The United States men’s basketball team is seeking a thrilling finish to its Paris Olympics run when it plays France in a gold-medal showdown. Numerous other sports are wrapping up with the 2024 Olympics nearing its end.

See the full schedule of events and read more on what to watch below:

U.S. men’s basketball seeks thrilling Paris finish

The men’s basketball tournament ends with the U.S. taking on host France in a showdown at Bercy Arena.

The U.S. men rallied to beat Serbia 95-91 in a compelling semifinal. Stephen Curry had 36 points.

Now Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James will lead the team as it seeks a fifth consecutive gold medal and 17th overall.

The French, led by phenom Victor Wembanyama, are seeking their first gold after settling for silver at the 1948, 2000 and 2020 Olympics, losing the final to the Americans in each of those tournaments. France held off World Cup champion Germany 73-69 to advance to Saturday’s final.

The game, a rematch of the final in Tokyo three years ago, is set to start at 9:30 p.m. CEST/3:30 p.m. EDT. The bronze-medal game between Germany and Serbia will take place at 11 a.m. CEST/5 a.m. EDT.

Many track and field events wrap up

Olympic track and field wraps up most of its competitions, with gold medals to be won in nine events.

The day gets started with the men’s marathon final at 8 a.m. CEST/2 a.m. EDT at Invalides. Then the evening session at the Stade de France gets underway with the men’s high jump at 7:05 p.m. CEST/1:05 p.m. EDT, followed by the men’s 800, women’s 100-meter hurdles, men’s 5,000 and women’s 1,500.

Sixteen-year-old American sprinter Quincy Wilson will look to redeem himself after a poor outing in the first round of the 4×400-meter relay. He became the youngest American male to compete in track at the Olympics but left the U.S. needing to make up significant ground after his opening lap.

The Americans needed a rally from Christopher Bailey on the final lap to qualify for the final in third place. The 4×400 relay gold-medal race starts at 9 p.m. CEST/3 p.m. EDT.

The women’s 4×400 follows at 9:14 p.m. CEST/3:14 p.m. EDT. The U.S. team of Quanera Hayes, Shamier Little, Aaliyah Butler and Kaylyn Brown won their heat by more than 3 seconds over Britain, but both groups finished with season-best times to advance.

Lin Yu-ting fights for gold

Lin Yu-ting fights Julia Szeremeta of Poland in the gold-medal bout in the women’s featherweight division.

Lin has won three consecutive bouts while dealing with widespread scrutiny regarding misconceptions about her gender at the Paris Olympics.

Lin and fellow boxer Imane Khelif have excelled despite the massive distractions stemming from the banned International Boxing Association’s decision last year to disqualify both fighters from the world championships for allegedly failing eligibility tests for women’s competition.

Both fighters have received ample support and cheers at their bouts.

Lin is a two-time Olympian who did not medal in Tokyo in 2021. She has made little public comment about those attempting to involve her in the controversy, but she has spoken of her goal to win a gold medal.

Her bout is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. CEST/3:30 p.m. EDT.

USWNT looking for Paris gold

The U.S. will face Brazil in the gold-medal match of the women’s soccer tournament. The Americans are seeking a fifth Olympic gold medal.

Brazil great Marta can end her international career with a gold medal after being suspended for the quarterfinals and semifinals. The 38-year-old Marta has said her sixth Olympics will be her last major tournament with the national team.

The match starts 5 p.m. CEST/11 a.m. EDT at Parc des Princes.

Beach Volleyball

The men’s bronze-medal match starts at 9 p.m. CEST/3 p.m. EDT at Eiffel Tower Stadium, followed by the men’s gold-medal match at 10:30 p.m. CEST/4:30 p.m. EDT.

Breaking

The b-boys bronze-medal battle is scheduled for 9:19 p.m. CEST/3:19 p.m. EDT at La Concorde, followed by the b-boys gold-medal battle at 9:29 p.m. CEST/3:29 p.m. EDT.

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Media Writer

During Kamala Harris’ thrill ride that has upended the 2024 presidential campaign, journalists for the most part have been on the outside looking in. The vice president hasn’t given an interview and has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic choice to replace Joe Biden.

That’s about to change, now that it has become a campaign issue. But for journalists, the larger lesson is that their role as presidential gatekeepers is probably diminishing forever.

Harris travels with reporters on Air Force Two and frequently talks to them, but her campaign staff insists the conversations are off the record. Outside of the plane on Thursday, she approached cameras and notebooks to publicly answer some questions, and one of them was about when she would sit down for an in-depth interview.

“I’ve talked to my team,” she said. “I want us to get an interview together by the end of the month.”

She spoke on the same afternoon that her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, gave a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, in part to draw a contrast with Harris. “She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” Trump said. His vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, posted a comment on social media to point out that Trump was doing something that Harris hadn’t.

The landscape for candidate interviews has changed

Given that modern presidential campaigns are essentially marketing operations, Harris’ stance is not surprising. For the teams behind candidates, “the goal is to control the message as much as possible,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican communications strategist who was senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

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Interviews and news conferences take that control away. Candidates are at the mercy of questions that journalists raise — even if they try to change the subject. News outlets decide which answers are newsworthy and will be sliced and diced into soundbites that rocket around social networks, frequently devoid of the context in which they were uttered.

In such an environment, the value and perception of the sit-down interview has changed — for journalists and candidates alike.

When Trump appeared last month in an interview format before the National Association of Black Journalists, his aides almost certainly didn’t want the main headline to be about their candidate suggesting Harris had misled voters about her race.

Between Instagram, Tik-Tok, televised rallies, emails or texts, campaigns have so many other ways of getting their message across to potential voters today. This lessens the need to directly engage with journalists, Madden said.

“Presidential campaigns increasingly are conducted as performances before a sympathetic audience, one that is invited to watch and listen but not to question or respond,” The New York Times wrote in a recent editorial.

Harris’ unusual late entry into the race means she bypassed vetting by voters, with journalists often as their surrogates, that takes on a more important role in the early stages of a nomination fight where a more intimate form of retail politics varies from state to state. That makes it all the more important that she be available to speak about her record and plans, the newspaper argued.

“Americans deserve the opportunity to ask questions of those who are seeking to lead their government,” the editorial said.

The Times’ editorial board has requested an interview with Harris and hasn’t received an answer, a spokesman said. The same was true of Biden before he dropped out.

A sympathetic interview — or none at all

Harris and her team may be taking lessons from her boss; Biden has lagged behind previous presidents in the number of interviews granted and press conferences held. That changed after the June debate with Trump that sent his re-election effort into a death spiral; televised interviews with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s Lester Holt did little to change that trajectory.

Trump has been more available, but often he talks with people unlikely to challenge him. Since July 5, he’s given interviews to Fox News personalities Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Harris Faulkner, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity. He’s also appeared twice on the “Fox & Friends” morning show.

Between those interviews — frequently clipped and run on other networks — and an endless stream of posts on his Truth Social site, Trump is “a content machine,” Madden said.

Trump’s news conference was telecast live on CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, although CNN and MSNBC both cut out before it was finished to fact check some of the claims.

Fox has also frequently pointed out the issue of Harris’ lack of access. “Trump Takes Questions as Harris Dodges Media,” said one of the network’s onscreen messages as Trump talked.

“We can’t be the only media company that talks about it,” Fox’s Bill Hemmer said on Tuesday, making reference to the upcoming Democratic national convention. “Sixteen days she has gone without a significant interview. Is it possible that she could run out the clock until Chicago? That would be extraordinary. then you’d have to ask yourself. What are you hiding? What is your team hiding from?”

Madden said that while interviews carry less importance than they used to, there are still some undecided voters who want to see them to help make their choices. That’s why he expects they will happen.

“You want to control it as long as possible as much as possible,” he said. “They have had so much momentum over the last couple of weeks, they haven’t had to really sit down and make their case directly to reporters yet. The day is surely coming.”

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Associated Press reporters Seung Min Kim and Will Weissert in Washington and Darlene Superville in Romulus, Michigan, contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

Bailey Ober pitched six scoreless innings, and Carlos Santana hit a two-run homer as the Twins beat the Cleveland Guardians in the first game of a double header, 4-2, at Target Field for their first victory against their American League Central rival this season.

The victory pulled the Twins to within 2½ games of first-place Cleveland pending a 7:10 p.m. first pitch tonight. Right-hander Louie Varland was recalled from Class AAA St. Paul to make the start against Guardians right-hander Alex Cobb.

It was particularly mollifying after the Twins learned Friday morning they will be without Joe Ryan, their quality-starts leader with 13, for a substantial amount of time — if not the rest of the season.

An MRI revealed that Ryan has a Grade 2 strain in the teres major in his right shoulder. He took himself out of his start at Wrigley Field on Wednesday in the second inning.

“We’re ready for this series and are just going to go out there and play our baseball,” Ober said. “It’s tough when guys go down, especially with how they’ve been doing. We’re hurting for them. We’re hoping they can get as healthy as they can. We’re just going to try to go out there and play our baseball.”

Ober (12-5) allowed only two hits and two walks and struck out nine in his ninth straight quality start.

Manny Margot started the first with a double and came home on Santana’s two-out, two-run home run off Joey Cantillo (0-2), and Ryan Jeffers made it 3-0 with a solo shot in the fourth. Santana started his career in Cleveland in 2010.

Cleveland shortstop Brayan Rocchio hit a two-run home run off Jorge Alcala to make it 3-2 in the seventh inning, but Kyle Farmer scored Max Kepler with a sacrifice fly in the Twins’ half to make it 4-2.

Jhoan Duran struck out the side in the ninth for his 16th save.

The Twins started this series 0-5 against their division rival, which has been alone in first place in the Central since early April.

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