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Northwestern quarterback Ryan Hilinski threw a touchdown pass in the first quarter and another in the second Saturday against Rutgers.

He threw for 267 yards and two touchdowns in the Wildcats’ 21-7 victory Saturday at Ryan Field.

Ryan Hilinski threw for 267 yards and two touchdown passes on Saturday afternoon to boost Northwestern to a 21-7 victory over Rutgers at Ryan Field.

Hilinski, making his third start since transferring from South Carolina, opened the scoring for the Wildcats (3-3, 1-2 Big Ten) by capping off a 98-yard drive in the first quarter, hitting Malik Washington for a 64-yard touchdown pass. The completion — Hilinski’s longest as a Wildcat — helped his team secure its first conference win of the season.

“I think one of the biggest things is that we’re continuing to have fun,” Hilinski said. “This is a game we played when we were 5 years old. I personally play best when I’m having fun and just recognizing that this is a game we’ve been playing our whole lives.”

Washington plowed through a downfield defender on his touchdown grab and finished with 84 receiving yards on five catches. Fellow wideout Stephon Robinson Jr. had 115 yards, taking pressure off a Wildcats rushing attack that struggled to get going throughout the day. Often a key to Northwestern’s offensive approach, the ground game combined for just 135 yards on 48 attempts.

“Really proud of the squad,” Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “The way they bounced back this game and these last couple weeks. I thought they put a ton of work in to get better fundamentally. We were able to carry our preparation over into the game.”

Northwestern appeared to be a favorable matchup for the Scarlet Knights (3-4, 0-4 Big Ten), who were coming off three consecutive games against opponents currently ranked in the top 10. But with five of its first six drives ending in punts, Rutgers couldn’t muster enough offense to avoid opening conference play with four straight losses. Though quarterback Noah Vedral hit all four of his passes on Rutgers’ only scoring drive of the game, he put together an altogether inconsistent day, going 18 of 30 for 152 yards.

“It’s very disappointing,” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said. “We certainly have to assess where we are and why we’re here, and see what we can do to fix it. Some of it is personnel, some of it is execution. We’re trying to find an answer.”

Marshall Lang added a 2-yard touchdown reception in the second and Andrew Clair’s fourth-quarter TD run padded the lead for Northwestern, which led 14-7 at halftime.

The Scarlet Knights came up short on an opportunity to tighten the game in the third, as Valentino Ambrosio missed a 33-yard field goal after a delay of game penalty forced the team to scrap an attempt to go for it on fourth down.

THE TAKEAWAY

Rutgers: After losing four straight, the Scarlet Knights’ 3-0 start to the season is drifting further into the rear-view. Ending this skid will require improved play from a defense which has allowed a combined 1,531 yards over its last three games. Another shaky performance from Vedral means coach Schiano likely won’t be dodging questions about a QB swap anytime soon. Rutgers will get a chance to regroup with a bye this coming week, followed by a visit to Illinois.

Northwestern: The Wildcats needed a win to salvage their season after being blown out by Nebraska on Oct. 2. They got one Saturday, thanks to Hilinski and improved play from a Wildcats defense that allowed just 222 total yards. While one strong showing against an average Rutgers offense won’t solve all of Northwestern’s defensive concerns, the performance can certainly serve as a building block. The Wildcats will need to maintain as much momentum from the victory as possible, as their next three weeks include games against two top-10 opponents in Michigan and Iowa.

QB1

Hilinski opened the year at third string for the Wildcats, but has seen his weekly pass yardage climb with each start. Northwestern cycled through three quarterbacks within its first three games, and will need stability at that position if it wants to recover from a shaky start to the season. With yet another productive performance, Hilinski may just be able to provide that for the Wildcats.

PROPS TO THE PUNTER

Fresh off winning the Ray Guy Punter of the Week award for the third time this season, Rutgers punter Adam Korsak put forth another solid effort on Saturday. He logged 403 yards on nine punts, four of which landed inside the 20-yard line.

FLAGS GALORE

Rutgers entered the game tied with the second-fewest penalties in the Big Ten this season, but was flagged frequently Saturday. The Scarlet Knights were hit with 11 penalties for 91 yards, including an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for sideline interference that helped Northwestern keep a fourth-quarter scoring drive alive.

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Stefanie Dolson (foreground) leads the cheers during the Sky’s victory Friday in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals at Wintrust Arena. | Paul Beaty/AP

One victory away from a championship, they finally are getting the media coverage and fan interest they long have sought.

The stands at sold-out Wintrust Arena were rocking Friday, perhaps more than any gym has rocked for a women’s basketball game in our town.

It was Game 3 of the best-of-five WNBA Finals between the Sky and the Phoenix Mercury, and the teams came in tied at a victory apiece. That was until the Sky demolished the brick-laying Mercury 86-50, the largest margin of victory in the Finals in the WNBA’s 25-year history.

Human good-luck charm Chance the Rapper was there at courtside. So was Bears quarterback Justin Fields, the young man who would be leading his team into battle against the Packers at nearby Soldier Field in about 36 hours. What they saw was a stone-cold rear-end thrashing that was as unexpected as it was severe.

Nasty cynics — let’s call them men — sometimes have described the WNBA as basketball played underwater. And it’s true that the women don’t have the muscular athleticism and high-flying jet propulsion of NBA players, men whose vicious dunks and midair acrobatics are the stuff of slow-motion dreams.

True, WNBA dunks are rare and rather timid when they do happen. Brittney Griner, the Mercury’s 6-9 center, had one in Game 1, but it was more of a dip than a jam.

Still, the women’s game is in many ways purer than the men’s pro game, with the latter’s uncalled travels, blatant carries and sumo-wrestler bashings under the hoop. The women’s fundamental style is certainly far closer to what Dr. James Naismith had in mind when he invented basketball 130 years ago, with its dependence on passing, defense and below-the-rim team effort.

Courtney Vandersloot — the Sky’s 5-8, 137-pound point guard — is the shifty, elusive, slick-passing playmaker who brings to mind a mix of John Stockton, Steve Nash and Nate Archibald. She only shot three times, making two baskets for four points, but her game-high 10 assists were things of beauty. So often did she set up teammates with in-rhythm shots that it seemed to depress the Mercury into near-surrender.

”Tough night at the office,” Mercury coach Sandy Brondello said.

Mercury stars Skylar Diggins-Smith and Diana Taurasi going a combined 3-for-19 didn’t help matters. And now the Sky has Game 4 on Sunday — starting roughly at halftime of the Packers-Bears game — after which, with another supreme effort, they could start their first WNBA title celebration while cars still are leaving the parking lots at Soldier Field.

”The Sky played great,” Fields summed up. ”The energy and the fans were electric.”

Sky coach James Wade concurred.

”I really feel Chicago,” he said.

Sky owner Michael Alter has, like so many WNBA folks from front-office staff to players to trainers, complained for years that the league would explode in popularity if the media just would pay more attention to it. To which those of us in the media always have countered: Bring us a great team, and maybe we’ll cover you more. The chicken or egg conundrum is there.

But it’s certain you can’t force a product down the public’s throat if it doesn’t open wide out of an appetite for that product. It’s a curious and unfortunate fact that the WNBA started in 1997 and basically has seen its attendance decline ever since.

”There’s a lot of people in cities who don’t even know they have a WNBA team in that city,” third-year WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, formerly an executive at Deloitte, said recently.

And whose fault is that? Is it possible a lot of people just don’t like the women’s pro game? Don’t love the summertime schedule? Can’t stop comparing the WNBA to men’s hoops?

One interesting stat is that many more viewers watch the women’s NCAA championship than watch the WNBA Finals. Colleges have something pro teams don’t: built-in, passionate, longtime fan bases.

Then, too, there is wide disparity in the existing WNBA fan bases. The Los Angeles Sparks, for example, play in the 19,000-seat Staples Center, where the NBA’s Lakers play, while the Washington Mystics play in the 4,200-seat Entertainment and Sports Arena, where the G League’s Capital City Go-Go play.

Right now, however, possibilities swirl in Chicago. One more big game, and the Sky can join the Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox and Blackhawks as champs in this city since 1985.

Then the sky’s the limit.

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Simeon’s Malik Elzy (8) runs the ball against Kenwood. | Kirsten Stickney/For the Sun-Times

Malik Elzy scored three touchdowns in the Wolverines’ huge win against Kenwood on Saturday.

Simeon junior Malik Elzy is widely considered to be the top football prospect in the city. He has scholarship offers from Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, Illinois, Tennessee and Wisconsin, among others.

Irish assistant coach Tommy Rees was at Lane Stadium on Saturday to see Elzy and the Wolverines play undefeated Kenwood.

Elzy is a receiver and a defensive back. It can be difficult for a high school receiver to affect a game, especially when his offense is struggling, which was the case with Simeon.

Heading into Saturday, the Wolverines had passed none of their tests this season. They lost to archrival Morgan Park on TV last weekend and also had lost to Joliet Catholic, Bolingbrook and Phillips.

So the Wolverines found themselves fighting for their playoff lives. With the season on the line, Elzy came alive.

He caught six passes for 90 yards, including touchdowns of 30 and 20 yards. And then he came up with the backbreaker: a 55-yard interception return for a touchdown on the Broncos’ final drive of the game to clinch Simeon’s 38-26 victory.

”I feel they disrespected me by trying to play me one-on-one,” Elzy said. ”So we took advantage of it, and you saw what happened on the field.”

Kenwood matched up highly recruited defensive back/receiver Jalil Martin against Elzy. The pair of prospects took turns going at each other on offense and defense.

”That’s my boy,” Elzy said. ”It was a big matchup. I knew it was going to be a good one, so I came out and showed up.”

Simeon (4-4, 3-2 Illini Red Bird) led 19-7 at halftime, but the Broncos dominated the third quarter and led 26-19 with 11:48 left.

Kenwood switched quarterbacks from Lou Henson to Shauntrel Meeks-Scott late in the second quarter and changed to a more pass-oriented offense.

”When they came out throwing in the second half, it threw us for a loop,” Wolverines coach Dante Culbreath said. ”They run about 90% of the time. But we made the adjustments we needed to make.”

The Broncos (7-1, 4-1 Illini Red Bird) did a good job of limiting Simeon’s running game in the first half, but junior Andre Crews started to cause some damage in the fourth quarter.

Crews (15 carries, 95 yards, two touchdowns) scored on a four-yard run with 5:52 left to pull the Wolverines to 26-25, but they missed the extra point.

He came through again with 1:52 left, shaking off a hand to his face mask and scoring on a seven-yard run to give Simeon a 31-26 lead.

”I had to trust my line,” Crews said. ”They came through in the second half to get us the win. I needed to get in the end zone on that run. It was up to me, and I had to come through, face mask or not.”

Wolverines quarterback Korey Flowers was 9-for-15 for 118 yards and two touchdowns. He also had a one-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.

”I’m proud of my young boys,” Culbreath said. ”They aren’t really experienced on the field, but they come to practice and fight every day. Kenwood is a tough team. They are well-coached and have good size. That is a good win.”

Meeks-Scott was 6-for-18 for 100 yards with an interception and a 51-yard touchdown pass to Kahlil Tate in the third quarter. He also rushed for 94 yards and two touchdowns on 10 carries.

”Simeon challenged us pretty good,” Kenwood coach Sinque Turner said. ”We got that loss out of the way. It’s a good time to have it. We will go back to the drawing board and reconstruct some things.”

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It’s Fields’ first Packers week. There’s nothing else like it for a Bears QB. | Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

An ugly day against the Packers can cast a Bears quarterback in a harsh light. An ugly stretch of games against the Packers, covering multiple seasons, can wreck a Bears quarterback’s reputation.

Two quarterbacks loomed larger than any other freshmen as the 2018 college football season came into view: Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields.

One, Clemson’s Lawrence, would beat out returning starter Kelly Bryant and lead the Tigers to a national championship. The other, Georgia’s Fields, would fail to beat out returning starter Jake Fromm and play pretty much only in garbage time.

A year later, having transferred to Ohio State, Fields didn’t officially nail down the starting job with the Buckeyes — beating out a graduate transfer who’d been a backup at Kentucky — until late in training camp, frustrating coach Ryan Day.

From there — belatedly — Fields’ career took off.

Here in Bears country, most of us seem to have our minds made up that the team’s new QB1 is the franchise cornerstone we’ve been waiting for. Maybe he is. But he still has a mountain to climb before he proves he’s as good as — or better than — Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance, the quarterbacks taken before him in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft. And Fields isn’t even a blip on the radar compared with Packers superstar Aaron Rodgers, whom he’ll oppose for the first time Sunday at Soldier Field.

An ugly day against the Packers can cast a Bears quarterback in a harsh light. An ugly stretch of games against the Packers, covering multiple seasons, can wreck a Bears quarterback’s reputation. That’s the danger Fields has inherited.

Lots of luck, kid.

And here’s what’s happening:

SUN 17

Dolphins vs. Jaguars (8:30 a.m., Ch. 2)

Look, the Fins and Jags may have a combined record of 1-9, but just think about it: They’re the best two American football teams in all of England.

Packers at Bears (noon, Fox-32)

Is this an elite Bears defense or isn’t it? And against Aaron Rodgers, does it even matter?

Mercury at Sky, Game 4 (2 p.m., ESPN)

One more “W,” and the Sky have their first-ever WNBA title. Watch and learn, Bulls.

Cowboys at Patriots (3:25 p.m., Ch. 2)

How long ago was Dallas’ last victory over New England? Put it this way: Troy Aikman and Drew Bledsoe were the quarterbacks.

Dodgers at Braves, Game 2 (6:37 p.m., TBS)

Truist Park was supposed to host the 2021 All-Star Game. Instead, it hosts a National League Championship series foe that’s essentially an all-star team.

MON 11

Astros at Red Sox, Game 3 (7:07 p.m., FS1)

Houston already made easy work of one Sox team during these playoffs. Something tells us you knew that already.

Bills at Titans (7:15 p.m., ESPN)

With cornerback Josh Norman now playing in San Francisco, which Bills defender has the guts to step forward and be stiff-armed into oblivion by Titans running back Derrick Henry?

TUE 19

E60: A Love Story (6 p.m., ESPN2)

A devastating diagnosis of ALS has tested — and deepened — the unlikely romance between a high school wrestling coach and the daughter of a former NHL superstar.

Nets at Bucks (6:30 p.m., TNT)

Two expected title contenders go at it in the NBA season opener, but, wait, where’s Kyrie Irving? We’ll do some “research” and get back to you.

Islanders at Blackhawks (7p.m., ESPN)

Not to tell Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton how to do his job, but perhaps he can employ a strategy that involves playing defense in the opening minutes of the game.

Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (9 p.m., HBO)

Segments include one on the “modern-day gold rush” as college athletes begin to profit — legally, for a change — after a landmark ruling by the NCAA.

WED 20

Bulls at Pistons (6 p.m., NBCSCH)

Zach LaVine. Nikola Vucevic. DeMar DeRozan. Lonzo Ball. The fun of a new season officially begins. At least, we think it’s going to be fun. Please let this be fun.

THU 21

Canucks at Blackhawks (7:30 p.m., NBCSCH)

Man, this was one heck of a rivalry back in the day. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when both teams involved are actually good.

FRI 22

Pelicans at Bulls (7 p.m., NBCSCH)

These are two of the most reworked rosters in the NBA. If you’ve watched the Pels and Bulls in recent seasons, you know that’s probably not a bad thing for either team.

Suns at Lakers (9 p.m., ESPN)

Anybody remember LeBron James and Anthony Davis? They used to be really good until an upstart team from Phoenix knocked them out in the first round of the playoffs.

SAT 23

Northwestern at Michigan (11 a.m., Fox-32)

The Wildcats are just kind of hanging around at 3-3, but they always seem to be good for one or two upsets nobody saw coming.

USC at Notre Dame (6:30 p.m., Ch. 5)

There have been better Trojans and Irish teams, no doubt, but few sights in college football can match these two uniforms sharing a field under the lights. Especially when football players are wearing them.

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Kierra Moore, who played for the girls’ basketball team at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School, was shot and killed Thursday in Chicago. | Provided photo

Moore was with a group of people in the 3100 block of West Polk Street when someone in a black sedan opened fire, killing her, police say.

As a young child, Kierra Moore was so drawn to basketball that she insisted on playing with the older kids.

“She’d come to her older brother’s practice and say, ‘I want to play.’ And I’d say you’re not old enough,” said Arlena Wade, who coached the brother and would go on to coach Moore at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School.

“I’m playing! I’m playing!” Moore would say, according to Wade. “She did that until she was old enough to play.”

Born and raised in Cabrini Green, Moore showed incredible promise. “She was destined to go to the WNBA,” her older brother Jaden Knox said Friday.

The 16-year-old was shot and killed Thursday night while standing with a group of people in Lawndale, according to police, who said the gunfire came from gunmen in a black car around 11:30 p.m. in the 3100 block of West Polk Street.

Moore was hit several times and died at Mount Sinai Hospital. Police have reported no arrests.

Family insisted that Moore was not with a group of people when she was killed. Moore was with her twin sister in a rideshare car that was blocked by another vehicle, Knox said. Three gunmen got out of the car and fired shots as Moore ran away, striking her 18 times, he said.

Her brother remembered Moore Friday as “a fun-loving, joking person” who was inseparable from her twin sister.

“She loved her twin more than anything,” Knox said. “They did everything together. Never once were they separated, unless she was with me.”

After Cabrini Green was torn down, Moore’s family moved to rowhouses nearby where she’d play one-on-one games with her brother at the courts.

“She could do things I couldn’t — right- and left-handed,” Knox said. “She was my right-hand man. We would play video games together, basketball games. I taught her the ways of the game.”

Between trips with her brother downtown for gym shoes, she’d talk about basketball, her team at Clark and her schooling. “She loved Michele Clark. She was always like, ‘I want to go to school, I can’t wait to play basketball,'” her brother said.

Provided photo
Kierra Moore (second from right), coach Arlena Wade a.k.a. Coach Pat (far right) and teammates from the Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School girls’ basketball team.

“She always told me she wanted to take her team to at least one championship. This year was supposed to be the year she’d take her team to the championship,” he said. “I told her, you already know I’m coming to every single last one of your games.”

Wade, the head coach at Clark, called Moore “the life of the team … a great player” who averaged about 15 points a game.

A captain of her high school team, Moore was a jokester but was also intense about playing — whether it was over a bad call or what jersey number she wore. A teammate still remembers when a ref called a foul on Kierra. “She got mad and fussy with the ref,” Tajiuna Cooper said. “She always got her way.”

Moore’s energy motivated the team and bound them together, Cooper said. “She wasn’t just a teammate, but family.”

While Moore had a hard exterior, she was “soft on the inside,” agreed Assistant Coach Sayisha Pendleton.

“No matter how tough she seemed, she was a gentle giant,” Pendleton said. “She couldn’t live without her team, and they couldn’t live without her. She was a big piece of the basketball team.”

Moore’s brother said he will always remember his sister’s “smile of gold.”

“When the team was down, she brought them up,” Knox said. “Everybody loved her.”

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This image released by Disney shows Mirabel, voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, in a scene from the animated film “Encanto.” | AP

“It means the world to me for little brown kids everywhere to get to see themselves and to see themselves represented in a positive way and feel seen,” the director says.

NEW YORK — Charise Castro Smith, the first Latino woman to co-direct a Walt Disney Animation Studios movie, admits that she has felt terrified at times. But when the chance to work on “Encanto” came around, she had no doubts.

“I said, ‘I have to do this. I have to,'” Castro Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press. She joined the project as a writer and had never been in a directing role.

Castro Smith, who has a young daughter, said “it means the world to me for little brown kids everywhere to get to see themselves and to see themselves represented in a positive way and feel seen.”

“Encanto,” which she co-directs with Jared Bush and Byron Howard, is set in Colombia — the land of magical realism — and follows Mirabel Madrigal, a teenage girl dealing with the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers. It opens in theaters Nov. 24.

Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP
Charise Castro Smith poses for a portrait in Los Angeles to promote her Disney animated film “Encanto.” The film, which she co-directs with Jared Bush and Byron Howard, is set in Colombia and follows a teenage girl dealing with the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers.

Castro Smith and Bush also share writing credits with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created original songs for the film. The cast, led by Argentine American actor Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “In The Heights”), includes Diane Guerrero, John Leguizamo, Wilmer Valderrama and Colombian Angie Cepeda.

“Encanto” is undoubtedly a big step for Castro Smith, who started as a playwright and only had a few TV credits as an actor (small parts in “The Good Wife,” “Body of Proof” and “Unforgettable”), writer (“Devious Maids,” “The Exorcist”) and producer (“The Exorcist,” “Sweetbitter”).

Her perspective as a woman raised in a Cuban American family proved useful to the job.

“Charise was a godsend from the moment she joined ‘Encanto’ and created a foundation of heart, vulnerability and authenticity that the entire film is built upon,” Bush said in an email to the AP. “From day one, she wanted to create a unique, flawed and utterly human character in Mirabel that spoke to the experiences of so many Latinas, while at the same time being relatable to audiences around the world.”

Initially brought on as a writer to collaborate with Bush, Castro Smith was asked to be a co-director after seven or eight months, she said. “So it sort of happened organically and it’s been amazing.”

She especially credits her bond with her Cuban grandmother as a source of inspiration for Abuela Alma, who is voiced in the film by Colombian actor Maria Cecilia Botero.

“I just remember watching that (talk) show ‘Cristina’ with her a lot,” Castro Smith recalled of her own abuela. “She encouraged me a lot. She was an amazing woman. Actually, the play I wrote most recently (‘El Huracan’, or ‘The Hurricane’) is about her.”

Although Alma “is temperamentally really really different than my grandmother was… that bond and that closeness I think was something that really informed me as I was writing,” she said.

Howard could see this too.

“From the very beginning, Charise knew who Encanto’s Abuela Alma needed to be, inside and out,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “Charise’s writing showing Alma’s bravery and struggle became the emotional heart of the film, and I know that much of this intimate connection with the character comes directly from the strong women in her own family.”

“This unique talent of blending real-life emotion with heightened, supernatural storytelling comes naturally for Charise,” Howard added. “She always writes with a sense of emotional truth.”

Castro Smith was raised in Miami and attended Brown University as an undergraduate student and later the Yale School of Drama, where she earned an MFA in acting.

Growing up, storytelling was a big part of her life.

“My mom used to tell stories about how, when I was a little kid, I was like putting on plays that I wrote in the living room and my grandmother really really encouraged it,” she recalled. “Then I went to see my first musical when I was like in third or fourth grade … and from that moment I was like, ‘I have to do this, I have to be involved in it.'”

Besides the opportunity of bringing to the screen characters that children of color can relate to, Castro Smith said she was also drawn to “Encanto” by the idea of a protagonist that at the beginning may not be able to accept herself but learns to see and embrace her own value.

“I think is a powerful message that I wanted to offer to everyone,” she said. “But particularly the fact that this is a Latinx character, it was just so personally important to me to put that on the screen. It’s meant the world to me to work on this because of that.”

In terms of representation, she feels hopeful that “Encanto” and other upcoming projects will pave the way for more productions led by and focused on minorities.

“It’s so important just because what we see, we kind of validate; what we see, we can empathize with; what we see, we can sort of put ourselves into the shoes of,” Castro Smith said. “I think what I do as a storyteller and what we all do as storytellers is kind of fundamental to the fabric of society.”

And Castro Smith has found her own value

“It turns out I really love directing,” she said. “I wanna keep doing that after this.”

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