stripes.com Free to Deployed Areas

BY FOSTER KLUG AND MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press

TOKYO — A deepening health crisis became an economic one too Friday as the coronavirus outbreak sapped financial markets, emptied shops and businesses and put major sites and events off limits.

The list of countries hit by the illness edged toward 60 as Mexico, Belarus, Lithu-ania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Iceland and the Netherlands reported their first cases. The threats to livelihoods were increasingly as worrisome as the threats to lives.

“It’s not cholera or the black plague,” said Simone Venturini, the city councilor for eco-nomic development in Venice, Italy, where tourism already hurt by historic flooding last year has sunk with news of virus cases.

“The damage that worries us even more isthe damage to the economy.”

The head of the World Health Organizationsaid Friday that the risk of the virus spread-ing worldwide was “very high,” citing the“continued increase in the number of cases and the number of affected countries.”

Economists have forecast global growthwill slip to 2.4% this year, the slowest sincethe Great Recession in 2009, and down from earlier expectations closer to 3%. For the U. S., estimates are falling to as low as 1.7%growth this year, down from 2.3% in 2019.

But if the disease known as COVID-19 becomes a global pandemic, economists ex-pect the impact could be much worse, withthe U.S. and other global economies fallinginto recession.SEE VIRUS ON PAGE 6

Volume 78, No. 225A ©SS 2020 CONTINGENCY EDITION SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2020

MILITARY Airman demotedfor urinating in office coffee pot Page 5

CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

Financial pain deepens over virusFears drive stocks, tourism down as nearly 60 countries report cases

‘ It’s not cholera or the black plague. The damage that

worries us even more is the damage to the economy. ’

Simone Venturinicity councilor for economic development,

Venice, Italy

A soldier stationed at U.S. Army Garrison Casey, South Korea, wears a mask in response to the surge of coronavirus

cases throughout the country. USAG Casey personnel are conducting coronavirus

screenings at entry points around the base. AMBER I. SMITH/U.S. Army

BY J.P. LAWRENCE

Stars and Stripes

DOHA, Qatar — The stage was set Friday for hundreds of guests to witness an accord expected to lay the groundwork for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghani-stan after more than 18 years of war.

Workers at the posh Sheraton Grand Doha hotel Friday lined up dozens of chairs and tested a pro-jection screen that serves as the backdrop where U.S. and Taliban officials will gather for a deal that would begin a conditions-based drawdown of American, NATO and foreign partner troops.

Most of the roughly 12,000 U.S. troops and 8,500 other foreign troops in the country support a NATO training and advising mission. The U.S. is expected to reduce its contingent to 8,600 to continue fighting terrorism.

In return, the militant group is expected to break ties with ter-rorist organizations like al-Qaida, which it had harbored in the early 2000s and refused to give up after the 9/11 attacks, prompting the U.S.-led invasion.

The agreement would also usher in talks involving the in-surgent group, the U.S.-backed Kabul government and other Afghans to address how Taliban fighters would integrate into the government and military.

“It is probably the most impor-tant event in the history of Af-ghanistan over the last 18 years, in terms of giving the greatest potential in ending the war,” said Sultan Barakat, director of the Doha-based Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, who is expected to attend the signing.

However, peace with the Tal-iban comes with mixed reactions from many in Afghanistan, who want an end to war but fear that SEE DOHA ON PAGE 4

Final steps underway for US-Taliban deal in Doha

AFGHAN WAR

NFL Ohio State’s Young wants to follow in Bosa’s footsteps Back page

Mideast: NATO warns Russia, Syria after Turkish troops killed » Page 5

ENTERTAINMENTBaby Yoda toy void officially coming to an end this springPage 13

PAGE 2 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

American Roundup ..... 14Comics/Crossword ...... 16Entertainment ............ 13Movies ...................... 12Opinion ..................... 15Sports ...................17-24Video Games .............. 11

T O D A YIN STRIPES

BUSINESS/WEATHER

Military ratesEuro costs (March 2) .......................$1.1273Dollar buys (March 2) ......................€0.8871British pound (March 2) ...................... $1.32Japanese yen (March 2) .................... 107.00South Korean won (March 2) ........1,185.00

Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ................................... 0. 3771British pound .....................................$1.2951Canada (Dollar) ...................................1.3432China (Yuan) ........................................6.9879Denmark (Krone) ................................6.8146Egypt (Pound) ....................................15.6333Euro ........................................... $1.0967/.9119Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................. 7.7942Hungary (Forint) .................................308.36Israel (Shekel) .....................................3.4795Japan (Yen) ...........................................108.42Kuwait (Dinar) ....................................0 .3060Norway (Krone) ...................................9.4816Philippines (Peso)................................ 51.09Poland (Zloty) .......................................... 3.95Saudi Arabia (Riyal) ........................... 3.7515Singapore (Dollar) ..............................1.3957South Korea (Won) ...........................1208.27

Switzerland (Franc)............................0.9668Thailand (Baht) ..................................... 31.54Turkey (Lira) .........................................6.2382(Military exchange rates are those available to customers at military banking facilities in the country of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., purchasing British pounds in Germany), check with your local military banking facility. Commercial rates are interbank rates provided for reference when buying currency. All figures are foreign currencies to one dollar, except for the British pound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound,

EXCHANGE RATES

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 4.75Discount rate .......................................... 2.25Federal funds market rate ................... 1.583-month bill ............................................. 1.4230-year bond ........................................... 1.79

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain66/63

Baghdad70/48

Doha72/51

KuwaitCity

69/53

Riyadh83/54

Djibouti85/70

Kandahar64/39

Kabul61/36

SATURDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST SUNDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa42/36

Guam80/77

Tokyo55/40

Okinawa71/68

Sasebo53/49

Iwakuni51/45

Seoul50/33

Osan51/33 Busan

53/42

The weather is provided by the American Forces Network Weather Center,

2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

49/39

Ramstein52/39

Stuttgart56/41

Lajes,Azores62/59

Rota62/56

Morón62/50 Sigonella

59/42

Naples55/43

Aviano/Vicenza46/32

Pápa47/31

Souda Bay53/50

SATURDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels47/44

Zagan47/33

Drawsko Pomorskie

43/32

Virus sparks global run on face masks A ssociated Press

Fear of the spreading coronavi-rus has led to a global run on sales of face masks despite medical experts’ advice that most people don’t need to wear them.

Many businesses are sold out, while others are limiting how many a customer can buy. Ama-zon is policing its site, trying to make sure sellers don’t gouge panicked buyers.

Both ordinary people trying to protect themselves from the out-

break and medical professionals are facing shortages.

Some industry officials are at-tributing the shortages not just to high demand but to disruptions in supply .

In the U.S., Walgreens, Home Depot, Lowe’s and True Value Hardware are reporting a sharp uptick in sales of masks over the past several weeks and say they are scrambling to get more from suppliers.

Still, the CDC says only people

infected or those showing symp-toms should wear masks to avoid spreading it to others.

Dr. John Huber, a clinical psy-chologist and chairman of the Austin, Texas-based nonprofit Mainstream Mental Health, said retailers need to do a better job of allaying customers’ fears and sharing the CDC’s advice.

“It’s the fear of the unknown,” Huber said. “Once we under-stand something, we tend not to be so fearful.”

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3Saturday, February 29, 2020

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers voiced frustration to naval leadership Thursday about shipbuilding cuts in the fiscal year 2021 budget proposal. Un-certainty is growing about how the sea service can reach its 355-ship goal in 10 years while fund-ing is being reduced and diverted to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Acting Navy Secretary Thom-as Modly told representatives on the House Armed Services Com-mittee that the Navy still plans to make its goal.

“While this budget does slow our trajectory to a force of 355 ships or more, it does not arrest it. … We are still deeply commit-ted to building that larger, more capable, more distributed naval force within what I consider a strategically relevant time frame of no more than 10 years.”

The Navy is requesting $207.1 billion, a $2.9 billion decrease from its 2020 funding. The re-quest includes the budget for the Marine Corps.

The Navy aims each year to move toward its total battle-force requirement of 355 ships by 2030. However, the 2021 request has a 17% reduction in shipbuilding

procurement, from $24 billion to $20 billion. The Navy seeks con-tracts for eight battle-force ships in 2021. However, funding for one Virginia-class submarine the Navy had already planned to buy in 2021 did not make it into the proposal. The money was instead put into the Navy’s operations and maintenance funding.

The budget proposal allows for 306 deployable ships by the end of 2021, up from 297 ships in 2020.

The Navy is putting more money in operations and mainte-nance for 2021 because the ser-vice needs to improve readiness after falling behind for many years, Modly said.

“Because that immediately im-pacts the safety and security of the sailors and Marines that we put out on these platforms,” he said. “We could not in good con-scious trade that money for more ships that could not operate prop-erly with the right equipment and with the right readiness. And so that’s the trade we made.”

Congress is still waiting on the Navy to submit its 30-year ship-building plan, which is required by law. It’s being held up because Defense Secretary Mark Esper wants time to compare it to the new Integrated Force Structure Assessment that the Navy has sent him, Modly said. That de-

tails the service’s plans for the specific makeup of its fleet, such as how many aircraft carriers, submarines and destroyers it needs to compete against Russia and China.

The reduction of shipbuilding funds became even more of a con-cern for congressional members Feb. 13, when Esper approved $3.8 billion in FY 2020 operations and maintenance funds to be di-verted to support building the border wall. Those funds were to be used for ships and aircraft, including a landing helicopter as-sault ship; two F-35B Lightning II fighters; and a P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft used in counter-submarine operations.

“To be frank, it’s not helpful be-cause it takes a ship out of a plan that we’re driving toward,” Modly said of the unfunded submarine.

The diversion of funds irritated committee members Thursday, and they repeatedly pointed to the 2018 National Defense Strat-egy’s focus on competing against Russia and China, which have increased their naval operations and continue to grow their sub-marine fleets.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., questioned the purchase of two salvage ships in the 2021 bud-get proposal instead of more submarines.

When it comes to defending against near-peer adversaries, “attack submarines are really the tip of the spear in terms of what we need out there,” he said.

Some lawmakers said the 355-ship goal in 10 years was impos-sible to meet. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the com-mittee, called it “aspirational,” and not a realistic strategy.

Modly defended the number and timeline, stating that it can be met with “a reasonable plan that demonstrates how we can get

there on an accelerated path andpolitical will. That’s it.”

Smith said that focusing on the355 number “kind of offends me”because it detracts from hearingmore about what capabilities theNavy needs.

“You could have 355 rowboats,theoretically, and you’d have 355 ships,” he said. “The point is much more the capabilities and the deployability” of each ship.

kenney.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @caitlinmkenney

BY COREY DICKSTEIN

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — House law-makers on Thursday blasted the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs for a lack of response to requests for infor-mation about contamination at a former Soviet base in Uzbekistan linked to hundreds of cancers among U.S. troops who served there between 2001 and 2005.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said the Defense Department had yet to provide a single document about the Karshi-Khanabad air base, better known as K2, which former service members testi-fied Thursday was replete with contaminants and the Pentagon knew about it.

In addition, the VA since Janu-ary has produced only a single Army health assessment, which was already publicly available. Lynch said this suggested further investigation was needed to es-tablish the links between the base and high rates of cancer among its veterans.

“So far, the responses from both departments have been far below the standard that these vet-erans and their families deserve,” Lynch said during a hearing of the national security subpanel of

the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He also said the Pen-tagon has asked for three months to prepare documents.

On Wednesday, Lynch, who is the chairman of the subpanel,

introduced legislation with Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., that aims to produce a database of troops who served at K2 and force the VA to rec-ognize the

base as a hazardous workplace that is responsible for the can-cers reported among its former inhabitants.

Green counted himself among the victims. He disclosed during the hearing that he spent time at K2 while an Army flight sur-geon. The lawmaker has battled colon and thyroid cancer, he said, which he suspects were tied to his time in Uzbekistan.

“It should be automatic. You were at K2? It’s automatic: ser-vice-connected,” Lynch said. “We’re not going to require any further medical tests. We’re going

to presume that the connection was there and that it was service-related. We don’t want people to have to jump through all those hoops to try to prove their case individually, one at a time. It’s not going to work that way. That’s not for the benefit of the families that are going to need care.”

Former service members who spent time at K2 testified Thurs-day that they were aware of at least 400 individuals diagnosed with cancers who served at the base. They said at least 30 have died.

The veterans described a toxic environment at the post, where pond water glowed green, black sludge oozed from the ground and the government posted mas-sive white and yellow signs warn-ing troops to keep out of certain areas due to chemical agents.

Paul Widener, a retired Air Force master sergeant who de-ployed to K2 shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, told lawmakers that he recalled other service members seeking out those signs to pose with for photographs.

“Everybody knew that at some point we would need direct evi-dence to prove that we had been there and that we had been ex-posed to what we were exposed

to,” said Widener, who was diag-nosed with colon cancer in 2007. “Because people think we’re crazy when we tell them.”

Widener is among a group of K2 veterans who have been fight-ing to convince the VA to recog-nize cancers among troops who served at the base as service-con-nected. Thus far, the VA has not done so, saying the evidence is not clear.

But the McClatchy news orga-nization, which first exposed the breadth of the cancers experi-enced by K2 veterans last year, reported this week that Pentagon documents show the Army knew at least by 2009 that cyanide, nerve and blister agents were present in water and bunkers on the base.

Widener told lawmakers that they should request reports from the Pentagon describing regular environmental studies completed at K2. He said the results of those tests were always quickly clas-sified and government officials sought to tamp down rumors of chemical exposures at the post.

“ ‘Another false alarm,’ we were told, ‘but you cannot go back into that house you were in before, even though it was a false alarm,’ ” Widener told lawmak-

ers, recounting what troops at K2 were regularly advised.

The Pentagon estimates about7,000 troops served at K2, whichwas used as a staging and sup-port base during the first fouryears of the war in Afghanistan.However, the number might notinclude troops who served thereon short, temporary assignmentsor certain special operators serv-ing highly classified missions.

Lynch and Green comparedthe government’s response to theK2 cancers to its slow responsesto recognized service-connecteddisabilities stemming from expo-sure to Agent Orange in Vietnamand later to burn pits in Iraq andAfghanistan.

They said troops who spent time at K2 deserved to be covered for any cancers that they face.

These exposures — they hap-pened, and therefore the diagno-sis that came from them — braincancer, colon cancer, thyroidcancer, whatever they are — they may very well be of other etiolo-gies, but the fact that this expo-sure occurred, we have to givethe benefit of the doubt to thewarrior. These presumptive diag-noses need to be included in it.”dickstein.corey@stripes.comTwitter: @CDicksteinDC

MILITARY

House questions cuts to Navy shipbuilding budget

Lack of response to sick troops at ex-Soviet base scrutinized

JOE GROMELSKI/Stars and Stripes

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly, left, answers a question during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, on Thursday. With him is Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger.

Widner

PAGE 4 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

MIDEAST

Doha: Preparations made for official signing of Afghan peace agreement FROM FRONT PAGE

gains for women and basic freedoms, par-ticularly in the cities, might be lost as a group that once banned music and shaving gains legitimacy.

The Taliban has long refused to negoti-ate with the government in Kabul and a spokesman for the militant group Friday denied they would meet with their repre-sentatives in Doha. Nevertheless, a gov-ernment delegation will try to speak with them, Javed Faisal, a spokesman for the Afghan National Security Council, said by

phone from Kabul.Others expected to attend the signing of

the accord includes former Taliban captive Timothy Weeks, an Australian university professor who arrived in Doha on Thurs-day. Weeks, who was held for three years, said on Twitter that he will be an “official guest” at the signing ceremony.

The Taliban posted a picture of Weeks with Anas Haqqani, one of three high-ranking militants released from Afghan custody last year as part of a prisoner swap that freed Weeks and another professor, U.S. citizen Kevin King.

The expected signing comes at the end of a seven-day partial cease-fire between the insurgents and government forces, which stopped most offensive operations in Afghanistan.

During the weeklong period, meant to test the Taliban’s ability to halt its fighters, U.S. counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State continued.

While scattered attacks broke the week’s calm, Gen. Scott Miller, the top U.S. com-mander in the country, said Tuesday there was a “downward trend in violence.”

The following day, alongside acting Af-

ghan Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid and followed by select media outlets, Mill-er walked some Kabul streets outside thecapital city’s heavily fortified green zone topublicize the reduction in violence.

The city, long one of the safest in the country, has seen increased suicide bomb-ings and other attacks following the with-drawal of most foreign combat forces at the end of 2014.

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.lawrence.jp@stripes.comTwitter: @jplawrence3

BY DAN LAMOTHE

The Washington Post

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban and United States had just launched a seven-day agree-ment to reduce violence and pos-sibly end America’s longest war, but U.S. and Afghan officials wondered whether the Taliban would keep its end of the deal.

Then a rocket crashed into a fire station at Bagram air base within the first hour of the so-called “re-duction in violence” period that began at midnight last Saturday. That was followed by dozens of other attacks across the country, including Taliban ambushes that killed at least six people in the northern province of Balkh.

Afghan officials said violence was down about 80% nationwide. But the attacks prompted Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to di-rect his staff to speak to Taliban leaders about restraining their fighters.

“The message that I passed is that if they can’t get that under control, we’re going to start shoot-ing,” Miller said in a staff meet-ing, referring to the situation in Balkh. “That’s a very tough deci-sion if we have the opportunity to end violence.”

The rocket at Bagram was “pretty close to hitting coalition” members, he added, something that “would be one of the red lines that is hard to come back from despite all the work.”

The behind-the-scenes mo-ments, observed by The Wash-ington Post, illustrate how U.S. military leaders are grappling with how to extricate the United States from the longest war in American history ahead of the expected signing of peace deal with the Taliban on Saturday.

For U.S. defense officials, the deal allows the United States to keep a foothold in Afghanistan depending upon the conditions on the ground, monitor whether the Taliban seeks peace, and carry out strikes against the Islamic State militants, who are at war with the Taliban, too. It also will could leave U.S. forces vulner-able to some casualties.

By early this week, U.S. mili-tary officials had grown confident that bloodshed with the Taliban could remain low through a sign-ing deal. Notably, there were few attacks in provinces like

Helmand, Paktika and Nangahar, all of which have been insurgency hotbeds, and civilians celebrated in the streets in some locations.

In Balkh, where attacks caught U.S. attention, it is believed that a Taliban commander was op-erating without the approval of his leaders, said one senior U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The commander needed to “pick up his game” and meet the terms of the seven-day deal, a message that was relayed to Taliban lead-ers overseeing him, the senior U.S. official said.

The violence reduction — something short of a full cease fire — opened the door for the signing this Saturday of a his-toric peace deal that calls for the United States to withdraw several thousand service members with-in months and more as conditions on the ground allow.

The agreement would be a first step on a road still rife with haz-ards. They include overcoming distrust on all sides, patching to-gether a toxic political situation among senior Afghan govern-ment officials, and dealing with irreconcilable Taliban members who may join the Islamic State out of disgust with the deal.

There is also the concern that the Islamic State will step up its attacks.

Additional negotiations be-tween the Afghan government and Taliban could take months or years, or fall apart. The two sides

will likely need to address such issues as how territory is con-trolled, what power the Taliban gets, the release of prisoners, and how to safeguard women’s rights and other protections gained since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

This account of the U.S. mil-itary’s week in Afghanistan is based on several days of inter-views with U.S. and Afghan of-ficials, including Miller, as they grappled with a potential new era.

Miller said in a rare 40-minute interview Thursday that his dis-cussion with Taliban leaders was “pragmatic and serious.” The group, he said, was serious about meeting its obligations and seeing the United States do the same.

“In terms of what I’ve seen, I’m satisfied that the Taliban made a good-faith effort,” Miller said . “The violence we have seen is spo-radic. In some cases, it appears to be harassing, although there have been a couple of fatalities associ-ated with violence — and those are things that we will talk to the Taliban about directly.”

The expectation, Miller said, is that the Taliban will continue to reduce its attacks. In one positive sign that U.S. officials observed, Taliban officials told their fight-ers to hold fire in a message that was distributed on WhatsApp.

Miller and his staff began re-ducing forces from about 14,000 last year and are expected to cut again from about 12,000 to 8,600 within months as part of the deal. The Taliban is likely to highlight

that the agreement calls for the eventual departure of all U.S. forces, while U.S. and Afghan government officials will empha-size that any withdrawal will be conditions-based.

A spokesman for Ghani, Sediq Sediqqi, disputed that the deal between the United States and Taliban is about the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

“It is going to be an opportunity for the Taliban to abandon vio-lence, break ties with Al Qaeda/other terror groups and embrace a political settlement pursuing a lasting peace,” he tweeted.

In Washington, a group of Re-publican lawmakers sent a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo on Wednesday raising alarm about the plan.

The lawmakers included Af-ghanistan veterans like Mi-chael Waltz of Florida and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who was wounded there while serving as a Navy SEAL. They highlighted the Taliban’s bloody history and questioned whether the militants will meet their obligations in the agreement.

“They will accept nothing less than a full-scale U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as they seek to establish their ‘Islamic Emir-ate,’ ” the lawmakers wrote. “Our withdrawal would then allow ter-rorist groups in Afghanistan to grow stronger and establish safe havens from which to plot attacks against us.”

Meanwhile, a dispute among Af-ghan government officials could threaten further negotiations.

An independent election coun-cil declared this month that Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, had won his reelection bid. But his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, rejected the results and pledged to form a parallel government. Protests, mostly against Ghani, broke out across northern Af-ghanistan, where Abdullah is allied with Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, a power broker and for-mer vice president under Ghani.

U.S. officials expressed con-cern about the political crisis. Miller and special U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with both parties, and privately with each other. Ghani eventually agreed to postpone his inauguration .

Miller, asked about the situa-tion, said that it will be “neces-sary” for Ghani and Abdullah to

“resolve their political differenc-es in a positive way as they move forward to the next step.” Doingso, Miller said, will allow them tohave a “united front” as they ne-gotiate with the Taliban.

Some U.S. officials have grum-bled that the United States gaveaway too much to the Taliban innegotiations, but Miller applaud-ed Khalilzad and his team fortheir work.

“We would not be where we arewithout him,” the general said.“We have from the very begin-ning been very intertwined.”

On Thursday, Miller and Khalilzad also met with senior Taliban officials in the Qatari cityof Doha, where the Taliban main-tains an office.

Amid the violence reduction,Miller visited with U.S. and Af-ghan troops in several locations.

At a base in Kabul that is home to U.S. and Afghan special opera-tions forces, the general observedas Afghanistan’s acting defenseminister, Asadullah Khalid,praised Afghan soldiers for their role in securing the Taliban’s commit to reducing violence. He hoped for a full cease fire later, he said.

Asadullah said that Afghanforces must remain apolitical asAbdullah and Ghani discuss their political futures.

On Wednesday, Miller and Asa-dullah walked through the streets of downtown Kabul without hel-mets or body armor in an effortto demonstrate that the violencereduction was holding.

They greeted shopkeepers andpassersby warmly, posing forselfies under the watchful eye of a small group of armed U.S. spe-cial operations forces on Miller’ssecurity team.

Miller traveled by helicopter toCamp Dahlke in the eastern prov-ince of Logar on Tuesday and metwith Green Beret soldiers andconventional U.S. soldiers who advise Afghan forces.

In a room of bushy-bearded Green Berets, Miller asked: Howmany times have you deployedhere?

One after another, the soldiersanswered: Three, four, even seven times.

“In a perfect world, if all is working, we may have fired our last shots, at least against the Tal-iban,” Miller said. “Maybe — un-less they attack us first. It’s theTaliban’s choice.”

Tensions remain despite reduced violence

DAN LAMOTHE/The Washington Post

Army Gen. Scott Miller meets with civilians in the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday,

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 5Saturday, February 29, 2020

MILITARY/MIDEAST

Turkey, Russia work to alleviate tensions after 33 troops killed

BY MEHMET GUZEL AND ANDREW WILKS

Associated Press

REYHANLI, Turkey — The presidents of Turkey and Russia spoke by phone Friday to try to defuse tensions that rose signifi-cantly in Syria after 33 Turkish troops were killed in a Syrian government airstrike, and a new wave of refugees and migrants headed for the Greek border by land and sea after Turkey said it would no longer hold them back.

The attack Thursday marked the deadliest day for the Turkish military since Ankara first en-tered the Syrian conflict in 2016 and also was the most serious escalation between Turkish and Russian-backed Syrian forces, raising the prospect of an all-out war with millions of Syrian civil-ians trapped in the middle.

NATO envoys held emergency talks at the request of Turkey, a NATO member. Turkey’s 28 al-lies also expressed their condo-lences over the deaths and urged de-escalation, but no additional NATO support was offered.

Apart from providing some aerial surveillance over Syria, NATO plays no direct role in the conflict, but its members are deeply divided over Turkey’s ac-tions there, and European allies are concerned about any new wave of refugees.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country already hosts more than 3.5 mil-lion Syrian refugees, has long threatened to “open the gates” for millions to flee to Europe unless more international support was provided.

Greece and Bulgaria increased security at their borders with Turkey in preparation for an influx.

The crisis stems from a Syrian government offensive that began Dec. 1 with Russian military sup-port to retake Idlib province in northwestern Syria, the last op-position-held stronghold in Syria. Turkey, the main backer of the Syrian opposition, has lost 54 sol-diers this month, including the latest fatalities, and now feels the

need to respond strongly.Thursday’s attack sharply

raised the risk of direct military confrontation between Turkey and Russia, although Turkish of-ficials blamed Syria for the air-strike. The Turkish stock market fell 10%, while the Turkish lira slid against the dollar.

In their phone call, Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed implementing agreements in Idlib, the Kremlin said. Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan’s director of communications, said they had agreed to meet “as soon as possible.”

Two Russian frigates armed with cruise missiles were en route to the Syrian coast, Russian navy officials said.

Erdogan held a six-hour emer-gency security meeting in Ankara late Thursday, the Anadolu news agency reported. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg by telephone while Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, who plays a senior role in foreign affairs, spoke to U.S. Na-tional Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday, with the council presi-dent, Belgian U.N. Ambassador Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, calling the escalating conflict “very, very concerning.”

“We want to call for restraint, for de-escalation and a cease-fire,” he told reporters.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Turkish troops that came under fire were deployed among “terrorist battle formations.” They were in the area of Behun, and according to coordinates given to Russia’s Reconciliation

Center in Syria, “there were no Turkish military units in the area ... and there weren’t supposed to be,” the ministry said.

Russian air forces did not carry out airstrikes in the area, the statement added, and after re-ceiving information about Turk-ish casualties, “the Russian side took all the necessary measures in order for the Syrian forces to stop the fire.”

Turkish Foreign Ministry

spokesman Hami Aksoy warned that the movement of migrants to the West could continue if the situation in Idlib deteriorated further.

Greek Prime Minister Kyria-kos Mitsotakis tweeted that no illegal border crossings will be tolerated and that Greece was not to blame for the “tragic events in Syria.”

Already on Friday, some peo-ple took minibusses and taxis

from Istanbul and headed toward Greece.

Dozens waited on the Turkishside of the border gate at Paz-arkule; a few hundred were wait-ing in a fenced-off no man’s landbetween the two countries.

Greece has about 50 coastguard patrol boats active in theeastern Aegean, assisted by about a dozen vessels from Frontex, the European border agency.

OMER KUSCU/AP

A Turkish man place national flag on a barrier outside the Russian consulate, in Istanbul, on Friday .

AP

Honour guards carry the coffins of Turkish soldiers killed in Syria to the airport to be sent to their homelands, in Hatay, Turkey, on Friday.

‘ We want to call for restraint, for de-escalation and a cease-fire. ’Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve

U.N. Security Council president

BY ROSE L. THAYER

Stars and Stripes

An airman in Alaska was de-moted and received a letter of reprimand for peeing in his squad-ron’s office coffee maker, among other violations of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, accord-ing to documents from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Formally charged as a viola-tion of article 92, dereliction of

duty, the unnamed airman “knew or should have known” to “refrain from urinating in the squadron coffee maker,” according to the redacted charge sheet provided by the base public affairs office. The incident occurred some-time between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, 2019, but the document does not stipulate how the crime was discovered.

The airman also faced a charge of being absent without leave

from Nov. 27 until he was appre-hended on Dec. 2. Both charges were addressed through article 15, which allows the commander to determine guilt and punish-ment for minor offenses instead of through a judicial hearing.

The airman received the letter of reprimand as well as a demo-tion in rank to airman basic, the Air Force’s lowest enlisted rank.

The charges were first made public earlier this month on a

Facebook page popular with en-listed Air Force personnel when someone anonymously shared a newsletter from the Alaska base that mentioned the charges. The newsletter posting, which garnered more than 400 shares and nearly 650 comments, also mentioned the airman had five previous letters of reprimand unrelated to these charges. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson’s public affairs office confirmed

that information. Joint Base Elmendorf-Rich-

ardson is located near Anchor-age and has about 5,500 military and civilian personnel. It is hometo U.S. Alaskan Command, 11th Air Force, U.S. Army Alaska andthe Alaskan North AmericanAerospace Defense CommandRegion.

Thayer.rose@stripes.comTwitter: @Rose_Lori

Airman demoted for peeing in coffee pot

PAGE 6 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

BY MARCUS KLOECKNERAND JENNIFER H. SVAN

Stars and Stripes

KAISERSLAUTERN, Ger-many — A 32-year-old Kaiser-slautern man has contracted the coronavirus and 17 others are in self-quarantine after being in contact with him, city health of-ficials said Friday.

The patient recently returned from a trip to Iran, health offi-cials for the city and Westpfalz Klinikum, a Kaiserslautern hos-pital, said Thursday night.

The hospital as a precaution has shut down all non-emergency services and plans to return to a normal schedule Tuesday, offi-cials said.

Kaiserslautern is home to the largest U.S. military community

overseas, where about 50,000 Americans live in the city and out-lying villages. No cases of corona-virus have been reported among the U.S. population in the area, military officials said Friday.

German health officials believe the patient contracted the corona-virus in Iran, which has reported 22 related deaths and 141 con-firmed cases, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

He arrived back at Frankfurt airport on Feb. 19 symptom-free and took a bus to Kaiserslautern that day.

On Wednesday, he went to the hospital with a fever, while shaking and coughing, officials said. The hospital tested for and confirmed the coronavirus Thursday.

The patient works in the me-

chanical engineering department at Technical University Kaiser-slautern, the Wochenblatt news-paper reported.

Seventeen people with whom he was in close contact with in recent days are self-quarantined in their homes, officials said. They include 15 colleagues and the patient’s two roommates — a student at the university and a teacher at a vocational school in Landstuhl, officials said. They have been tested for the corona-virus and results were expected Friday or Saturday.

City employees will provide the 17 people food and water while checking whether they stay home, the Rheinpfalz newspaper reported.

The Westpfalz hospital also sees American patients and is keeping

the military up to date on new de-velopments, hospital spokesman Dennis Kolter said Friday.

The hospital’s clinics in Kirch-heimbolanden, Rockenhausen and Kusel are continuing to see patients.

Military officials said they are tracking the coronavirus case in Kaiserslautern and added that the patient has no U.S. military affiliation.

“We do anticipate that it’s just a matter of time before we see cases of our own,” said Gino Mat-torano, a spokesman for Regional Health Command Europe on Fri-day. “We have been expecting this, and we are prepared to re-spond appropriately.”

The commander of the 86th Aerospace Medicine Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Lt. Col.

Tracy Bozung, a public health expert, was scheduled to answerquestions about the virus onRamstein’s Facebook page Fri-day. As of early Friday afternoon,nearly 150 people had commentedor posted questions to the page.

Germany is trying to containthe spread of the virus after 14new cases were confirmed Thurs-day in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the state’shealth ministry reported.

Another case was confirmedin Heidelberg on Friday in a manwho recently returned from askiing holiday in South Tyrol, in northeast Italy, a region hit par-ticularly hard by the virus.kloeckner.marcus@stripes.comsvan.jennifer@stripes.comTwitter: @stripesktown

BY COREY DICKSTEIN

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — U.S. Central Command on Thursday issued travel restrictions for troops sta-tioned within its area of responsi-bility across the Middle East and southwest Asia, citing fears about the fast-spreading coronavirus, a defense official said.

The command has canceled all leave and liberty travel planned within the CENTCOM area until further notice, said Navy Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for the

command. The new restrictions do no impact official or tempo-rary duty travel nor do they im-pact leave travel to destinations outside the CENTCOM area, such as the continental United States.

“U.S. Central Command is tak-ing multiple prudent measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 coronavirus and to mitigate the operational risk such transmission would pose,” Urban wrote in an emailed statement. “One of those steps is to suspend leave and liberty for U.S. service members within the Central Com-

mand area of responsibility.”Officials at the Pentagon said

there are no known or suspected cases of the coronavirus among its troops in the CENTCOM region.

The move is the latest in a se-ries of travel restrictions placed on American troops across the globe due to the threat of the virus, which initially broke out in China but has spread to at least 47 additional countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Coronavirus cases have been reported in 10 countries within

CENTCOM’s area of responsibil-ity, though the vast majority of those cases were reported in Iran, where the U .S. does not have ser-vice members. In countries with American troops in the region, 43 cases were reported in Kuwait, 33 in Bahrain, 13 in the United Arab Emirates, six in Iraq, and one each Afghanistan and Egypt. Those numbers were provided Thursday by the WHO.

So far, only one American ser-vice member has been confirmed to have contracted the corona-virus. A 23-year-old American

soldier stationed at Camp Carroll in South Korea tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.South Korea has the second larg-est outbreak of the virus outside of China.

The WHO reported Thursdaythat 1,766 cases are confirmed in South Korea. On Wednesday, U.S.troops and Defense Departmentcivilians stationed there were banned from any nonessentialtravel in South Korea.

dickstein.corey@stripes.comTwitter: @CDicksteinDC

FROM FRONT PAGE

“If we start to see more cases in the Unit-ed States, if we start to see people not trav-eling domestically, if we start to see people stay home from work and from stores, then I think the hit is going to get substantially worse,” said Gus Faucher, an economist at PNC Financial.

Part of the problem is that the health measures needed to combat the outbreak — locking down cities and ordering work-ers and students to stay home — damage the economy.

“This is a case where in economic terms the cure is almost worse than the disease,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Eco-nomics. “When you quarantine cities … you lose economic activity that you’re not going to get back.”

Kirkegaard said that hard-hit Japan, South Korea and Italy could slip into reces-sion. And if the U.S. stock market continues to plunge, American consumers could lose confidence and cut their spending, threat-ening to turn the record-breaking 11-year U.S. economic expansion into a recession.

“You don’t need many more days like this,” he said, as stocks tumbled again on Wall Street.

In Asia, attractions including Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan announced closures, and events that were expected to attract tens of thousands of people, including a concert series by the K-pop group BTS, were called off.

Investors watched as stocks fell across Asia. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index suffered another brutal drop, falling 715

points in mid-day trading. The index has dropped more than 13% since last week.

Businesses large and small saw weak-ness, and people felt it in their wallets.

“There’s almost no one coming here,” said Kim Yun-ok, who sells doughnuts and seaweed rolls at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, where crowds were thin Friday as South Korea counted 571 new cases — more than in China, where the virus emerged. “I am just hoping that the out-break will come under control soon.”

Booking Holdings, which owns the on-line travel firms Priceline, Booking.com, Kayak and OpenTable, said this week that the coronavirus has had a “significant and negative” effect on its business.

Facebook announced that it would can-cel its annual conference for software de-velopers, set for early May in San Jose. The event typically attracts 5,000 attendees.

In Italy, where the count of 650 cases is growing, hotel bookings fell, and Premier Giuseppe Conte raised the specter of re-cession. Shopkeepers like Flavio Gastaldi, who has sold souvenirs in Venice for three decades, wondered if they could survive the blow.

“We will return the keys to the landlords soon,” he said.

Europe’s economy is already teetering on the edge of recession. A measure of business sentiment in Germany fell sharp-ly last week. China is a huge export market for German manufacturers. Weaker busi-ness sentiment could lead companies to postpone their investment and expansion plans.

The economic hurt came with anger in Bangkok, where tenants at the Platinum

Fashion Mall staged a flash mob, shouting “Reduce the rent!” and holding signs that said “Tourists don’t come, shops suffer.”

Tourist arrivals in Thailand are down 50% compared with a year ago, according Capital Economics, a consulting firm.

Kanya Yontararak, a 51-year-old owner of a women’s clothing store, said her sales have sunk as low as $32 some days, mak-ing it a struggle to pay back a loan for her lease. She’s stopped driving to work, using public transit instead. She also packs a lunch instead of buying one and is cutting her grocery bills. The situation is more severe than the floods and political crises her store has braved in the past.

“Coronavirus is the worst situation they have ever seen,” she said of the

merchants.Some saw dollar signs in the crisis. Twen-

ty people were arrested in Italy for sellingmasks they fraudulently claimed provid-ed complete protection from COVID-19.Police said they were selling them for asmuch as $5,520 each.

Japan’s schools prepared to close and the country’s Hokkaido island declared astate of emergency, with its governor urg-ing residents to stay home over the week-end. The Swiss government banned eventswith more than 1,000 people, while at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, basins of holy water were emptied for fear of spread-ing germs.

Globally, more than 83,000 people have fallen ill with the coronavirus.

VIRUS OUTBREAK

CENTCOM issues travel restrictions for troops

Health officials confirm 1st case of coronavirus in Kaiserslautern

Virus: Economists warn of recession

CLAUDIO FURLAN, LAPRESSE/AP

A worker disinfects a ferry boat in Venice, Italy, on Friday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 7Saturday, February 29, 2020

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill negotiations on emergency spending to combat the coronavi-rus outbreak are likely to produce a bill that’s double or even triple the $2.5 billion plan requested by President Donald Trump just days ago.

Lawmakers and aides involved in the talks say they are proceed-ing well and are likely to produce legislation in the $6 billion to $8 billion range. Both the Democrat-ic-controlled House and GOP-held Senate are eager to complete work on the measure in the next two weeks.

All sides say the $2.5 billion White House coronavirus plan — of which only $1.25 billion would be new funding — is inadequate. And Trump himself appears to be in no mood to pick a fight on the issue with Democratic rivals like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or top Senate Democrat

Chuck Schumer of New York.“Congress is willing to give us

much more than we’re even ask-ing for,” Trump said Wednesday. “That’s nice for a change.”

Still, Trump did use the out-break to re-air his grievances over impeachment. “Do Nothing Democrats were busy wasting their time on the Impeachment Hoax, & anything they could do to make the Republican Party look bad, while I was busy call-ing early boarder & flight clos-ings, putting us way ahead in our battle with the Coronavirus,” he tweeted Thursday night.

On Thursday, Schumer and Pelosi weighed in with a roster of demands, including interest-free loans for small businesses harmed by the outbreak and re-imbursements for state and local governments for costs incurred in fighting the coronavirus. Pe-losi said any vaccine should be “affordable” and “developed with

taxpayer dollars … not dependent on ‘Big Pharma.’ ”

Schumer grabbed some head-lines Wednesday by outlining an $8.5 billion plan to fight coronavi-rus, even as he threw his support behind bipartisan talks by the top members of the House and Sen-ate Appropriations committees.

“He’s prioritized fighting with the White House over simply let-ting the appropriators do their work,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “‘Fortunately, it appears we will have an opportunity to put this cynicism behind us quickly and move forward in a unified way.”

Lawmakers involved in the talks say it’s impossible to come up with a precise estimate of the funding needs at this point, giv-ing the unknowns involved.

“If a Republican president asks for money the Democrats always say it’s not enough. And if a Dem-ocrat asks for money the Repub-

licans all say it’s too much. And they’re probably both right,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. “In a more functional Congress, we would do something like the president’s number and 60 days from now we’d all get together and do a sec-ond number once we know more, but we appear to be incapable of that kind of realistic approach to legislating.”

With both House and Senate taking a recess in two weeks, and U.S. health officials warning the public to prepare for the spread of the virus, lawmakers are under

pressure to approve the fundingquickly.

Congress also faces a loomingMarch 15 deadline for expiring electronic surveillance provisionsof the Foreign Intelligence Sur-veillance Act that are key tools in the war against terrorism. There has been some speculation that McConnell could pair the two is-sues together to ensure passage.

But combining the two billscould prove controversial. Pelosi and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of Californiaboth came out against the idea.

Associated Press

Schools across the United States are canceling trips abroad, preparing online lessons and even rethinking “perfect atten-dance” awards as they brace for the possibility that the new coro-navirus could begin spreading in their communities.

Districts have been rushing to update emergency plans this week after federal officials warned that the virus, which started in China, is almost certain to begin spreading in the U.S. Many are preparing for possible school clo-sures that could stretch weeks or longer, even as they work to tamp down panic among students, par-ents and teachers.

President Donald Trump has worked to minimize fears about the virus, but on Wednesday he and federal health officials rec-ommended that schools start plan-ning for arrival of the COVID-19 virus “just in case.”

“It’s the perfect time for busi-nesses, health care systems, universities and schools to look at their pandemic preparedness plans, dust them off, and make sure that they’re ready,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy direc-tor of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a Wednesday news conference.

School letters sent home from Florida to California this week

sought to assure parents that, in most communities, the risk of exposure to the virus is still very low. Most suggested the same precautions used to combat the flu: Wash hands frequently, cover sneezes and coughs, and stay home if fever or other symptoms arise.

At schools, cleaning crews have been told to pay extra at-tention to door knobs, keyboards and other surfaces that students touch through the day. Some dis-tricts have invested in handheld disinfectant sprayers that are used in hospitals, Others are add-ing traditional hand sanitizers in schools and buses.

But even as they work on pre-vention, schools are also starting to prepare for the worst. Many are making plans to teach stu-dents online in case the virus spreads so widely that schools are forced to close. Officials are considering how they would han-dle large numbers of absences among students or teachers, and how to make up days that could

be missed because of the virus.At least one school temporarily

closed Thursday over fears tied to the virus. Bothell High School, near Seattle, canceled classes after a staffer’s family member was placed in quarantine for showing symptoms of possibly contracting the virus. Officials said the school was being cleaned and disinfected “out of an abun-dance of caution.”

In Miami, public school lead-ers said they’re readying 200,000 laptops and tablets for students in case buildings close and force classes online. They’re also di-recting new international stu-dents to register at two reception centers instead of at school build-ings, where students have typi-cally registered.

“If there is one place where a contagion can actually spread, it could be the schoolhouse,” Al-berto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, said at a Wednesday news conference. “We are ready. We have protocols in place.”

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A govern-ment whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some fed-eral workers did not have the nec-essary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak.

The complaint deals with De-partment of Health and Human Services employees sent to Tra-vis and March Air Force bases in California to assist the quar-antined evacuees. The Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates personnel is-sues, confirmed on Thursday that it had received the unnamed whistleblower’s complaint and had opened a case.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., said the whistleblower recently contacted his office, also alleging retaliation by higher-ups for hav-ing flagged safety issues.

“My concern from the mo-ment I heard it is that individu-als at HHS are not taking the complaints of HHS employees seriously,” Gomez said in an in-terview. “Their superiors are not supposed to brush them off. By retaliating against people if they do call out a problem, that only discourages other people from ever reporting violations.”

HHS said it was “evaluating the complaint.”

“We take all whistleblower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the

Whistleblower Protection Act,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oak-ley said in a statement.

Gomez’s office said the com-plaint was filed by a high-rankingofficial at the Administration forChildren and Families, an HHSsocial service agency.

The whistleblower was among ateam of about a dozen employeesfrom the agency who had been de-ployed to help connect the evacu-ees with government assistancethat they might qualify for to easetheir return. The team was therefrom mid-January until earlierthis month.

Although team members hadgloves at times and masks at othertimes, they lacked full protectivegear and received no trainingon how to protect themselves ina viral hot zone, according to adescription provided by the con-gressional office. They had norespirators. While helping the evacuees, team members noticed that workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were in full gear to protect them from getting sick.

Gomez’s office said the high-ranking whistleblower com-plained to superiors and wasgiven the choice of being reas-signed or being fired.

Gomez said as far as he knowsnone of the workers from theagency has become infected withthe virus.

Oakley, the HHS spokeswoman,said the department had “nothingfurther to add at this time.”

VIRUS OUTBREAK

Congress eyes billions in funding to fight virus

NATE GUIDRY, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE/AP

Matt Dunn, a researcher for the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, holds dead samples of the coronavirus Thursday at the Biomedical Science Tower 3 in Oakland, Pa.

Whistleblower: Feds lacked proper protection while helping evacuees

Schools in US told to plan ‘just in case’

ELAINE THOMPSON/AP

A school janitor opens the door to a staff room inside Bothell High School, which was closed for the day on Thursday in Bothell, Wash.

PAGE 8 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

NATION

BY STEVE BEYNON

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The inspec-tor general for the Department of Veterans Affairs has launched an investigation into whether VA Secretary Robert Wilkie tried to gather damaging information on a Democratic policy adviser, who is also a Navy Reserve officer, after she reported she was sexu-ally assaulted last year at a VA hospital.

VA Inspector General Michael Missal on Thursday wrote a letter to Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., chairman of the House Commit-tee on Veterans’ Affairs, telling him the matter is “a high prior-ity” and investigators will report their findings to Congress once their probe is complete. It was unclear Thursday how long the investigation will take.

Earlier Thursday after a House VA committee budget hearing, Wilkie apologized for initially calling Andrea Goldstein’s re-ported sexual assault at the Washington DC VA Medical Cen-ter “unsubstantiated.”

“I wasn’t calling her a liar … I was sorry about the implica-tion from the word,” Wilkie told a group of reporters before the news of the IG’s investigation became public. “It was a word I used from the inspector general’s

own directive. I’ve said that to[Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif.]and [Takano] I should’ve neverused that word.”

Goldstein, a lieutenant in theNavy Reserve and senior policy adviser for the House VA com-mittee’s Women Veterans TaskForce, said in September that aman groped and propositionedher inside the VA hospital. TheVA inspector general’s office in-vestigated the alleged sexual as-sault but announced in January that it had closed the case withoutfiling any charges.

Goldstein’s report set off aharsh exchange between Demo-cratic lawmakers and the VA.Takano, in a statement earlier this month, said Wilkie’s call-ing out of a congressional stafferwas “shockingly tone-deaf” and “outrageous” and an example il-lustrating how female veterans’concerns are often dismissed bythe VA.

The IG’s probe comes two daysafter six senators demanded an investigation into how the VAhandled investigating the allegedsexual assault, prompted by thereports that Wilkie attempted todiscredit Goldstein. The sena-tors, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., called the reports “deeplyconcerning.” beynon.steven@stripes.comTwitter: @StevenBeynon

Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Bernie Sanders will swing through North Carolina, Virginia and Massa-chusetts in the coming days. Eliz-abeth Warren will make stops in Texas and Arkansas. Amy Klobu-char will be in Tennessee and Virginia.

The South Carolina primary is just two days away, but the race is quickly going national as can-didates pivot to the 14 states that vote on Tuesday.

The move is in part a recog-nition of Joe Biden’s strength in South Carolina, with most of the focus on the margin of his victory and who might come in second place. But it’s also an ef-fort to tap into the hundreds of delegates at stake in the Super Tuesday contests. About a third of the delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination will be on the table.

The tight turnaround between Saturday’s primary in South Car-olina and the contests that follow on Tuesday is creating a hectic stretch for campaigns.

“What happens in South Caro-lina does matter, mostly because of what the coverage is going to be over the three days leading

up to Super Tuesday. If someone seems out of the running, they’re going to lose value,” said Achim Bergmann, a Democratic strate-gist whose firm does work in a number of Super Tuesday states. “It’s a tough deal for the candi-dates who are perceived to be at the lower rungs at the moment to figure out where can they get some juice.”

New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg bypassed traditional early voting states including South Carolina to focus exclusively on the Super Tuesday states. But even he had to balance the com-peting demands as he qualified for Tuesday’s debate in Charles-ton. He went back to New York after the debate only to return to South Carolina the next day to ap-pear at a CNN town hall.

Bloomberg will be in Okla-homa, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina — all Super Tues-day states — over the next several days.

The strains on some candi-dates are evident. Pete Buttigieg hopscotched from Nevada on Saturday to Colorado and South Carolina by Sunday morning. He then hit Virginia before return-ing to South Carolina.

But even a meticulously craft-ed schedule can fall apart. Butti-gieg had planned to swing down to Florida, which votes later in March, for three private fund-raisers Wednesday. He abruptly canceled the events and a public campaign stop in the Miami area because of illness. His aides said he had flu-like symptoms.

Buttigieg met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Cau-cus and did media interviews in Washington, D.C., before return-ing to South Carolina to campaign on Thursday .

Jim Messina, a top aide on both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said Buttigieg is in a bind when it comes to the South Carolina-Super Tuesday dance.

“It is a big deal” for his cam-paign if Buttigieg doesn’t per-form in South Carolina, he said, because “more people like me are going to say on TV he can’t get the minority vote, and that’s not help-ful to his narrative.”

Indeed, strategists in key Super Tuesday states say voters there are watching to see what happens in South Carolina before they

make up their minds.“Anybody who defies expecta-

tions and does better than you expect, it just builds a strongernarrative for them,” said Matt Angle, a Texas Democratic strategist.

Texas offers the second-biggestdelegate pot on Super Tuesday, with 228 pledged delegates, andButtigieg and Biden are expectedto campaign there after SouthCarolina votes. But other candi-dates, including Sanders, Warrenand Bloomberg, have all madestops there this week.

Associated Press

BALTIMORE — Yet another embarrassing chapter in Balti-more’s troubled history ended Thursday when the city’s ex-mayor was sentenced to three years in federal prison for fraud-ulently selling her self-published children’s books to nonprofit or-ganizations to promote her politi-cal career.

Catherine Pugh accepted “full responsibility” for her actions and apologized through tears during the roughly 10 minutes she spoke in federal court in Baltimore be-fore she was sentenced. The vet-eran Democratic politician said that “no one is more disappoint-ed than me” and added that she did not want to bring “any more shame” to the city.

“I think the first thing I should do is apologize to the citizens of Baltimore who put their faith and trust in me as their mayor, and to all the people who put their faith and trust in me as state senator and as delegate,” Pugh said out-side the courthouse afterward.

The scandal shook Maryland’s largest city, which for years has struggled with grinding poverty,

political mismanagement, record crime rates and police abuses that led to massive riots. And it made a mockery of Pugh’s inau-gural promise to restore trust in Baltimore’s leaders.

Pugh, who turns 70 next week, was elected mayor in 2016 and resigned under pressure in May as authorities investigated bulk sales of her “Healthy Holly” pa-perbacks, which netted her hun-dreds of thousands of dollars.

Federal authorities accused her of double selling the books, keeping many for self-promotion purposes and failing to deliver them to institutions they were

purchased for, including the Bal-timore City Public Schools. Pugh used the proceeds to fund straw donations to her mayoral cam-paign and buy a new house.

Pugh was also sentenced Thursday to serve three years of supervised release after getting out of prison. She was ordered to pay more than $411,000 in res-titution and to forfeit more than $669,000 to the government.

The disgraced former mayor pleaded guilty to federal conspir-acy and tax evasion charges in November. She will be notified by April 13 when she must surren-der and begin her sentence.

IG probes whether Wilkie sought dirt on House aide

Ex-mayor of Baltimore gets 3 years in prison

STEVE RUARK/AP

Former Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh, second from left, and her attorney Steven Silverman, left, leave a sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Thursday .

Dems shift focusto Super Tuesday

GERALD HERBERT/AP

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden poses for photos at a campaign event in Conway, S.C., on Thursday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 9Saturday, February 29, 2020

NATION

BY RACHEL D’ORO

Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — For more than a quarter-century, the old bus abandoned in Alaska’s punishing wilderness has drawn adventurers seeking to retrace the steps of a young idealist who met a tragic death in the derelict vehicle.

For many, Christopher Mc-Candless’ legend was cemented in the “Into the Wild” book and movie. But scores of travelers following his journey along the Stampede Trail just outside De-

nali National Park have been rescued and others have died in the harsh reality of backcountry terrain that’s marked by no cell phone service, unpredictable weather and the raging Teklan-ika River, whose swollen banks prevented the 24-year-old Virgin-ian from seeking help before his 1992 starvation death.

Now families of some of those who died are proposing looking at building a footbridge over the Teklanika. The effort is led by the husband of a 24-year-old newly-wed woman from Belarus who died last year trying to reach the bus.

“People keep going there despite multiple accidents re-ported,” said Piotr Markielau, who was with his wife Veramika

Maikamava when she was swept away by the river. “Making the crossing safer is a social respon-sibility. It is also a constructive and humane way to learn from people who died there.”

But some local officials in De-nali Borough in Healy, about 25 miles away, fear a footbridge could give people a false impres-sion of safety that doesn’t exist.

“It’ll only encourage more peo-ple to go,” says Denali Assembly member Jeff Stenger, who rejects

the bridge idea and would prefer to see warning signs posted in the area instead.

Borough Mayor Clay Walker wants to see the bus relocated to a safer location on the other side of the Teklanika with the help of federal and state agencies.

“This bus has meaning to a lot of people, and the challenge will be to put together a plan that works for all,” Walker said.

A bridge would not have made a difference in the latest rescue,

this one involving five Italian tourists — one with frostbitten feet — who were rescued last Sat-urday after visiting the dilapidat-ed bus. There are other hazards, including harsh weather and dan-gerous terrain. Some attempting the trip are ill-prepared.

The long-discarded bus sits in a clearing on state land roughly half a mile from the boundary of the Denali National Park and Preserve. Travelers often tra-verse park land to get to the bus,

which was left in the wilderness to house construction crews working to improve the trail sotrucks could haul ore from amine, according to the book. It’soutfitted with a barrel stove and bunks, and McCandless wrote in his journal about living there for114 days, right up until his death.

Author Jon Krakauer, who wrote “Into the Wild,“ said he is “saddened and horrified” by thedeaths of people trying to cross the Teklanika. He’s also skeptical building a bridge or moving thebus will solve the problem.

“I really don’t know what can be done or should be done aboutthe unprepared ‘pilgrims’ whoget into trouble and perish or need to be rescued,“ he said in anemail to the AP. “I have no objec-tion to removing the bus, or build-ing a bridge to it, if a persuasive argument can be made that doingeither of these things would solvethe problem. I am skeptical aboutthe wisdom of either of these pro-posed measures, however.”

McCandless’ sister agrees. Ca-rine McCandless believes peoplewill keep trying to reach the site, regardless of what locals decide. She said people send her mes-sages every day from all over the world, identifying with her broth-er’s story, and she understandswhy people continue to make thetrek.

“It is not Chris’s story they are following, it is their own, even ifthey don’t realize it at the time,”she said. “And as far as the lure of the bus — it’s not about the bus,either. If the bus is moved, peoplewill simply erect a memorial in itsplace and continue to go there.”

‘Into the Wild’ lures unprepared to wilderness

Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. — At ski races across the United States, competitors are starting to aban-don a type of wax many count on for speed amid concerns it con-tains toxic chemicals that threat-ens human health and could reach streams and other critical groundwater sources.

The International Ski Federa-tion, the governing body for in-ternational skiing, announced plans to ban the use of fluorinat-ed waxes in all disciplines next season.

These waxes contain perfluo-roalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl sub-stances, collectively known as PFAS. They are commonplace in the environment and have been linked to a growing list of health problems.

Nordiq Canada, the govern-ing body for cross country skiing in Canada, also prohibited high and medium fluorinated waxes in most cross-country races this season. The Norwegian Ski As-sociation, meanwhile, banned

the use of fluorinated glide wax — used in both classic and skate skiing — for all athletes under age 16 two years ago.

That leaves skiers to use hydro-carbon waxes on their skis.

“I’m very happy with the de-cision not to use it,” said Sverre Caldwell, director of the SMS T2 team of elite cross-country ski racers, including U.S. Ski Team members, based at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. “For two reasons: one is the potential dan-ger and the other is, anything that kind of evens the playing field is good to me. It should be the ath-letes racing not the skis racing.”

The move to shift away from those particular waxes goes well beyond the professional circuit and the skiers themselves. In Ver-mont, the VPA Nordic High School Coaches Association decided to stop using all fluorinated glide waxes this season and in Maine high fluoro waxes were banned at the state championship.

Wax technicians, coaches and athletes have been heating the so-called fluoro waxes with irons on

the base of skis and then scrap-ing it off for years — often in wax rooms and trailers before a race. Many now wear masks and work in highly ventilated areas and wonder if they have suffered any health problems from all that ex-posure to the wax.

“The jury’s going to start com-ing back with a verdict in the next couple of years about what that meant for them,” said Jeff Clarke, a former U.S. cross-country ski team director, who is now coach-ing the Stowe Middle/High School Nordic team in Vermont.

While coaches say they are ready for a ban, until the FIS rules go into effect, the waxes still will be used in national races and they worry about how the FIS ban will be enforced.

The waxes make a bigger dif-ference in cross country skiing, particularly in warmer condi-tions, than in alpine skiing, coach-es say.

The International Ski Federa-tion says it’s looking at many op-tions for testing for the presence of the fluoro waxes and has not

yet determined what will be the best approach.

“The trick is going to be finding a test because right now they’re the fastest thing,” Caldwell said. “People will cheat at that level given the opportunity.”

Meanwhile, wax companies are working on alternatives.

So far, much of the PFAS con-tamination has been linked to firefighting foam at military bases and household products like carpet and packaging mate-

rial that contains PFAS.But supporters of the bans

point to one site in Vermont toshow that the wax can foul drink-ing water supplies.

A well at the site where National Guard biathletes, the U.S. Biath-lon Association and the Universityof Vermont Nordic team train hasbeen found to have PFAS abovethe state’s interim standards for safe drinking water. The well is currently not used for drinkingwater, according to the Guard.

Ski racing community starts to back away from toxic wax

JILLIAN ROGERS/AP

The abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless starved to death in 1992 on Stampede Road near Healy, Alaska, is seen in 2006.

Krakauer

LISA RATHKE/AP

A waxing table is seen earlier this month at a cross-country ski race at U-32 Middle & High School in East Montpelier, Vt.

PAGE 10 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

Associated Press

BEIJING — Questions were raised Thursday about a Chi-nese newspaper report that the country is planning to dis-patch a 100,000-strong army of ducks to help Pakistan combat a massive locust infestation.

The Ningbo Evening News had said the legion of lotus-eating waterfowl would be sent from the eastern province of Zhejiang following the earlier dispatch of a team of Chinese experts to Pakistan to advise on a response to the infesta-tion, which is being called the worst in 20 years.

However, local media said it wasn’t clear if such a plan ex-isted and a provincial agricul-tural technology institute cited in the story said it was looking into the matter.

The website of Hong Kong’s pro-China Phoenix TV said officials with the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Agri-cultural Technology were hop-ing to talk with researcher Lu Lizhi, who was quoted exten-sively in the story.

Calls to the provincial gov-ernment press office seeking confirmation of the report rang unanswered Thursday .

Saturday, February 29, 2020

WORLD

Ex-Philippine aide warns of disaster if US pact ends

Prayers at fire-bombed mosques as India’s religious riot toll grows

East Africa’s huge locust outbreak now spreads to Congo

Inquiry raised of China’s locust-eating ‘duck army’

BY JIM GOMEZ

Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines — A former Philippine foreign sec-retary warned Friday that the president’s decision to end a key U.S. security pact will undermine the ability of American forces to help the country deal with major disasters and deter aggression in the disputed South China Sea.

Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario cited the de-ployment of more than 13,000 American military personnel, dozens of aircraft and U.S. Navy ships under the Visiting Forces Agreement when Typhoon Hai-yan ravaged the central Philip-pines in 2013.

“Other countries wanted to immediately respond but were constrained by the lack of legal arrangements for their troops to enter the Philippines,” del Rosa-rio told a Manila forum where the repercussions of President Rodri-go Duterte’s decision to terminate the VFA were discussed.

Duterte’s administration no-tified the U.S. government two weeks ago that it intends to abro-gate the 1998 agreement, which allows the entry of large numbers of American forces for joint train-ing with Filipino troops, includ-ing disaster-response maneuvers, and lays down the legal terms for their temporary stay. The termi-nation will take effect after 180 days unless both sides agree to keep the agreement.

“What is unfolding before us is

a national tragedy which should be resisted,” del Rosario said. “As a democratic and republican country, we do not believe that one man alone can make this damag-ing choice for our people.”

The move by Duterte, known for his disdain of U.S. security policies while praising China and Russia, would be a major setback for the two countries’ decades-long treaty alliance.

Haiyan was one of the most ferocious typhoons on record and left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million people.

Duterte defended his decision Wednesday, saying the Philip-pines can survive and address a long-running communist in-surgency and threats by Muslim extremists in the largely Roman Catholic nation’s south without American military assistance.

“Do we need America to survive as a nation?” Duterte asked. “Do we need ... the might and power of the military of the United States to fight our rebellion here and the terrorists down south and control drugs?”

Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Ro-mualdez told the forum there are efforts to find a way to keep American special forces who provide counterterrorism train-ing, intelligence and advice to Filipino troops in the southern Philippines.

BY SHEIKH SAALIQ AND EMILY SCHMALL

Associated Press

NEW DELHI — Muslims in a northeastern neighborhood of In-dia’s capital returned for weekly prayers at fire-bombed mosques on Friday, two days after a 72-hour clash between Hindus and Muslims that left at least 40 dead and hundreds injured.

Five days after the riots start-ed, authorities have not said what sparked the worst communal vio-lence in New Delhi in decades. Hospitals were still trying to identify the dead as the toll con-tinued to rise, and residents of the areas affected by the riots were still seeking loved ones.

“If they burn our mosques, we will rebuild them again and pray. It’s our religious right and nobody can stop us from practicing our religion,” said Mohammad Sulai-man, who was among about 180

men who prayed on the rooftop of a mosque that was set on fire in the unrest.

Tensions between Hindu hard-liners and Muslims protesting the Hindu-first policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gov-ernment had been building for months when the violence ex-ploded Sunday night, on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first state visit to India.

Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party who lost his Delhi state assembly seat in recent elections, demand-ed at a rally Sunday that police shut down a Muslim-led protest in the city or else he and his fol-lowers would do it themselves.

And it appears they did.Hindus and Muslims attacked

each other with guns and swords, metal rods and axes, leaving the streets where the rioting oc-curred resembling a war zone.

Al-Hind hospital, a small clinicwith two doctors, was the nearest medical facility for many of thevictims. When the riots broke out,it turned into a chaotic emergencyward, its doctors dealing for the first time with injuries such asgunshot wounds, crushed skulls,stabbings and torn genitals.

“It was horrific as if evil hadpervaded and housed itself inthe hearts of the mob,” said M.A. Anwar, the doctor on duty,

Religious tensions in the area where the clashes occurred still simmered on Friday, tempered bya heavy police presence. On oneriot-torn street, Hindus shouted“Jai Shri Ram,” or Long LiveRam, the Hindu god, as Muslims attempted to reach a mosquedamaged in the riots.

Several Muslim residents toldThe Associated Press that mostMuslim families had locked theirhomes and fled the area.

BY RODNEY MUHUMUZA

Associated Press

KAMPALA, Uganda — A small group of desert locusts has entered Congo, marking the first time the voracious insects have been seen in the Central African country since 1944, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency said Tuesday as U.N. agencies warned of a “major hunger threat” in East Africa from the flying pests.

Kenya, Somalia and Uganda have been battling the swarms in the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years. The U.N. said swarms have also been sighted in Dji-bouti, Eritrea and Tanzania and recently reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war.

A joint statement Tuesday from FAO director-general Qu Dongyu, U.N. humanitarian chief

Mark Lowcock, and World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley called the swarms of locusts “a scourge of biblical proportions” and “a graphic and shocking reminder of this region’s vulnerability.”

The FAO said mature locusts, carried in part by the wind, ar-rived on the western shore of Lake Albert in eastern Congo on Feb. 21 near the town of Bunia. The country has not seen locusts for 75 years, it said.

“Needless to say the potential impact of locusts on a country still grappling with complex conflict, Ebola and measles outbreaks, high levels of displacement, and chronic food insecurity would be devastating,” the U.N. officials said in the joint statement.

Locust swarms can reach the size of major cities and can de-stroy crops and devastate pasture for animals.

Experts have warned that the

outbreak is affecting millions of already vulnerable people across the region.

Uganda’s government said Tuesday it was trying to contain a large swarm and will need more resources to control the infesta-tion that has spread to over 20 districts in the north. Soldiers have been battling swarms using hand-held spray pumps, while ex-perts have said aerial spraying is the only effective control.

The U.N. recently raised its aid appeal from $76 million to $138 million, saying the need for more help is urgent.

“This funding will ensure that activities to control the locusts can take place before new swarms emerge,” the U.N. officials said .

Experts have warned that the number of locusts if unchecked could grow 500 times by June when drier weather is expected in the region.

ALTAF QADRI/AP

Muslims offer prayers on the roof of a fire-bombed mosque in New Delhi, India, on Friday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 11Saturday, February 29, 2020

BY TODD MARTENS

Los Angeles Times

Sitting around a campsite near a tent. Making a cof-fee drink.

Typically, these ac-tivities are interstitial moments, actions that occur before or after something more exciting. Yet these undertakings are at the core of two new games, Wide Ocean Big Jacket and Coffee Talk.

Both approach interactivity with a light touch, letting players uncover intimate, conversa-tional moments. We play less as directors of action and more as voyeurs. Throughout, we connect with sometimes odd characters — we meet an alien, for instance, who is not so hot at the dating app game in Coffee Talk — and while we don’t become friends with these characters (tech has yet to make such a thing pos-sible), we do walk away feeling as if we’ve shared a moment with them.

Play here comes in the form of discovery, as each game deals with mature themes where what isn’t said is often of equal importance to what is said. Wide Ocean Big Jacket unfolds like an interactive animated fi lm, albeit one with adult topics such as the never-ending diffi culty of navigating interpersonal relationships regardless of age. Coffee Talk, which contrasts its nondescript name — one with echoes of an old “Saturday Night Live” skit — with a roster full of mythic creatures, can be experi-enced in multiple ways.

Both largely dispense with typical game-like elements, yet show how even delicate partici-pation can illuminate the every-day. Simple acts, be it swinging around a camera in Wide Ocean

Big Jacket or opting to mix gin-ger and cinnamon in Coffee Talk, offer the illusion of choice, thus creating relaxing environments in which we can explore weighty topics.

Coffee Talk alludes to multiple thought-provoking subjects, from interracial dating (here it’s interspecies dating, between an elf and a succubus) to a parent struggling to maintain a con-nection to his daughter. Wide Ocean Big Jacket, meanwhile, emphasizes the fragility in relationships. In Coffee Talk, we sometimes feel like a barista therapist, while Wide Ocean Big Jacket shows how efforts to con-sole often fail. When a teen asks about sex, we shift the spotlight to her aunt, who squirms her way out of answering the questions.

So while the core narratives of the two games use interactiv-ity relatively sparingly, they connect by creating a world in which we explore topics we often try to avoid. The characters in Wide Ocean Big Jacket may try to joke away a serious moment, as if real life could be solved with a clever social-media-wor-thy quip, but we’re still there, a faceless observer moving among the campgrounds and prompting conversations to happen whether the characters want it or not.

Mord, the outgoing, goofy teen, seems to court confrontation, while her fi rst crush, Ben, along for the family trip, struggles with awkwardness. The adults, Brad and Cloanne, are appar-ently happily married, although their partnership is stitched together with a string of com-promises. The characters are drawn slightly exaggeratedly, all fl oppy limbs and bones. Charm abounds — Mord is confused when the grownups enthusiasti-cally praise one another for their

“good” stretches to alleviate back pain — and as we hop from adult to kid and back again, we can serve alternately as instigators or connectors, setting into action relationships and bonds.

We can let much of Coffee Talk play on autopilot, or take a more active role and explore the char-acters we meet via their writings or social media pages. Their concerns and their troubles are discussed at the coffee counter, and whether it’s a vampire, an elf or a succubus, their issues are relatable. Be careful, of course, not to mess up their drinks — we may not be solving problems, but in Coffee Talk, the happier the patrons are, the more they may share.

Regular customer Freya, a green-haired journalist with dreams of writing fi ction, digs into the tales and woes of every-one who comes into the shop, approaching most with equal amounts curiosity and suspicion. Male customers immediately put her on guard, and the world out-side this near-future Seattle cof-fee shop is relatively bleak, even if werewolves and vampires are enjoying a peace treaty. America here is a place where “anyone can dream of being whatever they want to be and have those dreams crushed before they can even be discussed.”

Fear is everywhere, and there’s talk of closing borders. A fi sh, for instance, must leave her home in the ocean because there are no decent schools underwater anymore, only now she’s lonely because no one she knows can get a visa. We delight in uncovering the interpersonal drama of fairy tale and fantasy creatures, but there’s no denying that this is a game of modern life, where relaxing electronic beats create a calm environment in which we can make drinks and provide a little relief to those we meet along the way.

It’s a reminder of the healing

power of listening and talking. When an alien, dressed as an astronaut, lands in the coffee shop, the visitor proclaims that Earth has done little more than cause frustration. The planet’s “vagueness has taught us a new kind of feeling,” the extraterres-trial says, clearly indicating that this newfound emotion is one of discomfort.

Games for decades have been teaching us new tools — how to

fi ght off orcs or bounce off mush-rooms and blast away at Nazis. Maybe they can also remind us how to talk to one another.

Coffee TalkPlatforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox

One, Nintendo Switch, PCOnline: coffeetalk.infoWide Ocean Big Jacket Platforms: PC, Mac, Nintendo

SwitchOnline: wideoceanbigjacket.

com

VIDEO GAMES

Interactive, slice-of-life storiesCoffee Talk, Wide Ocean Big Jacket explore the dynamics, diffi culties of navigating interpersonal relationships

Toge Productions

Gameplay in Coffee Talk includes mini games in which the player attempts to create latte art.

Toge Productions

Coffee Talk puts the player in the role of a barista therapist.

Tender Claws

Wide Ocean Big Jacket, allows players to explore the unique interaction of four believable, flawed characters.

Toge Productions

A scene from Coffee Talk featuring otherworldly customers in near-future Seattle in which the player, as a barista character, solves their troubles while mixing coffee drinks.

PAGE 12 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

MOVIES

BY SONAIYA KELLEY

Los Angeles Times

When writer-director Leigh Whannell was approached to update the horror classic “The Invisible Man,” he basi-

cally spitballed the entire plot on the spot.Fresh off the modest success of his

low-budget 2018 sci-fi thriller “Upgrade,” Whannell found himself in a room with executives from Blumhouse Productions and Universal when “they fl oated this title to me like, ‘What do you think about the Invisible Man?’ ” he said. “Which was weird to me because it was a bit Mad Libs. I was like, ‘Not really sure? Never thought about the Invisible Man too much.’

“But one of the guys in the meeting said, ‘Well, what would you do with the character?’ And purely to fi ll the airtime I was like, ‘I guess I would probably tell the story from the point of view of a victim, like a woman escaping a relationship.’ I sort of vomited out the entire movie.”

Whannell conceived of the character as a wealthy scientist (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen of “The Haunting of Hill House”) who is charming and controlling in equal measure. After his girlfriend manages to escape the glass prison they share together, he stages his own suicide just to continue to torment and control her under the cover of invisibility.

In a departure from the original H.G. Wells novel and its 1933 fi lm adaptation — and despite the character’s title billing — this invisible man is a distant second-ary character.

“I think it’s really obvious that the way

to make the Invisible Man scary is to not focus the fi lm on him,” said Whan-nell. “Once you put the monster in the spotlight, you demystify it. Not showing something is always the scariest thing.”

Instead, he shifted the narrative focus from the titular antagonist to his intimate partner Cecilia Kass, a woman who is gaslighted to the brink of insanity, played by Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning ac-tress Elisabeth Moss. “One of the things I liked the most about this movie is that it’s a real-life monster,” Moss said during a joint interview with Whannell this month. “That’s what really curdles your blood when you watch the movie.

“That feeling of not being believed, not being heard or being scrutinized for believing something you know in your heart to be true is something I think on varying levels we can all identify with,” she added. “When I start telling people what this movie was about and how it was being used as an analogy for gaslight-ing, I was really surprised by how many people would get this look in their eye. It’s a commonality that I think deserves to be explored.”

“I think the 1933 fi lm is a classic hor-ror movie with an important place in the history of horror, but it’s not terrifying to modern audiences,” said Whannell. “I saw an opportunity to reframe it in a way that could be scary. We didn’t want to rely on the histrionics of horror, we wanted it to be real. The scarier monster is the one you can imagine in your own life. It’s not a fanged beast, it’s the guy next door.”

Upon fi nishing the script, Whannell

quickly realized that the success of the fi lm would hinge on its central perfor-mance. “I realized that the whole movie rested on this one character’s shoulders,” he said. “The list of actors that can (carry an entire fi lm) is short. And I remember everyone at Universal was really excited about Lizzie because they had just done ‘Us’ with her.”

In a stroke of kismet, Moss had been hankering to revisit the horror genre after her experience working with Universal and Jordan Peele on the fi lmmaker’s soph-omore outing, which was produced by Jason Blum and starred Lu-pita Nyong’o as a woman battling her shadow self.

“I’ve always loved horror, but I really wanted to do one after the experience of

watching Lupita and how absolutely mag-nifi cent she is in that movie,” said Moss. “I could see, ‘Oh, my God, OK, that’s what you can do with a role like that.’ She went so far and it was just the coolest thing, so I couldn’t wait to get the script. They said, ‘You’re going to get an offer for “The Invisible Man.” And I was like, ‘OK, that’s amazing,’ because I loved working with Blumhouse. But I also was like, ... ‘The Invisible Man?’ ”

“ ‘I guess if they can’t see me, it’s fi ne,’ ” Whannell joked.CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

Shifting the focus

How ‘Invisible Man’ star Elisabeth Moss helped writer/director Leigh Whannell turn classic monster tale into survivor’s story

‘ I think it’s really obvious that the way to make the Invisible Man scary is to not focus the film on him. Once you put the monster in the spotlight, you demystify it. Not showing something is always the scariest thing. ’

Leigh Whannellwriter/director, “The Invisible Man”

Elisabeth Moss stars in “The Invisible Man,” written and directed by Leigh Whannell.NURPHOTO/Getty Images

UNIVERSAL PICTURES/AP

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 13Saturday, February 29, 2020

ENTERTAINMENTFROM PAGE 12

“Yeah, ‘If they can’t see me, I guess I can play any gender?’ ” said Moss. “But they said the woman was the lead and when I read the script, it was not only a horror fi lm but this incredible charac-ter piece. It had a really challenging arc that you don’t get in some of your best dramas. So I said yes immedi-ately.”

After Moss was secured, Whannell leaned on his leading lady to authen-ticate the female perspective. It’s the latest in a successful series of creative collaborations for Moss, who has helped shape many of her strongest roles, from the heroine of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” to her partnerships with indie fi lmmaker Alex Ross Perry, including last year’s grunge rock drama “Her Smell.”

“That was the missing puzzle piece of the script,” Whannell said. “I was happy with the screenplay, but I needed that collaboration with Lizzie. We would dissect scenes for hours and we would rewrite the script and kind of do an autopsy on these scenes. I feel like the fi lm became stronger because we were like copilots.”

“There were times when a scene would only exist on our scripts,” said Moss.

“Yeah, exactly,” said Whannell with a laugh. “And everybody would be like, ‘Scene what?’ ”

“It would just be written in the mar-gins,” said Moss. “And some of it would be written in mine and some of it would be written in yours.”

“The funniest thing was watching the reactions of the other actors,” said Whannell. “They just had to roll with it. Because there’s a certain sense of impostor syndrome that happens if you’re writing a story about a woman’s point of view (as a man). And I didn’t really start feeling comfortable with it until Lizzie and I had all these conver-sations. She gave the fi lm authority ... and it felt like a true collaboration.”

Though the script required Moss to stretch her imagination by fi ghting against an invisible adversary multiple times, the actress says the biggest chal-lenge of all was the amount of running the role demanded.

“Let’s just say I underestimated it,” she said. “And the speed at which Mr. Whannell would require me to run, which was basically faster and faster and faster. I am not a particularly physical person; I do not really work out. And I got there and was like, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake. I absolutely should have gone to the gym.’ ”

“Remember a lot of times you’d be like, ‘I feel like we got the shot?’ ” said Whannell with a laugh. “You’d be like, ‘I really feel like that one worked.’ And I’d be like, ‘One more!’ ”

“I should have perhaps trained a little bit,” she said. “And then once I got there I quickly ordered an elliptical machine for my apartment. Warming up before takes is different for me. I don’t usually do the plank before a take on ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’ So that was a whole new thing, but it was fun. I felt like I was Jason Bourne, basically.”

But not all of the stunts were gruel-ing. Thanks to her background in dance, the choreographed fi ght scenes were a lot less arduous, Moss said.

“It was so much fun. We had such a great stunt team and they took really good care of me and made sure things were safe. Leigh called me when I was in Toronto shooting Season 3 (of ‘Handmaid’s Tale’) and said, ‘Look, I want to talk to you about the stunts and I would like you to do as much of it as possible.’ And I basically was like, ‘I want to do as much as I can. We should just always decide by what looks best on camera.’ ”

Walt Disney Co. unveiled new products tied to “The Mandalorian” breakout character Baby Yoda ahead of the New York Toy Fair , which concluded Feb. 25. DEVIN DOYLEFor The Washington Post

BY DAVID BETANCOURT

The Washington Post

Greatly anticipated, this moment has been.

The Baby Yoda toy void, the destroyer of many 2019 holiday

shopping hopes, is offi cially coming to an end this spring.

That was the offi cial word from the far, far away galaxy known as the Big Apple last week, as Disney and Lucasfi lm gath-ered journalists days ahead of Toy Fair New York to show off their Baby Yoda wares of all forms, from pajamas to Pop-Sockets, ones that will soon fi nally be in Star Wars fans’ eagerly outreached palms.

The event was offi cially described as a showcase for merchandise inspired by the live-action “The Mandalorian” and the animated “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” two Disney Plus hits that represent the best of the fi ctional universe after the polarizing “Star Wars: The Rise of Sky-walker.“

But there was no denying that everyone was here for products tied to the most famous 50-year-old child in Hollywood — which were strangely unavailable in shops in the wake of his viral fame in the fall.

That child, by the way, is offi cially just the Child, having yet to be named on “The Mandalorian” despite fans affectionately dubbing him Baby Yoda because of a strong likeness to the legendary Star Wars Jedi master. After the show’s debut in No-vember, “the Child” became a sensation through memes and GIFs, especially one that showed him sipping soup.

On Feb. 20 at the Dream Hotel in Man-hattan, the Child was everywhere. Legos, action fi gures, costumes, backpacks, hats, shirts, wallets and socks were all on dis-play. An image of the now-classic moment in “The Mandalorian” when a young Baby Yoda reaches out of a capsule and extends the cutest fi nger in the universe for the fi rst time? Framed and ready for your wall. The capsule itself? Also available, and featuring an animatronic Baby Yoda that blinks, coos and will melt your heart, for $60.

Build-A-Bear employees were there to show onlookers that if you squeezed their soon-to-be-available plush Baby Yoda’s

left hand, he made baby noises. Squeeze the right hand, and Ludwig Goransson’s earworm theme song from “The Mandalo-rian” begins to play.

An espresso machine, seemingly guided by the Force itself, churned out Baby Yoda lattes.

One thing you wouldn’t fi nd was a mea culpa from Lucasfi lm and Disney for seemingly missing out on millions by not having product ready for the 2019 holiday season. Bootleg product ended up appear-ing on eBay and Etsy, and Disney made efforts to remove them.

But attendees got confi rmation of what was already assumed: The only way to keep Baby Yoda’s end-of-Episode-1 debut a secret was to not have any products ready for purchase. Those products would have been seen online months ahead of “The Mandalorian’s” debut, so showrun-ner Jon Favreau asked the powers that be at Disney and Lucasfi lm to hold off on production until the fi rst episode was released — thus creating a streaming, 21st-century “I am your father” moment.

The goal of holding back on products was to give Star Wars fans the same feeling they had when they discovered George Lucas’ universe for the fi rst time, according to “The Mandalorian” producer Dave Filoni . If that meant millions were left on the table, so be it.

“It’s so hard to do surprises anymore,” Filoni said. “We wanted the audience to experience meeting the Child with Mando,” the bounty hunter title character.

That meant more than a few sad faces come the recent holiday season, but Filoni said Disney and Lucasfi lm knew “they

could come up with product quickly.”Paul Southern, Lucasfi lm’s senior vice

president of licensing and franchise, was one of the few on “The Mandalorian’s” product production side who knew of Baby Yoda’s existence before the series aired.

“We live in a world with Star Wars where the fans, they have a voracious ap-petite for news. It’s very diffi cult for us to manage the security and confi dentiality of everything once things are in develop-ment. It just touches too many people,” Southern said. “The last three months have been a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get this product to market quickly.”

JoAnn McLaughlin, the senior vice president of brand merchandising and product design at Lucasfi lm, didn’t know the Baby Yoda storm was brewing be-cause the decision to keep the character a secret came before she was offi cially on board. But she later became a quick study.

“The phone didn’t stop ringing from the powers that be at Disney saying, ‘OK, how fast are you going to get this done?’ ” said McLaughlin. She also said fans should ex-pect to see a heavy “Mandalorian” pres-ence at Disney Parks in California and Florida soon. And she’s been taking calls from retailers in regions where Disney Plus isn’t even available yet.

“China. Latin America. This is truly a global (event),” McLaughlin said. “(These regions) are reaching out, saying ‘What have you got? People here want the Child.’ ”

The Baby Yoda products will be rolled out starting in March, and some — such as Lego products on Amazon — won’t come until as late as August.

Unveiled ahead of NY’s big Toy Fair,Baby Yoda toys missed the holidays, but at least that prevented spoilers

They’re here!

PAGE 14 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

the department about a month ago when two pets were trapped inside a large house fire.

“We were able to save one of the animals and the other one was not able to make it,” he said. “So I wanted a better way to help the community and our four-legged family members, as well.”

Early risers in West see apparent meteor in sky

AZ PHOENIX — Early ris-ers in several Western

states reported seeing what ap-peared to be a meteor streaking across the sky before dawn.

The American Meteor Society received multiple reports from Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah about the fireball.

The phenomenon was captured on video by meteorite hunter Rob-ert Ward in Prescott, Ariz., that he posted on the organization’s website. It was also captured by a video camera mounted on Phoe-nix City Hall.

Beam Institute to hold 1st bourbon conference

KY LEXINGTON — The James B. Beam Insti-

tute for Kentucky Spirits was holding its first bourbon industry conference this week at the Uni-versity of Kentucky.

The Beam Institute collabo-rated with the Kentucky Distill-ers Association to plan the event around key industry issues, ac-cording to a statement from the

university. The conference will include presentations and discus-sions on topics such as grains, fermentation, warehousing and logistics.

A panel comprised of repre-sentatives from UK, Beam Sun-tory, and master distillers from multiple distilleries will answer questions about the future of the industry and the Beam Institute.

Sea lion wanders into woods far from water

WA CASTLE ROCK — A sea lion wandered far

from water in southwest Wash-ington state. The Oregonian/Or-egonLive reported the Steller sea lion, weighing around 600 pounds, was discovered in a wooded area outside the town of Castle Rock, Wash .

The animal was about two miles from a viable water source.

Sheriff’s deputies, Fish and Wildlife officers, and represen-tatives from the Cowlitz County Humane Society had to wait sev-

eral hours for a trailer to arrive to transport the animal back to the water.

Authorities believe the female sea lion was hunting smelt, a small fish.

Rescued jet skier says he lost ski saving bird

FL PORT RICHEY — A missing Florida jet skier

took refuge in a stilt house after he lost his water scooter attempting to save a bird caught in a wire.

Cole Torrent, 28, borrowed a friend’s jet ski and launched around 1 p.m. Tuesday. He was reported missing in the evening by the same friend, news outlets reported. The search began at Millers Bayou in Port Richey. The U.S. Coast Guard was called in around 7 p.m. and a few hours later Port Richey police said they found Torrent’s jet ski in a man-grove but not Torrent.

Twelve hours later, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office found Torrent by helicopter Wednesday

morning. He was waving at them from a stilt home near the mouth of the Pithlachascotee River.

Torrent told WTVT-TV he saw a bird tangled in wiring and want-ed to save it. He docked his jet ski to help the bird but didn’t securethe watercraft and it drifted awayfrom him.

8-year-old hailed for saving younger cousin

NH LISBON — An 8-year-old girl has been

awarded the American Red Cross’Certificate of Extraordinary Per-sonal Action after saving heryounger cousin from drowning.

Victoria Lombardi used herwater rescue training when 5-year-old Ariana Chattin steppedonto a frog pond that was 5 feetdeep and was covered in blue-green algae, The Caledonian Re-cord reported. The girls were at afamily picnic last August in NewTripoli, Pa .

Lombardi was given the awardTuesday by Maria Devlin, theCEO of the American Red Cross in New Hampshire and Vermont,at a reception at Evergreen SportsCenter.

Lombardi used the “Reach,Throw, Don’t Go” rescue proce-dure she learned in a Red Cross class. She said it made her feelgood to save someone’s life andencourages more people to learnwater safety skills.

Saturday, February 29, 2020

From wire reports

AMERICAN ROUNDUP

The amount raised from an effort to sell T-shirts for a Minnesota police officer injured in a shoot-ing , according to supporters. Waseca Officer Arik Matson was shot in the head in an exchange of gunfire in January. A group of people represent-

ing various businesses on Wednesday presented Matson’s wife, Megan, with the money gained from the sale of about 1,200 T-shirts, the Alberta Lea Tribune re-ported. Lori Nelson and her son, Trent, run 407Designz in Alden. Lori Nelson said that after her son designed the shirt, they posted it on Facebook, and the effort grew rapidly from there. The design includes the words “praying for Arik.”

Stolen hearse carrying casket recovered

CA LOS ANGELES — A thief stole a hearse —

with a body inside — that went on a wild ride, ending with a chase and a crash on a busy freeway.

Authorities say they found the body undisturbed inside a casket Thursday morning and took someone into custody after the crash, which closed the 110 Freeway during the morning commute.

The crime began Wednesday night, when the thief stole the black Lincoln Navigator from out-side St. Anthony Greek Orthodox Church in East Pasadena. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Depart-ment pleaded with the thief on so-cial media to return the body .

“Out of all the bad decisions you have made, at least make one good one & bring back the de-ceased person & casket inside the Navigator,“ it tweeted.

Beehive, 8-feet long, discovered in apartment

VA RICHMOND — An ani-mal control company in

Virginia said it’s removed an 8-foot-long beehive from someone’s apartment.

Virginia Wildlife Management and Control said in a statement that they removed the hive from the ceiling of a living room in Richmond on Monday. The space was in between tenants at the time. The company said the hive produced about 80 to 100 pounds of honey, although only about 15 to 20 pounds was able to be salvaged.

Rich Perry, owner of the wild-life control company, told The Charlotte Observer that the hive was big enough to support 100,000 to 150,000 bees. But he said it wasn’t fully occupied.

Tractor, equipment runs over used cars in lot

NC KINSTON — A trac-tor hauling a piece of

equipment malfunctioned and ran over a number of vehicles in a used car lot, police said Wednesday.

Kinston police said the tractor was hauling a dirt pan used in landscaping when it ran over at least five cars parked at Faith Au-tomotive Sales, WITN reported.

According to police, the tractor had a mechanical malfunction that caused it to veer to the right.

No injuries were reported, and an employee at the dealership es-timated damage to the vehicles at around $20,000.

Pet oxygen masks given to fire department

WV HURRICANE — Pet oxygen masks have

been given to a West Virginia fire department to help animals in-jured in fires.

Hurricane Fire & Rescue Lt. Bobby Bragg told WSAZ-TV the department received the masks through the Emma Zen Founda-tion, which donates masks to de-partments across the country.

Bragg said he noticed a gap in

THE CENSUS

‘The Art of the Brick’Sky Itomi, 3, peers at the sculpture “Dinosaur Skeleton,” made out of 80,020 LEGO bricks, at a media preview of “The Art of the Brick” exhibition at the California Science Center on Wednesday in Los Angeles. The exhibit, which features more than 100 works of art created from over one million LEGO bricks by contemporary artist Nathan Sawaya, opened on Friday.

CHRIS PIZZELLO/AP

$16K

Saturday, February 29, 2020 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 15

OPINIONMax D. Lederer Jr., Publisher

Lt. Col. Sean Klimek, Europe commanderLt. Col. Richard McClintic, Pacific commander Caroline E. Miller, Europe Business Operations Joshua M. Lashbrook, Pacific Chief of Staff

EDITORIALTerry Leonard, Editor

leonard.terry@stripes.com

Robert H. Reid, Senior Managing Editorreid.robert@stripes.com

Tina Croley, Managing Editor for Contentcroley.tina@stripes.com

Sean Moores, Managing Editor for Presentationmoores.sean@stripes.com

Joe Gromelski, Managing Editor for Digitalgromelski.joe@stripes.com

BUREAU STAFFEurope/MideastErik Slavin, Europe & Mideast Bureau Chiefslavin.erik@stripes.com+49(0)631.3615.9350; DSN (314)583.9350

PacificAaron Kidd, Pacific Bureau Chiefkidd.aaron@stripes.com +81.42.552.2511 ext. 88380; DSN (315)227.7380

WashingtonJoseph Cacchioli, Washington Bureau Chiefcacchioli.joseph@stripes.com(+1)(202)886-0033 Brian Bowers, Assistant Managing Editor, Newsbowers.brian@stripes.com

CIRCULATIONMideastRobert Reismann, Mideast Circulation Manager robert.w.reismann.naf@mail.milxsscirculation@stripes.comDSN (314)583-9111

EuropeKaren Lewis, Community Engagement Managerlewis.karen@stripes.commemberservices@stripes.com+49(0)631.3615.9090; DSN (314)583.9090

PacificMari Mori, customerhelp@stripes.com+81-3 6385.3171; DSN (315)227.7333

CONTACT USWashingtontel: (+1)202.886.0003 633 3rd St. NW, Suite 116, Washington, DC 20001-3050

Reader lettersletters@stripes.com

Additional contactsstripes.com/contactus

OMBUDSMANErnie Gates

The Stars and Stripes ombudsman protects the free flow of news and information, reporting any attempts by the

military or other authorities to undermine the newspaper’s independence. The ombudsman also responds to concerns and questions from readers, and monitors coverage for fair-ness, accuracy, timeliness and balance. The ombudsman welcomes comments from readers, and can be contacted

by email at ombudsman@stripes.com, or by phone at 202.886.0003.

Stars and Stripes (USPS 0417900) is published week-days (except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1) for 50 cents Monday through Thursday and for $1 on Friday by Pacific Stars and Stripes, Unit 45002, APO AP 96301-5002. Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA, Postmaster: Send address changes to Pacific Stars and Stripes, Unit 45002, APO AP 96301-5002.

This newspaper is authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military services overseas. However, the contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government. As a DOD newspaper, Stars and Stripes may be distributed through official chan-nels and use appropriated funds for distribution to remote locations where overseas DOD personnel are located.

The appearance of advertising in this publication does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or Stars and Stripes of the products or services advertised. Products or services advertised shall be made available for purchase, use or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user or patron.

© Stars and Stripes 2020

stripes.com

BY ELAINE C. KAMARCK

Special to The Washington Post

In the four years after the 1968 Democratic convention, the nomi-nating power in both parties shifted from elected officials and party lead-

ers to primary voters. For many years the effect of this change was limited, as each party continued to nominate candidates who would have been plausible under the old convention system.

But the Republican nomination of Don-ald Trump in 2016 illustrated a hidden weakness in the new system — the absence of peer review. It is practically impossible to imagine Trump being nominated in a system where responsible political actors had a hand in deciding who was capable of the job.

It’s easy to see how our nomination sys-tem suffers from the lack of this key com-ponent, but much harder to figure out how to slip it back in. A system that includes peer review should be able to “assess the qualities of candidates for public office according to such dimensions as intelli-gence, sobriety of judgment, intellectual flexibility, ability to work well with others, willingness to learn from experience [and] detailed personal knowledge of govern-ment,” as the late political scientist Nelson Polsby wrote in 1983. Voters in early states may see candidates up close, but they can’t very well assess a potential president’s capacity to govern — something that is es-pecially important in a system where the president shares power.

It would be neither possible nor wise to try to roll back the system of binding pri-maries that allows millions of partisans to choose their party’s standard-bearer

— citizens are accustomed to voting in pri-maries, and any attempt to exclude them would be widely viewed as illegitimate — but it would be prudent to reintroduce an element of peer review. One option would be to allow superdelegates to vote on the first ballot in the Democratic system and to introduce superdelegates into the Re-publican primaries, as well. This would give governors and members of Congress votes independent of the primary voters. Of course, these people are themselves elected and have historically been reluc-tant to go against the will of their voters.

A second, more novel option would be to require each group of superdelegates — House members, senators, governors and national committee members — to cast ballots before the first primaries and cau-cuses. These groups could meet to evaluate the presidential candidates as they declare. But rather than casting ballots in favor of one candidate or another — a system that would tip heavily in favor of the “estab-lishment” candidate — they could make a simple vote of confidence or no confidence. The criterion: Is this person someone who, by virtue of experience and temperament, can operate successfully in a democratic form of government?

A potential president could get an overall “vote of confidence” by crossing a modest threshold of superdelegates — say, 15% or 25%. This would be small enough to allow for minority ideologies to get a candidate into the ring, but large enough to rule out people with no track record of working within a democratic system.

The consequences of a no-confidence vote could be structured in a variety of ways. There could be no consequences at

all, absent the bad publicity of failing this first test. Or, those who failed the vote ofconfidence could be kept off the debate stage or even primary ballots, althoughvoters could still write them in and would still have the final say on the nomination.

Were such a system in place in 2016,Republicans might still have nominated Trump. And in 2019, given his long service in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders surelywould have passed this first, modest test. Nonetheless, a system like this would haveadvantages.

If candidates had to discuss their posi-tions with other lawmakers, the process could help keep unrealistic policy formula-tions from becoming rallying cries, such asTrump’s contention that Mexico would payfor a wall on the border. It would subjectpotential presidents to the real demandsof the presidency, rather than the fluffthat often passes in their stead. (Trump’s lack of knowledge as to the nuclear triad, for instance, could have been sussed outlong before the debates.) And it would re-quire other public servants to evaluate thesubjective issue of temperament: Is thisperson capable of operating in a system ofshared power?

The current nomination system makes both parties vulnerable to the easy lies ofpopular characters who are not equipped for the presidency, or who pose a threat todemocracy by virtue of their authoritarian temperaments. The parties need to step up.Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.” This is the fourth op-ed in a series about how to improve the presidential nominating process.

BY NOAH SMITH

Bloomberg Opinion

A viral video of a man punching the back of a woman’s reclined air-line seat got Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian’s at-

tention. But he made things worse when he asked flyers to be polite and check with the passengers behind them before hitting the recline button. This angered many people who have watched seats shrink over the years while airlines try to raise profit mar-gins by packing ever-more paying custom-ers onto their planes.

Why, observers asked, should flyers be forced into a vicious zero-sum battle over physical comfort just to fatten the coffers of companies that already earn billions of dollars a year? Some blamed the capitalist system itself.

Defenders of the system will tend to retort that airlines are just giving people what they want; smaller seats, they argue, are simply the price consumers have cho-sen in exchange for cheaper airfares. It’s hard to tell how airfares have changed over time, because just looking at ticket prices isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison; the average flight distance changes, and cus-tomers nowadays pay fees for things such as checked baggage and meals that once were included in fares. But the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tries to account for all of these factors, suggest that flying has gotten cheaper during the past 20 years.

This decline has happened in spite of a slight rise in real oil prices.

What’s more, air travel today offers con-sumers a bigger menu of choices. They can go with a discount airline and less leg room in exchange for a cheaper ticket. They can upgrade to premium seats with more space. In 2016, each extra inch of legroom in the

North Atlantic region cost about $33.There are still some customers who

will fall through the cracks in this system — if you want just a little more legroom than coach provides, for just a little more money, you might not be able to find a seat. But overall, for customers who are willing to do a little shopping, today’s free-market air-travel system makes it easier for people to optimize their own personal mix of leg-room and ticket price.

And as always when discussing the shortcomings of capitalism, it’s important to think about what the alternative would be. In this case, that would mean national-ization of the industry. That’s not as crazy a notion as it might sound; Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines, rated the top two carriers in the world in 2019 by consulting firm Skytrax, are both state-owned.

But it’s far from clear that American Airlines or United Airlines could match the performance of those champions under state ownership. Very high U.S. in-frastructure costs suggest that the federal government may have problems in its deci-sion-making processes that make cost con-trol difficult.

In most developed nations, the trend has been toward privatization. Most European airlines, once owned by national govern-ments, have been privatized; Korean Air was privatized in 1969, and Japan Airlines in 1987. This was generally a result of fi-nancial distress. Meanwhile, the majority of remaining state-owned carriers are in developing countries, with Singapore and Qatar being the exceptions.

Proponents of nationalization might argue that without the need to make a prof-it, airlines could reduce fares or increase legroom while holding fares constant. A wave of big airline mergers has increased the industry’s profitability since 2005, and common ownership may also be reducing

competition. But airlines were operatingon the edge of bankruptcy before the con-solidation wave; now, their margins are merely up to the normal level for a U.S. business. So there’s not a lot of profit to be squeezed out of the system — perhaps only$20 per flight, or less than one inch worthof legroom.

Nationalized airlines could also be run at a loss, subsidized by tax money, but thiswould likely lead to the airlines becoming a political bone of contention, with even-tual privatization as the result. Or salaries could be cut and the savings passed on toflyers, but this would likely degrade opera-tional efficiency and quality.

So although no one likes having tochoose between paying an upgrade fee andbeing shoe-horned into a tiny seat, it’s un-likely that nationalization would improvematters.

With only limited scope to increase com-fort while also keeping costs low, airlinesshould try to improve the flying experienceby making it more egalitarian. That makesbeing told how to behave while flying by a man who makes a multimillion-dollar sal-ary by packing more people onto planesparticularly galling. So yes, airline CEOsshould avoid seeming like they’re talkingdown to passengers.

Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to offer flights with identical seats — no pre-mium economy, business class and so on— as well as no preferred boarding. Elimi-nating those visible inequalities mightmake flyers feel better about the air-travelexperience. Who knows — they might even be willing to pay a little more for the pleasure.Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To fix the primaries, bring back peer review

Don’t blame capitalism for shrinking airline legroom

PAGE 16 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 17Saturday, February 29, 2020

SCOREBOARD

Go to the American Forces Network website for the most up-to-date TV schedules.myafn.net

Sports on AFN

College basketball

Thursday’s men’s scoresEAST

Albertus Magnus 95, Lasell 94Endicott 63, Wentworth 62Fairleigh Dickinson 74, Bryant 72Geneva 91, Chatham 63Grove City 70, St. Vincent 69Iona 86, Canisius 65LIU 74, Wagner 66Mass.-Dartmouth 84, Plymouth St. 71Merrimack 69, CCSU 58Mitchell 73, Eastern Nazarene 69New England Coll. 92, Dean 79Niagara 63, St. Peter’s 54Nichols 88, Gordon 76Northeastern 77, James Madison 57Purchase 81, Sarah Lawrence 67Sacred Heart 73, St. Francis (NY) 63St. Francis (Pa.) 75, Mount St. Mary’s 62Towson 76, Hofstra 65W. Connecticut 88, Mass.-Boston 73Westfield St. 102, Salem St. 74Worcester St. 96, Mass. College 72Yeshiva 74, Farmingdale St. 69

SOUTHAla.-Huntsville 79, Montevallo 68Austin Peay 67, Morehead St. 58Belmont 65, Tennessee Tech 62Coll. of Charleston 80, Delaware 71FAU 80, UTSA 71Fayetteville St. 72, Virginia Union 67Florida Gulf Coast 73, Jacksonville 67Gardner-Webb 83, Charleston South-

ern 74Lee 74, Shorter 55Liberty 76, Kennesaw St. 52Longwood 58, Presbyterian 55Morehouse 65, Fort Valley St. 60Murray St. 74, E. Kentucky 62North Alabama 72, NJIT 65North Florida 85, Stetson 72North Texas 78, FIU 59Radford 81, Hampton 78SIU-Edwardsville 90, UT Martin 75Tennessee St. 65, Jacksonville St. 55UAB 88, Marshall 80UNC-Asheville 80, High Point 76UNC-Wilmington 76, Drexel 65Union (Tenn.) 85, Christian Brothers 73Valdosta St. 80, West Florida 66W. Kentucky 95, Louisiana Tech 91, OTWest Georgia 75, Auburn-Montgomery 74Winthrop 90, SC-Upstate 82

MIDWESTAshland 83, Wayne St. (Mich.) 63Bellarmine 78, S. Indiana 63Cent. Oklahoma 80, Fort Hays St. 73, OTCleveland St. 70, Milwaukee 68Coe 103, Wartburg 75Concordia (Wis.) 96, Wis. Lutheran 83Drury 85, William Jewell 68E. Illinois 72, SE Missouri 70Ferris St. 84, Lake Superior St. 67Grand Valley St. 75, Davenport 66Green Bay 102, Youngstown St. 92Greenville 164, Fontbonne 148IUPUI 71, Oakland 68Ill.-Chicago 84, Detroit 67Illinois 74, Northwestern 66Indianapolis 96, McKendree 91John Carroll 86, Marietta 79Lindenwood (Mo.) 85, Ill.-Springfield 80Miami (Ohio) 76, Cent. Michigan 57Michigan Tech 91, N. Michigan 61Milwaukee Engineering 74, Benedic-

tine (Ill.) 70Missouri S&T 82, Quincy 77Missouri-St. Louis 73, Lewis 61Mount Union 97, Heidelberg 66N. Dakota St. 71, S. Dakota St. 69, OTNW Missouri St. 69, Washburn 61Neb.-Kearney 66, Newman 64Nebraska Wesleyan 91, Simpson 77Northeastern St. 93, Emporia St. 76Northwood (Mich.) 78, Saginaw Valley

St. 72Ohio St. 75, Nebraska 54Oral Roberts 113, W. Illinois 70Purdue 57, Indiana 49Purdue-Northwest 99, Wis.-Parkside 65Rockhurst 63, Southwest Baptist 58St. John’s (Minn.) 71, St. Olaf 43St. Thomas (Minn.) 74, St. Mary’s

(Minn.) 72Truman St. 94, Maryville (Mo.) 65Webster 85, Blackburn 77Wichita St. 72, Temple 69Wis.-Eau Claire 78, Wis.-Platteville 74Wis.-Oshkosh 76, Wis.-La Crosse 68, OTWisconsin 81, Michigan 74

SOUTHWESTArk.-Fort Smith 59, Texas-Tyler 54E. Texas Baptist 80, Concordia-Austin 76East Central 90, Ouachita Baptist 76Harding 78, SW Oklahoma 66LeTourneau 94, Mary Hardin-Baylor 90NW Oklahoma 85, Arkansas Tech 78Oklahoma Baptist 77, Ark.-Monticello 74S. Nazarene 67, S. Arkansas 59SE Oklahoma 81, Henderson St. 79, OTSul Ross St. 65, Louisiana College 54Tarleton St. 76, Texas A&M Interna-

tional 59Texas A&M Commerce 69, Oklahoma

Christian 55Texas A&M Kingsville 70, Dallas Bap-

tist 65Texas-Dallas 77, Hardin Simmons 61Texas-Permian Basin 106, Lubbock

Christian 95UALR 79, Louisiana-Monroe 63

FAR WESTCS Bakersfield 79, Texas Rio Grande

Valley 59CS Dominguez Hills 82, San Francisco

St. 67Cal Poly-Pomona 67, Cal St.-East Bay 54California 76, Colorado 62Concordia (Ore.) 78, Alaska 73E. New Mexico 92, Cameron 71E. Washington 69, S. Utah 51Gonzaga 94, San Diego 59Hawaii 70, Cal St.-Fullerton 59N. Arizona 57, Montana 56N. Colorado 93, Idaho 49New Mexico St. 67, Grand Canyon 53Notre Dame de Namur 82, Dominican

(Cal) 75

Oregon 69, Oregon St. 54Pacific 60, Loyola Marymount 53Portland St. 89, Idaho St. 76Sacramento St. 81, Montana St. 52Saint Mary’s (Cal.) 78, Santa Clara 72San Francisco 81, Portland 65Southern Cal 57, Arizona 48UC Irvine 82, Cal Poly 76UC Santa Barbara 65, UC Riverside 60UCLA 75, Arizona St. 72W. New Mexico 83, Angelo St. 78West Texas A&M 82, Midwestern St. 58Whitman 85, Linfield 70Whitworth 87, Pacific Lutheran 57

AP Men’s Top 25 scheduleSaturday’s games

No. 12 Villanova vs. Providence at the Wells Fargo Center

No. 16 Penn State at No. 18 IowaNo. 22 Texas Tech vs. TexasNo. 1 Kansas at Kansas StateNo. 2 Baylor at TCUNo. 6 Florida State at ClemsonNo. 13 Seton Hall at No. MarquetteNo. 15 Auburn at No. 8 KentuckyNo. 20 West Virginia vs. OklahomaNo. 7 Duke at VirginiaNo. 17 BYU at PepperdineNo. 5 San Diego State at NevadNo. 9 Maryland vs. No. 24 Michigan StateNo. 3 Gonzaga vs. Saint Mary’s

Sunday’s gamesNo. 10 Creighton at St. John’sNo. 25 Houston vs. CincinnatiNo. 19 Michigan at No. 23 Ohio StateNo. 11 Louisville vs. Virginia TechNo. 21 Colorado at Stanford

Thursday’s women’s scoresEAST

Iona 78, Canisius 72Michigan 80, Penn St. 66Monmouth (NJ) 49, Siena 43Quinnipiac 70, St. Peter’s 69Rider 68, Fairfield 60Rutgers 63, Wisconsin 43

SOUTHAustin Peay 70, Morehead St. 65Belmont 68, Tennessee Tech 52Coastal Carolina 88, Louisiana-Monroe 69Florida St. 81, Clemson 54Jacksonville St. 63, Tennessee St. 45Kentucky 88, Georgia 77LSU 61, Vanderbilt 55Louisiana-Lafayette 57, Appalachian

St. 51Louisville 68, Boston College 48Mercer 60, W. Carolina 54Miami 79, Wake Forest 63Mississippi St. 92, Arkansas 83Murray St. 66, E. Kentucky 65NC State 69, Syracuse 60Samford 69, UNC-Greensboro 57South Carolina 100, Florida 67Tennessee 77, Mississippi 66UT Martin 75, SIU-Edwardsville 58Virginia 66, Pittsburgh 55Virginia Tech 70, Duke 56

MIDWESTAuburn 95, Missouri 82Bradley 61, S. Illinois 57Denver 85, Fort Wayne 67Green Bay 81, Cleveland St. 51Illinois St. 78, Missouri St. 66Indiana 81, Nebraska 53Iowa 90, Minnesota 82Milwaukee 59, Youngstown St. 54N. Kentucky 82, Detroit 61North Dakota 71, Nebraska-Omaha 67Notre Dame 83, North Carolina 65Rio Grande 74, CS Bakersfield 65S. Dakota St. 85, N. Dakota St. 58SE Missouri 72, E. Illinois 56Wright St. 77, Oakland 60

SOUTHWESTAlabama 76, Texas A&M 63Oral Roberts 71, W. Illinois 60Texas State 72, Georgia Southern 68Texas-Arlington 58, Georgia St. 32

FAR WESTAir Force 49, Colorado St. 44BYU 66, Pepperdine 64CS Northridge 66, Long Beach St. 54Cal St.-Fullerton 68, UC Riverside 45Idaho 70, N. Colorado 65Idaho St. 68, Portland St. 63Montana 70, N. Arizona 57Montana St. 113, Sacramento St. 69New Mexico 54, Utah St. 52New Mexico St. 69, Grand Canyon 58S. Utah 70, E. Washington 67San Diego 54, Loyola Marymount 50San Diego St. 81, Nevada 68San Francisco 67, Pacific 61San Jose St. 76, UNLV 63Santa Clara 94, Saint Mary’s (Cal) 87, OTUC Irvine 72, Hawaii 71Wyoming 64, Fresno St. 55

AP Women’s Top 25 scheduleSaturday’s games

No. 18 Northwestern vs. IllinoisNo. 20 South Dakota vs. North DakotaNo. 6 UConn vs. HoustonNo. 13 Gonzaga at PortlandNo. 25 Princeton vs. YaleNo. 2 Baylor vs. Kansas State

Sunday’s gamesNo. 12 Texas A&M at No. 1 South Caro-

linaNo. 5 Louisville vs. Virginia TechNo. 18 Iowa at RutgersNo. 22 Indiana at MichiganNo. 25 TCU at Texas TechNo. 4 Stanford at No. 24 Arizona StateNo. 8 N.C. State at VirginiaNo. 13 Arizona vs. CaliforniaNo. 15 Kentucky at VanderbiltNo. 19 Florida State vs. Notre DameNo. 10 Mississippi State at MississippiNo. 3 Oregon vs. WashingtonNo. 12 DePaul at MarquetteNo. 17 Oregon State vs. Washington

StateNo. 21 Missouri State at BradleyNo. 7 Maryland at MinnesotaNo. 9 UCLA vs. Utah

Pro football

XFLEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L Pct PF PASt. Louis 2 1 .667 68 46DC 2 1 .667 67 58New York 1 2 .333 32 59Tampa Bay 0 3 .000 39 74

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L Pct PF PAHouston 3 0 1.000 99 68Dallas 2 1 .667 58 45Los Angeles 1 2 .333 74 71Seattle 1 2 .333 48 64

Saturday’s gamesLos Angeles at New YorkSeattle at St. Louis

Sunday’s gamesHouston at DallasDC at Tampa Bay

Saturday, March 7Seattle at HoustonNew York at Dallas

Sunday, March 8St. Louis at DCTampa Bay at Los Angeles

Saturday, March 14Houston at New YorkSt. Louis at Tampa Bay

Tennis

Mexican OpenThursday

At Fairmont Acapulco PrincessAcapulco, MexicoPurse: $1,845,265

Surface: Hardcourt outdoorMen’s SinglesQuarterfinals

John Isner (5), United States, def. Tom-my Paul, United States, 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-2.

Taylor Fritz, United States, def. KyleEdmund, Britain, 6-4, 6-3.

Grigor Dimitrov (7), Bulgaria, def. Stan Wawrinka (3), Switzerland, 6-4, 6-4.

Rafael Nadal (1), Spain, def. Kwon Soon Woo, South Korea, 6-2, 6-1.

Women’s SinglesQuarterfinals

Xiyu Wang, China, def. Zhu Lin (6), China, 6-2, 6-2.

Heather Watson (7), Britain, def. Chris-tina McHale, United States, 6-3, 1-6, 6-1.

Renata Zarazua, Mexico, def. Tamara Zidansek, Slovenia, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2.

Leylah Annie Fernandez, Canada, def. Anastasia Potapova, Russia, 6-3, 7-5.

Men’s DoublesQuarterfinals

Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Ca-bal (1), Colombia, def. Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen, Belgium, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 10-8.

Dusan Lajovic and Nikola Cacic, Ser-bia, def. Santiago Gonzalez, Mexico, andKen Skupski, Britain, 4-6, 6-4, 10-2.

Fabrice Martin and Adrian Mannarino,France, def. Mischa Zverev and Alexan-der Zverev, Germany, 6-1, 6-4.

Lukasz Kubot, Poland, and MarceloMelo (2), Brazil, def. Grigor Dimitrov,Bulgaria, and Taylor Fritz, United States, walkover.

Women’s DoublesQuarterfinals

Kateryna Bondarenko, Ukraine, andSharon Fichman, Canada, def. SabrinaSantamaria, United States, and Nina Sto-janovic, Serbia, 7-6 (5), 6-2.

Astra Sharma, Australia, and CarolineDolehide, United States, def. Sara Errani,Italy, and Daniela Seguel, Chile, 4-1, ret.

Storm Sanders and Ellen Perez (3), Australia, def. Heather Watson, Britain, and Nao Hibino, Japan, 6-3, 5-7, 10-7.

Desirae Krawczyk, United States, and Giuliana Olmos (2), Mexico, def. ArantxaRus, Netherlands, and Tamara Zidansek,Slovenia, 6-3, 1-6, 10-3.

Chile OpenThursday

At Club Deportivo Universidad CatolicaSantiago, ChilePurse: $604,010

Surface: Red clayMen’s SinglesRound of 16

Thiago Monteiro (8), Brazil, def. Ro-berto Carballes Baena, Spain, 6-1, 6-4.

Thiago Seyboth Wild, Brazil, def. Juan Ignacio Londero (5), Argentina, 7-6 (7), 6-4.

Albert Ramos-Vinolas (3), Spain, def.Juan Pablo Varillas, Peru, 7-6 (3), 6-2.

Cristian Garin (1), Chile, def. Alejan-dro Davidovich Fokina, Spain, 6-2, 0-6, 7-6 (4).

Men’s DoublesQuarterfinals

Pablo Cuevas, Uruguay, and Facundo Bagnis, Argentina, def. Gonzalo Escobar,Ecuador, and Ariel Behar (4), Uruguay, 6-3, 6-4.

Alejandro Tabilo and Marcelo TomasBarrios Vera, Chile, def. Matwe Middel-koop, Netherlands, and Marcelo Demo-liner (1), Brazil, 1-6, 6-3, 10-8.

Jonny O Mara, Britain, and MarceloArevalo-Gonzalez (2), El Salvador, def. Juan Ignacio Londero and Federico Co-ria, Argentina, 7-6 (3), 6-3.

Dubai ChampionshipFriday

At Dubai Tennis StadiumDubai, United Arab Emirates

Purse: $2,794,840Surface: Hardcourt outdoor

Men’s SinglesSemifinals

Stefanos Tsitsipas (2), Greece, def.Daniel Evans, Britain, 6-2, 6-3.

Novak Djokovic (1), Serbia, def. GaelMonfils (3), France, 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-1.

Men’s DoublesSemifinals

Michael Venus, New Zealand, and John Peers, Australia, def. Jurgen Melzer,Austria, and Edouard Roger-Vasselin,France, 7-6 (2), 6-2.

Qatar OpenFriday

At Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex

Doha, QatarPurse: $2,939,695

Surface: Hardcourt outdoorWomen’s Singles

SemifinalsAryna Sabalenka (9), Belarus, def.

Svetlana Kuznetsova, Russia, 6-4, 6-3.Petra Kvitova (8), Czech Republic, def.

Ashleigh Barty (1), Australia, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.

Deals

Thursday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballMLB — Promoted umpires Kerwin

Danley, Dan Iassogna, Alfonso Marquez and Jim Reynolds to Crew Chiefs. Pro-moted Ryan Blankley, Ramon De Jesus, Nic Lentz, Chris Segal and Jansen Vis-conti to Major League umpire positions. Announced the retirement of umpires Gary Cederstrom, Dana DeMuth, Mike Everitt, and Jeff Kellogg.

HOCKEYNational Hockey League

NEW JERSEY DEVILS — Recalled D Josh Jacobs from Binghamton (AHL).

SOCCERMajor League Soccer

COLUMBUS — Signed F Miguel Berry.NEW YORK RED BULLS — Signed D Pat-

rick Seagrist.PHILADELPHIA — Signed MF Alejandro

Bedoya.REAL SALT LAKE — Signed F Giuseppe

Rossi.SAN ANTONIO — Signed F Jose Gal-

legos to a multi-year contract.SAN JOSE — Signed F Jack Skahan.National Women’s Soccer League

NWSL — Named Lisa Baird Commis-ioner.

Golf

Honda ClassicPGA TourThursday

At PGA National (Champions)Palm Beach Gardens Fla.

Purse: $7 millionYardage: 7,125; Par: 70

First RoundTom Lewis 32-34—66 -4Harris English 32-34—66 -4Zach Johnson 35-32—67 -3Cameron Tringale 34-33—67 -3J.T. Poston 33-34—67 -3Lee Westwood 34-33—67 -3Brian Stuard 32-35—67 -3Wyndham Clark 31-37—68 -2Brendan Steele 36-32—68 -2Doc Redman 33-35—68 -2Patrick Rodgers 34-35—69 -1Charl Schwartzel 34-35—69 -1Sam Burns 33-36—69 -1Cameron Percy 35-34—69 -1Tim Wilkinson 34-35—69 -1Harold Varner III 34-35—69 -1Kyoung-Hoon Lee 35-34—69 -1Mark Hubbard 32-37—69 -1Kevin Streelman 35-34—69 -1Daniel Berger 33-36—69 -1Shane Lowry 32-37—69 -1Jamie Lovemark 34-35—69 -1Bud Cauley 36-34—70 ERobby Shelton 35-35—70 EIan Poulter 36-34—70 EHudson Swafford 35-35—70 ERyan Palmer 34-36—70 E

Pro baseball

Spring TrainingAMERICAN LEAGUE

W L Pct.Toronto 3 1 0.750Minnesota 3 1 0.750Chicago 3 2 0.600New York 3 2 0.600Detroit 3 2 0.600Boston 3 3 0.500Texas 3 3 0.500Tampa Bay 3 3 0.500Kansas City 3 4 0.429Baltimore 3 4 0.429Cleveland 2 3 0.400Houston 2 3 0.400Los Angeles 2 3 0.400Seattle 2 4 0.333Oakland 2 5 0.286

NATIONAL LEAGUE W L Pct.Miami 6 0 1.000Philadelphia 5 1 0.833Los Angeles 4 1 0.800San Diego 4 1 0.800San Francisco 3 2 0.600Colorado 3 2 0.600Milwaukee 3 2 0.600Chicago 3 3 0.500Cincinnati 2 3 0.400Arizona 2 3 0.400Atlanta 2 3 0.400Washington 2 3 0.400St. Louis 2 4 0.333New York 1 5 0.167Pittsburgh 0 6 0.000

Wednesday’s gamesSt. Louis (ss) 7, Houston (ss) 5N.Y. Yankees 8, Washington 2Miami 8, St. Louis (ss) 7Minnesota (ss) 10, Tampa Bay 8Boston 6, Pittsburgh 3Philadelphia 5, Minnesota (ss) 4Baltimore 4, Atlanta 3Detroit at Toronto, ppd.Houston (ss) 4, N.Y. Mets 2Milwaukee 3, San Francisco 3, 10 inningsChicago Cubs 8, Kansas City (ss) 0L.A. Dodgers 9, L.A. Angels 4Oakland 16, Arizona 3Seattle 5, Cincinnati 3Kansas City (ss) 7, Chicago White Sox 6San Diego 8, Cleveland 0Colorado 4, Texas 3

Thursday’s gamesPhiladelphia 12, Boston 5N.Y. Yankees 7, Tampa Bay (ss) 1Tampa Bay (ss) 6, Detroit 3Atlanta 3, St. Louis 1Baltimore 13, Pittsburgh 0Minnesota 3, Toronto 3Texas 13, Chicago Cubs 1Chicago White Sox 6, Seattle (ss) 5Oakland 5, Colorado 2L.A. Dodgers 6, Cleveland 5Milwaukee 4, Kansas City 2San Diego 1, L.A. Angels 0San Francisco 5, Seattle (ss) 4Cincinnati 8, Arizona 0Houston 5, Washington 5Miami 3, N.Y. Mets 1

Friday’s gamesTampa Bay vs. Washington at West

Palm Beach, Fla.Houston vs. Miami at Jupiter, Fla.Atlanta (ss) vs. Philadelphia at Clear-

water, Fla.N.Y. Yankees vs. Atlanta (ss) at North

Port, Fla.Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh at Bradenton,

Fla.Boston vs. Minnesota at Fort Myers, Fla.Toronto vs. Detroit at Lakeland, Fla.St. Louis vs. N.Y. Mets at Port St. Lu-

cie, Fla.Cleveland vs. Chicago White Sox at

Glendale, Ariz.Oakland vs. Cincinnati at Goodyear, Ariz.San Francisco (ss) vs. Kansas City at

Surprise, Ariz.L.A. Dodgers vs. Milwaukee at PhoenixTexas vs. L.A. Angels at Tempe, Ariz.Seattle vs. Arizona at Scottsdale, Ariz.Chicago Cubs vs. San Diego at Peoria,

Ariz.Colorado vs. San Francisco (ss) at

Scottsdale, Ariz.

College baseball

Thursday’s scoresSOUTHWEST

Abilene Christian 5, Youngstown State 2WEST

New Mexico 8, BYU 7Oregon State 13, San Diego State 1Santa Clara 6, Sacramento State 5

Pro soccer

MLS scheduleSaturday’s games

Colorado at D.C. UnitedNew England at MontrealLos Angeles Galaxy at HoustonToronto at San JosePhiladelphia at DallasReal Salt Lake at Orlando CityAtlanta at NashvilleSporting Kansas City at Vancouver

Sunday’s gamesNew York City FC at ColumbusCincinnati at N.Y. Red BullsChicago at SeattleInter Miami at Los Angeles FCMinnesota United at Portland

Saturday, March 7Chicago at New EnglandN.Y. Red Bulls at Real Salt LakeMontreal at DallasInter Miami at D.C. UnitedNew York City FC at TorontoCincinnati at AtlantaMinnesota United at San JoseHouston at Sporting Kansas CityOrlando City at ColoradoVancouver at Los Angeles GalaxyColumbus at Seattle

Sunday, March 8Nashville at PortlandPhiladelphia at Los Angeles FC

Saturday, March 14Dallas at New York City FCLos Angeles Galaxy at Inter MiamiNashville at TorontoReal Salt Lake at ColumbusD.C. United at CincinnatiSporting Kansas City at AtlantaColorado at VancouverSan Jose at PhiladelphiaChicago at Orlando CitySeattle at Houston

AP sportlightFeb. 29

2012 — In Genoa, Italy, the United States beats Italy in soccer for the first time in 11 games over 78 years, taking a 1-0 exhibition victory on Clint Dempsey’s goal in the 55th minute.

PAGE 18 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

BY DAVID BRANDT

Associated Press

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Madison Bumgarner showed the Arizona Diamond-backs he’s more than a rodeo star.

The team’s marquee free-agent acquisi-tion of the offseason was solid in his first spring training outing on Thursday. He re-tired his first five batters, including four on strikeouts, before giving up a solo homer to Derek Dietrich. He allowed one run over two innings.

“I felt good — a lot better than I expected for the first game of spring,” Bumgarner said. “Especially the way it usually goes for me. I was pretty happy with it.”

Bumgarner signed an $85 million, five-year deal in the offseason as the D-backs tried to close the gap in the NL West with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have won seven straight division titles. He spent his first 11 seasons with the San Francisco Gi-ants, helping the franchise win three World Series titles.

It was also the four-time All-Star’s first pitching appearance since The Athletic revealed the pitcher’s hobby as a rodeo participant. The 30-year-old has been competing in rodeo events under the alias of Mason Saunders and won $26,560 in a team-roping competition in December.

Bumgarner wasn’t interested in discuss-ing his surprising side hustle, deflecting several questions about the story.

“Like I said, I felt really good today,” Bumgarner said, changing the subject when asked. “Everything felt good and I

was happy with where it was at.”D-backs GM Mike Hazen said this week

he was unaware of Bumgarner’s rodeo par-ticipation when the team signed the lefty but added that it wouldn’t have affected his decision. Manager Torey Lovullo called it a non-issue and said he wants his players

to have other interests as long as they’re smart about their health.

Hazen wouldn’t comment on what the team allows the 2014 World Series MVP to do in his spare time or any specifics of the contract or guarantee language. Bumgar-ner looked healthy on Thursday with a

fastball that was in the low 90s and a sharpbreaking ball.

“Mixed in everything, threw a few morefastballs than I was originally planning,” Bumgarner said. “I was planning on kind of mixing it up and seeing where every-thing was at and what I needed to work on. I actually ended up going out there and thefastball felt pretty good, so I wanted to see exactly where it was at.”

Bumgarner was an elite pitcher from2013-16, finishing in the top 10 of the NL Cy Young Award voting in all four seasons. He injured his shoulder in 2017 in a dirt bike accident and missed three months ofthe season. He apologized at the time andcalled it a “stupid” decision that likely vio-lated his contract, though the Giants arenot believed to have pressed the issue.

He pitched a full season in 2019, fin-ishing with a 9-9 record and 3.90 ERA in207 2⁄3 innings.

He said wearing a different uniform in a game situation for the first time in the bigleagues wasn’t a big deal.

“For me, when I’m out there, I just focus on what I’m doing,” Bumgarner said. “Ihonestly never thought about it one timewhile I was out there.”

Saturday, February 29, 2020

New Arizona starter shows he’s not just a rodeo star

Bumgarner has solid first outing with D-Backs

MATT YORK/AP

Diamondbacks pitcher Madison Bumgarner retired the first five Cincinnati Reds batters he faced, including four on strikeouts, before giving up a solo homer to Derek Dietrich on Thursday in Acottsdale, Ariz. Bumgarner allowed one run over two innings.

DID YOU KNOW ?Thursday’s two-inning spring training outing was the first pitching appearance for four-time All-Star Madison Bumgarner since The Athletic revealed the pitcher’s hobby as a rodeo participant. The 30-year-old has been competing in rodeo events under the alias Mason Saunders and won $26,560 in a team-roping competition in December.

SOURCE: Associated Press

MLB/SPORTS BRIEFS

Briefl y

Chinese Olympic champ Sun gets 8-year ban for dopingAssociated Press

GENEVA — When the hammer came down on a container hold-ing a vial of Sun Yang’s blood, it ultimately shattered the career of China’s greatest swimmer.

The three-time Olympic cham-pion was banned for eight years on Friday, likely ending the 28-year-old Sun’s racing days before he could defend his 200-meter free-style title at the Tokyo Games.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport found the three-time Olym-pic champion guilty of refusing to cooperate with sample collec-tors during a visit to his home in September 2018 that turned confrontational.

The most vivid detail of the evi-dence — a blood sample rendered useless for testing by a hammer blow — left a clear impression on the judges.

A rare hearing in open court in November was reminded of how a security guard instructed by Sun’s mother broke the cas-ing around the vial to ensure the blood could not be used for anti-doping tests. The swimmer lit the early-hours scene with his mobile phone.

“The athlete failed to establish that he had a compelling justi-fication to destroy his sample

collection containers and forego the doping control when, in his opinion, the collection protocol was not in compliance,” the CAS panel of three judges agreed in a unanimous verdict.

Now banned until February 2028, the 28-year-old Sun cannot defend his 200-meter freestyle title in Tokyo.

Yankees’ Stanton upset, frustrated with injury

TAMPA. Fla. — New York Yan-kees slugger Giancarlo Stanton is upset over his latest injury, a strained right calf that could side-line him for opening day.

“It makes it seem like I didn’t

take care of myself, which makes it more frustrating,” Stanton said Friday. “I can’t stop and feel sorry for myself.”

Stanton was hurt Tuesday dur-ing outfield drills, and an MRI revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least serious on the scale. Stanton said his chances of playing in the March 26 opener at Baltimore all depend on his progress “this week, next week.”

“Kind of get some slower move-ments the next few days and see where I’m at then,” Stanton said.

Known for his strenous work-outs, Stanton played in just 18 games last season due a number of injuries, and he hit .288 with three homers in 59 at-bats. He had 38 homers in his first year with the Yankees in 2018, one season after hitting a career-high 59 for Miami.

New York put a major league-record 30 players on the injured list last season, and there have been more injuries this year.

All-Star pitcher Luis Sev-erino had Tommy John surgery Thursday and will miss the en-tire season. Lefty James Paxton is projected to miss the first two months following back surgery and Aaron Judge has been slowed by right shoulder soreness.

F1 teams fear outbreak may restrict race travel

MONTMELO, Spain — Thevirus outbreak breeding illnessand fear around the globe is caus-ing Formula One teams seriousconcerns about their ability totravel to races with the season setto start in two weeks.

Ferrari team principal MattiaBinotto said on Friday on the finalday of preseason testing in Spain that the Italian outfit wants guar-antees from F1 that its staff will not have trouble entering the hostcountries of the opening races in Australia and Bahrain.

Ferrari and F1 rival AlphaTau-ri, as well as F1 tire providerPirelli, are all based in northern Italy, the epicenter of the Italianoutbreak. Haas and Sauber also have some Ferrari employees ontheir teams because Ferrari pro-vides engines for their cars.

“The situation is certainly concerning us, worrying us, es-pecially back in Italy,” Binottosaid. “We are in contact with FIA and F1. What we will need is as-surance before leaving (for theAustralian Grand Prix). We can’tdiscover what it is on arrival.”

LEE JIN-MAN/AP

Chinese swimmer Sun Yang has been banned for eight years for breaking anti-doping rules and will miss the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 19Saturday, February 29, 2020

MLS

BY RONALD BLUM

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Used to bending free kicks for goals, David Beckham was not pre-pared for seven years

of twists en route to his team’s Major League Soccer debut this weekend.

“This I always knew was going to be a challenge. I didn’t real-ize how big of a challenge it was going to be,” the former England captain said Wednesday. “When we announced seven years ago, I thought it would take one or two years and we’ll be playing in the league. We’ll have a stadium. We’ll have great players. But it took slightly longer than that.”

Inter Miami opens its first season on Sunday at Los Ange-les FC, joining the league along with Nashville as MLS expands to 26 teams. After a match at D.C. United on March 7, Inter plays its home opener March 14 against the LA Galaxy — not in Miami but at an 18,000-capacity, $120 million venue and training com-plex built over about 10 months in Fort Lauderdale on the site of old Lockhart Stadium.

“There were moments where I looked and I thought this might not happen,” said Beckham, the team’s co-owner and president of soccer operations. “The biggest lesson is I’m more persistent than I thought I was and I’m more stub-born than my wife thinks I am.”

Now 44, Beckham won six Premier League titles and the 1999 Champions League while

playing with Manchester United from 1992 to 2003, then added a La Liga championship while with Real Madrid. He joined MLS with the Galaxy from 2007-12, win-ning two titles and boosting the league’s profile as part of a deal that gave him the right to buy an expansion team at a discounted price of $25 million.

After detouring twice to AC Milan on loans during his time with the Galaxy, he finished his playing career with a Ligue 1 championship with Paris Saint-Germain in 2013.

A jet-setter married to a former Spice Girl, Beckham decided in 2013 on Miami as his preferred site for his team, and MLS made the announcement in February 2014. But the launch repeatedly was put off while the team was

stymied in its search for a sta-dium site.

“I’m obviously not from Miami. I’m from East London,” Beckham said. “So me going to Miami, try-ing to buy a piece of land, talk to the politicians, wasn’t actu-ally getting us anywhere, funnily enough.”

Jorge and Jose Mas of the telecommunications company MasTec Inc. were added to the ownership group in December 2017, with Jorge becoming the managing owner.

MLS awarded the team the fol-lowing month, and it was named Inter Miami in September 2018 — the name was picked because owners view Miami as a diverse, global city. Still, it took until March 2019 for the team to say it would start play in 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, where the Strikers of the North American Soccer League were based from 1977-83 and Miami’s first MLS team, the Fusion, played from 1998 to 2001 before getting contracted.

A proposed long-term home at Miami’s Freedom Park still awaits political and legal approv-als and a hoped-for 2022 opening could be pushed back to at least 2023.

Beckham has watched his team train this week and looks forward to its first competitive match. He hopes his ownership will be re-membered as much as his play-ing days.

“I want a legacy in the game,” he said. “I want to be able to cre-ate a legacy that my children can turn around in 20 years and say, ‘My dad built this club.’ ”

BY RONALD BLUM

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Three days ahead of the Major League Soc-cer’s 25th season, owners, execu-tives and players gathered for a day of unbridled optimism and hyperbole.

Los Angeles FC lead owner Larry Berg predicted MLS will surpass Major League Baseball in popularity during the next 10 years and Inter Miami managing owner Jorge Mas maintained it will be of higher quality than the Premier League and La Liga by 2045.

MLS anticipates soccer’s sta-tus in the U.S. will be boosted when the Americans co-host the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada.

“We definitely have the de-mographics in our favor, both in terms of youth and diversity. So I think we’ll pass baseball and hockey and be the No. 3 sport in the U.S. behind football and bas-ketball,” Berg said Wednesday at the league’s kickoff event.

MLS expanded to 26 teams this season with the addition of David Beckham’s Inter Miami and Nashville, and plans are in place to reach 30 franchises by 2022 — triple the league’s low from 2002-04. The league has increasingly attracted better players from South America, and Berg called youth academies the league’s “crown jewel.”

“The academies will be pump-ing out just incredible talent, which will help both the league and the U.S. men’s national team such that we will vault way past Liga MX and the U.S. men’s national team will vault way past Mexico, and then it will come down to the media deals. ... Whether we can be a top-five league or a top-three league will really come down at the end of the day to money, our ability to compete for players.”

“I think the good news is play-ers want to play here,” Berg added. “We’re the United States of America. People want to live

here. It’s an incredible lifestyle.The infrastructure is fantastic.”

Mas partnered with Beckham, the former England captain, andenvisioned the league’s 50th year in 2045.

“I think the MLS will be oneof the top sports leagues in theUnited States. I think it will be on par or exceed the best leagues in the world, the Premier League orSerie A or La Liga worldwide,“ Mas said. “I think that the MLS25 years from now will be Pre-mier League-ish if we want toso-call it that on the metrics thatleagues are measured by.”

Clark Hunt, CEO of MLS’ Dal-las team and the NFL’s KansasCity Chiefs, compared soccer’sprogress in the U.S. to that of the NFL, which celebrated its 100thanniversary this season.

“The momentum that we haveI think has a chance to take us towhere the NFL is today,” he said.

Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, N.C., join the league next year,followed by St. Louis and Sacra-mento, Calif.

Charlotte, announced in De-cember, agreed to pay a $325 mil-lion expansion fee. The originalteams that started play in 1996paid $5 million each.

Detroit, Las Vegas and Phoenix remain in contact with the league,which also is monitoring effortsin San Diego. More warm-weath-er cities would help the schedule early and late in the year.

“We have no plan in place to gopast 30,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said. “It’s conceivable thatin time we might look at a largerleague to be able to address some of those challenges.”

Owners: Leaguewill surpass MLB,Premier League

RICHARD DREW/AP

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber speaks during the 25th season kickoff event in New York on Wednesday

DID YOU KNOW ?Charlotte, one of two MLS franchises that will debut next season, paid a $325 million expansion fee. The original teams that started play 25 seasons ago paid just $5 million each.

SOURCE: Associated Press

CHRIS O’MEARA/AP

Inter Miami FC’s Robbie Robinson, left, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies’ Forrest Lasso battle for control of the ball during the first half of a preseason friendly on Feb. 22 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Beckham’s Miami teamready after seven years

RICHARD DREW/AP

Co-owner David Beckham considers Inter Miami his legacy.

PAGE 20 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

NBA/COLLEGE BASKETBALLNBA scoreboard

Eastern ConferenceAtlantic Division

W L Pct GBToronto 42 16 .724 —Boston 41 17 .707 1Philadelphia 37 23 .617 6Brooklyn 26 31 .456 15½New York 17 42 .288 25½

Southeast DivisionMiami 36 22 .621 —Orlando 26 32 .448 10Washington 21 36 .368 14½Charlotte 20 38 .345 16Atlanta 17 43 .283 20

Central Divisionx-Milwaukee 50 8 .862 —Indiana 35 24 .593 15½Chicago 20 39 .339 30½Detroit 19 41 .317 32Cleveland 17 41 .293 33

Western ConferenceSouthwest Division

W L Pct GBHouston 38 20 .655 —Dallas 36 23 .610 2½Memphis 28 30 .483 10New Orleans 25 33 .431 13San Antonio 24 33 .421 13½

Northwest DivisionDenver 40 18 .690 —Oklahoma City 37 22 .627 3½Utah 36 22 .621 4Portland 26 34 .433 15Minnesota 17 40 .298 22½

Pacific DivisionL.A. Lakers 45 12 .789 —L.A. Clippers 39 19 .672 6½Sacramento 24 34 .414 21½Phoenix 24 35 .407 22Golden State 12 47 .203 34

Wednesday’s gamesCleveland 108, Philadelphia 94Charlotte 107, New York 101Washington 110, Brooklyn 106Orlando 130, Atlanta 120Minnesota 129, Miami 126Houston 140, Memphis 112Dallas 109, San Antonio 103L.A. Clippers 102, Phoenix 92Boston 114, Utah 103

Thursday’s gamesPhiladelphia 115, New York 106Indiana 106, Portland 100Oklahoma City 112, Sacramento 108L.A. Lakers 116, Golden State 86

Friday’s gamesMinnesota at OrlandoBrooklyn at AtlantaCharlotte at TorontoCleveland at New OrleansDallas at MiamiOklahoma City at MilwaukeeSacramento at MemphisDetroit at PhoenixWashington at UtahDenver at L.A. Clippers

Saturday’s gamesChicago at New YorkBrooklyn at MiamiPortland at AtlantaIndiana at ClevelandL.A. Lakers at MemphisHouston at BostonOrlando at San AntonioGolden State at Phoenix

Sunday’s gamesMilwaukee at CharlotteDallas at MinnesotaPhiladelphia at L.A. ClippersDetroit at SacramentoToronto at DenverL.A. Lakers at New OrleansWashington at Golden State

NBA roundup

Embiid-less 76erstop woeful Knicks

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — Tobias Harris’ performance had the 76ers feeling good during the game, and the doctor’s report on Joel Embiid afterward had them feeling even better.

Harris scored 34 points to lead short-handed Philadelphia to a 115-106 victory over the New York Knicks on Thursday night.

The 76ers played without in-jured All-Stars Embiid and Ben Simmons.

Embiid was hurt in Wednesday night’s loss at Cleveland when he collided with Ante Zizic. After Thursday’s victory, the 76ers learned that their star center didn’t have any structural dam-age. He has a sprained left shoul-der and will be re-evaluated in about a week.

“That’s exciting news,” 76ers coach Brett Brown said.

Before the game, Brown dis-cussed playing without Embiid and Simmons.

“It’s a painfully obvious bind,” Brown said. “We’re missing two All-Stars. You yank that from the team and it’s painful.”

The duo’s absence didn’t hurt against the woeful Knicks.

Shake Milton scored 19 points and Al Horford added 15 for the 76ers, who improved to their NBA-best home record to 28-2.

Harris signed a five-year, $180 million deal in the offseason.

Thunder 112, Kings 108: Danilo Gallinari scored 24 points and host Oklahoma City over-came a 19-point deficit to beat Sacramento.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 20 points and Chris Paul

added 17 for the Thunder. They have won five straight and 14 of 17.

Harrison Barnes scored 21 points for the Kings.

Pacers 106, Trail Blazers 100: Domantas Sabonis had 20 points and 11 rebounds in host Indiana’s victory over Portland.

Malcolm Brogdon had 17 points, eight assists and six re-bounds, and T.J. Warren and Vic-tor Oladipo scored 15 points each. The Pacers have won four of their last five.

CJ McCollum had 28 points and eight assists for the Trail Blazers. They have lost five of six.

Lakers 116, Warriors 86: An-thony Davis had 23 points and six rebounds in three quarters and visiting Los Angeles won its seventh straight game and NBA-record 18th in a row on the road against the Western Conference, beating injury-plagued Golden State without LeBron James.

Rajon Rondo started in place of James and contributed 12 points and six assists as the Lakers turned it into a rout with a 40-17 third quarter. James sat out be-cause of recurring soreness in his troublesome left groin.

Davis shot 6-for-13, made 10 of 12 free throws and also had a pair of blocked shots and steals for Los Angeles, whose 12 first-half turnovers allowed the Warriors to keep it close. Kyle Kuzma added 18 points off the bench.

Rookie Eric Paschall scored 23 points off the bench for his 11th 20-point game and Jordan Poole had 16 in the Warriors’ eighth straight loss both overall and at home in new Chase Center.

No. 3 Gonzagarouts San Diego

Top 25 roundup

Associated Press

SPOKANE, Wash. — Filip Pe-trusev had 21 points and nine re-bounds as No. 3 Gonzaga beat San Diego 94-59 on Thursday night to clinch its eighth straight West Coast Conference regular-season title.

Corey Kispert scored 16 points and Ryan Woolridge had 15 for Gonzaga (28-2, 14-1 WCC), which rebounded from its loss at BYU on Saturday. The win came on a night when former Gonzaga star Adam Morrison was honored.

Joey Calcaterra scored 19 for undersized San Diego (9-21, 2-13), which has lost 12 straight to Gonzaga.

Gonzaga has won 38 consecu-tive home games, the longest streak in the country.

No. 14 Oregon 69, Oregon State 54: Payton Pritchard scored 15 of his 23 points in the second half and the host Ducks pulled away from the Beavers.

Oregon (22-7, 11-5 Pac-12) had only a four-point halftime lead but started the second half with a 22-4 run to send Oregon State (15-13, 5-11) to its fourth consecu-tive defeat.

Will Richardson added 15 points for the Ducks, including 13 in the second half as he and Pritchard combined for 28 of Or-egon’s 40 points after the break. Anthony Mathis finished with 13.

Ethan Thompson led the Bea-vers with 15 points and Tres Tinkle had 14 points and 10 rebounds.

Wisconsin 81, No. 19 Michi-gan 74: D’Mitrik Trice scored 28 points and the visiting Badgers snapped the Wolverines’ winning streak at five.

Wisconsin (18-10, 11-6 Big Ten) extended its own winning streak

to five, never trailing in the gameand repelling every Michiganpush in the second half. The Wol-verines cut a 14-point deficit to three, but after a Wisconsin time-out with 2:50 remaining, Tricesank a three-pointer to double thelead.

Zavier Simpson scored a ca-reer-high 32 points for the Wol-verines (18-10, 9-8) who werewithout guard Eli Brooks becauseof a broken nose.

California 76, No. 21 Colo-rado 62: Matt Bradley matchedhis career highs of 26 points and five three-pointers, and the host Golden Bears pulled away in thesecond half to beat the Buffaloes.

Kareem South had 19 points and Paris Austin added 12 as Cal (12-16, 6-9 Pac-12) emphaticallyended a five-game losing streakagainst Colorado and gave first-year coach Mark Fox his mostsignificant win of the seasonwhile handing the Buffaloes astinging setback.

McKinley Wright IV scored 18points for Colorado.

The Buffaloes (21-8, 10-6) wereamong a handful of teams whobegan the night a half-game be-hind conference-leading ArizonaState.

No. 23 Ohio State 75, Ne-braska 54: Kaleb Wesson had16 points and a career-high 18rebounds, and the visiting Buck-eyes got out to a quick double-digit lead on their way to a victory over the Cornhuskers.

Ohio State (19-9, 9-8 Big Ten),playing without injured startingforward Kyle Young, won for thefourth time in five games. Ne-braska (7-21, 2-15) lost its 13th straight.

The Buckeyes led 26-12 aftermaking nine of their first 11 shots,including 5 of 6 three-pointers.

Bulldogs wrap up West Coast title

YOUNG KWAK/AP

Gonzaga guard Admon Gilder, right, drives while pressured by San Diego guard Finn Sullivan during the second half of Thursday’s game in Spokane, Wash. Gonzaga won 94-59.

MATT SLOCUM/AP

The 76ers’ Tobias Harris, right, reaches in as the New York Knicks’ RJ Barrett tries to take a shot during the first half of Thursday’s game in Philadelphia. The 76ers won 115-106.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 21Saturday, February 29, 2020

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

No. 16 Penn State (20-7)at No. 18 Iowa (19-9)

AFN-Sports6 p.m. Saturday CET2 a.m. Sunday JKT

No. 13 Seton Hall (20-7)at No. 19 Marquette (17-9)

AFN-Atlantic8:30 p.m. Saturday CET4:30 a.m. Sunday JKT

No. 15 Auburn (24-4)at No. 8 Kentucky (23-5)

AFN-Sports9:45 p.m. Saturday CET5:45 a.m. Sunday JKT

No. 7 Duke (23-5))at Virginia (19-7)

AFN-SportsMidnight Saturday CET

8 a.m. Sunday JKT

Saint Mary’s (23-6) at No. 3 Gonzaga (27-2)

AFN-Sports4 a.m. Sunday CETNoon Sunday JKT

BY JOHN MARSHALL

Associated Press

TEMPE, Ariz. — Remy Martin’s bloom of hair has an ebullient quality to it, shim-mying as he shakes a defender, bopping when he stops and pops, swooshing back as if he’s in a wind tunnel as he flashes through the lane.

It’s in his game, too, in the way the Ari-zona State junior guard whips crowd-roar-ing, no-look passes through his legs, raises up for three-pointers with the game on the line or bursts in front of a defender for a charge.

And it’s in his personality, his natural joy for life revving up teammates and fans on the court, lifting the spirits of everyone he meets off it.

“He has such a positive way about him that’s infectious to everyone around him,” Sun Devils coach Bobby Hurley said.

Martin, whose full name suggests a top-shelf after-dinner drink, was named after an uncle. He came to Arizona State as a star recruit and quickly became a favorite, with fans delighting in his game .

Martin burst off the bench as a momen-tum-changing sixth man as a freshman.

The 6-foot guard played with a confi-dence beyond his years, flicking no-look passes, fearlessly driving to the basket. He picked up opposing point guards full court, nodding his bouncy hair in approval after inevitably finding a way under their skin.

Martin still plays with the same this-could-be-the-last-play abandon as a junior, though he has morphed into a level-minded floor leader to balance Hurley’s volcanic sideline demeanor.

Martin has range that extends practi-cally to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport and, with a 40-inch standing vertical leap, has

the hops to finish at the rim against much bigger players. He’s the rare guard with a sublime mid-range game, usually stopping and popping while the defender is still in mid backpedal, and is one of college bas-ketball’s fastest end-to-end players with a ball in his hand.

Hurley, the point guard for two national championship teams at Duke, has given Martin the freedom to do things other coaches would wince at, like the one-footed fadeaway he shoots multiple times a game.

“I’ve worked hard at being able to score at multiple levels,” Martin said.

With his 24-point performance in a one-point, comeback win over rival Arizona, Martin became the first Pac-12 player in 23 years to start conference play with six straight 20-point games.

Martin took over down the stretch in a win over Stanford on Feb. 14, scoring 11 points in the final seven minutes. Two days later, he scored 15 of his 22 points in the final 11 minutes in a win over California, giving the Sun Devils their first Pac-12 weekend road sweep in 10 years.

Martin became the second player in Arizona State history (Shannon Evans in 2018) to be named the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week for his big Bay Area efforts.

The Pac-12’s second-leading scorer at 19.1 points per game, Martin is a front-runner for conference player of the year in what could be a two-player race with Ore-

gon’s Payton Pritchard. He’s been the key cog during a seven-game winning streak that moved Arizona State, a team picked to finish sixth, to the top of the Pac-12 stand-ings with two weeks left in the regular season.

“Remy Martin, what he’s done at Ari-zona State is remarkable. He’s a heck of a player,” Arizona coach Sean Miller said, unprompted. “He’s willed them to so many wins. Not only do I think he’s one of the best players in the Pac-12, he’s one of the best guards in college basketball.”

Martin’s infectious imprint spreads be-yond the hardwood.

Through a joy for life and sincerity, he forges an instant bond with anyone he meets. Fans and kids who meet him usu-ally decide Martin is now their favorite ASU player.

His mother, Mary Ann Macaspac, emi-grated from the Philippines and Martin

has embraced his heritage. He wears awristband with the flag of the Philippines on it and serves as a role model for young Filipino basketball players, showing themthere is a path to success.

Right after hitting the game-winneragainst Southern California on Feb. 8,Martin gave his shoes to a young boy who gleefully carried the oversized sneakers inhis arms up into the stands. Another RemyMartin fan for life.

When his team won the 10-11-year-old championship at Hurley’s camp, Martincelebrated like he had won the national championship, jumping with the playersbefore galloping off with one in his arms.

“I love living, I’m happy, I’m not takinganything for granted,” Martin said. “I’mliving, I’m healthy, I’m playing the game Ilove, so how can I not be happy?”

Now, about that hair.Close-cropped on the side, it bursts out

of the top of his head in an overrun bouquetof curls and swirls. When Martin is goingat full speed, which is nearly all the time,his locks bob and sway as if he’s being elec-trocuted, making it look like he’s playingeven harder than he is.

The upkeep, minimal. Martin usuallyclimbs out of bed, does a quick check andheads out the door.

“I’m usually getting out of bed to head topractice,” he said. “It’s not like I’m goingto a club or something, so there’s not muchthat needs to be done.”

Guard, known for his hair, is candidate for Pac-12 Player of Year

Mane event: Martin revs up Arizona State

PHOTOS BY DARRYL WEBB/AP

Above: Arizona State’s Remy Martin (1) leads his team off the court during a timeout against Oregon State during a game Saturday. Below: Martin is the Sun Devils’ emotional leader and scoring leader at 19.1 points a game.

‘ Not only do I think he’s one of the best players in the Pac-12, he’s one of the best guards in college basketball. ’

Sean MillerArizona coach on ASU player Remy Martin

PAGE 22 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, February 29, 2020

NHL

Associated Press

BOSTON — Nick Ritchie had a goal and an assist for his first points since Boston acquired him at the trade deadline to help the NHL-leading Bruins beat the Dallas Stars 4-3 on Thursday night.

Brad Marchand broke a second-period tie and Ritchie scored 1:27 later to make it 3-1. Then, after Denis Gurianov cut the deficit to one early in the third, Ritchie fed David Pastrnak in the slot to again make it a two-goal game.

Jaroslav Halak stopped 31 shots, and Charlie Coyle scored on a double-tipped swat out of the air for Boston. The Bruins snapped a two-game losing streak.

John Klingberg and Miro Heis-kanen also scored for Dallas.

Blues 3, Islanders 2 (OT): Colton Parayko scored on an un-assisted wraparound at 3:23 of overtime to give host St. Louis its sixth consecutive victory.

Vince Dunn tied it for St. Louis with 1:44 left in the third period. Brayden Shenn also scored for the defending Stanley Cup cham-pions, and Jordan Binnington had 14 saves

Maple Leafs 5, Panthers 3: William Nylander scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period to lift visiting Toron-to past Florida.

Auston Matthews, Kasperi Kapanen, Zach Hyman and Jus-tin Holl also scored for Toronto. Frederik Andersen stopped 24 shots in his sixth straight start.

Senators 5, Canucks 2: Bobby Ryan had a hat trick in his first game in more than three months, leading host Ottawa past Vancouver.

Ryan entered the joint NHL/NHLPA assistance program Nov. 20 after admitting to having a problem with alcohol. He last

played on Nov. 16 in Buffalo, but had been skating on his own since late December.

Rangers 5, Canadiens 2: Ryan Strome scored twice and added an assist and visiting New York rallied to beat Montreal for its fifth straight victory.

Phillip Di Giuseppe, Adam Fox and Mika Zibanejad also scored for the Rangers and Alexandar Georgiev made 32 saves. New York pulled into a tie with Caro-lina, two points behind Columbus for the final Eastern Conference playoff berth.

Predators 4, Flames 3 (OT): Mikael Granlund tied it just be-fore the end of regulation and scored 1:20 into overtime to lift host Nashville past Calgary in a showdown of the Western Confer-ence’s two wild-card teams.

Roman Josi and Colton Sissons also had a goal apiece, and Ryan Ellis added three assists.

Jets 3, Capitals 0: Connor Hel-lebuyck stopped 34 shots for his fifth shutout of the season, leading host Winnipeg over Washington.

Dmitry Kulikov, Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele scored for Winnipeg.

Wild 7, Red Wings 1: Defense-man Matt Dumba had two goals and an assist in visiting Minneso-ta’s rout of Detroit.

Kevin Fiala had a goal and two assists, Ryan Hartman and Ryan Donato had a goal and an assist each and Jordan Greenway and Eric Staal also scored for Minne-sota. Alex Stalock made 25 saves.

Sharks 3, Devils 2 (OT): Logan Couture scored 38 seconds into overtime, lifting host San Jose to a comeback win that snapped a five-game skid.

Rookie Mario Ferraro and Marcus Sorensen each scored in regulation for the Sharks. Martin Jones made 22 saves.

Scoreboard

Eastern ConferenceAtlantic Division

GP W L OT Pts GF GABoston 65 40 13 12 92 214 167Tampa Bay 64 40 19 5 85 226 180Toronto 65 34 23 8 76 229 216Florida 64 33 25 6 72 222 218Montreal 66 29 28 9 67 199 204Buffalo 63 29 26 8 66 184 196Ottawa 65 22 31 12 56 174 221Detroit 66 15 47 4 34 132 251

Metropolitan DivisionWashington 64 39 19 6 84 222 196Pittsburgh 62 37 19 6 80 202 170Philadelphia 63 36 20 7 79 210 185N.Y. Islanders 63 35 20 8 78 181 171Columbus 65 31 20 14 76 170 171Carolina 62 35 23 4 74 202 176N.Y. Rangers 63 35 24 4 74 212 193New Jersey 63 25 27 11 61 173 214

Western ConferenceCentral Division

GP W L OT Pts GF GASt. Louis 65 38 17 10 86 209 181Colorado 62 37 18 7 81 215 168Dallas 64 37 21 6 80 174 164Nashville 63 32 23 8 72 202 201Winnipeg 66 33 27 6 72 199 195Minnesota 63 31 25 7 69 198 202Chicago 64 28 28 8 64 192 205

Pacific DivisionVegas 65 35 22 8 78 211 196Vancouver 63 34 23 6 74 209 195Edmonton 64 33 23 8 74 201 199Calgary 65 33 25 7 73 195 202Arizona 66 31 27 8 70 182 176Anaheim 63 25 30 8 58 165 200San Jose 64 27 33 4 58 164 209Los Angeles 64 23 35 6 52 158 204

Note: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards per conference advance to playoffs.

Thursday’s gamesToronto 5, Florida 3N.Y. Rangers 5, Montreal 2Chicago 5, Tampa Bay 2Minnesota 7, Detroit 1Ottawa 5, Vancouver 2Boston 4, Dallas 3Winnipeg 3, Washington 0St. Louis 3, N.Y. Islanders 2, OTNashville 4, Calgary 3, OTSan Jose 3, New Jersey 2, OT

Friday’s gamesColorado at CarolinaMinnesota at ColumbusN.Y. Rangers at PhiladelphiaBuffalo at VegasPittsburgh at Anaheim

Saturday’s gamesBoston at N.Y. IslandersCalgary at Tampa BayNew Jersey at Los AngelesChicago at FloridaCarolina at MontrealDetroit at OttawaVancouver at TorontoBuffalo at ArizonaColorado at NashvilleDallas at St. LouisWinnipeg at EdmontonPittsburgh at San Jose

Sunday’s gamesPhiladelphia at N.Y. RangersCalgary at FloridaVancouver at ColumbusNew Jersey at AnaheimWashington at MinnesotaLos Angeles at Vegas

Monday’s gamesColorado at DetroitEdmonton at Nashville

BY ERIK ERLENDSSON

Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. — Dominik Kuba-lik recorded a hat trick with three goals in the third period, and the Chicago Blackhawks rallied past the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 on Thursday night.

Slater Koekkoek scored his first goal of the season and Bran-don Saad added another score as Chicago beat the Lightning for the first time in regulation since Dec. 13, 2009.

The Blackhawks scored three goals in a span of 5:20 and five goals total in the third period to erase a two-goal deficit. Kubalik tied the game at 5:02, provided an insurance goal on the power play at 11:43 and capped it off with his third of the period into an empty net at 17:29.

“I’m really happy that it hap-pened,” said Kubalik, who has seven goals in his past seven games and leads all rookies with 29 on the season. “I have no idea (what’s clicking). I would like to know as well. I’m just trying to do the same thing, be around the net. I’ve been lucky.”

Kubalik is the third rookie in Blackhawks history to score three goals in one period, joining George Hay (Feb. 19, 1927) and Ryan Hartman (Jan. 8, 2017).

Chicago’s Corey Crawford fin-ished with 37 saves.

Tampa Bay had won eight con-secutive games against Chicago and was 14-0-2 in the last 16 meet-ings in the regular season.

Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point each had a goal and an as-sist for Tampa Bay, which lost its fourth consecutive game. Curtis McElhinney stopped 22 shots for the Lightning, who had been 28-0-4 on the season when entering the third period with the lead.

“You don’t see that happen very often and it hasn’t happenedto us too often,” Lightning headcoach Jon Cooper said. “It tendsto happen once per year. Youdon’t want it to happen, but it hap-pened tonight, and you just haveto make sure you don’t let it hap-pen again.”

Koekkoek, a 2012 first-roundpick by the Lightning who wastraded to Chicago last season, fired a shot from the right point through traffic for the eventualwinner. It was his first goal sinceApril 5.

“It felt amazing obviously,”Koekkoek said. “I was luckyenough to get the winner.”

After a combined eight power-play chances through the opening32 minutes of play, Point finallybroke through during even-strength play at 15:31 of the sec-ond period. He wheeled aroundthe zone from the left circle to thehigh slot and zipped a wrist shot through traffic for his 24th goal of the season.

Kubalik’s hat trickrallies Blackhawks

Roundup

Ritchie, Bruinsput away Stars

PHOTOS BY CHRIS O’MEARA/AP

Chicago Blackhawks left wing Dominik Kubalik, center, celebrates one of this three goals against the Lightning with defenseman Duncan Keith, right, and center Jonathan Toews during the third period of Thursday’s game in Tampa, Fla. Kubalik scored all three of his goals in the third period.

MICHAEL DWYER/AP

Dallas Stars goalie Ben Bishop sits on the ice after a goal by the Bruins’ Brad Marchand, left, during the second period of Thursday’s game in Boston. The NHL-leading Bruins won 4-3.

Lightning center Brayden Point reacts after his second-period goal. Point also had an assist.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 23Saturday, February 29, 2020

FROM BACK PAGE

“I definitely think I’m the best player in the draft,” Young declared. “I think I showed it on my tape. You can go to every game. I think I showed it. I definitely think I’ll put my best foot forward this year. I grinded hard. Two of my biggest things are my hard work and dedication and I’m going to bring those two to the NFL with me.”

Young is considered a generational tal-ent, but Joe Burrow, who led LSU to the national title, is expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the draft in April.

That selection is owned by the Cincinna-ti Bengals, and Burrow said this week he wouldn’t have any qualms playing for them despite their lack of Super Bowl success.

Burrow grew up in Athens, Ohio, about 2 ½ hours away, and he cracked this week that he’d be able to head out for some home cooking now and again if Cincinnati indeed selects him.

Young would be even closer to his home-town if the Washington Redskins grab him at No. 2.

He was raised in Upper Marlboro, Md., about 10 miles from FedExField, where the Redskins play.

“Yeah, I always watch the Redskins, the hometown team,” said Young, who insisted he wasn’t a fan of the team as much as he was of certain players such as Clinton Por-tis or the late Sean Taylor.

“It’d mean a lot, playing in front of my hometown people, it’d definitely be a bless-ing,” Young said. “Everybody who has known me since I was younger could come to a game and things like that. But right now, I’m not focused on who could draft me. I’m focused on being the best player, the best person, I could be and impress the coaches at the combine.”

New Redskins coach Ron Rivera de-murred this week when asked about se-lecting a generational talent such as Young with the second selection.

“Well, before we can do anything with the No. 2 pick, we got to see what happens with the No. 1 pick,” Rivera said. “So once that pick goes 1, we’ll go from there. But again, as I said, everything’s an option.”

Young was scheduled to meet with the Redskins on Friday, and Washington quar-

terback Dwayne Haskins, the Redskins’ first-round pick out of Ohio State a year ago, definitely hopes things go so well that the ’Skins don’t even consider trading the pick.

“Yeah, me and Dwayne talk all the time. I’ve known Dwayne since high school. He definitely loves the organization and obvi-ously wants me to come play with him,” Young said. “We’ll see how this whole thing turns out.”

Like many of the top players at their po-

sitions who don’t need to impress teams physically at the combine this week, Young isn’t going to showcase his skills during on-field drills at Lucas Oil Field with the rest of the defensive linemen Friday night.

“I chose — me and my team — we de-cided that because that first day of camp when I step on the field, I want to be the best player I can be. I don’t want to waste time trying to be a combine athlete,” Young said. “When I step on the field, I know, I need to know that I put my best foot for-

ward as far as being the best player I canbe.”

Young said he’ll do position drills at OhioState’s pro day instead, but he won’t runthe 40-yard dash there, either.

Bosa, who also avoided the combineworkouts a year ago when he was comingoff an injury, did impart some advice toYoung.

“He just told me to be myself,” Youngsaid. “That’s what I have been trying to do the whole time I’ve been here.”

ARNIE STAPLETON

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — The stars came out at night inside Lucas Oil Stadium, especially Henry Ruggs III who came up short in his quest to set a record but still clocked the fastest 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine.

A 4.27-second time in the 40 is nothing to scoff at, but Ruggs had hoped to run faster.

The 5-foot-11, 188-pound speed-ster from Alabama fell short of the record 4.22-second time set by Bengals wide receiver John Ross during a blazing 2017 run.

“I’m trying to hit the lowest ever,” Ruggs said earlier in the week. “So, 4.22 or lower.”

Ruggs said he had previously run the 40 in 4.25 seconds and felt he could top that in Indianapolis.

He was initially clocked at 4.28 on his first of two runs but the of-ficial time was recorded at 4.27 seconds. His second time was 4.31.

Ruggs did back up his other boast this week, when he said he was the fastest guy at the NFL scouting combine.

Quez Watkins of Southern Miss was the next-fastest at 4.35 sec-onds when the combine’s on-field workouts and 40-yard dash made their prime-time debut.

Ruggs, who is often compared to Tyreek Hill, also had a 42-inch vertical jump, which was tied for second-best among the receivers who later ran routes and and caught passes — along with the tight ends — from the

quarterback prospects (exclud-ing projected top overall pick Joe Burrow and a rehabbing TuaTagovailoa).

Utah State’s Jordan Love,around whom buzz has beenbuilding this week, shined dur-ing the second QB session afterOklahoma’s Jalen Hurts stood outin the first group. Oregon’s JustinHerbert also impressed.

Other receivers who stood outfrom an unusually deep groupwere LSU’s Justin Jefferson,Alabama’s Jerry Jeudy and Okla-hom’s CeeDee Lamb.

Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapletonon Twitter: http://twitter.com/arni-estapletonMore AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Alabama WR runs40 in 4.27 seconds

Ruggs fast, still short of all-time combine markNFL

Crop: Young hoping to follow in footsteps of former Ohio State teammate Bosa

DID YOU KNOW ?Bengals wide reciever John Ross, drafted ninth overall by Cincinnati out of the University of Washington in 2017, set the all-time NFL Draft combine mark of 4.22 seconds in the 40-yard dash.

SOURCE: Associated Press

MICHAEL CONROY/AP

Alabama wide receiver Henry Ruggs III runs the 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis on Thursday. Ruggs’ time of 4.27 was fastest at the combine this year.

DAVID PETKIEWICZ, CLEVELAND.COM/TNS

Defensive end Chase Young, right, is considered by many evaluators to be a once-in-a-generation talent coming out of Ohio State — one season after a similarly hyped player, 2019 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Nick Bosa. Like Bosa, Young is expected to be taken No. 2 by the Washington Redskins in the NFL Draft, one spot below Heisman Trophy-winning LSU quarterback Joe Burrow.

S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Saturday, February 29, 2020

SPORTS

MLS owners confident, optimistic ahead of 25th season » Page 19

NFL

Cream ofthe cropLike former teammate Bosa,

Ohio State DE Young figures

to make immediate impact

BY ARNIE STAPLETON

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS

Chase Young wants to follow infellow Ohio State star Nick Bosa’s NFL footsteps, and he probably won’t have to wait all that longto start.

The freakishly athletic defensive end who’s widely viewed as the best player coming out of college — just as Bosa was — figures to start off his pro career just as the 2019 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year did: as the second selection in the draft behind a hot-shot, Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.

Bosa helped to lead San Francisco to the Super Bowl after he watched Arizona make Kyler Murray of Oklahoma the top overall pick in last year’s draft.

“Nick, he’s al-ways setting the standard. That’s

just motivation for me to achieve a lot of real good things,” Young said on Thursday dur-

ing his media session at the NFL scouting combine.

“It’s definitely been a blessing to watch him

grow into the player that he is. He’s defi-nitely helped me along this pas-sage. He hasn’t stopped. I’m just

grateful to be able to see him grow.”And to follow suit.“It’s going to be exciting,” Young said. “I’m

definitely excited to play with the big dogs and excited to show the world what I can do.”

Like Bosa 11 months ago, Young is the con-sensus cream of this year’s crop, an All-Pro in waiting, said NFL Network draft analyst Dan-iel Jeremiah, who compares Young to Julius Peppers and Mario Williams.

SEE CROP ON PAGE 23

Buckeyes defensive end Chase Young, pictured above, enters the NFL Draft widely viewed as the best player coming out of

college — just like former Ohio State teammate Nick Bosa,left. Bosa was the 2019 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year,

helping lead the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl.

AP photos

‘ Nick (Bosa), he’s always setting the standard. That’s just motivation for me to achieve a lot of real good things. ’

Chase YoungOhio State defensive end, on the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, former teammate Nick Bosa

Best in the WestGonzaga wraps up eighth straight WCC title » College hoops, Page 20