers Thursday afternoon.

Heather Armstrong, who runs the popular blog Dooce, lost 185,000 followers — more than The Tribune had to begin with — or 12 percent of the 1.5 million users who followed the @Dooce account Wednesday.

In an email to The Tribune, Armstrong said she welcomed the move by Twitter and that she has been waiting a long time for the social media giant to improve the safety and user experience on the platform.

“Removing fake accounts is a step in the right direction,” she said. “I am not at all aggrieved to lose bots, spammers and Russian trolls from my Twitter following — although I hope they didn’t purge all the accounts who followed me because they think I’m Lance Armstrong’s mom."

Other Twitter tallies impacted by the purge were those of Utah Republican Senate hopeful Mitt Romney, whose @MittRomney account shed more than 76,000 followers. His Democratic rival, Jenny Wilson, added six followers to her @JennyWilsonUT account.

Celebrities with Beehive State ties were particularly hard hit, largely reflecting the starting size of their follower bases, with the accounts of violinist Lindsey Stirling, novelist James Dashner, rally driver Ken Block and musician Brandon Flowers each shedding thousands of followers.

The Utah-tied band Imagine Dragons saw 71,000 followers slip away.

Bucking that trend, however, was Tan France of the Netflix program “Queer Eye,” who added 3,300 followers to his account Thursday.

In sports, the Utah Jazz lost more than 16,000 followers, along with drops for the individual accounts of Rudy Gobert (down 1,166), Derrick Favors (down 3,969) and Joe Ingles (down 2,364). Donovan Mitchell, as of Thursday afternoon, appeared to have sidestepped the purge, boosting his follower number by 132.

The official account of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shed 7,223 of its more than 465,000 followers. And @MormonNewsroom, a formal public relations account for the LDS Church, lost roughly 6,000 followers.

Other notable accounts hit by the purge include former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, now U.S. ambassador to Russia (down 4,079) and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah (down 4,720).

But no Utahn or Utah-linked account compared to Twitter-obsessed President Donald Trump, whose more than 53 million followers rank among the highest tallies on the social media site. By Thursday afternoon, Trump’s followers had declined by nearly 337,000 accounts.

Reporter Sean Means contributed to this article.

Editor’s note • Jon Huntsman is a brother of Tribune Owner and Publisher Paul Huntsman.

A day after a Utah movie theater abruptly pulled out of hosting a town hall with the survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, the students have booked a new location for the Saturday event.

The March For Our Lives “Road to Change” event will now be held at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy on July 14, according to a post on the local March for Our Lives Facebook page. The event is one of many to feature the Florida students, who are traveling across the country this summer to promote and discuss gun reform alongside students in local March for Our Lives chapters.

Organizers scrambled to find a new venue Wednesday after officials at the Larry H. Miller Megaplex Theatres — part of the Larry H. Miller Group, which also owns car dealerships and the Utah Jazz — canceled the event about 24 hours after students announced the location in South Jordan. Movie theater officials said they didn’t know the “full context” of the event before booking it and that it now “appears to be escalating into a potentially contentious situation."

The cancellation followed a recent Salt Lake Tribune article, which told the story of how the Utah Gun Exchange, a local firearms business, has been following the Florida students' tour across the country in an armored, military-style vehicle.

In the aftermath of the cancellation, the Utah Gun Exchange, which led a pro-gun rally ahead of Salt Lake City’s March for Our Lives rally last spring, offered its venue to organizers.

The students said they settled on the expo center because officials there complied with students’ request for the event to be gun-free because of “legitimate safety concerns.”

Utah Gun Exchange, according to the release, offered increased security at its venue, but “has not offered to make their event space gun-free.”

Representatives for the business also met with March for Our Lives members Wednesday and characterized the meeting as “successful.”

In the March for Our Lives SLC press release, students appeared to distance themselves from the group, which has been vocal critics of their efforts, and question its motives.

“We would also like to remind the media and all involved parties that Utah Gun Exchange is not a nonprofit organization like the National Rifle Association, or a legislative advocacy group like Utah Shooting Sports Council. Utah Gun Exchange is a business,” the statement said. “We are not obligated to mold our movement for gun reform and public safety around the desires of a business whose financial success could be negatively influenced by our legislative goals.”

The group said it hopes to work with legislators and others to craft laws to address gun issues, adding that members are particularly excited the event will be held within U.S. Rep. Mia Love’s district.

Love, March For Our Lives SLC said in its statement, is a leading recipient of donations from gun-rights lobbyists. In fact, the Utah Republican received $63,520 from gun lobbyists during the 2016 election cycle, according to a Politico analysis of Center For Responsive Politics data. That’s the sixth most of all House of Representatives members, with Love tallying about $10,000 more than California Rep. Kevin McCarthy and about $5,000 less than Nevada Rep. Joe Heck. Both representatives are Republicans.

Love’s campaign disputes the amount of money the database says she received, saying the numbers are speculative and misleading because they count donations from people who support gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association and do not provide the underlying data of those donors.

A spokesman from the center has told The Salt Lake Tribune that it includes in the tally people who have given at least $200 to an interest group like the NRA and then donated to a candidate. Love has received $3,000 from the NRA.

The 6 p.m. event is open to the public, although space is limited. One thousand priority tickets are available.

Wimbledon, England • There was a time, when she wa younger, that Serena Williams got upset when she wasn’t picked as the favorite to win Wimbledon.

Today, at 36 years old and 10 months removed from a difficult childbirth that was followed by grave health complications, she’s bemused by those who expected her to reach Wimbledon’s final this year, so soon after returning to competition.

“I literally didn’t expect to do this well in my fourth tournament back,” Williams said Thursday after clinching a spot in Saturday’s final with a 6–2, 6–4 semifinal victory over Julia Goerges of Germany. “It’s not inevitable for me to be playing like this.”

On Saturday, No. 25 seed Williams will face 11th-seeded Angelique Kerber, who advanced with a 6–3, 6–3 defeat of Jelena Ostapenko, in a reprise of Wimbledon’s 2016 final. Although Williams won that match in straight sets to claim her seventh Wimbledon championship and the 22nd of her 23 Grand Slam titles, she noted that Kerber, who has two Grand Slam titles of her own, is a more experienced, dangerous opponent today than two years ago.

“I have to be ready for the match of my life,” Williams said.

Given Williams’ domination of the sport over the past two decades, it is easy to assume that she can summon greatness at the snap of her fingers. Moreover, given the times she has tumbled from the top of the world rankings following tragedy or injury, only to rise again, it’s easy to assume Williams’ return to world-beating form was a certainty after maternity leave.

Hardly so. And Williams has made a point of raising the curtain on her rocky road back to make a larger point to women who feel overwhelmed by the changes in their bodies, emotions and priorities following childbirth.

“It’s about picking yourself up off the floor,” said Jill Smoller, Williams’ close friend, confidante and agent of nearly 20 years.

In a sense, Williams has been writing this narrative since her father, Richard, took her and sister Venus to a dilapidated tennis court in Compton, Calif., put rackets in their hands and coached them, along with their mother, into champions.

For the past 18 years, Smoller has been by Serena Williams’ side for almost every step. And she views Williams’ latest achievement as “another piece to the story that’s not close to being done.”

Speaking to reporters after Thursday’s semifinal, Williams appeared relaxed and revealed more about the challenges she has faced since Alexis Olympia was born Sept. 1, including a recurrence of life-threatening blood clots after her emergency Caesarean section.

“I lost count after four surgeries because I was in so many surgeries,” she said. “… Because of all the blood issues I have, I was really touch-and-go for a minute.”

Extended bed rest followed. For a time afterward, she could barely walk to the mailbox. But she declined to compare her recovery to other injuries and setbacks she has experienced, pointing to the joy of motherhood that offsets it all. “It’s by far the toughest,” she said. “But in a way, it’s by far the best.”

When she returned to competition in March, she was disappointed that she didn’t perform better. She lost in the third round at Indian Wells, and then she was ousted in the first round at Miami.

The idea was to treat each tournament like a steppingstone, but Williams wanted to take giant steps. She also wrestled with the profound pull of new emotions.

“Mostly, the hardest part was mentally letting go of a lot of mommy things in order to fully be 100 percent into tennis,” Williams said.

It was a process, as was reclaiming her movement, her timing and the power in her serve - particularly after injuring a pectoral muscle midway through the French Open.

As a medical precaution, given her history of blood clots, Williams wore a body-hugging compression suit during play in Paris. To fashionistas, it was a sleek catsuit. To Williams, it served double duty as a symbolic suit of armor.

She was not in superhero form when Wimbledon got underway last week. She had only resumed serving again a few days prior after taking a break to let her pectoral heal.

But she improved with each round. Her movement has gotten nimbler; her ball-striking, more crisp. And her serve, widely regarded as the greatest in women’s tennis, once again packs its daunting punch and placement.

After getting broken by Goerges in the second set Thursday, Williams slammed the door on any thought of a rally by serving out the match with successive service blasts. All told, she won the point 87 percent of the time that she landed her first serve.

Few can fully appreciate Williams’ comeback these past 10 months. But Pam Shriver has special insight as a 21-time Grand Slam doubles champion and mother of three who had a C-section and knows firsthand the setback it poses for any athlete whose sport taxes the abdominal muscles.

“I had age [in common with Williams] and a C-section, and I certainly wasn’t coming back to play tennis,” said Shriver, who’s at Wimbledon as an ESPN analyst. “What is cut in a C-section are important parts of your core [muscles]. It’s surgery—major abdominal surgery—and she had all these other complications.”

“Whatever happens Saturday, it’s one of the more impressive things that she has done. And that’s understating it.”

Washington •  The Trump administration’s kidnapping — that’s the proper word — of the children of would-be migrants should be seen as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Somebody ought to go to jail.

Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration's treatment of immigrant children as "one of the great acts of American generosity and charity."

On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed "ineligible," meaning they remain in government custody.

The reasons for failing to comply fully with Sabraw's order sound reasonable, unless you take into account the bad faith with which the administration has conducted this whole sordid exercise. In 22 cases, officials had "safety concerns posed by the adults in question," presumably the parents; in 12 cases, parents have already been deported; in 11 cases, parents are in federal or state custody; and in one case, an adult believed to be the child's parent cannot be found.

In a joint statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and HHS' Azar took credit for working “tirelessly” to reunite the children with their families — which is rich, given that the Trump administration deliberately and cynically created this crisis in the first place.

"Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally," the statement said. Translation: Don't come to the border seeking asylum because when others did, we took away their kids.

Given that the intention from the beginning was clearly to frighten and intimidate would-be migrants from Central America, why should anyone believe the administration is acting or speaking in good faith now? Why should we accept at face value that exactly 103 children under 5 were seized? How can we be sure there is only one case in which officials can't find or identify the parents? Given that it has taken weeks to return just 57 children, what is the likelihood that the government kept adequate records?

This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 2-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.

And what about the children older than 5 who were taken from their families? Sabraw ordered that they be returned to their parents by July 26, but don't hold your breath. We don't even know how many there are, because the government doesn't seem to know. Officials first gave the number as around 2,300, but the latest estimate is nearly 3,000. Why can't they settle on a precise figure? What reason would there be for such vagueness, other than ignorance?

I don't think they know how many kids they ripped away from their families, and I believe that means it is inevitable that some children will never again see their parents. The fact that my government would commit such a crime weighs on my conscience as an American. President Trump and his accomplices, from all appearances, couldn't be prouder.

"Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. As usual, he was ascribing his own base motives to others: He is the one who is "just using children."

Remember what this is really about. The main flow of undocumented migrants consists of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans seeking to escape rampant, deadly gang violence that their home governments cannot or will not check. The Trump administration issued new instructions Wednesday to officers who interview asylum seekers at the border, telling them that fear of gang violence, no matter how well-founded, is no longer grounds for asylum. The same new rule applies to immigration judges, who take their orders from Sessions.

Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

There could be eight times more coal mining near Bryce Canyon National Park under a revised leasing plan from the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management.

In the face of fierce opposition from environmental groups, Utah-based Alton Coal Development has long sought to lease 3,600 acres to mine nearly 45 million tons of coal near its existing Coal Hollow Mine in Kane County.

On Thursday, the BLM released a final environmental impact statement (EIS) endorsing the proposed lease, though the agency points to a scaled-back plan to extract 30.8 million tons as the preferred alternative.

The move cheered Kane County officials, who are eager to see expanded mining of their region’s rich, though largely untapped, coal deposits. The coal company’s existing reserves on private land are nearly mined out, and the federal Alton Coal Tract is seen as vital to its continued operations.

“We appreciate the review process of the BLM office to study and effectively determine responsible and safe mining operations to sustainably expand into federal lands,” Kane County Commissioner Dirk Clayson said in a news release. “In our experience, Alton has done a good job with operations and reclamation activities and is a super good example of managing responsible operations.”

For years, the Sierra Club, National Parks Conservation Association and other groups have fought the lease proposal and the mine, which began extracting coal on private land just outside the bucolic town of Alton in 2010. They argue expanded strip mining there would impair southern Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park, eight miles to the east, and degrade important sage grouse habitat.

“To increase the scale and size of [coal mining at Alton] is a mind-boggling,” said David Nimkin, NPCA’s Southwest regional director. “The impact of coal trucks running through a highly dense and special tourist corridor on U.S. Highway 89 and [State Route] 20 [over the Tushar Mountains] and through Panguitch is certainly problematic.”

Equally alarming are impacts to the visitor experience at Bryce, where clear views and natural sounds are critical draws.

During an earlier phase of the lease analysis under the Obama administration, both the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised such concerns, prompting the BLM to conduct a protracted “supplemental” EIS.

“I’m unclear how [the BLM] would address issues related to night-sky impacts, ambient light, air pollution, soundscape impacts for operations running 24–7, 365 days a year,” said Nimkin, who had not had a chance to dig into the massive document Thursday.

Added Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity: “Coal is on its economic deathbed, and this plan is just stringing communities along. It’s hard to imagine a worse use of BLM’s time than trying to prop up a dying industry whose climate pollution will only worsen the Colorado River Basin’s water future.”

The BLM is expected to issue a final decision after 30 days. Alton would be the second major federal coal tract leased in Utah since the 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump, who has made the revival of the U.S. coal industry and “American energy dominance” centerpieces of his admininstration’s agenda.

Under the proposal, the Alton tract would have a single, 120-acre pit in operation at any one time, and an additional 120 acres in some stage of reclamation during the life of the mine.

At full production, according to the EIS, the expanded mine would yield 2 million tons a year, employing 100 at the mine and another 60 truckers. That level would far outpace Alton’s past production, which has averaged around 250,000 tons a year with a workforce of 20 to 25 miners.

While the tract’s coal is all federally owned, nearly 1,300 acres of the surface, or about 36 percent of the total patch, is privately owned by eight landowners.

A critical issue regarding how much coal could be mined hinges on whether it could be dug from the surface, which allows for 90 percent recovery, versus underground, which leaves as much as half behind, according to the EIS. As a rule of thumb, deposits within 200 feet of the surface would be strip-mined and the “overburden” would be stored for later return to the pit to reclaim the mine area.

It appears the BLM’s preferred alternative calls for reduced surface disturbance to avoid habitat used by greater sage grouse, a ground-nesting bird that is the subject of a costly conservation effort aimed at keeping it off the endangered list. Alton marks the southern-most part of the bird’s range and is home to an important population.

A BLM news release issued Thursday did not mention sage grouse conservation, but it did emphasize how stepped-up coal mining would boost Kane County’s rural economy. Indirectly, the mine expansion would swell employment by 240 to 480 jobs, including fuel providers, and positions in maintenance, grocery stores and retail stores.

The jobs and revenue potentially generated by the larger mine are dwarfed by the ever-increasing jobs associated with Bryce, Nimkin said. According to National Park Service data, Bryce supported 3,120 jobs last year.

“In 2012, the spending at Bryce was $109 million," Nimkin said. “It was $213 million in 2017. It doubled in five years.”

Rural county officials prefer the types of jobs associated with resource extraction to those in the tourism sector, which are often seasonal and lower paying.

“Alton Coal provides family-sustaining wage jobs that are needed in our county and has provided some 30 jobs to date with the ability to expand as well as the additional indirect trucking jobs,” Clayson said. “This plays a vital role in our economy.”

Half the royalties and lease payments arising from the federal tract would go to the state, which would disperse this revenue to local governments around Utah.

There’s a moment near the beginning of the documentary film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” — as the trolley that transported millions of children to the Neighborhood of Make Believe is taken out of its box and Fred Rogers’ familiar sneakers are set next to a bench — when Margy Whitmer muses on the success of the show she produced for many years.

“We had a director who once said to me, ‘If you take all of the elements that make good television and do the exact opposite, you have ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ — low production values, simple set, an unlikely star,” she said. “Yet it worked, because it was saying something really important.”

The same might be said of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” itself.

Over the weekend, the film, having expanded to 893 screens across the country, topped the $10 million mark at the box office, passing “RBG,” a documentary about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to become the highest-grossing documentary of the year, according to distributor Aspiration Entertainment. Initially opening on 29 screens June 8, it nearly doubled its reach from 350 to 650 just before the Fourth of July holiday.

Celebrities from Dan Rather to Korie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” have tweeted about “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Moviegoers in Tampa, Fla., threw a Mister Rogers block party in front of a theater, collecting sweaters and sneakers for children. Presbyterians sang along to the show’s iconic theme song as the trailer for the film rolled at the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s denominational meeting. Prominent Pastor Mark Batterson’s National Community Church in the Washington, D.C., area is in the middle of a sermon series titled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” The Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago hosted a private screening for its JUF Young Families group.

Filmmaker Morgan Neville said he’s screened the documentary now for “every possible kind of audience.” Neville, who also wrote and directed the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet From Stardom,” had hoped to make a film that would find common ground, but “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” has “exceeded any expectation,” he said.

From the first screening, “it took on a life of its own,” he said.

“This has only happened to me once or twice in my career, where a film hits a nerve where it no longer feels like your film. The audience takes ownership of it and feels that it says something personal to them. It’s kind of magic when it happens.”

Perhaps the success of a documentary about a slow-paced children’s show hosted by a kind, soft-spoken Presbyterian minister shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the success of the children’s show was itself a surprise and its host, an unlikely celebrity.

So unassuming was Rogers that is it surprising to see how strongly his faith comes out in the film.

Yet it’s there, sometimes in sarcasm, as when Rogers’ son John muses about the difficulty of growing up with the “second Christ” for a dad. It’s there in Fred Rogers’ ordination as an evangelist for television, which was “way out there for the Presbyterian Church,” according to his wife, Joanne Rogers.

It’s there in the title of the documentary — and the show itself.

“This word ‘neighbor’ wasn’t something Fred came up with out of nowhere. It was biblical,” said the Rev. George Wirth, a friend and fellow Presbyterian minister who called Rogers “a man of deep faith.”

It came from Jesus’ words “love your neighbor as yourself” and the parable Jesus told in response to the question “Who is my neighbor?” in which the so-called good Samaritan cares for a man who had been beaten and left by the roadside.

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” the books Rogers wrote and the speeches he gave all came from that core — “the spiritual center of Fred Rogers,” according to Wirth.

“He was a community builder,” he said. “The neighborhood was symbolic of Fred Rogers’ desire for people to live together in peace, with respect and love and affirmation, and when things go wrong, forgiveness and reconciliation.”

Rogers not only took his own faith seriously, but he also studied Judaism, Islam and other traditions. Wirth recalled spending a week in Toronto with Rogers visiting Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen.

“The bottom line for him was he believed all people are created in the image of God. He saw everyone in that light: created in the image of God,” Wirth said. “That crosses all the religious boundaries, all the race, all the ethnic boundaries — all of God’s children are created in God’s image.”

But Rogers never explicitly mentioned his faith on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“He wasn’t doing that to hide his Christian identity,”said Junlei Li, co-director of the Fred Rogers Center at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. “I think Fred was very adamant that he didn’t want any viewer — child or adult — to feel excluded from the neighborhood.” If the message of the show appeared to be denominational or even Christian, he said, viewers might feel that they didn’t belong.

Growing up in a wealthy Presbyterian family in Latrobe, Rogers learned a Protestant work ethic and frugality that he carried into his work on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” according to Li.

Rogers’ parents also modeled the importance of giving — his mother often bought presents for hundreds of people in town at the holidays, and though his father kept a ledger of every townsperson and employee who had borrowed money from him, he never collected any of it. For Rogers, Li said, that came to mean “recognizing everyone has something worth giving. You could go to the lowest and the least and the youngest, and you fundamentally respect they have something to give.”

Ultimately, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was a show about hope and reconciliation, a word Li said meant a lot to Rogers. He wanted to mend broken relationships: between people, between humans and the environment, even — though he never made it explicit — between humans and their creator.

“That breaking of a relationship between each of us with our creator, in Fred’s world,” Li said, “would be that you no longer believe that you are worthwhile.”

Viewers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which ran from 1968 to 2001, now range in age from their 20s to 50s and many express a feeling of kinship, not to say neighborliness, with Rogers.

Filmmaker Neville is one of them. He hadn’t thought about the show in a long time, he said. But over the past six or seven years, Rogers kept reappearing in his life, and “every time I did, it just made me feel like, God, we need more of that in our culture today. Where is that kind of voice?”

Neville declined to comment on his own faith, but he said he believed messages like Rogers’ “do make a difference and hopefully change how people think.”

“We the people need to stand up and say, ‘That’s not OK. We need to look out for each other. United we stand, divided we fall.’ These are very basic ideals that I feel like nobody is advocating for anymore,” he said. “That’s why we need Fred Rogers.”

Denver • Sarah Hirshland’s biggest coup to date as a sports executive was brokering the billion-dollar deal that moved the TV home of golf’s U.S. Open from NBC to Fox.

Her next mission, as CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee, will be more delicate — repairing a frayed relationship between athletes and a community that has grown wary of the governing body after a slew of sex-abuse cases they feel were not handled appropriately .

The USOC announced the U.S. Golf Association’s chief commercial officer as its new CEO on Thursday. Hirshland will replace Scott Blackmun, who resigned earlier this year to deal with health issues that undercut his ability to handle the crisis that engulfed the federation.

In some ways, the hire of the 43-year-old mother of three, a graduate of Duke, was no surprise. Given the circumstances, the USOC was expected to hire a woman, and the fact that she used to work alongside Casey Wasserman, who chairs the LA 2028 Olympic effort, earned her high marks from what will be the USOC’s closest working partners over the next decade.

“I know firsthand that Sarah is a visionary leader,” Wasserman said.

But with much of the USOC’s marketing and business efforts moving into the hands of the LA organizers, chairman Larry Probst said one of Hirshland’s biggest tasks, outside of repairing relationships with athletes, will be shoring up support among lawmakers in Washington.

The USOC has come under increased scrutiny of late in the Capitol, with its leaders being grilled in a handful of hearings over what has largely been viewed as their slow response to the mushrooming sex-abuse crisis.

Though the USOC receives no federal funding, Congress has ultimate authority over the federation via the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act. When asked about her experience in lobbying and public policy, Hirshland laid out no specifics.

“I have spent, as you might imagine, time in and around the governance of sport within the context of the role of the USGA,” said the key architect of the deal that more than doubled the USGA’s take for TV rights, up to $1.1 billion over 12 years. “This will be a distinct opportunity for me and one I’m looking forward to.”

At the USOC, Hirshland will make $600,000 a year with a chance for a bonus of up to 50 percent. It’s a remarkably low salary for the leader of an organization who has to tend to relationships with 43 domestic Olympic sports organizations, to say nothing of the thousands of athletes, donors, fans and the International Olympic Committee, which has proven a thorn in the side of the USOC for decades. (The Olympic TV deal with NBC, meanwhile, is negotiated by the IOC and locked up through 2032.)

But Hirshland’s top task will be restoring credibility to the USOC’s efforts to provide safe atmospheres for its athletes.

Sex-abuse scandals in swimming, gymnastics and taekwondo —to name a few — forced the USOC to create more uniform standards to protect athletes across all Olympic sports.

Under Blackmun’s tenure, the USOC helped open the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which took over the duty of investigating sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports and meting out the punishment.

But the USOC’s off-and-on portrayal of itself as a federation that only truly oversees the athletes during the three-week Olympic period every two years rubbed many people wrong, and made it sound as if its leaders weren’t ultimately responsible for the welfare of the athletes.

“I ... recognize the challenges ahead as we navigate this critical moment in the USOC’s history,” Hirshland said. “We must protect, support and empower athletes, young and old, elite and beginner.”

The USOC finds itself a defendant in a number of lawsuits filed by athletes and even former U.S. gymnastics coordinator Martha Karolyi, all of which seek damages because of its role in the scandal.

The USOC’s interim CEO, Susanne Lyons, said the federation attempted to identify sex-abuse victims to be part of the search committee, but was prevented from reaching out because of the pending lawsuits.

Hirshland is the third woman to hold the title of CEO, following Lyons and Stephanie Streeter, whose brief tenure in 2008-09 was riddled with infighting and confusion and led to her departure.

“It’s a powerful moment for the USOC and for me, personally,” Hirshland said. “And while I don’t look at this as being a female CEO, I’m proud to be a woman, and even more proud to be CEO of the USOC. If I can do both things well, that’ll be good for the entire community in which we operate.”

Farmington • Nothing about the afternoon heat at Oakridge Country Club evoked images of surfing, but Cameron Champ likes the wave he’s riding.

The rookie has experienced his share of ups and downs on the Web.com Tour this season. His current trend is encouraging, with four straight top−10 finishes and a 10-under-par 61 in Thursday’s first round of the Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank.

His coach's advice, as relayed by Champ: “When you're going up, just try to stay there as long as possible.”

His rise to No. 27 on th money list has been driven by a lot of low numbers lately, and the 61 tops them all. Champ is two strokes ahead of Luke Guthrie, Martin Trainer and Steven Ihm. Those players each made eight birdies.

Guthrie’s round “could have been lower,” he said, “if I would have made everything inside eight feet.”

Champ, who turned pro in November as a Texas A&M senior, matched the course record shot by Christian Brand in July’s second round and Jacques Blauuw in the third round. As he stood over a 15-foot eagle putt on the par−5 No. 15 (Oakridge’s nines are reversed this week), Champ had thoughts of “59.” He settled for a two-putt birdie, then added his 10th birdie of the day on the par−4 No. 16 and parred the last two holes.

Overall, scores were slightly higher than in last year’s opening round, when there were two 62s and 100 rounds in the 60s; there with 88 this year.

As for the four golfers with Utah ties, former BYU star Patrick Fishburn and Orem native Scott Pinckney shot 67s and are tied for 28th place. Sandy resident Mike Weir posted a 71 and Utah State product Seokwon Jeon had a 72. Those two will have to do something extraordinary Friday to make the 36-hole cut, which came at 6-under last summer.

Pinckney, a tour member who’s rebuilding his game after missing nearly a year with a back injury, made seven birdies and three bogeys. Fishburn, playing via a sponsor exemption, is in position for a top−25 finish that would get him into next week’s tournament. Otherwise, he will return to the Mackenize Tour in Canada.

“I hit the ball extremely well today; had a lot of opportunities,” Fishburn said, describing his 67 as “a decent score.” In his usual, aggressive style, the Ogden native used a club other than a driver only once among the 14 driving holes.

Champ took much the same approach in his first visit to Utah. Oakridge “suits me very well personally,” he said. “It's kind of a bomber's heaven, I guess you can say.”

Champ led last week’s tournament in New York with a first-round 64 before fading to a tie for eighth. The good news is that’s his worst finish in the past four events, with a well-timed surge. After this weekend, only five stops remain on the tour’s regular-season schedule before the first set of 25 cards will be awarded for the PGA Tour’s 2018–19 schedule.

“I would have never thought six weeks ago I’d be in this position,” Champ said.

Moscow • Since declaring itself independent on Oct. 8, 1991, Croatia and its 4-plus million people have posted a World Cup third-place finish when the country was not yet seven years old and now is a World Cup finalist when the country is not yet 27 years old, with a captain whose childhood involved training with a grim soundtrack of shelling from a lingering war.

Only in late 1991 did the country that has forged this towering small-nation achievement start making its own plans for currency, passports and border crossings. War did not end at that very moment, either. And even in these improved 2010s, Croatian news reports in recent years have told of the troubling puzzle of declining population.

Yet here’s Croatia, its collective stomach rugged enough to surpass three deficits in the World Cup knockout stages and having played an entire extra match worth of extra time, on its way to play France on Sunday for the world’s most-prized prize.

When Vice President Vladimir Seks announced Croatia’s independence in 1991 with a statement that read, “The laws of Yugoslavia will no longer be in effect,” he did not add, “And we will kick more tail than you can believe at various international sports.” That would have been trivial and gauche. The country, after all, has produced that noted former Croatian parliamentarian and mixed-martial arts giant Mirko Filopovic, known in the cage as Mirko Cro Cop.

Also: Iva Majoli, French Open women’s champion; Goran Ivanisevic, Wimbledon men’s champion and four-time finalist; Janica Kostelic, four-time Olympic skiing gold medalist, and her brother Ivica, four-time Olympic skiing silver medalist; Toni Kukoc, key contributor to three NBA championships in Chicago; two teams of Olympic men’s handball gold medalists; one team of Olympic men’s water polo gold medalists; and individual Olympic gold medals in weightlifting, shooting, sailing, rowing, discus and javelin.

Croatians have even mastered one of the great cliches of sports to overcome that most dreaded of all opponents, the British punditry.

After Wednesday’s 2-1 victory over England in the World Cup semifinals, Luka Modric, the team captain and Real Madrid standout, told the British broadcaster ITV: “We proved everything differently than people were talking, especially English journalists, pundits on television. They underestimated Croatia tonight, and that was huge mistake, and all these words from them we take, we were reading, and, ‘OK, we will see today who will be tired.’ And like I say, they should be more humble and respect more opponents.

“And yeah, that’s it. We showed that we were not tired. We dominated the game physically, mentally in all aspects. We should kill the game even before extra time and now, this is an amazing achievement for us. It’s dream come true. After such a long time we are in the final, biggest success in Croatian history in sport and we have to be proud.”

He said all this and has done all this while facing quite some stresses at home. In a matter that has placed a severe dent in his homeland popularity, prosecutors have charged him with perjury in his testimony in the tax-fraud trial of a soccer executive who has fled to Bosnia, meaning that little Croatia achieves largesse even in the grand, global tradition of high-stakes corruption cases.

Can prosecutors hold onto a charge after a World Cup win? Croatia might prove also the testing ground for that. Those would be some sturdy prosecutors.

Somehow, even before it beat Nigeria, destroyed Argentina and dislodged Iceland in group play, Croatia arrived here with a considerable World Cup history for a pup of a nation. Its third-place showing in 1998 in France became the best for a debutant since Portugal did likewise in 1966.

By that time, Modric neared age 13. This came well after his traumatic age 6, when his grandfather had been murdered while guiding his cattle up the mountain, and the family had gone as refugees to a local hotel, where the locals would report the chronic sight of a lad and a ball.

Not so far removed from war by 1998, Croatia plucked Germany from that bracket with a 3-0 stunner in the quarterfinals, and went on to lose, 2-1, to eventual champion and host France in the semifinals, one of those matches that lasted beyond the match. During the third-place thing between Croatia and the Netherlands, French fans rained boos, derision and bad vibes upon Croatia’s Slaven Bilic, for what Steven Goff of The Washington Post called Bilic’s “animated flop” that led to the suspension of French defender Laurent Blanc for the final against Brazil.

“Tonight, Bilic was booed during the pregame introductions, the postgame medal ceremony, even during Croatia’s victory lap,” Goff wrote. “The unofficial count was 38 rude receptions, 26 before halftime.”

As a further byproduct of that match, Croatia’s Davor Suker scored his sixth goal of the World Cup, landing him the Golden Boot for highest scorer. Now young Croatia might have enough World Cup history to derive a Golden Boot and a Golden Ball from its 4-plus million, evidence of team matters much larger, such as that, somehow, it has arranged an even loftier meeting with France. Tack 2018 to 1998 and to all else, and the Croatian heart does seem a mighty organ.

Authorities arrested a 61-year-old Mississippi man Thursday in Utah in connection with the death of his wife, whose remains were recently found at the couple’s home.

Police have been looking for Charles Eugene Bowman in Utah since finding his wife’s body. She was last seen alive in May, FOX 13 reports. Authorites described the homicide as a “violent death."

FOX 13 says authorities found Brown near his car at a campground on the east side of Bear Lake, near the Utah-Idaho border.

To read the rest of the story, go to FOX13now.com.

Without either of their first-round picks from the past two drafts, the Utah Jazz used grit to scrape by the Orlando Magic, 75–70, and advance in the Las Vegas Summer League Tournament.

Diamond Stone, starting in place of injured center Tony Bradley (wrist), led the Jazz with 14 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks. While rookie guard Grayson Allen was rested, Georges Niang (12 points, 11 rebounds) and Stanton Kidd (9 points) helped extend the Jazz lead late in the fourth quarter.

The Magic, who played without star lottery picks Mo Bamba and Jonathan Issac, were led by Troy Caupain, who had 14 points. Both teams combined to shoot 34 percent from the field.

The Jazz are slated to play at 8:30 p.m. MDT Saturday against the Memphis Grizzlies. The rest of the tournament games will be single elimination.

In the middle of a gala British Prime Minister Theresa May put on for President Donald Trump, a tabloid published an interview in which Trump was highly critical of May and suggested one of her political opponents would make a great replacement for her. The comments continued Trump’s method of upending relations with allies on his trip to Europe and England. [Politico]

Happy Friday.

Topping the news: Survivors of the Parkland, Fla., shooting found a new venue for their “Road to Change” event after the original venue backed out citing security concerns. [Trib] [Fox13] [DNews] [KUER] [KUTV] [ABC4]

→ The Utah State Records Committee ruled that an interview between Brigham Young University police and a former leader of the Mormon Missionary Training Center accused of sexually assaulting a woman decades ago should be made public. [Trib] [KUTV]

→ Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is considering calling a special session after weeks of negotiating with the Salt Lake City Council on the inland port bill. Members met behind closed doors yesterday, and several said talks were close. Herbert could call lawmakers into session next week when they meet for interim hearings. But Mayor Jackie Biskupski is criticizing the work. [Trib] [DNews] [FOX13]

Tweets of the day: From @Mikebattuello: “Hey @TGowdySC, please share the last 7 years of your texts and emails … want to ensure you did not have any negative opinions of Hillary while you were investigating her.”

→ From @MEPFuller: “I honestly think you capture 95% of the Republican Party with an amalgamation of Mitch McConnell and Louie Gohmert.”

→ From @jaketapper: “Apparently we’re back to Congress believing that infidelity says something about someone’s character, is that right?”

Happy Birthday: To Rep. Rob Bishop and former Utah State University president Stan Albrecht, on Saturday to state Sen. Keith Grover and on Sunday to Rep. Chris Stewart.

Behind the Headlines: Tribune reporter Jessica Miller, Washington bureau chief Thomas Burr and editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce join KCPW’s Roger McDonough to talk about the week’s top stories, including one woman’s request for asylum.

Every Friday at 9 a.m., stream “Behind the Headlines” online at kcpw.org or tune in to KCPW 88.3 FM or Utah Public Radio for the broadcast.

In other news: Utah social media accounts saw their number of Twitter followers drop by the thousands as Twitter announced a purge of millions of accounts that had been locked due to inactivity or suspicious behavior. [Trib]

→ A leasing plan from the Bureau of Land Management under the Trump administration would allow for eight times more coal mining near Bryce Canyon National Park, according to an environmental impact statement released by the BLM. [Trib]

→ A 4th District judge ordered Young Living Essential Oils to pay its competitor, doTERRA Inc. about $1.8 million in attorney fees and other costs, saying Young Living acted in “bad faith” in a lawsuit that was lost last year. [Trib] [DNews]

→ Utah could recieve another $60 million in online sales tax revenue following a Supreme Court decision to allow states to collect taxes from online businesses. [APviaTrib]

→ Pat Bagley says that Sen. Orrin Hatch wears multiple faces, and that being just two-faced would be an improvement for Utah’s senator. [Trib]

→ Robert Gehrke says the Utah Gun Exchange’s strategy of following the Parkland students around the country is a poor strategy, regardless of where you stand on guns. [Trib]

Nationally: Trump reaffirmed U.S. support for NATO at this year’s metting, but still issued vague threats if allies don’t meet his demands for increased military spending. [NYTimes] [WaPost]

→ The president’s unpredictable performance at the NATO summit in Brussels left many European leaders convinced that Trump “plays in a completely different way than the rest of us,” as Danish Defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen put it. [Politico]

→ Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is moving from his “VIP” jail cell to a maximum-security detention center in Northern Virgina, although he is still expected to be segregated from the general prison population. [Politico]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

-- Connor Richards and Taylor W. Anderson

Twitter.com/crichards1995 and Twitter.com/TaylorWAnderson