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NEW YORK (AP) — While Cam Skattebo has not played football for the New York Giants since undergoing season-ending surgery in late October, the rookie running back still has plenty of people around sports talking about him. Skattebo attended WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” at Madison Square Garden, along with teammates Abdul Carter and Roy Robertson-Harris. After some back-and-forth banter during a skit, Skattebo shoved wrestler JD McDonagh from behind a barrier and got pushed back, with the clip going viral. “Cam’s crazy,” Giants starting left tackle Andrew Thomas said Tuesday with a chuckle. A handful of local radio hosts blasted Skattebo for risking his health by taking part in the show. Skattebo took to social media to defend himself. “Honestly if you don’t like that I’m having a good time while dealing with a tough time, then just go ahead and unfollow and casually move on,” Skattebo posted on X, formerly Twitter. “I’m not able to play football and have the fun I’ve been having my whole life so I am doing things outside the box trying to find stuff to keep me happy. Enjoy the rest of y’all’s week and just don’t talk about me if you ain’t got nothing nice to say.” Skattebo, who wore a jersey of Rangers enforcer Matt Rempe at the event, is recovering from a broken right fibula and dislocated right ankle after getting hurt in gruesome fashion Oct. 26 in a loss at Philadelphia. In a video interview with Complex Sports over the weekend, Skattebo showed how well the injury was healing, and he was wearing a protective boot at the Garden. The 23-year-old also was on the sideline Sunday at the Meadowlands on a scooter and sporting the boot. ESPN New York’s Chris Carlin said he “could not have been angrier at the just remarkable stupidity shown by Skattebo. He was one of the lone bright spots of this team, and he thinks it’s a good idea to get involved like that.” Co-host Bart Scott, who played 11 NFL seasons as a linebacker with the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets, was less vocally critical but still described Skattebo’s participation as “carelessness.” “Whether you’re play wrestling or wrestling, it’s still a physical act,” Scott said. WFAN’s Chris McMonigle said “the optics are so bad.” On the same station, Brandon Tierney called it dumb. “I’m not here to be the buzz kill or holier than thou or the headmaster or the dean of discipline, but, dude, use common sense,” Tierney said. “What happens if there’s a little beer or a little water or a little seltzer on the Garden floor and he slips and he loses control?” Skattebo responded to that clip on social media by saying his foot was off the ground, adding, “Trust me wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize anything.” Skattebo, along with quarterback Jaxson Dart, had brought an infusion of energy into the organization before going down. The fourth-round pick out of Arizona State had run for five touchdowns and had two more receiving in his first eight professional games. Asked Tuesday on a video call with reporters about Skattebo at the Garden, second-year back Tyrone Tracy flashed a smile. “I wasn’t there last night, but you best believe I was fighting,” Tracy said. “I was fighting at home, though, telling him to duck and sit down. Cam’s a wild man. Everybody knows that. He’s going to go out there and do what he do.” ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

When Bryce Young was benched after two games last year, people questioned whether he needed a fresh start on another team. Young is still in Carolina and has the Panthers in the playoff chase. The third-year quarterback threw for a franchise-record 448 yards and three touchdowns against the NFL’s No. 1 pass defense to lead the Panthers to a 30-27 win over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. Carolina (6-5) trails the Tampa Buccaneers (6-4) by a half-game in the NFC South, and the two teams will meet twice in the final three weeks. Both have tough road games in Week 12. The Panthers face the San Francisco 49ers (7-4) on Monday night. The Buccaneers take on the Los Angeles Rams (8-2) on Sunday night. Young bounced back from an ankle injury in the first quarter against Atlanta to lead a comeback from a 21-7 deficit a week after a disappointing 17-7 loss to New Orleans. If Young continues to play at this level, the Panthers could end Tampa Bay’s streak of four consecutive division titles. “To me, it’s just my expectation for Bryce to take every game plan and every opportunity and attack it, and he’s been doing that,” Panthers coach Dave Canales said. ”(Sunday) was a day about the whole group. It was about all the guys, the time on task, the side conversations in practices, working together in between drives and really just making it come alive. Finding the completions where they were and extending the play when he needed to. I’m just proud of the way that he just pushed through for his teammates. It just speaks volumes to the type of leader that he’s continued to grow into, and to be able to be available for his guys and find a bunch of different guys in different situations.” Canales was two games into his first season as an NFL head coach when he decided to bench Young for veteran Andy Dalton. Young, the 2023 No. 1 draft pick, struggled in his rookie season under former coach Frank Reich. He needed more time to learn Canales’ system, watch from the sideline and grow as a player. Canales helped develop Geno Smith in Seattle and Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay. His patient approach with Young is coming along. Performances like the one against Atlanta should give Panthers fans reason for optimism that Young can still be a franchise QB. He has completed 62.7% of his passes for 1,962 yards, 14 touchdowns, seven interceptions and a career-high 86.0 passer rating. “Everybody in the locker room knew it was bound to happen. We knew that we had in our bag, and specifically Bryce,” rookie wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan said. “But I mean, to turn the tape on, man, Bryce went out there and balled for sure.” The Detroit Lions may have found a formula to stop the tush push. They stopped Jalen Hurts five of six times on Philadelphia’s version of the QB sneak. Two of the stops were negated by penalty. Still, the Lions had more success than any team against it. They also were one of the 10 teams to vote not to ban the play. None of the other nine teams will play the Eagles in the regular season. “Respect,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “They did a good job stopping it.” The Lions sent a rusher off the edge to pull Hurts back from trying a second effort and also pushed their frontline defenders up the middle. It worked. Bills safety Damar Hamlin overcame suffering cardiac arrest during a game against Cincinnati on Jan. 2, 2023, to not only return to the NFL but was a starter for Buffalo last season. A pectoral injury sent Hamlin to injured reserve last month, but he says he was built to handle adversity long before he nearly died on the field. “The toughness and adversities that I’ve already had in my life to even just make it to the point where I’m able to be an NFL athlete, that was the toughest part of my journey,” Hamlin told The Associated Press. “That was really like the toughest navigation. I was built for the chase and I was built to overcome the adversity to be able to persevere through something so heart-wrenching, no pun intended, but you know something so heart-wrenching and something so scary to life, to be able to get myself to a point where I wanted to be able to show that I can compete again at the highest level in the world. So, I think just the foundation that my parents built in me, the foundation of things I had to overcome and the mindset that I had to build myself up into a person carries me through life.” ___ On Football analyzes the biggest topics in the NFL from week to week. For more On Football analysis, head here. ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president on Tuesday ruled out allowing U.S. strikes against cartels on Mexican soil, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was willing to do whatever it takes to stop drugs entering the U.S. “It’s not going to happen,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday. “He (Trump) has suggested it on various occasions or he has said, ‘we offer you a United States military intervention in Mexico, whatever you need to fight the criminal groups,’” she said. “But I have told him on every occasion that we can collaborate, that they can help us with information they have, but that we operate in our territory, that we do not accept any intervention by a foreign government.” Sheinbaum said she had said it to Trump and to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that they have understood. “Would I want strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” Trump said Monday, adding that he’s “not happy with Mexico.” The U.S. Embassy in Mexico shared a video through social platform X later Monday that included previous comments from Rubio saying that the U.S. would not take unilateral action in Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexican and U.S. diplomats were trying to sort out Tuesday what may have been an actual U.S. incursion. On Monday, men arrived in a boat to a beach in northeast Mexico and installed some signs signaling land that the U.S. Department of Defense considered restricted. Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said late Monday that the country’s Navy had removed the signs, which appeared to be on Mexican territory. And on Tuesday, Sheinbaum said that the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency that determines the border between the two countries, was getting involved. The signs, driven into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, caused a stir when witnesses said men in a boat arrived at the local beach known as Playa Bagdad and erected them. The signs read in English and Spanish “Warning: Restricted Area” and went on to explain that it was Department of Defense property and had been declared restricted by “the commander.” It said there could be no unauthorized access, photography or drawings of the area. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mexico contacted its consulate in Brownsville, Texas and then the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. Eventually, it was determined that contractors working for some U.S. government entity had placed the signs, Sheinbaum said. “But the river changes its course, it breaks loose and according to the treaty you have to clearly demarcate the national border,” Sheinbaum said during her daily press briefing. The area is close to SpaceX Starbase, which sits adjacent to Boca Chica Beach on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. The facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA, which hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars. In June, Sheinbaum said the government was looking into contamination from the SpaceX facility after pieces of metal, plastic and rocket pieces were reportedly found on the Mexican side of the border following the explosion of a rocket during a test. The area also carries the added sensitivity of Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, which Mexico has also rejected. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — At 100 years old, Lee Grant knows the cost of McCarthyism better than almost anyone else on the planet. One of the last surviving actors to be blacklisted during the anti-communist Red Scare, the Academy Award-winning performer is speaking out against Florida’s new social studies teaching standards, which critics have warned are aimed at rewriting one of the most repressive chapters in American history. “It’s a lie and a distortion of the truth of history,” Grant said in an interview with The Associated Press. In 1951, Grant’s star was on the rise. But just as her career was taking off, it was derailed and she was blacklisted, barred from working in film or television for the next 12 years after she refused to name names in front of the congressional committee that investigated so-called “un-American activities.” “Me? Turn in friends?” she said, adding “That’s not the way I am raised.” Reflecting on how political persecution changed her own life, Grant said she sees echoes of McCarthyism in today’s politics, pointing to President Donald Trump’s fights with the media and wondering how long his critics will be able to continue speaking out. “As an old blacklisted actor, director,” Grant said, “I keep worrying.” The teaching standards approved last week for middle- and high school students by the Florida Board of Education include instruction on the use of “‘McCarthyism’ as an insult” and how using the terms “red-baiter and Red Scare” amounts to “slander against anti-communists.” Florida’s standards soften decades of criticism of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a political movement to root out what he labeled as communism in government, the Civil Rights Movement and artistic communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. McCarthy and others tried to silence political opponents by accusing them of being communists or socialists, using fear and public accusations to suppress basic free speech rights. The public inquisitions, ideological loyalty tests and firings of that period are seen now as a shameful period that upended the lives and careers of scores of actors, writers, activists and public servants. The term “McCarthyism” became synonymous with baseless attacks on free expression, and the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to the phenomena in several First Amendment-related rulings. Born Lyova Rosenthal and raised in Manhattan, Grant made her Hollywood debut playing the shoplifter in the film “Detective Story” alongside Kirk Douglas, a role that earned Grant an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Grant was not herself a member of the Communist Party, a point of contention in her first marriage to screenwriter Arnold Manoff, who was a communist. But Grant spoke out at the memorial service of an actor friend who died of a heart attack six months after being questioned by the congressional committee, saying that “being blacklisted killed him.” “That was how I was blacklisted. That was the act,” she recalled. Soon after, Grant’s name appeared on a list, alongside artists like Orson Welles, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller and Lena Horne. “We live in a democracy that was being used as a fascist tool to stop people from thinking,” Grant said of the time. Despite her yearslong ban in Hollywood, Grant was able to work in theater, which provided a haven for some blacklisted actors, and she continued fighting against the purge. By 1954, public opinion and McCarthy’s fellow senators turned on him, and in the 1960s, the blacklist’s hold on Hollywood loosened. Grant ultimately went on to have a storied career, despite the years lost to being blacklisted. She made a comeback in the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night” alongside Sidney Poitier, channeling her anger as a distraught woman outraged by the prejudice of local authorities investigating her husband’s murder. She went on to win an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role in the 1975 film “Shampoo” alongside Warren Beatty. She later became a documentary filmmaker, directing “Down and Out in America,” which won the Oscar for best feature-length documentary in 1987. Florida’s new teaching benchmarks, which will go into effect in the 2026-2027 school year, were prompted by a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last year requiring instruction on communism and the “threat” it’s posed to the U.S. The move followed the Republican-controlled Legislature’s designation of Nov. 7 as Victims of Communism Day in Florida’s public schools, to include at least 45 minutes of instruction on figures such as former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Under the new standards, Florida teachers should give instruction on efforts by “anti-communist politicians,” such as McCarthy, and the late Presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon. Teachers are also instructed to identify “propaganda and defamation” used to “delegitimize” anti-communists. “Instruction includes using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anti-communism,” the new standards said. “Instruction includes slander against anti-communists, such as red-baiter and Red Scare.” ___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

A historic ocean liner will become the world’s largest artificial reef after it’s sunk off Florida’s Gulf Coast early next year. Okaloosa County officials announced Tuesday that they expect to sink the SS United States in early 2026 about 22 nautical miles (41 kilometers) southwest of Destin and 32 nautical miles (59 kilometers) southeast of Pensacola. The nearly 1,000-foot (305-meter) vessel, which shattered the trans-Atlantic speed record on its maiden voyage in 1952, has spent most of this year at the Port of Mobile in Alabama, being scoured to remove chemicals, wiring, plastic and glass. The ship’s final location was selected as part of an agreement with Pensacola tourism officials, who are contributing $1.5 million to the project, and Coastal Conservation Association Florida, which is kicking in another $500,000. Officials had been considering two other locations, including one that would have placed the ship further east and closer to Panama City Beach. “This collaboration will foster amazing adventures for generations of visitors and create a tourism economy that will benefit the state and the entire Northwest Florida region,” Okaloosa County Board Chairman Paul Mixon said in a statement. The contributions will be used to transform the SS United States into an artificial reef and finance a multi-year marketing campaign. The deal is part of Okaloosa County’s $10.1 million plan to purchase, move, clean and sink the ship, which includes $1 million toward a onshore museum to promote the ship’s history. Once in place, the SS United States will sit at a depth of about 180 feet (55 meters), but the vessel is so tall that the top decks will be about 60 feet (18 meters) from the surface, making it attractive to both novice and experienced divers. The artificial reef will also be about 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) away from to the USS Oriskany, another popular dive destination that was sunk in 2006. The SS United States is set to join Okaloosa County’s more than 500 artificial reefs, which include a dozen smaller ship wrecks. “The transformation of the SS United States into the world’s largest artificial reef creates a rare opportunity to elevate our entire region on the global stage,” said Darien Schaefer, president and CEO of Visit Pensacola. The new artificial reef will provide essential marine life habitat, which prompted Coastal Conservation Association Florida to make its largest donation in the organization’s 40-year history. “It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to contribute to the creation of the world’s largest artificial reef,” CCA Florida Executive Director Brian Gorski said in a statement. The SS United States arrived in Alabama at the beginning of March following a 12-day tow from Philadelphia’s Delaware River, where it has spent nearly three decades. Okaloosa County took ownership after a years-old rent dispute was resolved last October between the conservancy that oversees the ship and its landlord. Various groups have attempted to restore the SS United States over the years, but all plans were eventually abandoned because of the steep cost. Recently, increased media attention has generated more calls to preserve the ship, and a group called the New York Coalition sued in Pensacola federal court asking a judge to halt sinking such a historically significant vessel. But Okaloosa County officials have said that preventing the SS United States from becoming a reef would only send it to the scrapyard. The vessel, which is more than 100 feet (30 meters) longer than the RMS Titanic, was once considered a beacon of American thousands of troops. On its maiden voyage, the ship reached an average speed of 36 knots, or just over 41 mph (66 kph), The Associated Press reported from aboard. The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, besting the RMS Queen Mary’s time by 10 hours. To this day, the SS United States holds the trans-Atlantic speed record for an ocean liner. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com