St. Petersburg, Russia • Belgium earned its highest World Cup finish on Saturday by beating England 2-0 in the third-place match.

Thomas Meunier and Eden Hazard scored a goal each for the Belgians, who lost to France in the semifinals on Tuesday.

Meunier scored in the fourth minute, knocking a cross from Nacer Chadli past England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. Hazard added the other off a pass from Kevin de Bruyne in the 82nd.

Toby Alderweireld denied England's best chance of the game, sliding on the goal line to clear a shot from Eric Dier.

England, which lost to Croatia in the semifinals, matched its best World Cup result — fourth in 1990 — since winning the tournament for the only time in 1966.

France and Croatia will play in the final on Sunday at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.

Belgium's previous best finish at the World Cup was fourth, but the team outplayed England in the midfield to go one better this time.

The Belgians could easily have scored more, with Pickford making a good save to stop a shot from De Bruyne in the 11th and Alderweireld volleying narrowly over the bar in the 35th.

England made set pieces the cornerstone of its run to the World Cup semifinals and created chances for Harry Maguire and Dier in the second half. Neither hit the target with their headers.

It was the second time England and Belgium met in this year's tournament. In the group stage, both teams had already qualified before Belgium's 1-0 win in Kaliningrad.

England coach Gareth Southgate made five changes to face Belgium, but Danny Rose and Fabian Delph made little impact while Dier started slowly but threatened in the second half.

Phil Jones failed to intercept the pass which led to Hazard's goal.

The two replacements in Belgium's lineup were more effective. Meunier scored and Youri Tielemans dominated the midfield.

England forward Harry Kane is still placed to win the Golden Boot with a tournament-leading six goals ahead of Sunday’s final.

Kane last scored in England's win over Colombia in the round of 16. On Saturday, he slipped as he shot wide in the first half, then failed to make contact with Jesse Lingard's cross early in the second.

Romelu Lukaku couldn’t add to his four goals for Belgium and was substituted shortly after misjudging a through ball by De Bruyne.

Jackson, Wyo. • A pronghorn lingered nearby as Steve Morriss removed barbed wire from an obsolete fence on the Pinto Ranch in Grand Teton National Park.

“It waited for us to be done, said ‘thank you’ and then went on its way,” Morriss said about the encounter, which happened years ago but left an indelible impression.

He’s been disassembling and bailing barbed wire to help wildlife ever since.

For about a decade, Morriss has been a devoted member of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation’s volunteer fence-pull team. The volunteers and staffers remove and modify fencing that for one reason or another is no longer needed and creates a hazard for wildlife. As the foundation approaches its 25th anniversary this year, it also nears another milestone: the removal of 200 miles of unnecessary fencing.

The effort had Morriss, 25 other volunteers and foundation staff in the field on a recent Saturday removing almost a mile of fence from a relic pasture near the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Horse Creek elk feedground. They worked at the junction of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and a swath of state-owned land about 10 miles southeast of Jackson off Highway 89.

Livestock have stopped grazing on the national forest parcel, so the barbed-wire fence is no longer needed, said Aly Courtemanch, a Wyoming Game and Fish wildlife biologist and Wildlife Foundation board member. Removing the fence eliminates an obstacle for migrating elk and mule deer, she said.

The three-strand fence was a hazard for animals trying to jump over the fence or crawl under it. One by one the strands came out as volunteers pulled giant, rusted staples from wooden posts.

Then they rolled up the wire and hauled it away to be recycled. The group on Saturday had mechanical assistance: along with a manual wire winder, they also had a Game and Fish power winder at their disposal. A small tractor turned the winder mounted on its back.

One volunteer, Dick Klene, an 18-year veteran of the fence-pull team, welcomed the help.

“I know we didn’t have a winder when I started,” he said.

Along with removing lengths of barbed wire from fences, the team also modifies fences to protect wildlife in areas where fencing is still needed for cattle. Tactics include lowering the height of the fence and replacing the top with either a smooth wire or smooth wooden pole. They also raise and replace the bottom wire with a smooth wire to protect calves and fawns that might crawl underneath the fence.

Keeping barbed wire in the middle of the fence and smooth wires on the top and bottom protects wildlife and grazing cattle. Wild ungulates typically go under or over fences, but cattle try to push through, said Jon Mobeck, the foundation’s executive director.

The nonprofit’s goal is to reduce the total number of obstacles an animal might run into along its migration path, Mobeck said. An elk might encounter 100 fences during migration, he said, and all those obstacles add up.

“We look at the landscape scale,” he said. “Why not remove every possible fence to preserve movement into the future?”

The Horse Creek fence pullers were poised to keep removing fencing in pursuit of that goal.

“You see that you did something when you’re done,” Lori Tillemans said. “And you get to see beautiful country you don’t usually get to see.”

Maurine Karabatsos agreed, saying she liked seeing a tangible result to her work.

Many of Saturday’s volunteers were fence-removal pros.

“There’s a lot of veterans that show up, so we get it done quickly,” Arne Johanson said.

“There’s a concrete satisfaction to the work,” Beverly Boynton said. “It’s fun doing a little cowboytype work.”

Provo • A hazmat suit and respirator is what Jared Herbert typically wears to work. If passers-by ask what he is working on, he tells them he’s just cleaning a house. Or taking care of a residential chemical contamination.

He never gives the real reason his cleaning crew travels in unmarked vans to rip out carpet, scrub air ducts or load furniture into a dumpster.

“We keep it as discreet as we can,” he explained. “You want to know that someone has meth in your neighborhood, but you also don’t want to know, you know?”

Herbert works as a foreman for Meth Mob, a Provo-area decontamination company focused on cleaning “meth houses.” He travels across the state to clean all kinds of houses where high measures of meth contamination are reported. His crew and asbestos-cleaning crews wear the same garb.

“I’ve done really run-down, beat-up houses in beat-up neighborhoods, but then I’ve done multimillion-dollar homes that have meth,” Herbert said. “I hate to say it but yes, it’s everywhere.”

Ann Atkin, the owner of Meth Mob, said her company cleans more than 100 houses every year. Every month has been busier than the previous month in the two years the company has been in business.

“I don’t want this to be a fear factor,” she said. “We’ve tested lots of homes without meth, but we’ve also tested a lot that have [it].”

The dangers and damage of meth

Methamphetamine is an addictive stimulant, one that can be smoked, swallowed, snorted or injected.

The drug comes as a pill or a powder, though crystal meth looks like glass or shiny blueish white rocks.

Users who smoke or inject meth report feeling a brief and intense rush, while ingesting or snorting produces a long-lasting high, according to information from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Both effects release dopamine into the brain that regulates feelings of pleasure. It’s sometimes used for medical treatment of attention deficit disorder or obesity.

Small amounts create increased wakefulness, decreased appetite and violent behavior, along with rapid and irregular heart rate, increased blood pressure and hyperthermia.

High doses can elevate body temperature to lethal levels or cause cardiovascular collapse, extreme anorexia, dental problems and memory loss. Overdosing causes death from heart attacks or organ problems generated by overheating.

To home inspector Jared Fenn, meth is a huge issue that no one seems to talk about.

“It’s a much bigger problem than people want to admit or realize,” he said. “The problem here in Utah County is that it’s ‘Happy Valley.’ Nothing goes wrong here and everybody’s happy. But meth is a huge problem.”

He and his team in Orem work as home inspectors with the national franchise Pillar to Post. They inspect homes in Utah, Sanpete, Juab, Carbon, Emery, Sevier and Millard counties, often working with homebuyers worried about buying a meth-contaminated house.

Inspecting a residence for meth contamination is an extra service his business provides in addition to regular home inspections, much like radon or mold screening.

“It’s the first step in getting that peace of mind when you’re buying a property,” he explained.

But when it comes to meth contamination, “there’s really nothing that you can look for.”

“Of the houses we’ve had test positive, half of them were ones we never would’ve suspected,” Fenn said.

A common misconception is that only cooking meth causes contamination. But traces of meth get into the carpet and the walls and the air ducts whenever users smoke in their homes.

In 2004, the Utah Health Department reported 107 clandestine meth labs in Utah. Ten years later, there was only one.

There are usually no obvious signs of contamination unless someone completes a sample test inside the home.

“It can be cleaned up; that’s the good news,” he said.

As a certified inspector, Fenn conducts swab tests in at least three 10-by-10-centimeter spots in a home. If the swabs test positive at a lab for more than 1 microgram of meth per 100 square centimeters, state law requires the house should be cleaned and decontaminated.

“That’s what people don’t realize is that just smoking it can contaminate the house,” Fenn said.

But while there is plenty of information about how meth harms adults, evidence is scarce on the secondhand effects of meth inside a contaminated home.

“That’s where a lot of the controversy comes up,” Fenn said.

There’s little research on how meth contamination hurts residents in a home, though exposure could cause the same, though lesser, reactions that meth users experience like liver or kidney problems and lung disorders.

Young children can be particularly vulnerable if they crawl around on the carpet, Fenn explained. Meth can damage their neurological development or immune system as they are a lot more susceptible to adverse effects than a healthy adult.

A growing number of Utah real estate agents are requesting meth-contamination testing, preferring to know about possible contamination before closing a deal with buyers.

“There are so many hazards that we deal with in our environment. Let’s take care of the ones that we can control,” Fenn said.

His team conducts a meth-contamination test an average of one in every 15 homes they inspect. The test is cheap insurance compared with spending thousands in remodeling only to find contamination afterward.

Enter cleaning crew stage right

The first thing Herbert needs to know when he starts cleanup for a house is how high the contamination levels are. The crew decontaminates the entire home, but there are usually rooms that need extra attention.

“Bathrooms are a common place for meth smokers,” he said. “Laundry closets are good. Anywhere that has a fan that blows out.”

He also finds small clues inside a home. Deadbolts on closets. Holes in the wall from a violent user. Any porous furniture or materials need to be thrown out before the cleaning process starts, including couches, carpets and most electronics.

“I’m adamant about carpet,” Herbert said. “If it’s contaminated, I can’t save it. I just won’t. Too much risk.”

The team members usually break the furniture they remove from the house to prevent anyone from stealing the contaminated items from their dumpster truck. The waste is taken to the dump as hazardous material and quickly buried in authorized areas.

“Just don’t ever ask me to save a flat-screen TV because that ain’t gonna happen,” Herbert said with a laugh. “I tried, I already know it can’t be done.”

Some of the hardest homes he’s cleaned belong to grandparents. In one incident, a grandmother had taken one of her grandchildren under her roof. But police later discovered the grandchild was smoking meth inside the home.

“That’s 60, 70 years of this lady’s life that I’ve got to just throw away because you can’t save it,” Herbert said. “It’s all sorts of houses. Meth will get anyone, that’s the way I look at it.”

Another common situation is what happens to “house flippers,” homebuyers who repurpose rundown homes. These homeowners can lose thousands if they put in new carpet and paint before testing for meth contamination.

“Once it’s disrupted, it floats through the air and gets into stuff,” he said.

After tossing the carpet and furniture, his team members divide the cleaning process into dry and wet procedures. First, they thoroughly vacuum the floors and the air ducts. For the wet process, they run chemicals inside the ducts and scrub all the walls and ceilings three times. The chemicals need to sit for four to six hours to neutralize the meth. The workers also scrub any hard surfaces and most appliances.

“In meth cleanup, asbestos is the only thing that takes precedence over meth,” Herbert said. “It’s the only thing that can be cleaned before me.”

Some companies charge more for cleaning but use softer chemicals, according to Fenn. Cheaper companies might use harsh chemicals that sometimes corrode metal hinges, sink fixtures or cabinet hardware.

Herbert’s team takes about 14 days to clean an average 2,200-square-foot home. The manual labor is usually done in a week, but contamination testing before and after the cleaning takes time to process in the lab.

An ounce of prevention is slightly cheaper

Certified home inspectors and cleaning teams are not the only ones who can conduct contamination tests. Free meth contamination testing kits are available at the Utah County Health Department.

Although homebuyers are the most frequent demographic who test, the kits are available for real estate agents, renters, homeowners and everyone in between. The kit comes with instructions and tools for collecting a sample from a home and sending it to a lab for a small fee.

“The $45 is a cheap way for an individual owner to see if there is any reason to worry about it,” said Chris Davis, the program manager of solid and hazardous waste at the Health Department.

The department usually hands out 100-150 kits a year and provides an online comprehensive list of decontamination specialists who can verify results of individual tests.

If law enforcement or certified inspectors report high levels of meth contamination, the Health Department oversees the cleaning process and ensures the home is cleaned. The house is barred from occupancy until the department issues a written report that the residence is drug-free.

“Recently we haven’t had issues with labs, it’s been more with the users,” said Steve Alder, the bureau director of solid and hazardous waste at the Health Department.

According to data from the department, nearly 28 percent of individuals admitted to substance abuse treatment programs were using meth. Of those in treatment, about 75 percent were women and mothers.

“It’s used by a lot of different people in a lot of different circumstances,” said Karla Bartholomew, a licensed environmental health scientist with the Salt Lake County Health Department.

Salt Lake County does not offer free test kits but will refer citizens to state-certified decontamination specialists. Residents in both counties can contact their local health departments for help in contamination testing, as “it can be a very daunting and scary process.”

“But there’s no reason to be confused,” Bartholomew added.

No rhyme or reason to contamination

The best practice is to do a meth test on every house, Fenn advised. He finds meth in places from apartments to construction sites to Brigham Young University student housing.

A higher percentage of the drug is found in apartment complexes like BYU housing, as there is a higher number of people who are moving in and out.

“There’s a lot of scenarios, but there really isn’t a stereotype I’ve come across in the last decade,” he said. “We need to be aware of it, not be scared of it and hide our heads in the sand, but face it head on.”

Then, there is the concern for the health of family members living in a contaminated home.

“It is an issue, it’s going to hurt your house, but recognize the sign not just in the homes but also with people,” Fenn said.

The cost of a quick test or house cleaning is a small price instead of remodeling twice, Atkin said.

“The majority of my work is found in the real estate transaction due diligence period,” she added. “They’ll clean it up before they move in or they find out that their house for sale has it.”

Herbert agreed. He’s traveled everywhere from Logan to Payson, Lehi to St. George, even parts of southern Idaho. He is traveling to Moab soon to decontaminate two more houses.

All the homes start to run together after a while, and it’s easier for his crew to talk about where they haven’t cleaned rather than where they have been.

“That’s how bad it is,” Herbert said. “The house in Lehi? You’d have never suspected it. You’d think this is the nicest neighborhood on Earth. But it’s there, it’s there.”

London • Angelique Kerber was so steady, so patient, so accurate throughout the Wimbledon final. She never really gave Serena Williams much of a chance.

Kerber won her first championship at the All England Club and third major overall by playing cleanly as can be and picking her spots for big shots, beating Williams 6-3, 6-3 on Saturday.

"I knew that I had to play my best tennis against a champion like Serena," said Kerber, the first German woman to win Wimbledon since Steffi Graff in 1996.

She prevented Williams from claiming an eighth title at Wimbledon and 24th from all Grand Slam tournaments, which would have equaled Margaret Court's record.

Williams gave birth only 10½ months ago, then was treated for blood clots. She wore special compression leggings as a precaution during Wimbledon, just the fourth tournament of her comeback.

After all the time away, Williams spoke about being impressed with herself for just reaching the final. She also wanted to win, of course.

"To all the moms out there, I was playing for you today — and I tried," said the 36-year-old American, her voice shaking during the trophy ceremony.

"Angelique played really well," Williams said. "She played out of her mind."

Kerber made only five unforced errors the entire match, 19 fewer than Williams. Perhaps more impressive was this: She broke Williams in 4 of 9 service games.

The 30-year-old German lost to Williams in the 2016 Wimbledon final. She beat Williams in the Australian Open final that year, then won that year's U.S. Open to briefly replace her at No. 1 in the rankings.

Kerber addressed Williams during the on-court interviews, saying: "You're such an inspiration for everybody, for all of us. I'm sure you will have your next Grand Slam title soon. I'm really, really sure."

The final started more than two hours late, because they had to wait for the end of Novak Djokovic's five-set victory over Rafael Nadal in a men's semifinal that was suspended the night before.

Williams' play was tight right from the outset.

After taking the opening two points, she made four miscues in a row to get broken. That was part of a run in which she dropped 8 of 9 points. The American was mostly her own undoing, too: She was responsible for the final's initial six unforced errors. By the time the first set was over, the disparity was 14-3.

That's not going to work against an opponent of Kerber's quality.

Trying to sneak a ball by Kerber is something akin to trying to put one past a brick wall. There are no holes.

The left-hander scurried along the baseline, this way and that, using a combination of quickness and anticipation to track down what often appeared to be winners for Williams but were not enough to end a point. Kerber would bend real low, even putting a knee right on the grass to get a ball back.

And when she swung her racket, the measure was almost always true.

That's not to say Kerber is only about defending. She has added a more aggressive element to her game in recent years. That was on display Saturday when she delivered a pair of down-the-line forehand passing winners to collect the last break she'd need, for a 4-2 edge in the second set.

Soon enough, she was down on the grass, celebrating the moment and caking dirt on her white dress.

“It was such an amazing tournament for me. I was really happy to get this far,” Williams said. “It’s obviously disappointing, but I can’t be disappointed. I have so much to look forward to. I’m literally just getting started.”

Springdale, Utah • A highway through Zion National Park on southern Utah has reopened after being closed due to mud and debris from a heavy rainstorm.

Park officials said Friday the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway was reopened after being closed from Canyon Junction to the park's east entrance after the storm Wednesday night.

Officials said the mud and debris were up to 4 feet (1 meter) deep and that plows cleared a path to dozens of vehicles that were stranded.

No injuries were reported.

Officials said the national park near St. George north of the Arizona line received 3 inches of rain in a short amount of time Wednesday night.

Provo • After BYU quarterback Tanner Mangum ruptured his Achilles tendon while setting up to throw a pass last November at Bulldog Stadium in Fresno, Calif., there were fears that a complete recovery would take up to a year, maybe nine months at the earliest.

An unrepentant optimist, Mangum said a few months later that it wouldn’t take nearly that long for him to return for his senior season.

He was right.

Mangum, who turns 25 on Sept. 8, received full clearance to participate in contact drills in April, just after BYU’s spring scrimmage, and about five months after the surgery. He is ready to compete for the starting quarterback position he once seemingly had a stranglehold on when training camp opens in early August.

“With modern technology and modern medicine [recovery from] an Achilles injury doesn’t take as long as it used to,” Mangum said at BYU Football Media Day last month. “I am so grateful for that.”

That Mangum has to compete with freshman Zach Wilson, sophomore Joe Critchlow and junior Beau Hoge for the spot after starting in eight games last season just illustrates how disastrous those eight games were for the former Elite 11 quarterback from Eagle, Idaho. He went 2-6 as a starter in 2017, beating only Portland State and San Jose State, teams that went a combined 2-22.

Whereas questions for Mangum before the 2017 season focused on whether he would turn pro at season’s end, inquiries on June 22 were mostly about his health and ability to bounce back from the disaster that resulted in offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Ty Detmer getting fired.

Mangum was also asked why he’s not irritated about having to win back the starting job all over again. After all, he has thrown for 5,158 yards in a career he said has “been a wild ride.”

Complaining about having to fight for his job isn’t how he rolls.

“I guess I just understand that in college football, every year is a battle. Every year is a competition,” he said. “And I have seen how unpredictable it can be, with injuries and performance and playing time. So you can’t take anything for granted.”

BYU coach Kalani Sitake said he and his staff didn’t make Mangum compete hard enough for the starting job before the 2017 opener against Portland State, handing it to him prematurely based on past performance.

“He didn’t have to earn it,” Sitake said, admitting it was a mistake.

The only quarterback derby in training camp was between Koy Detmer Jr. and Hoge to be Mangum’s backup.

In fairness, Mangum went 8-4 as a freshman after taking over for Taysom Hill (Lisfranc injury) and throwing the winning touchdown pass against Nebraska in the 2015 opener. He followed that with more late heroics to beat Boise State, and it was assumed he was headed for greatness. Even after starting miserably in the eventual 35-28 loss to Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl, he turned it around in the final three quarters to give BYU fans hope.

But he lost the starting job to Hill in 2016 and played significant minutes only after Hill was injured. Mangum played just well enough to beat Wyoming 24-21 in the 2016 Poinsettia Bowl, then had a subpar outing in the rainy spring game in 2017, signaling more bad times to come.

Still, he seemed destined to lead the Cougars back to a bowl game in 2017. It didn’t happen, due to injuries and ineffective play from the entire offense.

“Obviously, I understand that I didn’t play well last year, so I have to earn that job,” Mangum said. “I have to earn that right to be the starting quarterback. … In the quarterbacks room, we all get that. We are all aware that it could be anyone’s job.”

As soon as he could, Mangum went to work on his body, dropping around 15 pounds to look more like a physical specimen and less like the chunky returned missionary who served in Antofagasta, Chile.

“I am fully OK with having a battle,” Mangum said. “That’s healthy. It pushes all of us to be at the top of our game. And it is motivating us to keep working as hard as we can throughout the offseason. … We obviously have a lot of tough games, so we have to be as ready to go as we can be.”

Mangum credited BYU football nutritionist Dan Wilcox for helping him get rid of “a little bit of unneeded weight, a little unnecessary body fat.”

Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes and quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick have noticed the transformation.

“He has certainly reshaped his body. He looks great,” Grimes said. “He is a different guy than he was when I first got here six months ago, and I am really liking the guy I am seeing now.”

Roderick said that if the season had started a week after spring camp ended, Mangum could have played.

“He is full go,” Roderick said. “There are no reservations about any thing with Tanner, as far as his Achilles is concerned.”

BYU tight end Laulu-Pututau, who is embarking on a similar type of comeback himself this season, said Mangum’s desire to return quickly and “get more chiseled” might not have earned him the starting job, but it has earned him the respect of his teammates.

“The thing about Tanner is that he’s always positive, always optimistic,” Laulu-Pututau said.

Unrepentantly so.

Shaz Bennett is coming home to Salt Lake City this week, bringing the movie she’s worked on for six years.

Her coming-of-age story “Alaska Is a Drag” has played the film-festival circuit over the past several months and will continue that run when it debuts at Salt Lake City’s Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival, which runs Friday through Sunday, July 20-22, at the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts.

“Alaska Is a Drag” is one of the 23 features that will play over Damn These Heels’ three days. (It screens Sunday, July 22, at 1:45 p.m. in the Jeanné Wagner Theatre, and Bennett will be there for a Q&A after the screening.)

The lineup represents the breadth of storytelling for and by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer filmmakers, said Patrick Hubley, artistic director of the Utah Film Center, which is presenting Damn These Heels for the 15th year.

The festival, Hubley said, has “evolved primarily by how LGBTQ cinema has evolved. … There’s been a tremendous change in our society, about how society as a whole views the LGBTQ community.”

A decade ago, LGBTQ movies often centered on coming-of-age stories, usually coming-out stories, and “portrayed the alienation and lack of acceptance that society had for the LGBTQ community,” Hubley said. Now, “no one makes an issue of a gay couple getting married.”

Coming-of-age stories are still an important element of LGBTQ cinema, just as they are for movies in general — and “Alaska Is a Drag” is one of them.

It centers on Leo (Martin L Washington Jr.), a glam-obsessed young man working in a fish cannery in Alaska, who goes to the only gay bar within miles with his twin sister, Tristen (Maya Washington), for whom he dresses in drag inspired by the aurora borealis. After years of fighting off a bully in his small town, Leo’s punching skills catch the attention of his boss (Jason Scott Lee), a former amateur boxer, who offers to train him in the ring.

The inspiration for the story came from Bennett’s upbringing in Salt Lake City.

“When I lived in Salt Lake, a lot of friends of mine went up to Alaska fish canneries,” Bennett said. “I did it one summer, to raise money to move to New York.”

Once she moved to New York to pursue filmmaking (after studying acting at the University of Utah), she for a time did a drag act with a 7-foot-tall drag queen — who was from Alaska.

“I took a lot of my own experiences in Salt Lake, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery in the world,” Bennett said of her script, which she started working on in 2012. “I liked using the magical elements in Alaska, like the northern lights. I liked the idea of these kids taking the natural beauty and controlling the magical elements.”

In 2012, Bennett made a short film as part of an American Film Institute workshop for women filmmakers, based on a piece of her feature script. She cast both Washingtons (who are not related to each other, though both are half-black and half-Filipino) and infused their life experiences into the characters. “That ultimately made the feature feel more grounded,” she said.

After finishing the short and showing it on the festival circuit for 2013 and 2014, Bennett started to raise money for the feature. A crowdfunding campaign raised some of the money, and she won a competition in Poland that paid for some of the post-production work.

All this happened while Bennett — who had previously held jobs at the Sundance Film Festival and AFI Fest — was working on TV crews in Hollywood. Recently, she worked as a script coordinator on Lifetime’s reality-TV drama “UnReal” and Amazon’s detective drama “Bosch” — where, after writing an episode in season 4, she was promoted to the writing staff for season 5.

Earlier this year, Bennett got her chance to direct for TV for the first time, helming an episode of Ava DuVernay’s prime-time melodrama “Queen Sugar” (on the OWN Network). DuVernay has made a point of hiring only women to direct the show.

“She’s a real champion for all of us,” Bennett said of DuVernay, whom she met at AFI while working on the “Alaska Is a Drag” short.

Bennett said she identifies as queer, though she’s happily married to a man — Jean-Pierre Caner, also a filmmaker, and one of the editors and camera operators on “Alaska Is a Drag.”

“I feel very welcomed by the queer community,” she said, adding that the movie blurs traditional boundaries of gay identity.

“[Leo] runs between all of the labels,” Bennett said. “He’s playing with gender all the time. He’s bisexual, or he doesn’t even know what he is yet.”

Of all the festivals she attends, Bennett said, “the queer festivals are always the most fun. The parties are better. The people are always really supportive.”

Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival<br>The 15th annual Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival, presented by the Utah Film Center<br>Where • Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City<br>When • Friday through Sunday, July 20–22<br>Tickets • $10 per screening; arttix.artsaltlake.org<br>Passes • $70 to $500; utahfilmcenter.org

London • British police have arrested a man and a woman at a right-wing protest in London, where people supporting a prominent right-wing activist were joined by a “Welcome Trump” rally.

The small rally supporting U.S. President Donald Trump — who's in Scotland after visiting London — joined the "Free Tommy Robinson" protest Saturday in London's Whitehall. Robinson —whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — founded an anti-Muslim group and was jailed for contempt of court after broadcasting outside a criminal trial in May.

Scotland Yard had imposed restrictions on both rallies "due to concerns of serious public disorder and disruption." It said a June rally by the "Free Tommy" group resulted in serious violence in London and led to nine arrests.

The force said the two arrested Saturday were suspected of public order offenses.

As a doctor at the Intermountain Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, there’s no greater joy than bringing hope to my patients who are battling blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Across the country, more than 1.3 million Americans are fighting these heart-wrenching diseases, with a new patient being diagnosed every 3 minutes.

Over my 23-year career, I have made it my personal mission to fight for my patients by providing the best care possible. This includes offering bone marrow and cord blood transplants, which have proven effective at curing cancers of the blood.

But without help from Congress, Medicare patients are at serious risk of not being able to undergo the procedures they need to survive — even after we find a donor who is a perfect match.

This sad situation is the result of decades-long federal policy, which treats bone marrow and cord blood transplants differently from solid organs. Unlike patients who need kidneys or lungs, Medicare does not cover the cost of search and cell acquisition for blood cancer patients. Moreover, as patients recover from the lifesaving procedures — requiring a 20- to 30-day hospital stay on average — hospitals are forced to take huge financial hits because Medicare’s reimbursement rate does not even come close to covering the true cost of treatment.

As a result, hospitals in Utah and across the country are losing tens of thousands of dollars on each cellular transplant they perform on Medicare patients. Because bone marrow and cord blood transplants are not adequately reimbursed by the system, many hospitals are forced to make the unthinkable choice between incurring huge losses or no longer offering cellular transplant procedures. In order to keep the hospital running, many have chosen the latter.

In April, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) missed a golden opportunity to propose changes in how cellular bone marrow, peripheral blood stem cell and cord blood transplants are reimbursed. Even as the transplant community has worked closely with policymakers to ensure patient access and financial sustainability, CMS’ 2019 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) Proposed Rule will not appropriately reimburse donor search and cell acquisition costs for these essential treatments, unless the Congress steps in and changes the policy through legislation.

As a physician, I’ve pledged to do everything it takes to save my patients’ lives. That’s why I’m advocating for the bipartisan Patient Access to Cellular Transplant (PACT) Act (H.R. 4215), which would adjust the reimbursement structure for hospitals that provide marrow and cord blood transplants to Medicare beneficiaries beginning October 1. The PACT Act is a necessary and thoughtful fix to the decades of underfunding that have caused many hospitals to question their ability to provide the only curative treatment for blood cancers and other blood disorders to Medicare beneficiaries.

I urge our representatives to support the PACT Act and encourage Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee to support the introduction of a companion bill in the U.S. Senate. My blood cancer patients — Utah’s brave friends, neighbors and loved ones — are looking to you for hope.

Julie Asch, M.D., is the program director of the Intermountain Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.

American Fork, Utah • American Fork police say a 21-year-old West Jordan man was arrested after a pickup ran a red light during a pursuit and collided with a car, killing a man who was a passenger in the car.

Police said the pursuit began Friday when a Utah County sheriff's deputy stopped the pickup but it then sped off as the deputy approached the truck to make contact with the driver.

Police said 21-year-old Trevor Pitcher from West Jordan was arrested after the collision on suspicion of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and other crimes.

The identity of the car passenger who was killed was not released.

Police said the woman driving the car and Pitcher had minor injuries.

Standing in wide open farmlands by his home outside Herriman, Justin Swain hardly seems ready to talk about housing density. Yet his story of battling development to protect a way of life is like so many resonating in Utah.

When Swain chose two years ago to build in Herriman’s semi-rural Creek Ridge neighborhood, the Utah native settled on a larger lot of about a quarter acre, giving him “a nice-sized backyard” for his three kids.

“It was very much a quality-of-life decision,” Swain, a 38-year-old software-product manager, said of the area’s rural feel.

So when developers of the Olympia Hills project won initial zoning approval for 8,765 housing units on 931 acres right next to his home, Swain fought it. He worried about traffic on east-west arterials that barely keep up now. Within 24 hours of learning of the rezone, he said he had collected more than 5,000 signatures in opposition.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams has since vetoed the rezoning, effectively sending the Olympia Hills project back for wider discussion.

“This is something that’s not going away," Swain predicted. "Obviously, Olympia Hills is not going away. But even if we come to some resolution everybody loves for that thousand acres, well, guess what, there’s another two, three, four thousand acres on the other side.”

Swain said he knows the land around his home will one day be developed. “I’d be hypocritical to move in and then say, ‘You can’t build here,’" he said. "We expect growth, and we’re just fine with it, even some level of density.”

But, he quickly added about Olympia Hills, “I personally don’t think that level of density is the answer.”

Yet housing density may indeed be the answer, at least in some corners of the state, as Utah tries to alleviate a statewide housing shortage while its population swells. Shrinking stocks of undeveloped land along the Wasatch Front are already forcing the trend, while also raising the visibility of density as an increasingly hot political issue.

How to fill up

Sporadic conflict over the nature of residential development is, of course, nothing new. It has fueled debate in countless public hearings and hundreds of mayoral and city council races in Utah for decades.

But as a talking point, housing density — the number of dwellings designed for a given acreage — has gained new traction, with projects such as Olympia Hills, redevelopment of Holladay’s old Cottonwood Mall site, and smaller apartment complexes and town house projects becoming controversial flashpoints before city councils and planning commissions across the state.

“Clearly something happened in the last year that has brought all of this to the forefront,” said Cameron Diehl, executive director of Utah League of Cities and Towns, representing elected officials and civil servants with 243 municipalities.

Longer term, what’s happening is growth.

With a high birthrate and job-creating economy, the state is projected to add 2 million residents by 2050 to the 3 million who live here now. While a majority of Utahns believe growth and housing demand stem primarily from out-of-staters moving in, the opposite is true: Most of the state’s expanding numbers come from more babies being born.

As the Beehive State continues to add people, undeveloped land in northern Utah’s five-county urban center is running out. Gone are the days when new housing subdivisions could simply sprawl onto unused acreage on city perimeters.

“In the past, we could just add another ring and keep building out,” said Ari Bruening, chief operating officer of Envision Utah, a regional planning agency that has studied the state’s growth since the early 1990s. “We’re to the point where the next ring is on the other side of the mountain range.”

Combined with rising costs of building materials and labor shortages in construction, shrinking land-stock trends have squeezed housing supplies and pushed prices to all-time highs for nearly every type of housing — luxury to low income, single-family homes to condos and apartments.

At the same time, already established residents hold mixed views of new housing construction, just as business and municipal leaders are pressing a campaign to raise public awareness of a lack of available housing statewide.

To build or not

A recent report commissioned by the Salt Lake Chamber estimates Utah has a shortage of about 250,000 homes.

A recent Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found that 49 percent of registered voters thought new housing was “positive for the state.” Another 27 percent said they were neutral on the idea, while 19 percent viewed additional housing as negative.

Other polling shows varied attitudes among Utahns toward growth in general. But their precise views on issues related to housing density are likely in flux along with the rapid pace of the state’s expansion itself.

“I don’t think we, as stakeholders and policymakers, have a great handle on what the public thinks is happening,” Diehl said.

Since the Great Recession, building permits in Salt Lake County and along the Wasatch Front have started to skew heavily toward more dense multifamily dwellings over single-family homes. Some cities now offer incentives on permitting and other impact fees to encourage density. The state of Utah is currently proposing a more dense approach to how the Point of the Mountain is developed, once the state prison moves north to Salt Lake City.

At the same time, depending on the locale, residential developments involving a handful of town homes or a lone apartment building can be thwarted by grass-roots opposition.

Suspicions persist, officials say, that higher-density development — apartments, town homes, condos and even single-family homes on smaller lots — will lower property values, heighten traffic, boost crime and otherwise burden government services.

“In the general public, density is this four-letter word,” said Abby Osborne, vice president of public policy and government affairs at the Salt Lake Chamber. But she argued density is a piece of a larger fear over population growth.

“They’re feeling it in people moving into their communities and more homes being built. They’re feeling it in trying to get to and from their kids' soccer game. They’re feeling it when they go to a fireworks show, and there are thousands of people there when there were hundreds last year. They’re feeling it in the grocery line.

“And they’re not wrong,” Osborne said, “but it’s all about how we grow.”

In a way, the issue naturally pits established residents against the interests of those seeking to move in, said Diehl, with elected leaders often caught in the middle.

“When we talk about our cities, we’re talking about the residents who live in those cities,” he said. “They have expectations about the quality of life where they reside. Local government is the most responsive level of government to the needs of residents.”

Residents in several Utah cities are challenging what they see as unresponsive actions by their city councils, going after high-density construction directly via petitions to put city zoning disputes on the November ballot.

Projects ranging from an apartment complex in Orem designed for Utah Valley University students to the $560 million-plus Holladay project could go before voters as do-overs.

Retail turned residential

Developers with Ivory Homes and Woodbury Corp. have won approval to transform the barren Cottonwood Mall site into 56 acres of retail, eateries and offices with a blend of apartments and single-family homes. The mall had languished, caught up in major shifts for bricks-and-mortar retail and shopping centers as more customers buy more online.

Ivory and Woodbury, both Utah-based companies, released a glowing third-party economic analysis of its proposed project last week, with Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes, saying the $562 million investment “will help bolster Holladay City’s tax base and budget for many years to come.”

The redevelopment also takes advantage of used acreage instead of green fields along with existing roads and utilities that served the old shopping center, according to Chris Gamvroulas, head of Ivory Homes’ land-acquisition arm.

“If anyone believes that the development pressure on infill parcels like the former Cottonwood Mall site is going to diminish over time,” Gamvroulas said, “they are fooling themselves.”

What’s more, he said, “the people are here. Homebuilders don’t create growth. They respond to growth. Land development occurs when there is something moving in the market.”

Yet, after several iterations of the project and 22 public hearings, opponents filed petitions on Thursday to overturn zoning for what developers want to call “Holladay Quarter.” The eastside city was founded, they contend, to take control of its zoning and protect against high-density housing.

“We believe that if left unchecked,” their website said, “this will be the first domino to fall in many more high-density, multifamily projects to come to Holladay.”

Along with traffic and complaints of a lack of government transparency, one of their main concerns, according to opponent Brett Stohlton with the group Unite For Holladay, is the project’s 775 apartments and 210 single-family homes.

Bringing in potentially thousands of new residents to Holladay, many of whom may work elsewere, Stohlton said, “you’re creating issues with regard to freeways and the valley as a whole. We don’t need to turn everything on its head or reinvent the wheel in the next five years.”

Top officials at Ivory Homes note the development’s impact would be more gradual, built over seven to 10 years.

How dense is dense?

Olympia Hills held the prospect of 30,000 new residents added to one of Salt Lake County’s last regional pockets of undeveloped land. At 37 residents per acre, that’s more than three times higher than roughly 11 residents per acre in Daybreak in nearby South Jordan, a master-planned community built on sustainable urban design principles.

Densities in nearby suburban communities range from seven per acre in Riverton, eight in Herriman and nine in Midvale to 12 in the metro township of Kearns. An urban project such as Holladay Quarter or residential complexes in downtown Salt Lake City would come in far higher.

But people per acre is inexact measure of issues behind crucial growth patterns, argues Bruening, with Envision Utah. Density numbers, for example, overlook the key role of freeways, roads and transit options, including light rail and bus routes. That, in turn, neglects how close or far away people live to job centers and how resulting commuter patterns might affect Utah’s air pollution.

He and Osborne, with the chamber, noted the heightened benefits for land use, traffic and air quality of locating higher-density residential projects near jobs centers and the Wasatch Front’s mass transit lines.

“I wish you could get past the ‘density good-density bad’ debate and move on to design,” Bruening said. “Los Angeles is one of the densest cities in the country, but it hasn’t worked out very well for them in terms of transportation.”

Envision Utah and city planners have focused on lot sizes as a metric for land use by single-family homes, and those have long hovered between a third to a quarter acre or less in Salt Lake County. But that’s an imprecise measure, too.

Draper resident Clinton Fairbanks is nervous that his City Council’s recent move to label as surplus 217 acres of open space on Deer Ridge will lead to development close to where he lives in the Suncrest neighborhood. He has heard of plans for 30 homes on half-acre lots running through the larger 2,000-acre piece of adjacent untouched land.

However big the homes or the lots they’re on, he said, any subdivision running across the mountain is going to take out invaluable green space and spoil the breathtaking views.

“I really wanted to give my children what I envisioned as open space,” Fairbanks said, lamenting that he no longer uses some trails behind his home, due to traffic from mountain bikers. “I had not realized we had become a Los Angeles. I specifically bought my home because I had mountain in my backyard.”

At the moment, Jairus Lyles keeps having the same conversation, which gets tiring after a while.

“Everywhere I go people are talking about the Virginia game,” he said. “I don’t want to be known as just the guy who beat Virginia.”

And yet that event, when his 16-seed UMBC Retrievers toppled the top-seeded Cavaliers, is the thing that opened a door to the NBA for Lyles, who signed a contract with the Utah Jazz on Thursday.

It’s been a solid summer for Lyles, a 6-foot-2 guard who has averaged 7.5 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the Jazz across four games. He understands that beating Virginia — in which he scored a game-high 28 points — caught the attention of the pro ranks, and now comes the hard part.

“You always dream about being in the NBA,” he said. “I’m not quite there yet: My foot’s in the door, now I’ve got to open it. It’s always a blessing to get an opportunity.”

While one game looms larger than the rest, Lyles’ resume is longer than most know, back to his days playing for Maryland powerhouse Dematha High.

Lyles helped breathe life into UMBC’s program, averaging 20.3 points per game over the course of his three-year career. Traditionally, the Retrievers haven’t been merely an afterthought: They’ve hardly been a thought at all, even in their hometown of Baltimore. But with Lyles, the team went from 7-25 in his first season to 25-11 in his last.

Still, few expected the Retrievers to be an actual threat to Virginia, an experienced, tempo-controlling squad. Lyles played a starring role in a game that has gone down in March lore, going 9 for 11 from the field.

“It was definitely a big stage, playing in front of all those NBA scouts,” he said. “It opened people’s eyes.”

Lyles has always had scoring ability, and that’s a big part of why the Jazz are bringing him into the fold for training camp. While he sports a thin frame, he’s shown an ability to shoot from long range, but also finish near the basket against larger competition. It’s a long shot for him to make the NBA roster, so his contract likely means the Jazz will retain his rights to sign him to the Salt Lake City Stars.

But Lyles is never one to pass on an opportunity: He’s spent summer league getting close to G League veterans Georges Niang and Naz Mitrou-Long about taking the next step as a pro. He knows his job in September will be to push the veterans any way he can, and he hopes to keep workshopping his game to show his fame will last beyond 15 minutes.

“I’ve been a scorer all my life,” he said. “But it’s about getting better about things you’re not good at.”

The Lou Groza Award stands in the window, like a golden football ready to be kicked. Three trophies representing the Ray Guy Award, showing a punter’s follow-through, are aligned on a nearby shelf.

The displays in the entrance of the Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Center honor Utah’s specialists of the past and present, with the strong possibility of additions to come. Ute kicker Matt Gay and punter Mitch Wishnowsky enter their senior seasons with hopes of earning more trophies, but only as a bonus for meeting their own standards.

Any expectations that come with preseason All-America selections and the potential for more awards are topped by what they demand of themselves and each other. They’ll also be competing for the job of kicking off, held by Wishnowsky last season.

Reviewing his first year of college football, Gay said, “Well, I missed four field goals, so I can definitely improve," skipping the part about making a Pac-12 record 30 kicks.

Wishnowsky was a Ray Guy Award finalist in 2017 after winning the trophy the previous season — but “personally, I underperformed last year,” he said. “I could have done a lot better.”

Those attitudes tell the story behind their success, with more to come in 2018. The Utes are in the last stage of offseason conditioning, in advance of preseason practice that starts Aug. 1. The specialists are like everybody else in this phase, lifting weights and running, working only occasionally on kicking early in the week.

In the summer, “You kind of lose focus on the fact there is a ball involved,” Gay said good-naturedly.

The kicks will come soon enough. The irony surrounding what has become a hallmark of Utah’s program is that field goals and punts are signs of offensive shortcomings. The less frequently Gay and Wishnowsky showcase their skills, the better for the Utes overall. They will remain vital, undoubtedly.

“No one knew who I was last year, so I had nothing to lose,” said Gay, a former Utah Valley University soccer player. “Now, my name’s out there a little bit, so people have higher expectations. What they didn’t know is I had those expectations for myself, before other people had them.”

Gay hopes to have a game-winning opportunity in 2018. His only dramatic moment at Rice-Eccles Stadium came in April, when his 57-yard field goal as time expired gave the Red team a 25-23 victory. “Yeah, it’s just the spring game, but it’s still a game,” Gay said. “Your teammates are going to be mad if you don’t hit it.”

So he’ll draw from that experience, while also absorbing his rare misses last season — a 50-yarder vs. Stanford, a 33-yarder at USC, a 43-yarder at Oregon and a 45-yarder vs. Washington State. “You’ve got to remember what it feels like to to miss, to be able to make 'em,” Gay said.

The Ute specialists' bond is boosted by the NFL model of having the punter hold for place-kicks, meaning they spend more time together. Tom Hackett was a holder, while winning two Ray Guy Awards for punting. From his perspective, Wishnowsky watched Gay’s technique improve throughout last season. “I honestly think Matt’s going to be get better this year,” he said.

Wishnowsky expects himself to do so, returning to his 2016 form. The numbers can be deceiving, based on field position, but Wishnowsky’s average dropped from 47.7 yards to 43.9 yards last season. In November, he averaged 41.6 yards. “I didn’t have the same pop on the ball,” he said.

He intends to do more lifting during the season and might alter his game-day routine to include running in the morning, rather than resting his leg. The Australian believes he can master both the rugby-style and traditional punting methods. Maximizing his ability means more to him than collecting another trophy. “If I focus on that,” he said, “the awards will come with it.”

That’s why Gay and Wishnowsky will be fun to watch again in 2018, even if Ute fans hope the bulk of their work comes merely on extra-point attempts.

Don’t believe Sen. Mike Lee when he says Utah has to choose between public lands and affordable housing. It’s a false choice and a dirty trick. And it flies in the face of Utahns’ actual experience of the beautiful landscapes we treasure.

In a recent speech to the conservative Sutherland Institute, Lee repeatedly demonized public lands and touted three horrible bills he intends to introduce to destroy them.

Despite Lee’s claims, Utahns overwhelmingly support public lands. According to the 2018 Conservation in the West poll, 91 percent of Utahns visited federally managed public lands last year, and 65 percent said rollbacks of laws that protect land, water and wildlife are a serious problem.

Throughout his rant, the Utah senator spun a revisionist history aimed at sowing division and fostering hatred. Among other things, Lee claimed that “the federal government’s vast estate is preserved for the enjoyment of the very few: For an upper-crust elite who want to transform the American West into so many picturesque tourist villages and uninhabited vistas.”

But there’s no point in refuting all of Lee’s mistruths and twisted logic. What’s needed is a gut check about public lands and Utah’s future.

Think about your last trip into the Wasatch, the Uintas, Zion or Bryce Canyon. Did you feel, as Lee apparently does, caged and oppressed by a tyrannical government? Or did you feel free to escape into a spectacular, peaceful landscape?

In public lands, we retain a vision of an egalitarian society. No one gets a better seat at Flaming Gorge than anyone else. We draw strength and inspiration from the canyons and mountains and deserts — and from the wildlife that call them home. We spend time with our loved ones or in solitary contemplation, uninterrupted by the noise and pressures of daily life.

Public lands are a democratizing force and they belong to everyone. At least for now.

Lee wants to unravel that.

One of his bills would transfer federal public lands to states, even though he must know that Western states cannot afford to manage them. States would be forced to sell public lands to private interests to mine, drill, log and develop.

Second, he wants to gut the Antiquities Act and effectively prevent any new national monuments in Utah, despite the fact that our state’s natural beauty has been an economic boon to communities from Kanab to Kamas.

His third bill would give states the power to sell public lands for housing and other developments deemed to be a benefit to the community. Who decides what a “benefit” is? Not voters.

These proposals are a slap in the face to Utahns and a wish list for corporate interests. They showcase Lee’s short-sighted, narrow view of what we can accomplish together. And they go against the wishes of the people he’s elected to represent.

We can do better. We can create a Utah where these shared spaces are maintained, protected and restored rather than sold off to developers and extractive industries. A Utah where respect, justice, cooperation and kindness are the norm ― not ruthless competition and greed.

We need to demand that our state legislators stop spending taxpayer dollars to subsidize fossil-fuel extraction on public lands. We need to insist that our congressional representatives stop advancing legislation that strips protections from beautiful landscapes in our state and instead tell them that they must keep public lands accessible for generations to come.

Maybe one day Lee will join us to work together toward a radically better Utah. But we’re not holding our breath, and we’re not waiting. It’s a future we’re already creating.

Ryan Beam is a Salt Lake City resident and a public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. Kirsten Johanna Allen is executive director at Torrey House Press, a nonprofit book publisher promoting conservation through literature. She lives in Torrey and Salt Lake City.

A new bill soon to be presented to Congress, the Central Wasatch National Conservation and Recreation Area Act (CWNCRA), would allow for the transfer of up to 340 acres of developable public Forest Service land located in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons to the Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude ski resorts.

Once these resorts gain title to the land they will be able to develop it as they see fit. Expect to see new structures, hotels, lodges, condominiums and other businesses that will bring people to the canyons and dollars to the ski resorts.

On July 9 , the Central Wasatch Commission (which is the successor to the Mountain Accord) passed a resolution directing the CWC executive director to meet separately with the members of the CWC Executive Committee to revise this bill and once completed to deliver it to Utah’s congressional delegation who will be encouraged to work to get the bill passed and enacted into law.

This bill has some good provisions, such as the addition of approximately 8,500 acres to the wilderness areas and the designation of the White Pine Special Management Area. The White Pine area would be managed to maintain its natural state, but helicopter skiing would be allowed and mountain biking would be prohibited, even on the trails in the lower portion of the canyon near the main canyon road.

But, the fatal flaw in this bill is the possible transfer of developable public lands to the four ski resorts. The ski resorts would trade private lands on the hillsides and ridgetops for this developable public land near the existing ski resort infrastructure. The preliminary map shows that Solitude could receive up to 125 acres, Brighton up to 25 acres, Alta up to 110 acres and Snowbird up to 80 acres. This is a total of 340 acres of developable land in some of the most valuable areas of the canyons.

This land is not cheap land. It is prime real estate worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Because it is public land it has never been available for the ski resorts or anyone else to acquire and develop. But this bill changes that. These lands will now be available to the ski resorts. Imagine the real estate construction and development that would fill the canyon. Think about what the canyons will be like if the ski resorts, which already dominate the canyons, grow by 25 percent, 50 percent or maybe even 100 percent. They will become even more dominant and more influential.

This will result in higher prices for resort users and more inconvenience, problems and challenges for anyone who uses the canyons for non-resort activities. Imagine the increased traffic, noise and congestion. The transportation system in the canyon is already inadequate. This new development would break it. But that is not all, there is no mention of the transportation issues in the canyons that this expansion will cause. In effect, the message is let’s make it possible for resort expansion now and we will worry about transportation issues later.

This is the second fatal flaw of this bill. There is nothing in the bill that solves or even addresses the transportation issues in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. When the Mountain Accord was established, its stated mission was to address and solve the transportation issues of the two canyons. The mission of the CWC as the successor to the Mountain Accord is also to address and solve the transportation issues.

Sadly, this proposed bill does not do that. In fact, transportation in the canyons is not even mentioned in the proposed bill. Without a solution to the transportation issues any actions that increase the development or use of the canyons will just add to the already existing problems of the canyons.

My plea to you is to read the bill. If you agree with my conclusions then contact your government leaders. Contact the members of the CWC. Contact your mayor, your congressman, your senator, your governor. Let them know your opinion. I don’t care where you sit, what your politics are, or what your or position is, you have a right to speak and to have your voice be heard.

Vaughn Cox, Sandy, is a long term resident living near the mouths of Little Cottonwood Canyon and a member of the Granite Community Council.

In late June, an op-ed by none other than U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney appeared in our own Salt Lake Tribune, and Mr. Romney finally seemed to address that that nasty dilemma stuck in Utah’s political craw: Whether to support or oppose President Donald J. Trump.

And how simple the answer turned out to be! When it comes to Trump, writes placatory Romney, praise the good and reject the bad. Well, that’s pretty reasonable, right?

But as I read Romney’s “Where I stand on the Trump agenda,” I noticed an eerie absence. In the same article that Romney writes, “if you stay silent you tacitly assent to the captain’s posture,” Romney remains wholly quiet on the issue that has come to most singularly represent the cruelty of the Trump administration: family separation at the U.S. border.

A few days earlier, Romney had told KUER’s Nicole Nixon he thought the policy “must be reversed,” but it remained strange to me that within the op-ed meant to establish his position on Trump, from whom that policy originates — and right in the midst of the border crisis — Romney would leave that critical subject untouched.

Romney’s motivation? In 2016, 46 percent of Utah voters went with Trump, but 21 percent voted for the explicitly anti-Trump Evan McMullin. Romney couldn’t risk alienating either group, so his letter had to sustain a sense of commensurability between the two. If his article were to even mention Trump’s border policy, that fiction would shatter, because Trump’s actions there are too repugnant to reject meaningfully without fully condemning the man behind them.

Claiming indisposition on the president means ignoring Trump as a symbol of white supremacy, and permitting a mainstream platform for ethno-nationalism. Romney masks his “tacit assent” for Trump’s personal character while knowing it to be the source of the administration’s inhumanity.

Given that Romney’s position on Trump has already shifted radically since his famous anti-Trump speech at the University of Utah in 2016, Romney’s present promise to go the middle road with the president is just as unreliable. Appeasing Utah’s Trump-wary Republicans is necessary to win the race but, once a senator, moderating the president will hardly take priority over retaining his place in the party of Trump, where obeisance to the president is the real fulcrum of an incumbent’s staying power.

Before today, I would have thought it too far to direct an ad-hominem against someone merely because their politics were different from mine. But this changes when that difference emerges as neglect for our most fundamental moral axioms.

Romney is an ectothermic scoundrel, bound to submit to Trump’s black ambitions as readily as any Republican politician of 2018. If we truly oppose Trump as “divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions,” as Romney himself puts it, we will vote for Romney’s opponent, who opposes Trump altogether.

Why? Because words alone will not stop atrocities.

When one of us casts a vote for Romney, we show the rest of the country that we really aren’t terribly concerned with what Trump might do to our friends and neighbors, but with how we’ll be able to talk about ourselves once it is all over.

“No, I never supported Trump. I voted for Romney. I disagreed with Trump! Well, I didn’t do anything to stop him, when he came for the children, but isn’t it enough that I disagreed with him? And civilly, moreover! Back during those days, we disagreed with that president as only Utahns could: civilly, politely, respectably, mildly and meekly.”

And the meek shall inherit the earth.

Atticus Edwards is an honors student studying philosophy at the University Of Utah.

The scenes were nothing alike and wildly memorable.

Both started with a tee shot that sailed some 60 yards to the right during the final round of the British Open, and that’s where the similarities end.

Seve Ballesteros didn’t have to take a penalty drop from near the front tire of a black car in a parking lot at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. He had a two-shot lead, and once he dropped his ball away from the cars, he had a short iron onto the green. The great Spaniard went on to capture his first major championship in 1979, and he was jokingly referred to as the “Car Park Champion.”

Jordan Spieth?

He became the “Driving Range Champion” at Royal Birkdale, and it was no joke.

Spieth already had lost his three-shot lead in the final round last year when his drive on the 13th hole flew well to the right toward the dunes, hit a spectator in the head and wound up in a bush. Spieth had no shot, and really no place to drop that improved his chances. His best option was to go back to the tee and play his third shot.

But wait.

“Is the range out of bounds?” Spieth asked.

The rest was a blur, until he arrived home in Dallas with the claret jug and watched replays for the first time.

“I couldn’t help but turn on the final round, and actually fast-forward until the tee shot on 13. I didn’t watch the first 12 holes,” Spieth said. “For me, it went by pretty quickly because it was, ‘OK, decision here, decision here, now I need to drop here.’ But with the coverage, with the commercials, and then they come back and it seems like we haven’t even moved, it was like, ‘Man, that really did take a long time.’ That was kind of tough to watch.”

The ending was remarkable.

Once it was determined the range was in play, Spieth hit 3-iron over the dunes toward a green he couldn’t see, coming up just short. He pitched that delicately over a pot bunker and made the putt for a bogey.

And then it was pure Spieth after that.

He nearly holed his tee shot on the par-3 14th with a 6-iron for birdie. He made a 50-foot eagle putt on the 15th, a 30-foot birdie putt on the 16th, an 8-foot birdie putt on the 17th and just like that, he was three legs home to a career Grand Slam.

“After the 13th hole, everything went slower to me than what’s on TV,” he said. “So it’s kind of this flip based on what I was watching and how I was feeling. For me, it was this whole regrouping and re-motivating and resetting a goal. And all that kind of took place pretty quickly in real time.”

Spieth rarely makes it easy on himself.

Of his three majors, only his wire-to-wire, four-shot victory at the 2015 Masters lacked any real drama. His U.S. Open title that summer at Chambers Bay featured a signature, 25-foot birdie putt on the 16th, a three-putt double bogey on the 17th and help from Dustin Johnson, who three-putted from 12 feet for par on the final hole.

Spieth had a five-shot lead on the back nine at the 2016 Masters, made quadruple-bogey 7 with two shots into Rae’s Creek, and never recovered. He couldn’t put away the Travelers Championship last year until he was forced into a playoff, and then holed a bunker shot .

Still only 24 for another few weeks, Spieth is looking at the big picture of his career; the British Open is a big part of it.

“I’ve kind of had a career’s worth of experience in four years, which is I think advantageous going forward, the way I look at it,” he said. “Having a positive experience off of losing a lead and being able to regain it within a major championship Sunday is one that not many people have. I wasn’t trying to do it. But I can certainly look back on that as, ‘Man, positives can come out of what really seems like a day that’s not going my way.’”

And that’s why he’s not overly concerned now.

The Open was his last victory, and lately, he hasn’t been particularly close. He was nine shots back in the final round of the Masters when he nearly produced the biggest rally in Augusta National history, closing with a 64 — with a bogey on the final hole — to finish two back of Patrick Reed.

Since then, he has played seven events and missed the cut in three of them. In the other four, he has not finished closer than 12 shots of the lead.

“I have no doubt in my ability to come back and defend whether form is on, off or anything indifferent,” he said. “I’ve proven to myself that I can go from two missed cuts to potentially winning. That’s not anything that throws me off.”

If nothing else, he learned that from last year’s British Open.

Yosemite National Park, Calif. • A firefighter was killed Saturday while battling a wildfire burning near Yosemite National Park, California state fire officials said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Heavy Fire Equipment Operator Braden Varney was killed while fighting the Ferguson Fire in the morning hours.

The blaze broke out around 10:30 p.m. on Friday in Mariposa County, near the west end of Yosemite National Park and the Sierra National Forest.

Fire officials said it had burned about 130 acres (53 hectares) by Saturday afternoon.

Varney is survived by his wife and two small children, state fire officials said. The circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately released and officials said they were still working to confirm details.

"In the meantime, please join us in keeping Braden and his loved ones in your prayers and all the responders on the front lines in your thoughts as they continue to work under extremely challenging conditions," California fire officials said in a statement.

Officials at Yosemite National Park said the wildfire had closed Highway 140 from Midpines to El Portal.

Power in Yosemite Valley had also been affected because power lines had been turned off while firefighters worked to quell the blaze.

Rights come with responsibilities, but this has been lost in the conversation about guns and schools. I’m a soldier and a teacher. I support the Second Amendment and safe schools. We can have both.

Let’s talk about military weapon discipline as a case study in responsibility. My military weapon is secured when I’m not on field training, on the firing range or in an active combat zone. There are two locks between me and that gun: the arms room and the arms rack.

How does this connect to school safety? After the Columbine shooting, the Secret Service and Department of Education studied school attacks. They found that most perpetrators were students with guns acquired from home or the home of a relative. Translation: easy gun access.

A Wall Street Journal article from April finds similar results: Most school shooters are students getting guns from home. There are a few cases where weapons were stolen from legal owners before an attack, but the weapons were still not properly secured.

What qualifies as proper gun storage? I’d suggest the same principle the military uses: two locks between the gun and anyone accessing it. A gun safe opened by fingerprint in a home with a locked front door would work for loaded weapons. These safes open in about two seconds so you still have easy access, but kids can’t get ahold of them.

For unloaded weapons, trigger locks and/or locked gun cases are OK if the guns are still inaccessible to children, but ammunition must be locked up separately.

Some argue that if criminals want to get guns, they will find a way. The overwhelming majority of school shooters have no prior criminal record. Guns are simply too easy to get.

Some folks will view this as an attack on the Second Amendment. Nonsense. It speaks of a well-regulated militia. Soldiers maintain control of their weapons. If not, they’re punished. Here’s an idea for the rest of us: If you’re too careless to secure your firearm, you’re irresponsible and you shouldn’t have one.

A few people insist medications and cleaning chemicals kill kids “just like guns.” Actually, research shows child-resistant caps reduce accidental poisonings. If you’re childproofing your home, you’re also adding child-locks to doors and cabinets. Two locks. We make it harder to get into harmful chemicals and medications than we expect for access to firearms.

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death in the United States so sometimes friends suggest we should confiscate cars. That’s as ridiculous as confiscating guns. Still, we regulate cars to reduce motor vehicle deaths. Failure to use a seatbelt gets you a ticket. Result? Fewer crash deaths.

Here’s another benefit: Properly securing firearms will significantly reduce Utah’s suicide rate.

Eighty-six percent of our firearms deaths are suicides. Most youth suicides are by firearm. Some kids might find another way, but states with mandatory storage rules have lower suicide rates. From the RAND “Gun Policy in America” meta-analysis in March of this year:

“The strongest available evidence supports the conclusion that laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of children reduce firearm self-injuries, suicides and unintended injuries to children.”

Let’s protect our rights and improve school safety by updating Utah’s gun regulations.

Responsible firearms owners should secure firearms properly with two locks, unless they have physical control or direct supervision of their weapons. Firearm sales should include installed trigger locks or gun safes in all transactions. We must write these expectations into law.

If your child takes your gun to school, you’re an irresponsible gun owner and make the rest of us look bad. Exercise your rights responsibly to keep the rest of us safe.

Lock them up.

Deborah Gatrell is a social studies teacher in Granite School District, a National Board Certified Teacher and a Utah Teacher Fellow with 19 years of service in the National Guard.

Chicago • Jabari Parker and the Chicago Bulls agreed Saturday to a $40 million, two-year contract, bringing the talented and oft-injured forward to his hometown team.

Agent Mark Bartelstein confirmed the deal shortly after the Milwaukee Bucks rescinded their qualifying offer. That made Parker an unrestricted free agent, clearing the way for him to join the rebuilding Bulls.

The 23-year-old Parker led Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy to four state championships and starred for one season at Duke before the Bucks drafted him with the No. 2 overall pick in 2014.

The Bulls are banking on him to stay healthy after he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee twice in four seasons with Milwaukee.

“Jabari is a 23-year-old player who is a natural fit with our young core, and is a proven scorer at the NBA level,” general manager Gar Forman said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming him back to his hometown.”

Parker has averaged 15.3 points and 5.5 rebounds. His best season was in 2016-17 when he averaged 20.1 points in 51 games before tearing his ACL a second time. He played 31 games last year, averaging 12.6 points and 4.9 rebounds.

“Jabari and I felt it was in the best interest of both he and the team to rescind our qualifying offer, making him an unrestricted free agent,” Bucks general manager Jon Horst said. “We appreciate everything Jabari has brought to our team and our community over the last four years and we wish him well.”

Bartelstein praised the Bucks for “working side-by-side with us.”

“From the moment the Bucks drafted Jabari with the No. 2 pick in the 2014 Draft, they have gone out of their way to treat Jabari as a member of the Bucks family, and this is another perfect example of doing exactly that, and we’re very appreciative,” he said.

Parker goes from playing alongside superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo to trying to help the Bulls rise in the Eastern Conference after a 27-win season. He figures to start at small forward, with Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine in the backcourt, Lauri Markkanen at power forward and either rookie Wendell Carter Jr. or veteran Robin Lopez at center.

The son of former NBA player Sonny Parker, Jabari Parker was one of the most highly touted prospects to come out of Illinois.

He played at the same high school as Derrick Rose, who was drafted by the Bulls with the No. 1 pick in 2008 and became the youngest MVP in league history three years later. Of course, knee injuries derailed his run in Chicago. And the Bulls are hoping Parker’s injuries are behind him.

Chicago also released guard Julyan Stone and forward Paul Zipser on Saturday.