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NEW YORK — Visitors to corn mazes across the country are finding a familiar and joyous figure in the winding labyrinth of tall stalks. Snoopy.

More than 80 farms in the U.S. and Canada have teamed up with Peanuts Worldwide to create “Peanuts”-themed mazes to celebrate the beloved strip’s 75th birthday this summer and fall.

A massive Snoopy rests on top of his doghouse in a maze at Dull’s Tree Farm in Thorntown, Indiana, and he’s depicted gleefully atop a pumpkin at Downey’s Farm in Caledon, Ontario.

“All of these events helps keep my dad’s legacy alive,” says Jill Schulz, an actor and daughter of “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz.

“As someone who can’t even keep houseplants alive, the fact that they can do that with a corn maze and get the artwork right and create a fun experience for all ages is pretty incredible,” she adds, laughing.

The mazes — which span 35 states and provinces, from California to New York, Ontario to Texas — are expected to attract more than 2 million visitors. Farmers are signing up for the free service because the mazes are part of the customer lure, in addition to things like hay rides, fresh produce and pumpkin carvings.

Each maze is designed for the size of the farm — from 1.5 acres to 20 acres — and are mostly corn but also sunflowers. They’re custom created by the world’s largest corn maze consulting company, The MAiZE Inc.

The Utah-based Brett Herbst, who leads the company and who launched his first corn maze in 1996, says technology has only somewhat changed the way corn mazes are made.

“The first year we did it, we just used a weed whacker with a saw blade on it when the corn was fully grown,” he says. “Now we do it when it’s short and we go in and either mow it or rototill it. We design it all on a computer, but most of it we actually just go draw it out on the ground by hand.”

He and his team have over the years designed mazes with everything from the faces of presidential candidates, Oprah Winfrey, zombies, John Wayne and Chris LeDoux. Charlie Brown and Co. just work well, he says.

“It’s very nostalgic and just seemed like a very natural fit from the get-go to embrace that with ‘Peanuts,'” he says. “It’s harvest time. It’s kind of become this iconic thing.”

There’s an art and a science to maze building, a balance between maintaining the integrity of the image, but also making it a true maze where people can actually get lost in. “That’s definitely a challenge there,” says Herbst. “You want to accomplish both as much as possible.”

“Peanuts” made its debut Oct. 2, 1950. The travails of the “little round-headed kid” Charlie Brown and his pals eventually ran in more than 2,600 newspapers, reaching millions of readers in 75 countries.

The strip offers enduring images of kites in trees, Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, tart-tongued Lucy handing out advice for a nickel and Snoopy taking the occasional flight of fancy to the skies. Phrases such as “security blanket” and “good grief” are a part of the global vernacular. Schulz died in 2000.

There’s something timeless about corn mazes, and that’s what excites Jill Schulz so much. They offer kids a chance to disconnect from their online life and celebrate something their parents did.

“It’s great to have an opportunity to just bring kids to events that are old school, because it’s also important for parents and grandparents to introduce something they loved to do as a child,” she says.

“I think we all need a little innocence for our children right now with all the technology out there. We need a little ‘put down your phone and go out and have some good old fashioned, old school family time.’ I think that’s important.”
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PARIS — Paris is getting a colorful splash of Olympic creative spirit with nearly 30 vibrant street art pieces that have popped up on bustling metro station walls, a large billboard at the airport and in front of City Hall.

One shows a drawing of French fencer Ysaora Thibus in action. Another has canoers paddling down the Seine River. Some others include people enjoying themselves in a busy district. The original art was spread throughout Paris and other nearby host cities around the Olympic and Paralympic sites.

“During this time of the Olympics, it’s a lot of energy and people coming from all over the world,” said New York native JonOne, who has lived in Paris for the past three decades and is viewed in the street art world as a graffiti pioneer. He’s one of six renowned street artists from four continents whose work is currently on display at train stations, airports, taxis, digital screens and billboards.

The artists were selected through a campaign spearheaded by Visa to help support small businesses. They hail from France (Marko 93 and Olivia De Bona), Brazil (Alex Senna), Australia (Vexta) and the United States (Swoon).

“Why not use street art?” said JonOne, 60, whose artwork can be found in several places in Paris including the Palais Royal–Musee du Louvre station. It took two months with five collaborators to finish the blue, white and red abstract expressionist-style graffiti, which covers 250 square meters of the wall at the busy station.

“It projects a lot of energies and youth culture,” he said. “It’s a good moment to show our artwork.”

The campaign was designed as an open-air exhibition curated by Nicolas Laugero Lasserre, an expert in urban art. The 28 pieces of original artwork will remain on display until September 8.

“Just like high-level athletes, artists share values of tolerance, open-mindedness, questioning and self-surpassing,” said Lasserre, who has organized over 50 exhibitions with public and private institutions, including an exhibition at the Paris City Hall. “Associating art and sport is one of the cornerstones of Olympism.”

Each creation highlights the spirit of the neighborhoods — such as Saint-Denis, Montmartre and Rue Montorgueil — capturing the vibrancy of cafes, bookstores and shops that have become an essential fabric of Paris and the wider Ile-de-France region. They can also be found at the airports of Lille, Lyon and Marseille, hosts of some Olympic events.

“We asked the artists to show us their version of Paris in the most authentic way,” said Juan Arturo Herrera, a business administrator and marketing executive at Visa International. Last month, he carried the Olympic flame over a 200-meter course in eastern France.

“Street art is the most accessible of arts,” he said. “It’s universal. We’ve seen it for decades now in cities. It has made its way through museums and we wanted to bring it back out. We see this as the biggest exhibition of open-air art in the public space.”

De Bona, a Parisian, feels proud to bring her artwork to her hometown, family and visitors from around the world.

“It was so moving,” she said. “I see how the art makes my city so beautiful. It’s a privilege to represent France for all these people who are coming to Paris from all over the world.”

De Bona, 39, remembered when street art and graffiti were not widely accepted by the masses. But now, she’s witnessed a positive shift in the perception and within the industry, which was once male-dominated.

“People need pictures in the streets,” she said. “It needs to be welcoming the arts. We are the bridge between people who don’t think it fits in the museum. We bring art to the people. This is our way to express ourselves and exist.”

Marko 93 said his passion for street art kept him pushing through the words of skeptics. At a young age, he was intrigued by watching the evolution of graffiti during the 1980s hip-hop era in New York, which he called the “promised land” of graffiti.

“It’s all about perseverance,” said the 51-year-old during his live performance, painting a fencer along the Seine. “Art is also about perseverance. This passion pushes us to move forward and beyond our limits.”

One day, JonOne would like to see arts reintroduced as competition at the Olympics.

Art competitions first came into fruition at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm ,with medals awarded in five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. The International Olympic Committee ended the competitions in the 1948 Games, and an attempt to bring it back was denied four years later.

“Artists are like athletes, too,” JonOne said. “I respect athletes in basketball and runners. Art is not really a sport, but it should be included in the Olympics. Just surviving as an artist is an Olympic sport.”
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PARIS — Women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics has highlighted the complexity of drafting and enforcing sex eligibility rules for women’s sports and how athletes like Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are left vulnerable in the fallout.

When eligibility for women’s events has come into question, it often has been a legally difficult process for sports bodies that has risked exposing athletes to humiliation and abuse. In the 1960s, the Olympics used degrading visual tests intended to verify the sex of athletes.

The modern era of eligibility rules are widely known to have started in 2009, after South African 800-meter runner Caster Semenya surged to stardom on the track as an 18-year-old gold medalist at the world championships.

Semenya, the Olympic champion in the 800 meters in 2012 and 2016, is not competing in Paris because she effectively is banned from doing so unless she medically reduces her testosterone. She is, however, still involved in a legal challenge to track’s rules, now into its seventh year.

Here’s a look at sex tests in sports and the complexity they create amid changing attitudes toward gender identity:

What is the criteria for female participation?

Testosterone levels — not XY chromosomes, which is the pattern typically seen in men — are the key criterion of eligibility in Olympic events where the sport’s governing body has framed and approved rules.

That’s because some women, assigned female at birth and identifying as women, have conditions called differences of sex development, or DSD, that involves an XY chromosome pattern or natural testosterone higher than the typical female range. Some sports officials say that gives them an unfair advantage over other women in sports, but the science is inconclusive.

Semenya, whose medical data proved impossible to keep private during her legal cases — has a DSD condition. She was legally identified as female at birth and has identified as female her whole life.

Testosterone is a natural hormone that increases the mass and strength of bone and muscle after puberty. The normal adult male range rises to multiple times higher than for females, up to about 30 nanomoles per liter of blood compared with less than 2 nmol/L for women.

In 2019, at a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing, track’s governing body argued athletes with DSD conditions were “biologically male.” Semenya said that was “deeply hurtful.”

Semenya’s case played out very publicly before 2021, when gender identity was a big story at the Tokyo Olympics and in society and sports in general. She took oral contraceptives from 2010-15 to reduce her testosterone levels and said they caused a myriad of unwanted side effects: weight gain, fevers, a constant feeling of nausea and abdominal pain, all of which she experienced while running at the 2011 world championships and 2012 Olympics.

Female athletes of color have historically faced disproportionate scrutiny and discrimination when it comes to sex testing and false accusations that they are male or transgender.

Why does sex verification testing differ between sports?

Each governing body of an Olympic sport is responsible for drafting its own rules, from the field of play to who is eligible to play.

Women’s boxing came to the Paris Games with effectively the same eligibility criterion — an athlete is female in her passport — as at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 after the International Boxing Association was permanently banned from the Games following decades of troubled governance and longstanding accusations of a thorough lack of normal transparency. Much has happened in the science and debate in those eight years.

Since the Tokyo Games in 2021, track’s World Athletics tightened the eligibility rules for female athletes with DSD conditions. Starting in March 2023, it required them to suppress their testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L for six months, commonly through hormone-suppressing treatment, to be eligible to compete.

That was half the level of 5 nmol/L proposed in 2015 for athletes competing at distances from 400 meters to 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).

World Athletics followed another major sport — World Aquatics — in prohibiting transgender women from competing in women’s races if they had undergone male puberty. The International Cycling Union also took this step last year.

The swim body’s world-leading rules additionally require transgender women athletes who did not benefit from male puberty to maintain testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L.

World Aquatics is not actively testing junior athletes. The first step for athletes is that national swim federations “certify their chromosomal sex.”

Similarly, soccer’s world body FIFA defers to its national member federations to verify and register the sex of players.

“No mandatory or routine gender testing verification examinations will take place at FIFA competitions,” it said in a 2011 advisory that is still in force and has been under a lengthy review.

Why do governing bodies care about who identifies as female?

Many sports bodies try to balance inclusion for all athletes and fairness to all on the field of play. They also argue that in contact and combat sports, like boxing, physical safety is a key consideration.

In the Semenya case, the judges at the Court of Arbitration for Sport acknowledged in a 2-1 ruling against her that discrimination against some women was “a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means” to preserve fairness.

Male athletes are not required to regulate their natural levels of testosterone, and female athletes who do not have DSD conditions also can benefit.

“The idea that a testosterone test is some kind of magic bullet is actually not true,” International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams said in Paris as the women’s boxing debate has raged.

What does the IOC require?

The IOC is at times very powerful and at others not at all.

The Switzerland-based organization manages the “Olympic Charter” book of rules, owns the Olympics brand, picks the hosts and helps fund them through the billions of dollars it earns selling the broadcasting and sponsor rights.

The Olympic sports events, however, are run by the individual governing bodies, like FIFA and World Athletics. They codify and enforce their own athlete eligibility and field-of-play rules as well as disciplinary codes.

So when Olympics sports reviewed and updated how they handled sex eligibility issues, including with transgender athletes, the IOC published advice in 2021, not binding rules.

That was the organization’s framework on gender and sex inclusion that recognized the need for a “safe, harassment-free environment” honoring athletes’ identities while ensuring competitions are fair.

Boxing, however, was different, and the consequences have hit hard in Paris.

The IOC has been in a yearslong and increasingly bitter feud with the International Boxing Association, which is now Russian-led, culminating in a permanent ban from the Olympics last year.

For the second straight Summer Games, the Olympic boxing tournaments have been run by an IOC-appointed administrative committee and not a functioning governing body.

In this dysfunction, boxing eligibility rules have not kept pace with other sports, and the issues weren’t addressed ahead of the Paris Games.

At the 2023 world championships, Khelif and Lin were disqualified and denied medals by the IBA, which said they failed eligibility tests for the women’s competition but has given little information about them. The governing body has contradicted itself repeatedly about whether the tests measured testosterone.

In a chaotic press conference Monday in Paris, IBA officials said they did blood tests on only four of the hundreds of fighters at the 2022 world championships and that it tested Khelif and Lin in response to complaints from other teams, apparently acknowledging an uneven standard of profiling that is considered widely unacceptable in sports.

Who is challenging established rules in some sports?

Before Semenya, there was sprinter Dutee Chand of India who went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She challenged track and field’s initial testosterone rules passed in 2011 as a reaction to Semenya.

A first CAS ruling for Chand in 2015 froze the rules and led to an update in 2018, which was then challenged by Semenya. Her career in the 800 stalled because she refused to take medication to artificially suppress her testosterone levels and was barred from competing at elite events.

Semenya lost at CAS in 2019 but went through Switzerland’s supreme court to the European Court of Human Rights, where she scored a landmark, but not total, win last year.

In May, another ECHR hearing in Semenya’s case was held, and a ruling likely will come next year.

The case could be sent back to Switzerland, maybe even back to CAS in the Olympic home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. Other sports are watching and waiting.
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NEW YORK — Renowned French high-wire artist Philippe Petit marked the 50th anniversary of his famous walk between New York’s Twin Towers with a performance in a Manhattan cathedral, accompanied by live music from Sting.

Petit walked between the spires of the World Trade Center skyscrapers, 1,350 feet up, on August 7, 1974.

A photographer captured the feat with the New York skyline in the background as Petit — without a harness — made the crossing.

Now 74 years old, Petit partly re-created his gravity-defying stunt Thursday in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, about seven miles north of the former Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Of course, my illegal walk between the towers was the most important moment of my life at the time, and now I look back and I have done something like 100 high wire walks all over the world,” Petit told AFP.

In the reconstruction, Petit was met by a police officer as he completed his walk.

The New York Times, which called Petit’s Twin Towers walk the “art crime of the century,” reported that in 1974 after 45 minutes of “knee bends and other stunts,” Petit turned himself over to waiting police.

He was charged with disorderly conduct and trespass, but the charges were dropped in return for a free aerial performance in a city park.

The feature film The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire tell the story of the famous stunt. 
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PARIS — Sprinter Noah Lyles revealed he had COVID-19 after missing out on another gold medal for the United States at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.

Elsewhere, French basketball star Victor Wembanyama moved closer to his dream of a first gold after helping Les Bleus beat Germany to set up a dream final against the U.S. team after the Americans edged Serbia 95-91.

On the same Stade de France track where he won the historically close 100 meters by five thousandths of a second, Lyles was third behind gold medalist Letsile Tebogo of Botswana and U.S. teammate Kenneth Bednarek in the 200-meter race.

Medics tended to a tired-looking Lyles and took him off in a wheelchair. Wearing a mask as he spoke with reporters, Lyles later said he had COVID.

“It definitely affected my performance,” said Lyles, adding that he tested positive early Tuesday morning but was cleared to compete. The U.S. track federation said it and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee adhered to all Olympic and Centers for Disease Control guidelines.

Over at Bercy Arena, with former NBA stars Dirk Nowitzki and Tony Parker watching their respective countrymen, France held on to win 73-69.

Wembanyama, the NBA rookie of the year, clenched his fists at the buzzer and teammate Evan Fournier jubilantly threw the ball into the crowd.

The 20-year-old star didn’t play three years ago in Tokyo, when the French lost the final to the U.S. They meet again Saturday, when Wembanyama hopes to give France its first Olympic gold in men’s or women’s basketball.

Highlights of what happened on Day 13 of the Paris Olympics:

Curry leads semifinal fightback against Serbia

LeBron James had a triple double and Steph Curry scored 36 points as the American men rallied from 17 points down.

The U.S. faced an 11-point halftime deficit — the biggest successfully overcome by an American team since NBA players were added to the Olympic mix in 1992 — and again trailed the Serbs by 11 with just over seven minutes left.

Serbian players fell on their backs at the buzzer after coming so close.

It was a far cry from their group opener when the U.S. rolled to a 110-84 win.

US team gets a world record, breaks the 100-medal mark

The United States now has more golds and more overall medals than any other nation.

With three days left of competition, American athletes total 30 golds for 103 medals overall.

The U.S. went 1-2 in the women’s 400 hurdles with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaking her own world record in a time of 50.37 seconds, and Anna Cockrell taking the silver.

Grant Holloway followed up with gold in the men’s 110 hurdles in 12.99, beating countryman Daniel Roberts.

Also, Long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall won the women’s long jump with Jasmine Moore taking the bronze behind Germany’s Malaika Mihambo.

China’s diving double ends with tears

China claimed its sixth gold medal in diving at the Paris Games with defending champion Xie Siyi winning the 3-meter springboard.

The Chinese made it a podium 1-2 as Wang Zongyuan took the silver ahead of Mexico’s Osmar Olvera Ibarra.

Wang was in tears afterward.

He hadn’t lost a major diving competition in the event since finishing behind teammate Xie at the Tokyo Olympics. After that silver, Wang won three straight world championship titles.

“It is regrettable I lost,” Wang said through an interpreter. “I must learn to accept any failure and my response is to make a greater effort to improve myself.”

Another world record but no gold

American Sam Watson left the Games with another world record to his name but didn’t get the gold medal.

The 18-year-old Watson broke sport climbing’s speed world record on Thursday for the second time at the Paris Games, but that came in the fight for bronze.

Veddriq Leonardo of Indonesia won gold in 4.75 seconds in the final.

Charron lifts for another medal

Maude Charron raised Canada’s flag at the opening ceremony for the Paris Games and lifted up another medal in weightlifting.

Charron took the silver medal in the 59-kilogram category to add to her gold in the 64-kilogram competition at the Tokyo Games.

Rahimi stars as Morocco gets bronze

Soccer-mad Morocco fans finally have an Olympic medal to celebrate after routing African rival Egypt 6-0 for the bronze.

Soufiane Rahimi scored twice and the Casablanca-born striker will surely become a household name back home after netting an impressive eight goals in the tournament.

He was comfortably the leading scorer ahead of Friday’s final between Spain and 1984 Olympic champion France.

Morocco won the African Cup of Nations title in 1976.

Dutch end long wait for gold in men’s field hockey

Duco Telgenkamp scored the golden goal in the shootout to give the Netherlands a 2-1 victory over Germany.

It was the Netherlands’ first gold in men’s hockey at the Olympics since 2000 and third in the country’s history.

Captain Harmanpreet Singh scored both goals as India beat Spain 2-1 for a second straight bronze, after beating Germany at the Tokyo Games.

French get gold, Portugal a rare medal

Track cyclist Benjamin Thomas overcame a crash in the men’s omnium race to give France its 14th gold medal of the Paris Games.

Thomas held off Iúri Leitão, whose silver medal was only Portugal’s second medal so far — compared to 54 for the French.

Also, world champion Ellesse Andrews of New Zealand won the Olympic title in the women’s keirin.

Nadeem gets Pakistan’s first medal with an Olympic record

Arshad Nadeem got Pakistan’s first medal of the Paris Games in style by setting an Olympic record in javelin.

Nadeem’s throw of 92.97 meters beat Norwegian Andreas Thorkildsen’s mark of 90.57 from the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Plain sailing for Austria

In the southern port city of Marseille, Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maehr of Austria won gold in a tight race in the mixed-gender dinghy.

The sport became a new sailing category at these Games. 
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