MINNESOTA at CALIFORNIA

When: 9:30 p.m. (CDT) Saturday
Where: Memorial Stadium, Berkeley, Calif.
TV: ESPN
Radio: KFAN, 100.3 FM
Weather: 66 degrees, partly cloudy, 12 mph east wind
Betting spread: Minnesota, minus-2.5

Records: The Gophers (2-0) eviscerated Northwestern (La.) State 66-0 on Saturday after a season-opening 23-10 win over Buffalo. Cal (2-0) walked past Texas Southern 35-3 on Saturday after beating former Pac-12 opponent Oregon State, 34-15, in Game 1.

History: The Golden Bears lead the all-time series 4-2, with Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson combining for five touchdowns in a 42-17 home win over Minnesota in 2006.

Stat: Minnesota climbed to No. 33 in ESPN’s efficiency metric SP+, while Cal registers at 52 through Week 2. When it comes to each program’s top-ranked opponents, Buffalo (1-1) sits at 85th, Oregon State (0-2) at 97.

Big question: How much does continuity matter? Cal has survived more than 20 players transferring out from last year’s team, while the Gophers have sustained only a few important defections. Head coach P.J. Fleck preaches “cultural sustainability” and this early season foe from a Power Four conference will put that concept under a microscope.

Key matchup: Cal QB Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele vs. Gophers secondary. The former five-star recruit, per On3, has not played like a true freshman. “He’s really scary,” Fleck said. The U safeties are the deepest position on the roster, but the newer cornerbacks will get their stiffest test yet.

Who has the edge?

Gophers offense vs. Cal defense: The U’s most versatile offensive weapon, RB Darius Taylor, is questionable after appearing to pull his right hamstring last weekend. If he can’t play, Minnesota will likely turn to a trio of tailbacks: A.J. Turner, Cam Davis and Fame Ijeboi. Cal has been strong against the run so far this year, ranking 14th in the nation with only 58 yards allowed per game. … Gophers coordinator Greg Harbaugh gained respect for Bears head coach Justin Wilcox when Western Michigan prepared for Wilcox’s Wisconsin defense in the 2017 Cotton Bowl. Wilcox’s defenses have multiple fronts from four to three down linemen, including stemming on the same play, and disguised coverages. “It’s a challenge, especially for a young quarterback (Drake Lindsey) to be able to manage all of that,” Harbaugh said. … DE Ryan McCullough is twitchy off the edge with 1 1/2 sacks and 14 pressures in 83 pass-rush snaps, per Pro Football Focus. He will be problematic for the U’s new tackles — freshman Nathan Roy and senior Dylan Ray. … The heart of the defense is LB Cade Uluave, who has 15 tackles, but also five missed tackles through two games. EDGE: California 

Gophers defense vs. Cal offense: Sagapolutele has been a revelation after last year’s starter, Fernando Mendoza, transferred to Indiana. In the Oregon State win, he posted the highest PFF passing grade (95.5) for a true freshman in an FBS game since 2014. The next closest? Caleb Williams, Zach Wilson, Brock Purdy and Tua Tagovailoa. The 6-foot-3 lefty can spin it, completing 68% this season for 493 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. He also has 37 yards on the ground and a rushing TD. “Very accurate,” coordinator Danny Collins said. “He’s really comfortable back there, comfortable running their offense, like he has run their offense for a lot of years.” … After zero takeaways against Buffalo, Minnesota had four against Northwestern State, including two returned for touchdowns. “We challenged our defense to be obsessed with the football and that is what we have to continue to challenge,” Collins said. Cal has only one giveaway through two games. … The Bears’ offense is led by coordinator Bryan Harsin, the former Boise State and Auburn head coach. “We have to have crazy communication all game long,” Collins said. “Coach Harsin has been doing this for a long time.” … Slot WR Jacob De Jesus is a shifty 5-foot-7 threat, while 6-4 split WR Trond Grizzell is a big target. … Veteran DT Jalen Logan-Redding hurt his right leg last week and might not play Saturday. EDGE: Gophers 

Special teams: PR/KR Jacob De Jesus was an All-America returner at UNLV and has a combined 147 return yards so far this season. Minnesota has been within the top 30 in both kick and punt return yards allowed. … Both teams are each 4-for-4 on field goals and average 42 yards on punts. … Koi Perich has yet to make a splash play in either return game. EDGE: California

Prediction: One anonymous ACC assistant coach told Athlon  Sports that Cal was in “serious trouble” after last season’s exodus, but they have rebounded and will give a grave scare to the Gophers. Yet Minnesota will be fundamental enough to eek out a win. Gophers, 19-17. 

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By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. jobless claim applications jumped to their highest level in almost four years last week, the latest sign that the labor market is softening.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the week ending Sept. 6 rose 27,000 to 263,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the most filings since the week of Oct. 23, 2021 and well above the 231,000 new applications economists forecast.

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Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically low range between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago.

Despite last week’s increase, layoffs remain relatively low by historical measures and hiring has weakened, a trend that economists describe as “no hire, no fire.”

Earlier this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a massive preliminary revision of U.S. job gains for the 12 months ending in March, further evidence that the labor market has not been as strong as previously thought.

The BLS’s revised figures showed that U.S. employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year ending in March 2025, with the biggest weakness coming from the leisure and hospitality sector, professional and business services and retail. The report showed that job gains were tapering long before President Donald Trump rolled out his far-reaching tariffs on U.S. trading partners in April.

The department issues the revisions every year, intending to better account for new businesses and ones that had gone out of business. Final revisions will come out in February 2026.

The updated figures came after the agency reported Friday that the economy generated just 22,000 jobs in August, well below the 80,000 economists were expecting.

Also last week, the government said that U.S. employers advertised 7.2 million job openings at the end of July, fewer than economists had forecast and the first time since April of 2021 that there were more unemployed Americans than job postings.

Last month’s grim July employment report, which showed job gains of just 73,000 and included huge downward revisions for June and May, sent financial markets spiraling and prompted Trump to fire the head of the agency that compiles the monthly data.

The various labor market reports have bolstered fears that Trump’s erratic economic policies, including the unpredictable taxes on imports, have created so much uncertainty that businesses are reluctant to hire.

Broader U.S. economic growth has weakened so far this year as many companies have pulled back on expansion projects amid the uncertainty surrounding the impacts of the tariffs. Growth slowed to about a 1.3% annual rate in the first half of the year, down from 2.5% in 2024.

The sluggishness in the job market is a key reason that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently signaled that the central bank may cut its key interest rate at its meeting next week. A cut could reduce other borrowing costs in the economy, including mortgages, auto loans, and business borrowing.

While a rate cut could spur economic growth, economists fear it could push inflation even farther above the Fed’s target of 2%.

Thursday’s report showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 9,750 to 240,500.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 30 was unchanged at 1.94 million.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation rose last month as the price of gas, groceries, hotel rooms and airfares rose, along with the cost of clothes and used cars.

Consumer prices increased 2.9% in August from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, up from 2.7% the previous month and the biggest increase since January. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%, the same as in July. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

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The reading is the last the Fed will receive before its key meeting next week, when policymakers are widely expected to cut their short-term rate to about 4.1% from 4.3%. Still, the new inflation data underscores the challenges the Fed is facing as it experiences relentless pressure from President Donald Trump to cut rates. Inflation remains stubborn while the job market is weakening, diverging trends that would require polar reactions from Federal Reserve policymakers to address.

Hiring has slowed sharply in recent months and was lower than previously estimated last year. The unemployment rate ticked up in August to a still-low 4.3%. And weekly unemployment claims rose sharply last week, the government also reported Thursday, a sign layoffs may be picking up.

Typically the Fed would cut its key rate when unemployment rose to spur more spending and growth. Yet it would do the opposite and raise rates — or at least keep them unchanged — in the face of rising inflation. Last month, Chair Jerome Powell signaled that Fed officials are increasingly concerned about jobs. Yet stubbornly high inflation could keep the Fed from cutting very quickly.

On a monthly basis, overall inflation accelerated, as prices rose 0.4% from July to August, faster than the 0.2% pace the previous month. Core prices rose 0.3% for the second straight month.

Gas prices jumped 1.9% just from July to August, the biggest monthly increase since a 4% rise in December. Grocery prices climbed 0.6%, pushed higher by more expensive tomatoes, apples, and beef. The cost of travel soared, with air fares rising 5.9% just from July to August and hotel room prices rising 2.3%. Rental costs also increased, rising 0.4%, faster than the previous month.

The impact of tariffs appeared to be mixed, with many imported goods rising in price but modestly. Clothing costs rose 0.5% just last month, though they are still just slightly more expensive than a year ago. Furniture costs rose 0.3% and are 4.7% higher than a year earlier. Appliance costs also rose from July to August, after falling the previous month.

The inflation data arrives at the same time that Trump has sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook as part of an effort to assert more control over the Fed. Yet late Tuesday, a court said the firing was illegal and ruled that Cook could keep her job while the dispute played out in the courts.

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president said Thursday that Korean companies will likely hesitate to make further investments in the United States unless Washington improves its visa system for their employees, as U.S. authorities released hundreds of workers who were detained from a Georgia factory site last week.

In a news conference marking 100 days in office, Lee Jae Myung called for improvements in the U.S. visa system as he spoke about the Sept. 4 immigration raid that resulted in the arrest of more than 300 South Korean workers at a battery factory under construction at Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah.

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South Korea’s Foreign Ministry later confirmed that U.S. authorities have released the 330 detainees – 316 of them Koreans – and that they were being transported by buses to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport where they will board a charter flight scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Friday afternoon. The group also includes 10 Chinese nationals, three Japanese nationals and one Indonesian.

The massive roundup and U.S. authorities’ release of video showing some workers being chained and taken away, sparked widespread anger and a sense of betrayal in South Korea. The raid came less than two weeks after a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Lee, and just weeks after the countries reached a July agreement that spared South Korea from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs — but only after Seoul pledged $350 billion in new U.S. investments, against the backdrop of a decaying job market at home.

Lawmakers from both Lee’s liberal Democratic Party and the conservative opposition decried the detentions as outrageous and heavy-handed, while South Korea’s biggest newspaper compared the raid to a “rabbit hunt” executed by U.S. immigration authorities in a zeal to meet an alleged White House goal of 3,000 arrests a day.

During the news conference, Lee said South Korean and U.S. officials are discussing a possible improvement to the U.S. visa system, adding that under the current system South Korean companies “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making direct investments in the U.S.

Lee: ‘It’s not like these are long-term workers’

U.S. authorities said some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others entered legally but had expired visas or entered on visa waivers that prohibited them from working.

But South Korean officials expressed frustration that Washington has yet to act on Seoul’s yearslong demand to ensure a visa system to accommodate skilled Korean workers, though it has been pressing South Korea to expand U.S. industrial investments.

This image from video provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via DVIDS shows manufacturing plant employees waiting to have their legs shackled at the Hyundai Motor Group’s electric vehicle plant, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Ellabell, Ga. (Corey Bullard/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP)

South Korean companies have been mostly relying on short-term visitor visas or Electronic System for Travel Authorization to send workers who are needed to launch manufacturing sites and handle other setup tasks, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.

Lee said that whether Washington establishes a visa system allowing South Korean companies to send skilled workers to industrial sites will have a “major impact” on future South Korean investments in America.

“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” he said.

“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it,” Lee added.

Lee said the raid showed a “cultural difference” between the two countries in how they handle immigration issues.

“In South Korea, we see Americans coming on tourist visas to teach English at private cram schools — they do it all the time, and we don’t think much of it, it’s just something you accept,” Lee said.

“But the United States clearly doesn’t see things that way. On top of that, U.S. immigration authorities pledge to strictly forbid illegal immigration and employment and carry out deportations in various aggressive ways, and our people happened to be caught in one of those cases,” he added.

South Korea, US agree on working group to settle visa issues

Following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that U.S. officials have agreed to allow the workers detained in Georgia to later return to finish their work at the site. He added that the countries agreed to set up a joint working group for discussions on creating a new visa category to make it easier for South Korean companies to send their staff to work in the United States.

Before leaving for the U.S. on Monday, Cho said more South Korean workers in the U.S. could be vulnerable to future crackdowns if the visa issue isn’t resolved, but said Seoul does not yet have an estimate of how many might be at risk.

The Georgia battery plant is one of more than 20 major industrial sites that South Korean companies are currently building in the United States. They include other battery factories in Georgia and several other states, a semiconductor plant in Texas, and a shipbuilding project in Philadelphia, a sector Trump has frequently highlighted in relation to South Korea.

Min Jeonghun, a professor at South Korea’s National Diplomatic Academy, said it’s chiefly up to the United States to resolve the issue, either through legislation or by taking administrative steps to expand short-term work visas for training purposes.

Without an update in U.S. visa policies, Min said, “Korean companies will no longer be able to send their workers to the United States, causing inevitable delays in the expansion of facilities and other production activities, and the harm will boomerang back to the U.S. economy.”