Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields wanted to return to Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, coach Matt Eberflus said.

But Fields couldn’t grip the football because of the right hand injury he suffered during a third-quarter sack and was sidelined for the rest of the 19-13 Bears loss.

Whether Fields will miss more time is now the major question. The X-rays on Fields’ hand were negative for any fracture, but the Bears are awaiting the results of an MRI. Fox Sports and NFL Network reported Fields dislocated his thumb.

“We’ll know more information tomorrow,” Eberflus said.

In a 1-5 season that has become so much about determining whether Fields is the Bears’ quarterback of the future, those test results are perhaps more crucial than the final result on the field Sunday. Eberflus said Fields’ demeanor after the game was “great.”

“He goes, ‘Coach, we’ll see where it is tomorrow,’” Eberflus said. “He was positive, and he was upbeat.”

Fields was trying to get rid of the ball as Vikings outside linebacker Danielle Hunter sacked him from behind with 10 minutes, 43 seconds to play in the third quarter. Fields’ hand was outstretched as he tried to toss the ball, and it hit the ground before his body did.

Fields held his hand and grimaced as he jogged to the sideline and sat on the bench briefly. He headed first to the medical tent and then the locker room. The Bears eventually ruled Fields out of the game, turning to undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent to take his first NFL snaps.

“It sucks to have a guy like that and not be able to have him on the field,” running back D’Onta Foreman said of Fields. “But this locker room has a lot of trust in Tyson and what he brings to the table. We’ve seen him work each and every day in practice and the things he’s been able to do. It definitely sucks but we have a lot of confidence in (Bagent). … His poise and his calmness, the way he commands himself in the huddle, just getting everybody on the right page.”

Before Fields was injured, he and the Bears offense did little to build momentum from their strong performance against the Washington Commanders in Week 5.

Fields completed 6 of 10 passes for 58 yards, no touchdowns, an interception and a 36.7 passer rating. He was sacked four times. The Bears had minus-3 passing yards following their first three drives before Fields connected with Darnell Mooney for a 39-yard pass. The Bears had a chance to take the lead late in the second quarter, but Hunter got in Fields’ face on a pass, and Jordan Hicks intercepted him.

Wide receiver DJ Moore, who had 230 receiving yards against the Commanders, was targeted twice in the first half, with one 7-yard catch. Moore said at one point the Vikings had three players on him.

“All the different looks, all the pressures and everything that was coming at us,” Moore said. “It’s hard when you go out there and think they’re going to do one thing and they do a whole multitude of things that they either put in or just had something to beat our play call with.”

The inconsistency of the passing offense behind Fields through six games has left major questions for the Bears about whether they are going to stick with him beyond 2023, especially as they and the Carolina Panthers, whose 2024 first-round draft pick the Bears own, drop deeper into the NFL basement — with higher draft picks in sight.

Fields can’t convince them one way or the other if he’s out for any extended time with a hand injury.

Bagent’s turn as the Bears leader didn’t exactly unfold as a fairy tale for the quarterback from Division II Shepherd University who played his way into the Bears backup role through preseason and practice performances.

Bagent, who said he got a “handful” of snaps with the first-team offense in practice last week, completed 10 of 14 passes for 83 yards and an interception and also had a lost fumble and a touchdown run.

He fumbled on a strip-sack by Vikings safety Josh Metellus on his third NFL snap. Hicks recovered the ball and turned it into a 42-yard touchdown and a 19-6 Vikings lead.

“A little bit of miscommunication,” Bagent said. “But at the end of the day, I’ve got to keep two hands on the ball. I’ve got to protect the ball.”

Bagent recovered to lead the Bears to a touchdown three drives later, connecting with Moore on 18- and 24-yard passes and scoring on a 1-yard run. He then got the Bears to the Vikings’ 35-yard line on their next drive with a chance to win it, but he underthrew Moore on a pass that Byron Murphy Jr. intercepted.

Bagent spoke of mixed emotions after the game — but said primarily he was thinking about not getting the win.

“More than anything, just wanting a couple of those plays (back),” Bagent said. “Obviously I would have liked a different outcome in the game. I think after you process and think about that, I’m just extremely grateful for the life I’ve been blessed with.”

If Fields can’t return this week for next Sunday’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders at Soldier Field, Bears players said they expect Bagent to be a poised and confident leader.

“He’s got a lot of self confidence,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “He has conviction in what he does and what he says, and if he has to take over here for a bit, we’re going to rally around him and make this the best situation possible for him.”

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Banks must comply with US, EU, and UK sanctions in addition to local regulations, Swissinfo reports

G7 countries, particularly the US, have questioned whether Switzerland is doing all it can to track Russian assets stashed away in bank vaults, Swissinfo reported.

Swiss banks complain that on top of existing tax evasion and money laundering regulations, they now have to comply with US, EU, and UK sanctions. The situation is particularly complicated and challenging for banks with multiple branches abroad.

“Contradictions between sanctions regimes [of the US, EU, and UK] are repeatedly leading to major difficulties with implementation and unnecessary compliance risks,” Philipp Rickenbacher, the CEO of Julius Bar bank and president of the Swiss Wealth Management Association, was quoted as saying earlier.

Switzerland, which is not an EU member state and considers itself neutral with regard to foreign policy, at first adopted all the sanctions that the EU imposed on Russian citizens and companies, including asset freezes, in 2022. The government justified the move as an “extraordinary situation,” claiming that Swiss neutrality remains intact but “of course we stand on the side of Western values.” 

After the Swiss decided to take part in the EU sanctions, it had no choice but to adopt the US sanctions as well, which have “extra-territorial reach due to the power of the dollar and US financial system,” the report said.

Swiss bankers reportedly argued that instead of neglectfully adopting these measures, the government should in the future actively seek to influence global sanctions packages in a way that suits its domestic agenda.

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The report also pointed to the fact that there is no exact information about how much money wealthy Russians hold in the country. According to the Swiss Bankers Association estimates, the total could be around 150 billion Swiss francs ($170 billion), while the amount in offshore assets that are managed by Swiss banks could be $2.4 trillion.

“The sparse information on Russian assets in Switzerland suggests that the authorities are not active enough in looking for hidden assets of sanctioned persons,” Martin Hilti, the head of Transparency International Switzerland, told Swissinfo. “They should implement sanctions proactively by joining international task forces,” he argued.

Bern has so far rejected this type of international cooperation, arguing that Swiss sanctions already function perfectly well without joining the REPO task force (the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force), established between the EU, G7, and Australia in March 2022.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT’s business section

LIDO, Venice, Italy – Elvis may be long gone but his spirt was certainly invoked at the Venice Film Festival press conference before Monday night’s world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.”

That’s because as Coppola, 52, spoke about her film adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir about her life, marriage and divorce from Elvis Presley, she was asked what did Priscilla Presley think of her movie.  And since the real Priscilla Presley, 78, was sitting in the front row, she was given a mic and jolted the room with an emotional, tear-filled answer.

Asked, “Priscilla, what moved you the most seeing the film?” she answered, “The ending. It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about your life and your love and” – she choked up, stopped, as the room erupted into applause – “Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework. We spoke a couple of times and I put everything out for her that I could.

“It was very difficult for my parents to understand why Elvis was so important to me” – she was 14, in 9th grade, an Army colonel’s daughter, when she met the superstar in Germany where he was stationed for his military service.

“With Elvis I was a listener. He would talk about his fears and his hopes and the loss of his mother, which he never got over. I was the person who sat there and listened.  Even though I was 14, I was a little older in life than numbers.

“I never had sex with him,” she said.  “He was very kind, very soft and loving. He respected the fact I was 14 years old. We were more in mind and that was our relationship.

“He valued me when he came back to the United States and talked about how mad he was with the (film) director. I never knew why he had this trust in me. He loved that I never gave him up in any way or told anyone at school I was seeing him. Our relationship went on until I left,” when she was 29.

She concluded, saying, “It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. It was the lifestyle. And we remained very close. We had our daughter” Lisa Marie who died Jan. 12 at 54 – “and it’s like we never left each other.”

“Priscilla” opens theatrically Oct. 27.

Woody Allen 50th

Woody Allen, here to world premiere his latest, won applause and cheers with the witty, clever and homicidal “Coup de Chance,” his first-ever French-language thriller. It marks the 87-year-old writer-director’s 50th film.  Originally it was with two Americans in Paris – but when French financing happened, it became Parisians in Paris.  “The only changes I had to make were cosmetic,” he said.

 

Gender reveal parties have come a long way from releasing pink or blue balloons and frosting cupcakes. They’ve escalated to using smoke bombs and pyrotechnics to announce the “big reveal,” resulting in injuries, wildfires and death.

They need to stop.

On Sunday, a gender reveal party in Mexico featured a pilot releasing pink smoke from his plane. According to a video posted online, the plane’s left wing appeared to separate from the fuselage as it flew away from the group of people below.

The plane crashed, and according to reports, the pilot died after being taken to a hospital.

This wasn’t the only tragedy to stem from a gender reveal.

A Southern California couple set off a smoke bomb at their Sept. 5, 2020 gender reveal. It sparked the El Dorado wildfire that burned more than 22,000 acres. One firefighter was killed battling the flames and two others were injured, according to reports.

The Sawmill Fire of 2017 was caused by a father-to-be detonating a target packed with Tannerite in a desert near Green Valley, Arizona. That sparked a blaze that lasted more than a week, burned 46,991 acres and cost over $8 million to contain and extinguish.

Blowing things up is a theme at these parties. In 2021, a gender reveal in Kingston, New Hampshire used  80 pounds of explosives to announce the big news. The resulting explosion damaged nearby homes and was felt in northern Massachusetts.

Neighbor Sara Taglieri told a New York ABC affiliate “I’m not upset because I have chalk or confetti blowing my way. I mean, it was an explosion that rocked my house, my neighbor’s, my community and town. It was just absolutely over-the-top ridiculous.”

Over-the-top ridiculous is the name of the game in our Instagram age. A simple cake and streamers won’t get the views that say, a plume of pink smoke wafting over cheering guests will. A party celebrating a yet-to-be-born baby and explosives are a perfect match – if you view this as a chance to star in your own reality show, captured on gender reveal Insta reels.

Unfortunately, far too many people do, and the ante for the outrageous keeps getting upped. What were once simple family celebrations are now full-scale extravaganzas, camera-ready, and choreographed to wow followers.

Blogger Jenna Karvunidis is credited with being the “inventor” of the gender reveal party. Her 2008 party for her unborn daughter featured Karvunidis cutting into a cake with pink frosting on the inside. As ta-da moments go, it was nothing like the literally explosive festivities we have today.

And that’s one of the reasons Karvunidis is denouncing them. “Stop it. Stop having these stupid parties,” she wrote on Facebook as the El Dorado Wildfire raged. “For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.”

Unfortunately, no one listened, and another life has been lost.

Hopefully, if anything good is to come out of Sunday’s tragedy, it is that expectant couples rethink the “hey look at us” aspect of celebrating their unborn child, and instead revel in the joy of their growing family.