Prato plays hero for Saints again in walk-off

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Anthony Prato didn’t start Thursday’s game at CHS Field for the St. Paul Saints. He helped St. Paul end the game as winners with an RBI single in the ninth inning.

Prato entered as a pinch runner for catcher Patrick Winkel after Winkel singled in the eighth. Prato’s first at-bat of the game was a two-out single to score Carson McCusker to win the game.

Prato had also produced a walk-off win on Aug. 21 against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Caleb Boushley started for the Saints and gave up two runs in four innings. Hobie Harris (4-6) pitched a scoreless ninth for the win.

Diego A. Castillo, Yunior Severino and McCusker each had two hits for the Saints. Severino drove in three runs.

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Concordia College in Moorhead receives anonymous $20M gift for its business school

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Concordia College has announced a gift to the school that it said will transform how business students receive their education.

The donation was revealed during a Thursday gathering of administrators, faculty and students at the liberal arts college in Moorhead.

Concordia President Colin Irvine announced the “transformative” milestone, a $20 million gift to the Offutt School of Business from an anonymous donor.

“This truly historic contribution will greatly enhance our capacity to attract, teach, to inspire and to equip the next generation of business leaders,” Irvine said.

Terry Brandt, vice president for advancement, said the gift — the largest gift ever given to the business school and one of the largest ever given to the college — is more than a financial contribution.

“It is a profound investment in the future of education at Concordia College. It will open doors, it will create opportunities and significantly enhance the experience and impact we offer our students,” Brandt said.

Irvine said the donation builds on other major steps made in the last year , including the opening of the Sanford Heimarck School of Health Professions.

Following that, a $10 million anonymous gift helped the school launch 22 new or reimagined academic programs, five new or expanded co-curricular programs, and infrastructure investments, including a new outdoor track, new turf and lights for the football field, he said.

Those investments have helped prompt a boost in enrollment, Irvine said, with more than 600 new students registered this fall, marking the school’s largest class since 2018.

Susan Larson, Concordia provost and dean, said the $20 million gift will lay the groundwork for expanding graduate program offerings, including a master of business administration degree and graduate certificates in management and business analytics.

At the undergraduate level, Concordia will expand programs that integrate real-world experiences with rigorous academic learning, she said.

“We have had exciting conversations in the past year on areas around econometrics, business and sustainability, and sports and arts management,” Larson said.

The gift will also bring upgrades in classroom technology, she said, and will prioritize scholarships for lower-income students.

Concordia broke ground in June 2011 on the Offutt School of Business, named after former chairman of the Concordia Board of Regents Ron Offutt, who contributed the lead gift toward the $50 million fundraising campaign.

The business school opened its doors in January 2013.

Chris Mason, dean of the Offutt School of Business, said since then, the school has graduated more than 2,000 students.

“This generous donation ensures that our future students will continue this legacy armed with an education that not only meets the demands of today but anticipates the challenges of tomorrow,” Mason said.

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Northeastern Minnesota school bus driver suspected of drunken driving

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A school bus driver was arrested Wednesday morning for allegedly driving while impaired in northeastern Minnesota.

According to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, 17 South Range students were on board the impaired driver’s bus when he was pulled over near Saginaw.

In a news release, the sheriff’s office said a “concerned citizen” called just after midnight Wednesday to report an off-duty St. Louis County School District bus driver was consuming alcohol. The citizen was concerned “he was highly intoxicated and would not be sober by morning when he would likely begin his route.”

Deputies contacted the driver at his home at 6 a.m. Wednesday and the driver assured them he would not work later. The sheriff’s office also informed the school district.

An hour later, the school district told deputies that the driver was, in fact, on his route. Deputies pulled him over “without incident” on Independence Road just north of Seville Road in Saginaw, according to the news release.

The driver was arrested on pending charges of second-degree DWI and operating a school bus with evidence of alcohol present in the person’s body, the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office said all 17 children on board were students at South Ridge School near Alborn and were “uninjured and doing well.” Their parents were notified, and school district staff arrived to “take custody” of the bus and children.

While the sheriff’s office said official blood test results “will not be available for quite some time,” a preliminary breath test recorded the driver had a blood alcohol content of 0.16 — twice the legal limit to drive a typical motor vehicle. However, Minnesota law forbids school bus drivers from having any amount of alcohol in their system while operating a school bus.

On Wednesday, the driver remained in the St. Louis County Jail.

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Pope heads to Papua New Guinea after final Mass in Indonesia before an overflow crowd of 100,000

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By NICOLE WINFIELD and EDNA TARIGAN

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to Indonesia on Friday after celebrating Mass before an overflow crowd of 100,000, a final celebration before heading to Papua New Guinea for the second leg of his 11-day journey through Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The 87-year-old pope had no official events Friday beyond a farewell ceremony and the six-hour flight to Port Moresby, giving him something of a break after a packed three-day program in Jakarta.

The visit culminated with a jubilant Mass on Thursday afternoon before a crowd that filled two sports stadiums and an overflowed into a parking lot.

“Don’t tire of dreaming and of building a civilization of peace,” Francis urged them in an ad-libbed homily. “Be builders of hope. Be builders of peace.”

The Vatican had originally expected the Mass would draw some 60,000 people, and organizers predicted 80,000. But the Vatican spokesman quoted local organizers as saying more than 100,000 had attended.

“i feel very lucky compared to other people who can’t come here or even had the intention to come here,” said Vienna Frances Florensius Basol, who came with her husband and a group of 40 people from Sabah, Malaysia but couldn’t get into the stadium.

“Even though we are outside with other Indonesians, seeing the screen, I think I am lucky enough,” she said from a parking lot, where a giant TV screen was erected for anyone who didn’t have tickets for the service.

While in Indonesia, Francis sought to encourage the country’s 8.9 million Catholics, who make up just 3% of the population of 275 million, while also seeking to boost interfaith ties with the country boasting the world’s largest Muslim population.

In the highlight of the visit, Francis and the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, signed a joint declaration pledging to work to end religiously inspired violence and protect the environment.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis’ agenda is aligned with more of his social justice priorities. The poor, strategically important South Pacific nation is home to more than 10 million people, most of whom are subsistence farmers.

Francis will be travelling to remote Vanimo to check in on some Catholic missionaries from his native Argentina who are trying to spread the Catholic faith to a largely tribal people who also practice pagan and Indigenous traditions.

The country, the South Pacific’s most populous after Australia, has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries, with conflicts becoming more and more lethal in recent decades.

History’s first Latin American pope will likely refer to the need to find harmony among tribal groups while visiting, the Vatican said. Another possible theme is the country’s fragile ecosystem, its rich natural resources at risk of exploitation and the threat posed by climate change.

The Papua New Guinean government has blamed extraordinary rainfall for a massive landslide in May that buried a village in Enga province. The government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.

Francis becomes only the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II touched down in 1984 during one of his lengthy, globetrotting voyages. Then, John Paul paid tribute to the Catholic missionaries who had already been trying for a century to bring the faith to the country.

Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth nation that was a colony of nearby Australia until independence in 1975, is the second leg of Francis’ four-nation trip. In the longest and farthest voyage of his papacy, Francis will also visit East Timor and Singapore before returning to the Vatican on Sept. 13.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.