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AFGHANISTAN

RAHMAT GUL/AP

Foreign security personnel and Afghan police arrive Friday at the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. Gunmen attacked a remembrance ceremony, killing at least 32 people .

BY PHILLIP WALTER WELLMAN

Stars and Stripes

Gunfire killed dozens of people at a memo-rial in Kabul attended by senior Afghan gov-ernment officials Friday.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website .

At least 32 people were killed and more than 50 others were injured in the violence that started at about 11:30 a.m., Afghanistan’s Health Ministry and security officials said Friday. The Afghan Interior Ministry said over 80 people were injured and some are in

critical condition. All of those killed or injured were civilians, Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called the attack “a crime against humanity and against the national unity of Afghanistan,” in a Twit-ter statement.

The ceremony in the city’s west, relatively far from most U.S. forces in the city, marked the 1995 death of Afghan Shiite leader Abdul Ali Mazari.

SEE KABUL ON PAGE 4

BY DAN LAMOTHE

The Washington Post

KABUL, Afghanistan — A new net-work of special operations forces will serve as the backbone of a smaller U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, hunting Islamic State fighters as the U.S. withdraws and providing fire-power against the Taliban if a peace agreement with the group crumbles, military officials said.

The network was established as Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepared to shrink the number of U.S. troops last summer while the Trump admin-istration negotiated a U.S. troop with-

drawal deal with the Taliban. The idea was to improve coordina-

tion between coalition and Afghanforces, relying on WhatsApp to share information, in a way that would stillbe possible if the number of U.S. ser-vice members shrinks.

The force is designed to “with-stand any change in policy, whatever that may be, or a change in any con-ditions on the ground,” said a seniorU.S. military official, speaking on thecondition of anonymity because of thesensitive nature of the operations. The force will work with coalition part-ners, “but the core of it will obviouslybe U.S.,” the official said.

SEE SECURITY ON PAGE 4

ISIS claims responsibility for deadly attack in Kabul

Trump signs $8.3B bill to combat coronavirus outbreak in US » Page 6

Volume 78, No. 230A ©SS 2020 CONTINGENCY EDITION SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2020 stripes.com Free to Deployed Areas

New special ops network will serve as security backbone ahead of US pullout

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, March 7, 2020

EXCHANGE RATES

T O D A YIN STRIPES

American Roundup ..... 14Comics/Crossword ...... 16Gadgets .................... 13 Health & Fitness ........ 12Opinion ..................... 15 Sports ...................17-24Video Games .............. 11

Military ratesEuro costs (March 9)........................$1.1633Dollar buys (March 9) ......................€0.8596British pound (March 9) ...................... $1.33Japanese yen (March 9) ....................104.00South Korean won (March 9) ......... 1161.00Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................0.3766British pound .....................................$1.3028Canada (Dollar) ................................... 1.3414China (Yuan) ........................................6.9277Denmark (Krone) ................................6.5823Egypt (Pound) ................................... 15.6402Euro .......................................... $1.1348/.8812Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................. 7.7695Hungary (Forint) .................................295.20Israel (Shekel) .................................... 3.4915Japan (Yen) ...........................................105.20Kuwait (Dinar) .................................... 0.3054Norway (Krone) ................................... 9.2476Philippines (Peso)................................. 50.71Poland (Zloty) ......................................... 3.78Saudi Arabia (Riyal) .......................... 3.7531Singapore (Dollar) ............................. 1.3777South Korea (Won) .......................... 1190.23

Switzerland (Franc)............................0.9326Thailand (Baht) ..................................... 31.43 Turkey (Lira) .........................................6.0940(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, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 4.25Discount rate .......................................... 1.75Federal funds market rate ................... 1.093-month bill ............................................. 0.6130-year bond ........................................... 1.57

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain71/63

Baghdad69/58

Doha77/57

KuwaitCity

75/61

Riyadh83/65

Djibouti84/72

Kandahar58/41

Kabul45/33

SATURDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST SUNDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa45/34

Guam80/76

Tokyo46/39

Okinawa71/67

Sasebo56/51

Iwakuni54/47

Seoul55/33

Osan63/32 Busan

56/40

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

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

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

50/35

Ramstein43/37

Stuttgart42/35

Lajes,Azores65/61

Rota65/50

Morón65/43 Sigonella

58/42

Naples53/49

Aviano/Vicenza51/35

Pápa48/39

Souda Bay62/53

SATURDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels48/33

Zagan40/36

Drawsko Pomorskie

42/38

BUSINESS/WEATHER

Mortgages at record low due to virus Associated Press

Long-term U.S. mortgage rates have sunk to a record low, giving many homeowners an opening to refinance their loans to free up money to spend or save.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage hit a record low of 3.29% this week from 3.45% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. The decline is being driven by investors shift-ing money out of the stock market

and into the safety of U.S. Trea-surys as the coronavirus outbreak has deepened. Long-term mort-gage rates tend to track the yields on the 10-year Treasury note, so they typically fall in tandem.

The new 3.29% average rate is the lowest for a 30-year fixed mortgage since Freddie Mac started tracking such rates in 1971. On Thursday Freddie Mac’s survey of loan rates also showed the average rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage sliding this week

to 2.79% from 2.95% last week. The 15-year rate is now at its low-est level since 1991.

A steady decline of mortgage rates has created a potential boon for would-be home buyers as well as for homeowners who can refinance into lower-rate loans. Refinancings can lower monthly payments and in some cases allow homeowners to tap additional cash from the equity in their home.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3Saturday, March 7, 2020

BY NIKKI WENTLING

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Two Repub-lican senators introduced legisla-tion Thursday that would restrict foreign military students from obtaining firearms and establish a more thorough vetting process for the students before they are allowed access to U.S. military bases.

The Secure U.S. Bases Act aims to improve security following a deadly shooting Dec. 6 at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla., where a Saudi officer who was train-ing on the base killed three U.S. sailors and injured eight other people. The bill was introduced by Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Rick Scott, R-Fla., who heard from Pentagon officials this week about security weaknesses that led to the Pensacola attack.

Garry Reid, director for de-fense intelligence, told senators Wednesday that Pentagon proce-dures meant to detect and prevent threats at U.S. military bases did not cover international military students. Further, the Pentagon is “overly reliant” on the State Department’s vetting procedures for these students and the agen-cies fail to share information, he said. There are also loopholes that allow foreign military students to purchase firearms, despite re-strictions for nonimmigrant visa holders.

“The tragic events at Pensac-ola underscore the unacceptable shortfalls in our security stan-dards and vetting procedures,” Ernst said in a statement. “We must do more to protect our mili-tary personnel and ensure the se-curity of our facilities.”

The Secure U.S. Bases Act would create a new visa category for foreign military students that would prohibit them from pos-sessing or acquiring a firearm

except for specific use in theirtraining programs. The shooter inthe Pensacola attack, MohammedAlshamrani, a second lieuten-ant in the Royal Saudi Air Force, was able to buy a semiautomatic handgun with a hunting license.

The bill would also requiremembers of foreign militaries toget an official endorsement let-ter from the chief of intelligenceof their countries when apply-ing for U.S. military training.Students would also have to be fingerprinted and undergo an in-person interview and extensive background check that would include a review of their social media activity. The U.S. direc-tor of national intelligence wouldhave to make the final decisionon whether to admit students into the program.

The thoroughness of the vetting process came into question during the investigation of the Pensacolashooting, which was deemed an act of terrorism. Alshamrani was motivated by “jihadist ideology”and had posted anti-Americanmessages on social media, Attor-ney General William Barr said.

During the FBI’s investigation into the attack, 21 Saudi studentswere expelled from the UnitedStates for having “derogatorymaterial” on their computers andphones, Barr said.

Finally, the act would order thedefense secretary to develop risk profiles for each country that par-ticipates in the training program.Those risk profiles would be used when deciding whether to admitstudents.

“This terrorist should neverhave been allowed in our country,let alone on an American military base with easy access to Ameri-can military men and women,”Scott said of [email protected]: @nikkiwentling

BY NIKKI WENTLING

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs has unlawfully turned away veterans with other-than-honorable discharges for decades because of flawed training and guidance that created a “cycle of misinformation,” a report released Thursday found.

VA staff often reject such veterans on the spot rather than telling them to fill out ap-plications for health care, sending a writ-ten denial and informing them about their options to appeal, the report says. While other-than-honorable discharges, com-monly known as “bad paper,” can preclude

veterans from some VA services, that’s not always the case — particularly with men-tal health care.

The gay veterans group OUTVETS, along with the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School, authored the report. They based findings on interviews with veterans, evidence from veterans advo-cates and legal aid attorneys, and docu-ments obtained from the VA and Defense Department.

Dana Montalto, an instructor at the Vet-erans Legal Clinic, said veterans are being denied due process.

The VA did not maintain records of vet-erans with bad paper who were rejected on the spot, but the report’s authors estimated

numbers in the tens of thousands since 1980. There are about 400,000 veterans who are at risk of being denied care today, they wrote.

“By its very nature, the turn-away prob-lem is one in which usually no record is created, and as a result no VA documen-tation exists. It is therefore impossible to know definitively how many veterans were wrongly denied care, where they are lo-cated, and when it occurred,” the report states. “The pattern, however, is clear: VA’s denial of care to veterans with bad paper discharges is national, persistent, and sys-temic. Its impact on some of our most vul-nerable veterans can be harmful or even deadly.”

Veterans receive other-than-honorabledischarges for a host of reasons, includingserious crimes. However, service memberswith bad paper were, in many cases, un-justly released from the military becauseof infractions that stemmed from mental health issues.

The Government Accountability Office found that tens of thousands of Iraq andAfghanistan veterans who were separated from the military for misconduct had suf-fered from post-traumatic stress disorder,traumatic brain injury or another mentalhealth disorder.

[email protected]: @nikkiwentling

MILITARY

BY TONY CAPACCIO

Bloomberg

The Navy’s newest Virginia-class submarines are expected to be 10 to 15 months late as con-tractors General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries try to recover from assembly faults that have dogged recent boats in the $161 billion program.

The average delay of 10 ½ months is an increase from a seven-month average cited a year ago by the Naval Sea Systems Command for 10 vessels being built under a 2014 contract, ac-cording to a comparison of dates in Navy budget documents. The contractors, rival shipbuilders who are producing the subma-rines together, had sought to shave months off of previous con-struction periods.

The latest delay estimates may raise fresh concerns in Congress about whether the companies have the personnel, expertise and shipyard capacity to juggle three major projects: the 10 “Block IV” vessels now under construc-

tion, as many as 10 more under a “Block V” contract signed in De-cember and the start of construc-tion later this year on the Navy’s new $128 billion Columbia-class submarine program.

The Virginia-class is the mil-itary’s primary submarine for land, surface and anti-submarine attack missions, with cruise mis-siles and torpedoes. It’s also capa-ble of carrying Navy SEALs and is envisioned as a future platform for launching underwater drones. The Columbia will be the nation’s new launcher of intercontinental ballistic missiles to replace the current Ohio class.

Adding to the complexity for the shipbuilders, the next round of Virginia-class submarines will be 30% larger than their prede-cessors because they’ll have a new “payload module” to carry additional weapons, according to Bryan Clark, a naval analyst and senior fellow at the Hudson Insti-tute in Washington. Lawmakers are seeking to add a second Block V submarine to one requested by the Navy for next year.

“The shipbuilders will need to accelerate their efforts to ef-ficiently use assembly space and get their workforce more profi-cient,” Clark said.

The estimated delivery delays for the Virginia class include nine months for the USS Vermont, which is supposed to be deliv-ered next month; 12 months for the USS Oregon, now scheduled for a November delivery; and 15 months for the third, the USS Montana, now scheduled for Au-gust 2021 instead of May of this year, according to delivery dates in Navy budget documents con-firmed by the Naval Sea Systems Command. It said in a statement that “delivery schedules are ex-pected to improve by the end of the block.”

The Naval Sea Systems Com-mand said in a statement that “the cumulative factors impact-ing delivery include limited floor space in assembly facilities to move multiple submarine mod-ules through the assembly pro-cess, material availability, and an inexperienced workforce.”

More vetting of foreign military students sought

Report: VA unlawfully denies health care access for vets with ‘bad paper’

Documents show longer delays on Navy’s $161B Virginia-class subs

ALFRED A. COFFIELD/U.S. Navy

Sailors aboard the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS New Hampshire haul in mooring lines to dock the 7,800-ton submarine at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., in July . Assembly faults have led to delays on the Navy’s newest Virginia-class submarines.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

FROM FRONT PAGE

The network, which has not previously been disclosed to the public, was detailed to The Wash-ington Post as military officials seek to reassure U.S. and Afghan citizens that the U.S. can still pro-vide security in coming months.

The initial version is expected to withstand any cuts as the U.S. military presence shrinks from about 12,000 service members to 8,600 over the span of 135 days under the terms of a deal reached with the Taliban on Feb. 29. U.S. officials did not reveal how many people the network includes, but the senior military official said it is built to function with a few thousand U.S. troops in Afghani-stan or less.

The deal, negotiated for more than a year, calls for the U.S. to withdraw all of its service mem-bers within 14 months if the Tal-iban meets certain requirements, including beginning negotiations with the Afghan government to end the war and ensuring that Afghan soil is not used to plot or carry out attacks against the U.S. or its allies.

But U.S. officials have described the timeline as “aspirational,” cit-ing concerns about whether the Taliban will follow through on its obligations. The U.S. withdrawal will be “conditions-based,” the officials have said, repeatedly de-clining to offer specifics.

On Wednesday, the uncertainty was underscored by 43 Taliban attacks and a U.S. airstrike tar-geting the group in Helmand province, said Army Col. Sonny Leggett, a U.S. military spokes-man. The U.S. strike, the first in 11 days anywhere in the country, was carried out in defense of Af-ghan forces, Leggett said.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, downplayed the recent at-tacks in testimony before the Sen-ate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, saying they oc-curred at “small, little outposts,” and that cities have not been hit.

The complexities of the coun-terterrorism arrangement in the deal with the Taliban have not been released to the public, but Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday that documents known as “implementing ar-rangements” address the issue.

As the U.S. has explored whether its relationship with the Taliban can evolve, it has contin-ued to carry out strikes against ISIS. Leggett tweeted Tuesday that U.S. forces had killed 18 ISIS fighters in Konar province in re-cent days.

Miller, in an interview last week in his office, said “there will probably be something there” for the U.S. military in Afghani-

stan as long as the U.S. believes there are “national interests to safeguard.”

“What I do understand about Afghanistan is there are no straight lines,” Miller said. “You have to understand that you have multiple paths forward, and ide-ally based on our assessment and judgment, we are taking the cor-rect path.”

Miller, who previously com-

manded the elite Joint Special Operations Command, directed Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue to design the network. Donahue incorporated lessons learned in Syria, where he oversaw forces fighting ISIS, and other opera-tions involving JSOC, U.S. mili-tary officials said.

The force includes “regional targeting teams” primarily com-prising special operations troops

in locations where the U.S. plans to maintain a presence.

At the center of the network isthe Combined Situational Aware-ness Room, or CSAR, on a base in Kabul. Primarily comprising members of Afghanistan’s secu-rity forces, it gathers informationabout Taliban and ISIS attacks, combines it with other reports,and passes it on for possibleaction.

On a recent afternoon in theCSAR, Afghan officers moni-tored video screens and waded through WhatsApp messages ontheir phones.

“Attention to CSAR!” Afghan officers yelled in English asnew reports of Taliban attacksarrived.

An Afghan lieutenant colonel,speaking on the condition of ano-nymity because of his role, saidAfghans typically work 24 hoursat a time in the CSAR, and thengo home to their families. Mostlive within driving distance — a major reason the operations cen-ter was moved in the past fewmonths from 45 miles north atBagram Airfield.

“We chose the best officers,”said the Afghan officer direct-ing the CSAR. “Most of them areWestern-educated.”

The teams are typically led by an American major or lieu-tenant colonel and report to theCSAR, which is commanded by Donahue, who leads NATOSpecial Operations ComponentCommand-Afghanistan.

The network first providedmajor assistance in June, when it helped stave off Taliban attackson Afghan forces after Ramadan,the senior U.S. military official said. In the following months, theU.S. military boosted airstrikes,reaching a crescendo of 918 in September, according to AirForce statistics.

The strikes occurred as the network assisted Afghan forcesin taking back swaths of north-ern Afghanistan in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Takhar and Kunduzprovinces, the senior military official said. The majority of theoperations consisted of Afghan forces maneuvering down a road as airstrikes killed a few dozenTaliban fighters ahead of them.

“It’s not rocket science,” the of-ficial said. “It just works.”

Saturday, March 7, 2020

MIDEAST

Security: Network expected to withstand cuts as US presence shrinks

FROM FRONT PAGE

The Islamic State-Khorasan affiliate has frequently attacked Shiite communities, who it con-siders apostates to Islam.

Last year, ISIS-K targeted the same ceremony, killing at least three people and wound-ing over 20 others.

“We had tight security for this event today,” Rahimi said, in light of last year’s violence. An investigation to determine

what went wrong is underway, he said.

Afghan special police forces arrived at the scene shortly after the attack began, Kabul police spokesman Ferdous Far-amarz said.

The Taliban, who have been criticized by U.S. and Afghan officials for increasing violence across the country after last weekend’s peace deal with the U.S., quickly denied involve-

ment in the attack. Afghan Chief Executive

Abdullah Abdullah, the coun-try’s No. 2 official, was evacu-ated safely from the scene, Abdullah’s spokesman Faridoon Khwazoon said. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai also attended the memorial and is safe, Tolo News reported.Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report. [email protected]: pwwellman

Kabul: Investigation into attack underway

TAMANA SARWARY/AP

British soldiers arrive near the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday .

Associated Press

PARIS — The U.S. special rep-resentative for Iran said Thurs-day the Islamic Republic must “immediately” ensure inspec-tors have access to sites that har-bor traces of nuclear material or activity.

The finding was made public in a report this week by the inter-national nuclear watchdog, which said Iran is denying access.

In one of two confidential re-ports, the International Atomic Energy Agency identified three locations where Iran possibly stored undeclared nuclear ma-

terial or conducted activities without declaring them to in-ternational observers. The As-sociated Press saw the report to member countries. The other report said Iran nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since November, violating a deal with world powers.

The IAEA said its request for access to two of the sites was de-nied, although the nuclear-related activities are thought to date from the early 2000s.

The spokesman for Iran’s nu-clear agency, Behrouz Kamal-vandi, responded Wednesday that

requests for access must have a legal basis, according to Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency. He didn’t elaborate.

The U.S. official, Brian Hook, said the access is required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty to which Iran is a signa-tory, meaning it must provide ac-cess “immediately.”

“Iran must be held to the same standards as every one of the other 190 parties” to the treaty, he said during a meeting with a group of reporters.

Hook was in Paris to meet his French, German and British

counterparts, signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that the Trump administration pulled out of in 2018. The U.S. wants a more inclusive deal that address-es ballistic missiles and Iran’s regional ambitions in Syria and elsewhere. Instead, Washington has levied punishing economic sanctions on Iran as part of its “maximum pressure“ campaign against Iran.

While noting the three Eu-ropean nations have “tactical disagreements” with the United States, he stressed their common concern that Iran not obtain nu-

clear arms.China and Russia also are sig-

natories to the deal, the Joint Com-prehensive Plan of Action, whichpromised Iran economic incen-tives in return for curbs on its nu-clear program. Those incentiveshave failed to materialize, along with European efforts to create amechanism allowing Iran to get around U.S. sanctions that has yet to get off the ground. Iran, in turn, has incrementally violatedthe deal’s restrictions with mea-sures it maintains are reversible in what it says is a “maximum re-sistance“ campaign.

US Iran representative says Tehran must let inspectors into nuke site


BY KENT HARRIS

Stars and Stripes

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — The 31st Fighter Wing has 134 people in isolation or self-quaran-tine and has instructed everyone to keep their distance from oth-ers in public amid coronavirus concerns, officials said during a virtual town hall meeting.

Medical workers have screened many people and told them to re-main in their homes or barracks as a precaution, officials said Thursday during the meeting, streamed on Facebook Live.

There are no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus among the base population. However, it wasn’t clear whether any person-nel have been tested, and base officials did not immediately re-spond to a request for comment Friday.

The base does not have the ability to test for the virus but could have personnel tested at the Italian hospital in Udine or Land-stuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, said Lt. Col. Mark Dudley, commander of the 31st Aerospace Medical Squadron.

The people in self-quarantine more than likely have the flu, “however, we cannot disassociate or tell the difference” because of the lack of coronavirus testing at Aviano, Dudley said.

Officials also directed every-one to maintain at least 1 meter of distance from each other, on or off base. That directive, which follows the lead of Italy’s guid-ance, will last until at least April 3, said Lt. Col. Matthew Lund, the

wing’s staff judge advocate.No one in Pordenone, the prov-

ince where Aviano is located, has tested positive for the virus, The Associated Press reported Friday.

The government of the greater Friuli Venezia Giulia region in northeast Italy, which includes Aviano, reported Thursday that 22 people had tested positive for the virus. All the cases were in the cities of Udine, Trieste or Gorizia.

Italy called for all of its public schools in the country to close through March 15, and both Avi-ano and U.S. Army Garrison Italy are doing the same. In the south, schools on Navy bases in Naples and Sigonella remained open as of Thursday.

Students are continuing their studies via online learning, school officials at Aviano said. Most of the courses have been reviews of already acquired learning, but new subject matter will be intro-duced if schools remain shuttered, Aviano Middle/High School Prin-cipal Ken Harvey said.

Brig. Gen. Daniel T. Lasica, the wing commander, said he knows that many are concerned about the virus , and some are strug-gling to take care of children on their own, or pay for child care. He urged airmen to talk to their leaders if they needed help.

“We need to have those conver-sations,” Lasica said.

There are currently no restric-tions on moves to or from new duty stations, Aviano officials said. However, Army officials at Vicenza, about 90 minutes south-

west of Aviano, said Wednesday they’ve received reports of some troops being quarantined upon arrival in the United States.

The Army is developing a poli-cy to deal with the “literally tens of thousands” of soldiers and ci-vilians who travel to bases world-wide, Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier said Friday at a virtual town hall in Vicenza.

“This is a big Army problem,” he said. “The policy is going to apply Army-wide and affect a huge number of families.”

Quarantines would not count against annual or sick leave, and those placed in quarantine would be housed at no expense to them-selves, said Cloutier, commander of U.S. Army Africa.

Aviano officials said person-nel are expected to follow State Department and Italian travel restrictions unless they have of-ficial approval, which effectively cuts off Friuli Venezia Giulia from the rest of Italy.

Meanwhile, the base exchange is rationing a few products, in-cluding hand sanitizers, and has rearranged the food court and checkout counters to meet the 1-meter guidelines. But new ship-ments continue to come in as scheduled.

Also, the base theater will be closed through April 3 as part of guidance to avoid large crowds, officials said. Some classes of-fered through the community center will continue.Stars and Stripes reporter Nancy Montgomery contributed to this [email protected]

BY KIM GAMEL

Stars and Stripes

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean woman who works at Camp Humphreys has tested positive for COVID-19, officials said Friday, the first confirmed case linked to the U.S. mili-tary outside the hard-hit area of Daegu.

The announcement raised to seven the number of people affili-ated with U.S. Forces Korea who have been infected, including a soldier and his wife.

However, the other six were connected to bases in the south-eastern area of Daegu, which is the epicenter of the outbreak that began in mid-February and has led to more than 6,000 infections nationwide.

The latest employee “is cur-rently in isolation at her off-base residence in Cheonan,” an area near Camp Humphreys, as di-rected by the Korea Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, USFK said in a press release.

Humphreys garrison com-mander Col. Michael Tremblay said she took the COVID-19 test on Thursday , and the results came back positive earlier Friday.

“It is the first positive case on Camp Humphreys,” Tremblay said in a Facebook live update for the community.

Officials tracking her move-ments using closed-circuit TV and electronic records have de-termined that she visited Star-bucks and the post exchange in the main shopping area on post on Feb. 26, Tremblay said.

She also went to her office on Thursday, he added, without iden-tifying the building or her job. She had taken leave in-between those dates.

Tremblay said the people who had come in close contact with her have been self-quarantined, and the areas she visited have been cleaned.

“We believe we have signifi-cantly mitigated that risk,” he said.

The garrison, which is home to USFK headquarters and has a population of more 37,000, also reimposed ID checks at the en-trances of its post exchange fa-cilities and the commissary to ensure only authorized buyers can enter.

“This is strictly a precaution-ary measure and not meant to be an enduring thing,” Tremblay said. “It’s meant as a control mea-sure in response to COVID-19.”

USFK, which commands some 28,500 American troops on the divided peninsula, has restricted access to Camp Humphreys and

other installations, barred ser-vice members from nonessential outside activities and implement-ed health checks at entry gates tocontain the virus.

USFK’s public affairs office said Friday it has decided to an-nounce total numbers, status ofisolation, location and contacttracing going forward.

“My assessment is this is thenew ‘normal’ where we haveCOVID-19 cases weekly if notdaily,” spokesman Col. Lee Pe-ters said in an email, adding thatit’s a matter of “when and where,”not “if” COVID-19 happens.

U.S. and South Korean healthprofessionals “are actively con-ducting contact tracing to deter-mine whether anyone else mayhave been exposed,” USFK said.

The command has announced six other cases, including a sol-dier and his wife, the spouse of anactive-duty service member, thespouse of a civilian Defense De-partment employee, the widowof a military retiree and another South Korean employee.

Previous cases were all in thesoutheastern city of Daegu orsurrounding areas, which havebeen hardest hit by the respira-tory virus as South Korea’s over-all toll increased to 6,284, with 42deaths.

Officials have said the previousinfections occurred off post, butthey were waiting for the contact trace investigation to be complet-ed in the recent case.

USFK said it “remains at risklevel ‘high’ peninsula-wide andis implementing all appropriatecontrol measures to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”

Most of the South Korean cases have been in Daegu and sur-rounding areas.

The pneumonia-like diseasehas symptoms that are similarto the flu or a common cold andis believed to be spread throughdroplets or close contact.

The best way to prevent it is bywashing your hands thoroughlyand frequently, avoiding con-tact with sick people and staying home if you are experiencing symptoms, authorities [email protected]: @kimgamel

VIRUS OUTBREAK

NORMAN LLAMAS/Stars and Stripes

Signs limiting the number of disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer to three per customer are posted at the commissary at Aviano Air Base, Italy, on Thursday. Hand sanitizer had been out of stock for several days, but wipes remained in stock.

USFK: 1st case tied to military outside Daegu

No positive cases at Aviano but 134 people in isolation

‘ My assessment is this is the new ‘normal’ where we have COVID-19 cases weekly if not daily. ’

Col. Lee PetersUSFK spokesman


VIRUS OUTBREAK

Trump approves $8.3B measure to combat virus

Virus pop-up shop opens in DC

Army researchers work on vaccines

BY ANDREW TAYLOR

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than a dozen people in the U.S. and infected more than 200.

The legislation provides fed-eral public health agencies with money for vaccines, tests and potential treatments and helps state and local governments pre-pare and respond to the threat. The rapid spread of the virus has rocked financial markets, inter-rupted travel and threatens to affect everyday life in the United States.

Trump had planned to sign the bill during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion in Atlanta. But he told report-ers Friday that concerns were raised about “one person who was potentially infected” who worked at the CDC. Trump said the per-son has since tested negative for the new virus, and the CDC was added to his schedule on Friday.

The Senate passed the $8.3 bil-lion measure Thursday to help tackle the outbreak in hopes of reassuring a fearful public and accelerating the government’s response to the virus. Its rapid spread is threatening to upend ev-eryday life in the U.S. and across the globe.

The money would pay for a mul-tifaceted attack on a virus that is spreading more widely every day, sending financial markets spiral-ing again Thursday, disrupting travel and potentially threatening the U.S. economy’s decade-long expansion.

Thursday’s sweeping 96-1 vote sends the bill to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cast the sole “no” vote. The House passed the bill Wednesday by a 415-2 vote.

The plan would more than tri-ple the $2.5 billion amount out-lined by the White House 10 days ago. The Trump proposal was im-mediately discarded by members of Congress from both parties. Instead, the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate Appro-priations committees negotiated the increased figure and other provisions of the legislation in a burst of bipartisan cooperation

that’s common on the panel but increasingly rare elsewhere in Washington.

“In situations like this, I be-lieve no expense should be spared to protect the American people, and in crafting this package none was,” said Appropriations Com-mittee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “It’s an aggressive plan, a vigorous plan that has received an overwhelming positive reaction.”

Trump was sure to sign the measure, which has almost uni-versal support. It is intended to project confidence and calm as anxiety builds over the impact of the virus, which has claimed more than a dozen lives in the U.S.

“The American people are looking for leadership and want assurance that their government is up to the task of protecting their health and safety,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The impact of the outbreak continues to mount. The Brit-ish government is considering suspending Parliament for five months in hope of limiting the spread of the virus in the United Kingdom.

The legislation would provide federal public health agencies money for vaccines, tests and po-tential treatments, including $300 million to deliver such drugs to those who need it. More than $2 billion would go to help federal, state and local governments pre-pare for and respond to the coro-navirus threat. An additional $1.3 billion would be used to help fight the virus overseas. There’s also funding to subsidize $7 billion in small business loans.

Other dollars would be directed to help local officials prepare for the potential worsening of the out-break and subsidize treatment by community health centers. Medi-care rules would be loosened to enable remote “telehealth” con-sultations whereby sick people could get treatment without visit-ing a doctor.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., whose state is at the center of the crisis, praised the bill because it “will increase access for public lab testing, help pay for isolation and quarantine, help pay for sani-tizing in public areas, better track the virus and those who might come into contact with it, help labs who are trying to identify hot spots, and limit exposure.”

BY ASHRAF KHALIL

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The nation’s capital has pop-up shops for food and drink, even marijuana. And now, coronavirus prevention supplies.

As local stores sell out of masks and hand sanitizer, Adilisha Pa-trom, owner of a co-working and event space next to Gallaudet University, saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

Inside, her storefront, different models of face masks and hand sanitizer bottles in various sizes are displayed along with a stack of information sheets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Florida native who came to Washington to attend Howard University, Patrom, 29, sells her

masks for between $5 and $20, depending on the model. She also puts together prevention kits with masks, surgical gloves and sani-tizer, which sell for $20 to $30.

The high-end N95 masks are priced at about twice what they sell for on Amazon. But Patrom says her goal isn’t to get rich. Rather, she sees the shop as a ser-vice to the community and says discounts are available to those in need and to senior citizens, who are most vulnerable to the virus.

“I just feel so blessed to have, just to have the ability,” to stock up on supplies, she said.

The idea started with a health crisis in her own family; Patrom’s father was diagnosed with a blood cancer in November. With her fa-ther’s immune system weakened by ongoing chemotherapy treat-ments, Patrom bought boxes of

N95 facemasks, which are con-sidered superior to the basic sur-gical masks.

Both she and her father wearthe masks routinely when going to the grocery store or elsewhere around town.

As the global coronavirus deathtoll increased and the virus beganmaking inroads in the U.S., Pa-trom decided to stock up on handsanitizers and open her shop.So far, business has been slow.Patrom said she has only madethree sales since opening earlythis week. The majority of hervisitors, she says, are just seekingbasic information and walkingaway with a CDC fact sheet.

“I think people haven’t startedfreaking out yet,” she said. “A lotof people are just waiting for thatfirst (local case).”

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The De-fense Department is ratcheting up its efforts against coronavirus as Army researchers work to de-velop a vaccine for the illness.

Army medical research-ers said Thursday that the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are working on testing and developing two vaccines, or “candidates,” that could be used potentially to combat coronavi-rus, officially named COVID-19. The team is working in coordina-tion with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health.

The Army has received a sam-

ple of the coronavirus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was taken from an American patient in Wash-ington state, Dr. Kayvon Mod-jarrad, the director of emerging infectious diseases at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon.

Researchers are testing the vaccines on mice. The next step will be to test the vaccines on larger animals. Then the first phase study is small groups of humans.

It is still expected to take 12 to 18 months before a vaccine is avail-able to the general population.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Sec-retary Mark Esper told reporters that the efforts underway in South Korea have been a good model for

protecting people from the virus,such as teams wiping down sur-faces and people changing socialinteractions.

He said next week he will re-ceive a plan on how the Pentagonwould carry out its own preven-tion and mitigation measures inthe building in case an employee is diagnosed with coronavirus. If there was an outbreak at the Pen-tagon, he said they are confident the department can continue to perform its functions.

“Our national military com-mand center has the capability to go for weeks at a time if theyhave to be locked down inside the building if we have some type ofoutbreak,” Esper [email protected]: @caitlinmkenney

NATHAN ELLGREN/AP

Adilisha Patrom organizes face masks, hand sanitizer and other supplies inside her pop-up shop on Thursday, in Washington.

‘ I believe no expense should be spared to protect the American people. ’

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.appropriations committee chairman


VIRUS OUTBREAK

Associated Press

BANGKOK — Crossing more borders, the new coronavirus hit a milestone Friday, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and the vast masses in between.

The virus, which has killed nearly 3,400 people, edged into more and more U.S. states, popped up in at least four new countries and even breached the halls of the Vatican. It forced mosques in Iran and beyond to halt weekly Muslim prayers. It brought Is-raeli and Palestinian authorities together to block pilgrims from Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem. And it upended Japan’s plans for the Olympic torch parade.

“Who is going to feed their families?” asked Elias al-Arja, head of a hotel owners’ union in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occu-pied West Bank, where tourists have been banned and the storied Church of the Nativity shuttered.

The 100,000 figure of global infections is largely symbolic but dwarfs other major outbreaks in recent decades. SARS, MERS and Ebola affected far fewer people but had higher mortality rates.

The economic impact grew along with the number of infected people. World stocks and the price of oil dropped sharply again Fri-day. A sharp drop in travel and a broader economic downturn linked to the outbreak threatened

to hit already-struggling commu-nities for months to come.

The head of the U.N.’s food agency, the World Food Program, warned of the potential for “abso-lute devastation” as the outbreak’s effects ripple through Africa and the Middle East.

India scrambled to stave off an epidemic that could overwhelm its under-funded and under-staffed health care system, with not nearly enough labs or hospi-tals for its 1.3 billion people.

Yet even as COVID-19, the dis-ease caused by the virus, reached new territory, it was retreating in China, where it first emerged late last year, and slowing in South Korea, another major epicenter.

More than half of those who contracted the virus have now re-covered, and U.S. health officials said they expect a far lower death rate than the World Health Orga-nization’s international estimate of 3.4% — a high rate that doesn’t account for mild cases that go uncounted.

The fear and the crackdowns that swept through China are now shifting westward, as workers in Europe and the U.S. stay home, authorities vigorously sanitize public places and consumers flock to stores for household staples.

“The Western world is now fol-lowing some of China’s playbook,” said Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at the financial firm IG.

The spectacle of a cruise ship ordered to stay at sea off the California coast over virus fears replicated ones weeks ago on the

other side of the globe in which hundreds of people were infected on a ship even during a quaran-tine. Thailand on Friday blocked a separate cruise ship from docking, worried that it carried dozens of passengers from Italy, the center of Europe’s epidemic, which has 148 virus deaths. No one on that ship was known to be infected.

In the U.S. the number of cases passed 230 people scattered across 18 states. China reported 143 new cases Friday, the same as a day earlier and about one-third what the country was seeing a week ago. Just a month ago, China was reporting several thousand new cases a day. The problem has now flipped, with the outbreak moving to Europe — where Italy, Germany and France had the most cases — and beyond.

South Korea reported 505 addi-tional cases Friday, down from a

high of 851 on Tuesday.The new virus has spread to

about 90 countries. The Neth-erlands reported its first virus death Friday while Serbia, Slo-vakia, Peru and Cameroon an-nounced their first infections. Even Vatican City was hit, with the tiny city-state confirming its first case Friday but not say-ing who was infected. The Vati-can has insisted that 83-year-old Pope Francis, who has been sick, only has a cold.

The new coronavirus is known to affect the elderly more than other groups.

And in the United States, offi-cials in Washington state are so concerned about having space to care for the sick they were ex-pected to close a $4 million deal Friday to take over a roadside motel. The plan to turn the 84-room EconoLodge into a quaran-tine facility was not sitting well

with everyone, including the po-lice chief.

To the south, cruise passengersawaited test results aboard theGrand Princess ship. The vessel, with 3,500 aboard, was ordered to stay at sea after a traveler from its previous voyage died of thecoronavirus and at least four oth-ers were infected. The cruise linesaid samples were collected from45 passengers and crew members and results were expected laterFriday.

The Grand Princess is operated by the same line as the DiamondPrincess, which was quarantinedat a Japanese port last month. More than 700 people on boardwere infected.

In a sign of hope, a woman in-fected with the virus gave birth toa girl in Qom, the Iranian Shiite holy city particularly hard-hit bythe virus.

Infection cases pass 100K mark

Iran warns it could use ‘force’ to halt travel between cities

EBRAHIM NOROOZI/AP

A firefighter disinfects a traditional shopping center to help prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in northern Tehran, Iran, on Friday .

Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian authorities warned Friday they may use “force” to limit travel between cities and announced the new coronavirus has killed 124 people amid 4,747 confirmed cases in the Islamic Republic.

Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour offered the figures at a televised news con-ference. He did not elaborate on the threat to use force, though he acknowledged the virus now was in all of Iran’s 31 provinces.

The threat may be to stop peo-ple from using closed schools and universities as an excuse to go to the Caspian Sea and other Ira-nian vacation spots. Semiofficial news agencies in Iran posted im-ages of long traffic lines as people tried to reach the Caspian coast from Tehran on Friday, despite authorities earlier telling people to remain in their cities.

Iran on Thursday announced it would put checkpoints in place to limit travel between major cities, hoping to stem the spread of the virus.

Iran canceled Friday prayers

across its major cities. Elsewherein the region, Iraq canceled Fri-day prayers in Karbala, wherea weekly sermon is delivered onbehalf of the country’s top Shiitecleric. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates meanwhile lim-ited prayers to two verses of the Quran so they lasted no longer than 10 minutes, over concerns about the virus.

More than 4,990 cases of thevirus, which causes the illnessCOVID-19, have been confirmedacross the Middle East. Iran andItaly have the world’s highest death tolls outside of China.

In Tehran, firefighters sprayeddisinfectant on an 11-mile lengthof Tehran’s famous Valiasr Av-enue, some from firetrucksand others walking along itssidewalks, spraying ATMs andstorefronts.

“It would be great if they did it every day,” grocery store ownerReza Razaienejad said after thefirefighters sprayed outside hisshop. “It should not be just a one-time thing and should be donefrequently, especially in placeslike here where movement andtraffic happens a lot.”

ANDREW MEDICHINI/AP

A man wearing a mask walks in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Friday .


NATION

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — It took Joe Biden’s moderate rivals just hours to unite behind his presidential campaign after they left the race. Bernie Sanders hasn’t been so fortunate.

Elizabeth Warren, one of Sand-ers’ closest ideological allies, de-clined to endorse anyone after suspending her campaign on Thursday. She didn’t rule out an endorsement of her New England neighbor but said she wanted to “take a deep breath and spend a little time on that.”

High-profile Warren support-ers across the country, particu-larly women, were also hesitant to race into Sanders’ camp. And on Capitol Hill, where Biden was racking up new endorsements daily, the Vermont senator hasn’t earned a single new endorsement, even among the most progressive elected officials, in two weeks.

The dangerous silence from Warren and progressive officials across the country comes at the worst time for Sanders, who’s sud-denly losing momentum in a two-man race with the former vice president as another set of high-stakes primary elections looms. Sanders is moving forward with the same coalition that was beat-en soundly earlier this week. And if he cannot find a way to grow, and grow quickly, the Vermont senator’s 2020 challenge will only become more dire.

There is an increasing sense of frustration within Sanders’ campaign, where a divide over strategy has emerged between opposing camps, according to a person close to the campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.

On one side, campaign manager Faiz Shakir wants to empower the pool of existing supporters, such as progressive congresswomen

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, because of their organic appeal to voters. On the other, senior adviser Jeff Weaver is pushing for a wider range of endorsements to broaden Sand-ers’ coalition.

Within the campaign, some la-ment Sanders’ unwillingness to court elected officials as Biden’s coalition grows exponentially. The former vice president earned endorsements this week from three former rivals just hours after they suspended their cam-paigns: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg. Another former competitor, for-mer Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, also endorsed Biden on the eve of Texas’ primary, which Biden nar-rowly won.

Biden’s team has already an-nounced plans to dispatch Klobu-char, a Midwestern moderate, to Michigan ahead of the state’s crit-ical primary election on Tuesday.

Many would-be Sanders sup-porters, meanwhile, are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, said the or-ganization would ultimately en-dorse whomever Warren does.

“We are among her many sup-porters who are rooting for her to exert every ounce of leverage she has in this moment of goodwill in order to advance the big ideas and the people she cares so much about,” Green said Thursday.

He said Warren, a former Har-vard law professor and expert on the legalities of contracts, would approach the decision carefully and that process “might be time-intensive or it might not be.”

The National Organization for Women, whose political action committee endorsed Warren ear-lier in the week, encouraged War-ren to take her time.

Sanders struggles to expand base as Warren exits race

ROSS D. FRANKLIN/AP

The crowd cheers as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a rally Thursday in Phoenix.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Hiring in the United States jumped in Feb-ruary as employers added a ro-bust 273,000 jobs, evidence that the economy was in strong shape before the coronavirus began to sweep through the nation.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% last month, matching a 50-year low, down from 3.6% in January.

The monthly job gain comes from a survey of payrolls in the second week of February, pre-dating the viral outbreak. So far, there are few signs that the job market has been affected by the disease, but most economists ex-

pect hiring to slow in the coming months.

Wage growth slowed slightly in February, rising 3% compared with a year earlier, down from a 3.1% year-over-year average gain in January. Paychecks have grown at a 3% pace or higher for more than a year and a half but have slowed since reaching 3.5% last summer.

If employers were to start slashing jobs as a consequence of the virus, it could significantly es-calate the economic damage. For that reason, a range of job market barometers will provide some of the most vital signals about how the economy is withstanding the virus’ impact.

Widespread layoffs can trans-form slowdowns in just one ortwo sectors — the travel industry,say, or manufacturing — into afull-blown downturn for the over-all economy. When workers losejobs and pay, they typically cutspending. Their friends and rela-tives who are still employed grow anxious about their own jobs andwary of spending freely, a cyclethat can trigger further job cuts.

So long as monthly job gains re-main above 100,000 or so, the un-employment rate should stay lowand the economy may be able to avoid a downturn. If the monthlypace were to sink below that levelfor a sustained period, jobless-ness would likely rise.

US added robust 273K jobs in February

Associated Press

SCRANTON, Pa. — President Donald Trump de-fended the administration’s response to the corona-virus and his confrontational style of name-calling political opponents as he fielded questions Thursday from select members of the public in his first TV town hall of the 2020 election cycle.

Trump, who regularly calls his top Democratic presidential opponents “Sleepy Joe” and “Crazy Bernie,” was asked whether he could deliver his message without the controversial rhetoric. “When they hit us, we have to hit back. I really feel that,” Trump said in response to the first of two questions about civility. “You can’t turn your cheek.”

Fox News, the president’s favorite network, hosted the live event in Scranton, Pa. , a rare instance where the president answered questions from the public.

The first question, from an undecided voter, was about the administration’s response to the virus. The number of the cases in the U.S. stood at about 200 on Thursday, including 12 deaths — 11 in Wash-ington state and one in California.

“Everybody has to be calm. It’s all going to work out,” Trump said, sounding defensive at times as a pair of Fox News journalists pressed him on the issue. “We hope it doesn’t last too long.”

It was Trump’s first 2020 visit to Pennsylvania, a battleground state he won by about 44,000 votes in 2016. He did particularly well in northeastern Pennsylvania, where Scranton and Wilkes-Barre

have long anchored a strong Democratic presence.The state is home turf to former Vice President

Joe Biden, who spent his first 10 years in Scranton before his family moved to Wilmington, Delaware. An electric billboard proclaimed “Scranton is JoeBiden country.”

Biden’s prospects of winning the Democraticpresidential nomination surged in the past weekafter he won South Carolina and then 10 of 14 stateson Super Tuesday. Asked about the Democraticrace, the Republican Trump said several times thathe was “mentally” prepared to take on Vermont Sen.Bernie Sanders.

“I was ready ... and now I have a whole differentdeal,” Trump said at the event, which was scheduled before Biden’s resurgence. Trump chose Scrantonas the setting.

He blamed Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out ofthe Democratic race Thursday, for hurting Sanders’chances by not folding her campaign sooner.

Tickets to the town hall were distributed throughthe Eventbrite website and Fox confirmed questionswere selected from people who submitted them via the website. The audience seemed overwhelmingly supportive of Trump, greeting the president with thunderous applause and “USA, USA” chants.

One female questioner told Trump it was “trulyan honor” to have him in Scranton. “Just don’t tell my husband,” she said.

Trump defends rhetoric at town hall

MATT ROURKE/AP

President Donald Trump meets with attendees after a FOX News Channel Town Hall, co-moderated by chief political anchor Bret Baier and anchor Martha MacCallum, in Scranton, Pa., on Thursday .


NATION

Military police sent to 2 border crossings

States scramble to prepare for food stamps rule change BY SOPHIA TAREEN

Associated Press

CHICAGO — Having food stamps offers Richard Butler a stability he’s rarely known in his 25 years. He was in state custody at age 2, spent his teen years at a Chicago boys’ home and jail for burglary, and has since struggled to find a permanent home.

The $194 deposited monthly on his benefits card buys fresh pro-duce and meat.

“It means the world to me,” said Butler, who shares a one-bedroom apartment with two oth-ers. “We can go without a lot of things, like phones and music. We can’t go without eating.”

But that stability is being threatened for people like Butler, who are able-bodied, without de-pendents and between the ages 18 and 49. New Trump administra-tion rules taking effect April 1 put hundreds of thousands of people in his situation at risk of losing their benefits. They hit particu-larly hard in places like Illinois, which also has been dealing with a separate, similar change in the nation’s third-largest city.

From Hawaii to Pennsylvania, states are scrambling to blunt the impact, with roughly 700,000 people at risk of losing benefits unless they meet certain work, training or school requirements. They’ve filed a multi-state law-suit, expanded publicly funded job training, developed pilot pro-grams and doubled down efforts to reach vulnerable communities, including the homeless, rural res-idents and people of color.

Social service agencies say they won’t be able to fill the gap, making increased homelessness and more hospital visits among the biggest concerns. Experts say they’ve already seen troubling signs in some states.

“This is a cascading effect,” said Robert Campbell, manag-ing director at Feeding America, which runs hundreds of food banks nationwide. “It will in-crease demands on the emergen-cy food system, food banks and

pantries.”Currently, work-eligible, able-

bodied adults without dependents under 50 can receive monthly benefits if they meet a 20-hour weekly work, job training or school requirement. Those who don’t are limited to three months of food stamps over three years.

However, states with high un-employment or few jobs have been able to waive time limits. Every state except Delaware has sought a waiver at some point, ac-cording to the National Confer-ence of State Legislatures.

The new rules make it harder to get waivers. They’re the first of three changes to the Supple-mental Nutrition Assistance Pro-gram, or SNAP, which feeds 36 million people nationwide.

The Trump administration has touted the change as a way to get people working and save $5.5 bil-lion over five years. Able-bodied adults without dependents are 7% of SNAP recipients.

But states fighting the change say that argument is misguided.

“Not everyone is in a position to get a job tomorrow, and taking away access to food is only going to make that more difficult,” said Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Te-resa Miller. “We’re going to have more hungry people in the state.”

Pennsylvania — where as many as 100,000 people could be affected — is working with so-cial services groups to create 30 job training programs for SNAP recipients.

However, experts say work op-portunities are limited.

More than half of SNAP recipi-ents have a high school diploma, but about one-quarter have less, according to the Center on Bud-get and Policy Priorities. Avail-able jobs are more likely to have low pay, shifting schedules that might not offer enough qualifying hours and few benefits like paid sick leave.

“Work requirements really don’t do much to affect the rate at which people are working,” said Elaine Waxman at the Urban In-stitute, a nonprofit research orga-nization. “If people can work and consistently, they pretty much are.”

Some states are focusing on rural areas, which have lessaccess to transportation andservices.

Hawaii, for instance, wants to develop a pilot program to help400 Molokai residents keep ben-efits. The rural island once hada waiver because of high un-employment, but the new rulesassign Molokai to the same job market as nearby, more prosper-ous Maui, even though a 30-min-ute plane ride is the only way to travel between the islands.

The program would use educa-tion, training and volunteering tofulfill the work requirement. It’smodeled after similar programs used in remote Alaska, which isseeking waivers for less-populat-ed areas. Roughly 5,000 in Alaskacould lose benefits.

Attorneys general in nearly 20 states and Washington, D.C.,have sued to block the rules. Theyargue the changes will force peo-ple to divert their limited funds,leading to homelessness andhealth problems.

People with food insecurityspend 45% more on medical care annually than those who are foodsecure, according to a 2018 report by the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Experts say critics’ worries arefounded and point to Kentucky asa case study.

Like a handful of states, Ken-tucky has voluntarily instated time limits for SNAP benefitssince 2017. More than 13,000 people in Kentucky lost benefitsbecause they reached the three-month limit, according to a 2019 Urban Institute report.

Anecdotally, there’s been an in-crease in food pantry visits.

In Fayette County, which lost its waiver in 2018, the average num-ber of monthly household visits tofood pantries jumped from 1,800 to 2,000, according to MichaelHalligan, CEO of God’s PantryFood Bank in Lexington.

“Starving people does not help them get employment,” said MaryFrances Charlton, a Chicago Co-alition for the Homeless attorney.

CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/AP

Richard Butler and his fiance Amber laugh while they have breakfast, on Feb. 27, in an apartment a friend is letting them live in on Chicago’s Southside. Richard Butler receives food stamps every month, providing him stability. Soon that may change with a new rule taking affect April 1.

‘ Not everyone is in a position to get a job tomorrow, and taking away access to food is only going to make that more difficult. ’

Teresa MillerPennsylvania Department of Human Services secretary

BY ASTRID GALVAN

Associated Press

PHOENIX — The U.S. government says it is sending 160 military police and engineers to two official border crossings to deal with asylum seekers in case a fed-eral appeals court strikes down one of the Trump administration’s key policies.

Senior Customs and Border Protections officials said Friday that active-duty per-sonnel will be in place by Saturday at ports of entry in El Paso and San Diego. They’ll also send aviation support.

The deployment is in response to a crowd of asylum-seekers that gathered at an El Paso crossing last Friday after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tempo-rarily struck down the program known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases

wind through court in the U.S. Officials shut down that border crossing for several hours that evening before the court re-versed itself.

On Wednesday, the court again made a decision on the case, this time blocking the program in Arizona and California, the two border states under its authority. About 60,000 asylum-seekers have been returned to Mexico while awaiting their immigration hearings in the U.S.

Critics call the program inhumane and dangerous, forcing vulnerable people to wait in high-crime Mexican border cities where they are often subjected to violence, extortion and kidnapping.

But “Remain in Mexico,” which the gov-ernment calls the Migrant Protection Pro-tocols, has been one of the most successful tools in the administration’s battle to stem the large number of asylum seekers look-

ing for refuge in the U.S.The Trump administration is asking the

U.S. Supreme Court, which has consis-tently ruled in the administration’s favor on immigration policies, to intervene and wants the policy to stay in effect until next week to give the high court time to decide.

In the meantime, authorities say they’re preparing for more large groups of asylum seekers in case the appeals court strikes down the policy. Seeking asylum at ports of entry is legal, but the government has gone to great lengths to prevent migrants from doing so, including a “metering” policy that requires asylum-seekers to wait on an unofficial list for months before they are even allowed to walk up to a U.S. agent and seek protection.

CBP officials who provided the informa-tion on Friday provided few details about what exactly the military police will be

doing but did say military police won’tbe conducting immigration enforcement.They said the deployment is scheduled tolast two weeks but could be extended if necessary. The deployed soldiers will comefrom Ft. Polk, L a.

The Trump administration has used theNational Guard at the border before, al-though they’re not allowed to participatedirectly in law enforcement activities likearrests.

Since Remain in Mexico began a year ago, officials have increasingly hardened the El Paso Paso Del Norte bridge. Rollsof razor wire and forklifts with concretebarriers have been a regular fixture on the bridge for months, drawing the ire of localbusiness leaders who say it turns off Mexi-can shoppers and visitors who keep the ElPaso economy afloat.


BY BASSEM MROUE

Associated Press

BEIRUT — Idlib’s skies were completely free of Russian and Syrian government warplanes for the first time in weeks Friday, and residents reported a relative but tense calm as a cease-fire deal brokered by Turkey and Russia took hold in Syria’s north-western province.

The truce halted a terrifying campaign of bombing from above that killed hundreds and sent a million people fleeing toward the Turkish border during the Rus-sian-backed assault by Syrian government forces on the coun-try’s last rebel stronghold.

The agreement, announced Thursday after a six-hour meeting between the Turkish and Russian presidents in Moscow, essentially froze the conflict lines. The deal does not force Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces to roll back military gains made in the past three months, which had been a key Turkish demand.

That effectively rules out the possibility of hundreds of thou-sands of displaced people return-ing to their homes.

The deal also lacked specifics or a known mechanism to enforce the truce. It is the latest of many cease-fire agreements for Idlib over the past few years. All have ended up unraveling after a few months, triggering new govern-ment offensives that captured more territory from the opposi-tion. Government forces now control much of Syria after evict-ing rebels from other parts of the country.

“This is nothing more than a time for fighters to rest,” Salwa Abdul-Rahman, a citizen jour-nalist, told The Associated Press by phone from Idlib’s provincial capital, which bears the same name.

“Warplanes that used to terror-ize children at night and commit massacres are not flying over-head now,” she said.

Although warplanes no longer launched sorties, the activists said there was minor shelling in some areas after the truce went into effect at midnight Thursday.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan each back rival sides in the Syr-ian conflict and have become the main power brokers in the war-torn country.

The situation in Idlib worsened in recent weeks after Turkey sent thousands of troops there. Clash-es with Syrian government forces have killed 60 Turkish soldiers

and scores of Syrian troops since the beginning of February.

Abdul-Rahman said Idlib resi-dents, mostly those who were displaced over the past three months, “are angry because they were hoping to return to their homes” that are now under gov-ernment control. Abdul-Rahman added that people who “are now living in tents discovered they cannot return.”

“This matter concerns us, Syr-ians, but it seems we don’t have a say in this. They are playing chess with us,” she said about the Russia-Turkey agreement.

The Britain-based Syrian Ob-servatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Syr-ian and Russian warplanes were not in the air over Idlib on Friday. Still, it reported minor violations in the first three hours of the truce.

Idlib-based opposition activist Taher al-Omar reported clashes shortly after midnight on the southern edge of Idlib.

The Observatory later reported a clash between Syrian troops and jihadi fighters in the Jabal al-Za-wiya region in Idlib. The Obser-vatory said 15 combatants were killed, six from the government side and nine from the Turkistan Islamic Party, which is largely made up of Chinese jihadis.

The Russia-Turkey agreement appears to achieve Moscow’s key goal of allowing the Syrian gov-ernment to keep control of the south-north highway known as the M5. Syrian forces captured the highway’s last segments in the latest offensive.

The deal also would set up a security corridor along the M4, a key east-west highway in Idlib. According to the cease-fire deal published in Syrian pro-govern-ment media, Russian and Turkish troops are supposed to begin joint patrols on the M4 on March 15.

The reopening of the M4, which has been closed by insurgents since 2012, will be a test for the new Russia-Turkey deal.

Under a Russia-Turkey agree-ment reached in the summer of 2018, the two highways were sup-posed to be opened before the end of that year. But rejection of the deal by al-Qaida-linked militants in Idlib kept the two vital roads closed.

Erdogan said there would be “no question of change” regard-ing Turkey’s 12 observation posts inside Idlib. The posts are manned by Turkish troops and are in place as part of a 2018 agreement with Russia.


WORLD

Russia-Turkey truce in Syria halts bombing

EU criticizes Turkey on exploiting migrants as border clashes return

Judge says Dubai ruler threatened wife

BY COSTAS KANTOURIS AND ELENA BECATOROS

Associated Press

KASTANIES, Greece — Clash-es between Greek riot police and migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey erupted anew Friday as European Union foreign ministers took aim at what they called “Turkey’s use of migratory pressure for political purposes.”

Greek riot police used tear gas and a water cannon to drive back people trying to cross the land border from Turkey in the morn-ing. Turkish police fired volleys of tear gas back toward Greece in an ongoing standoff between An-kara and the EU over who should care for migrants and refugees.

Later in the day, calm returned to the area and people camped out near the border appeared to be moving further away from the frontier, possibly to a makeshift camp set up nearby.

Thousands of refugees and other migrants have been trying to get into Greece through the country’s eastern land and sea borders in the past week after Turkey declared its previously guarded borders with Europe were open.

Following through after months of threats, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week his country, which already houses more than 3.5 million Syr-ian refugees, would no longer be Europe’s gatekeeper.

He has demanded Europe shoulder more of the burden of caring for refugees. But the EU insists it is abiding by a 2016 deal in which it disbursed billions of euros in refugee aide in return for Turkey keeping refugees on its soil.

Erdogan’s decision has alarmed EU countries, which are still see-ing political fallout from mass migration five years ago.

EU foreign ministers met in

Zagreb, Croatia on Friday to dis-cuss the Greece-Turkey bordersituation and events in Syria, where Turkish troops are fight-ing. Erdogan has cited a potentialnew wave of refugees from Syriaas part of his reasoning for open-ing the border to EU-member Greece.

The ministers acknowledgedTurkey’s role in hosting millionsof migrants and refugees but saidthe EU “strongly rejects Turkey’s use of migratory pressure for po-litical purposes. This situationat the EU external border is notacceptable.”

In a joint statement after theemergency meeting, the minis-ters expressed “full solidaritywith Greece, which faces an un-precedented situation, as well as with Bulgaria, Cyprus and otherMember States, which might besimilarly affected.”

They said the EU was “deter-mined” to protect its external borders and that “illegal cross-ings will not be tolerated.”

BY JILL LAWLESS AND DANICA KIRKA

Associated Press

LONDON — The ruler of Dubai conducted a campaign of fear and intimidation against his es-tranged wife and ordered the ab-duction of two of his daughters, a British judge ruled in documents that were unsealed Thursday.

A judge at the High Court in London found that Sheikh Mo-hammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, 70, “acted in a manner from the end of 2018 which has been aimed at intimidating and frightening” his ex-wife Princess Haya, 45.

Judge Andrew McFarlane also said the sheikh “ordered and or-chestrated“ the abductions and forced return to Dubai of two of his adult daughters from another marriage: Sheikha Shamsa in Au-gust 2000, and Sheikha Latifa in 2002 and again in 2018.

The judge made rulings in De-cember and January after a battle between the estranged spouses over the welfare of their two chil-dren, but the sheikh fought to pre-

vent them from being made public. The U.K Su-preme Court quashed that attempt on Thursday.

Prin-cess Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of

Jordan, married the Dubai ruler in 2004, becoming his second of-ficial wife, the court said. Sheikh Mohammed also has several un-official wives. The couple has a daughter, Jalila, 12, and 8-year-old son Zayed, the youngest of the ruler’s 25 children.

In April 2019, Princess Hayafled the Gulf emirate with her children, saying she had becometerrified of her husband’s threatsand intimidation.

The threats continued after the princess moved to London,the judge said, adding that thesheikh had used the apparatus of the state “to threaten, intimidate,mistreat and oppress with a totaldisregard for the rule of law.”

In May 2019, Sheikh Moham-med launched legal action, seek-ing the children’s return to Dubai,while Princess Haya asked for them to be made wards of theBritish court and stay in the U.K.

The sheikh later dropped hisbid to take the children back toDubai and fought unsuccessfullyto prevent the court from issuinga fact-finding judgment on his wife’s allegations.

Princess Haya

EMRAH GUREL/AP

Migrants gather in Edirne, near the Turkish-Greek border on Friday.


BY GIESON CACHO

The (San Jose, Calif.) Mercury News

The great thing about the Resi-dent Evil remakes is that it gives Capcom a chance to improve on an already great vision. With

the current hardware, developers are no longer constrained by technological limitations.

They can put dozens of zombies on screen and improve their artifi cial intel-ligence to make them smarter. They can craft detailed environments that bring harrowing situations to life. The hardware can handle it all.

With the Resident Evil 3 remake, Capcom updates a classic that was ahead of its time. It carries over concepts of the original, following Jill Valentine as she tries to escape Raccoon City. At the time, that was a departure for the series. The previous games tended to be claustropho-bic as players explored mansions, police stations and subterranean bases.

Detailed environmentResident Evil 3 was different because

it put Jill in an urban environment. She wandered alleys, catwalks and city streets. It’s wide open with more dangers on the screen as the undead pounded on fences and lurked around corners. It’s an en-vironment that begs to be explored, but players have to be cautious. They can eas-ily meander down a dead-end alley, turn around to backtrack and fi nd that zombies have followed Jill, essentially trapping her.

The game is full of these dangers, but it also gives players opportunities to fi ght back. Apparently in the rush to evacuate the doomed metropolis, authorities left barrels of gasoline and malfunctioning generators.

Expert players will conserve their ammo by using these environmental haz-ards to eliminate several zombies at once rather than pumping bullets into them one at a time. Players can shoot the barrels to ignite explosions killing surrounding undead. Meanwhile, fi ring at generators can disperse electricity to stun them. At

that moment, Jill can knife them to death, but that takes time.

For players who want to save every bullet, they can also just avoid the undead altogether. It’s a viable solution in Resident Evil 3, and sometimes encouraged. It’s often better to lure zombies to one side of a rooftop in order to run past them on the other end. When being chased, players shouldn’t confront any undead and just use

the dodge button to dip away from them.

Although the visu-als and zombies look better, players can expect the same sort of puzzles as the pre-vious entries. They’ll fi nd random jewels in boxes and journal clues that help them open a safe or fi nd a

pivotal item. The problems aren’t diffi cult per se, but they’re easier if players pay attention to their environment.

A nemesis called Nemesis Players have to deal with Nemesis. It’s

essentially Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 on steroids. The tyrant variant follows Jill around Raccoon City and has more maneuverability and intelligence than the previous monster. In the demo I played, I found some protected zones in safe rooms, but that also meant I was technically trapped as it loomed behind the door.

One way to deal with Nemesis is to toss a grenade. It stuns him, and he also drops a supply box with goodies inside. Another way is to run with an obstacle between Nemesis and Jill. They just need to make sure that he can’t corner quickly while rushing toward players.

Further on, players will encounter tougher monsters than zombies in the sewers, and they’ll have to use the envi-ronment more to their advantage. I found that using corners helps when fi ghting these bigger creatures called Hunter Gammas. They’re also more deadly than the normal zombies because they can devour players in one bite.

The demo climaxed with a boss battle against Nemesis atop a building . This is where the tyrant variant shows its combat prowess. It uses a fl amethrower against Jill and can climb using its tentacles. Play-ers have to keep their distance and fi nd its weak point to survive.

Intriguing multiplayerThe other major feature of Resident Evil

3 is an asymmetrical multiplayer mode called Resistance. It pits four players against one mastermind. The goal is for the four survivors to escape, or for the Umbrella exec at the helm to kill them all.

The concept is comparable to Left 4 Dead except instead of the director throw-ing out enemies, a human controls that aspect of gameplay. The mastermind acts almost like dungeon master, setting up challenges against the group. The player can lay down traps and place zombies and other creatures to stand in their way.

The mastermind role has limitations. They have a deck of options with cards that cost a certain number of points. Those points regenerate over time. On top of that, the mastermind can only place the enemies and traps using surveillance cameras found in key spots in each room.

There’s plenty of strategy as the an-tagonist has to fi gure out where to place the obstacles and how many of them to produce. They’ll need to look at the map and fi gure out where the survivors are headed. It’s smart to put zombies and traps on the way to objectives such as keys or canisters.

Each mastermind has his or her special-ty. Daniel Fabron and Annette Birkin rely on creatures and buffs while Alex Wesker is an expert with traps and infection. Ozwell Spencer uses Umbrella tech to stall players. The survivors have to escape within a certain time allotment, and that time can be extended by killing zombies or fi nishing tasks. If they die, they lose time in their bid to escape.

The ace up the masterminds’ sleeves are the monsters they control. Annette deploys her husband, a G-virus-infected William Birkin, while Daniel has con-

trol of Mr. X. Alex can drop Yateveo, a bioweapon plant that sits in one place. Spencer has a force fi eld that blocks a path. Players have to be mindful of how they use these creatures because they cost a lot to summon onto the battlefi eld.

On the survivors’ end, each has a special ability that counteracts some creature or obstacle. Valerie is the healer who can also mark ammo and other items in a room. January can jam the cameras and raise the costs of dropping zombies and traps for the mastermind. Tyrone is the tank and can deal pain to armored zombies with melee attacks. Samuel has a similar ability, but he’s geared toward damage. Martin can disarm traps while Becca deals damage with fi rearms. To succeed, players need a good mix of char-acters who cover everyone’s weaknesses.

Resistance mode can feel like a game of cat and mouse. Survivors blindly look for the three keys needed in the fi rst phase. The second phase requires them to fi nd a zombie a security card, and they need to use that guard at three ATM-looking ma-chines to open a door to the third phase. The fi nal section has the survivors looking for red canisters that they must destroy. If they can knock out three of them, they can escape and win.

Teamwork is mandatory . The mas-termind can lock players in a room and turn off the lights, making navigation and fi ghting diffi cult. Survivors need to use their talents harmoniously to get out alive, but keep in mind, it’s possible that not everyone will escape. Some players could fall during the last stage of the battle and not make it out alive.

Built into Resistance is a progression system. The more that players use a cer-tain mastermind or survivor, the higher their level goes.

It’s better than some of Capcom’s other Resident Evil multiplayer games. It feels like it could have been a full-fl edged game on its own, but being packaged with the Resident Evil 3 remake makes the project an even better value for fans.

The Resident Evil 3 remake comes out April 3 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Online: residentevil.com/re3/us

VIDEO GAMESCapcom photos

Resident Evil 3 remake updates an innovative survival-horror classic


Thirsting for a better solutionExperts warn that ‘dry fasting,’ or abstaining from water, is a terrible idea

HEALTH & FITNESS

ILLUSTRATION BY NOGA AMI-RAV

Stars and Stripes

BY JESSICA ROY

Los Angeles Times

A new fad diet making the rounds on wellness infl uencer Insta-gram won’t actually help you lose weight. And it could cause

dehydration, urinary tract infections, kidney stones, organ failure — even death.

It’s called “dry fasting.” It goes beyond what most of us would consider fasting — abstaining from solid food or liquid calories — and requires consuming no water or liquids of any kind for many hours or even days at a time.

Instagram and other social media sites have provided a glossy new platform for extremely dubious health and nutrition claims. Posts about dry fasting often tout the need to “heal” or “rest” or “reset” your kidneys, or “boost” their fi ltration. In practice, what dry fasting will do is make you look a bit more toned, because your body is using up the water in your cells for energy.

Even more dubious claims suggest that dry fasting forces your body to burn toxins, or fat, or infl ammation, or tumors. It does not. When you stop feed-ing your body calories, it breaks down muscle and fat. The toxic byproducts of that breakdown process build up in your system, requiring extra hydration to fl ush them out.

In other words, if you’re abstaining from food, your body needs more water, not less.

Experts agree: There is no dietary or nutritional reason to go on a “dry fast.”

“I don’t recommend it at all,” said Dr. Pauline Yi, a physician at UCLA Health Beverly Hills who regularly treats patients in their late teens and early 20s. She said intermittent fasting and other fasting-type diets are a popular topic with patients, and she has no problem with people trying them out.

“But I also tell them when you’re fast-ing, you have to drink water,” she said. “You cannot go without hydration.”

The majority of the human body is water. Your individual water consump-tion needs depend on your height, weight, health and the climate, but gen-erally speaking, Yi said people should be consuming at least 68 ounces — almost nine cups — of water every day.

Cary Kreutzer, an associate professor at USC’s schools of gerontology and med-icine whose area of expertise includes nutrition and diet, says digestive systems aren’t meant to have extended “breaks.” She likened making your kidneys go without water to letting your car’s engine run out of oil. “You can basically burn out some parts of the car that you’re going to have to get replaced,” she said. “You don’t want those replacement parts to include your vital organs.”

Another unintended consequence of dry fasting: It sets your body in water-conservation mode.

“Your body likes homeostasis,” said Yi, the physician. “If you’re

going to cut back on water, your body will produce hormones and chemicals to hold onto any water.”

So while you might gain a very short-term benefi t by looking a tiny bit more toned while you’re severely dehydrated (body-builders have been known to dry fast before competitions for that reason), once you consume liquid again, your body rebounds and desperately hangs on to even more water than before. It’s like yo-yo dieting in fast motion.

Dry fasting is not the same thing as intermittent fasting, which has become a popular fad diet in recent years. There are different variations of intermittent fasting, but most people start with 16 hours of fasting followed by eight hours of eating. Martin Berkhan created the “LeanGains” 16:8 intermittent fast-ing guide and is widely credited with popularizing the diet. On his website, leangains.com, Berkhan writes that dur-ing the 16-hour fasting window, coffee, calorie-free sweeteners, diet soda, sugar-free gum and up to a teaspoon of milk in a cup of coffee won’t break the fast.

The subreddit for fasting, r/fasting, has an “Introduction to Intermittent Fasting” guide that contains the follow-ing tips for surviving the fasting portion of your day:

� Drink lots of cold water� Always carry water, a canteen, a

bottle, or keep a full glass within sight� Water, water, water, water

Valter Longo has studied starvation, fasting and calorie restriction in hu-mans for nearly 30 years. He’s currently the director of the Longevity Institute at USC and a professor of gerontol-ogy. Fasting-type diets have grown in popularity in recent years for a simple reason, he said: “Because they work.”

But he said he’s not aware of any reputable studies about the effects of dry fasting, and said he wouldn’t even consider putting one together, also for a simple reason: It’s incredibly dangerous.

“For sure, the body needs to reset, but there are safe ways of doing that, and dry fasting is not one of them,” Longo said. “We require water.”

His work has involved looking at how cultures and religions have engaged with starvation and fasting throughout his-tory, and says he hasn’t heard of any that involved extended fasting without water. The closest is Ramadan, during which observers go without food or water dur-ing daylight hours — but at most, that lasts for 16 hours, and it’s preceded and followed by extensive hydration.

If someone tries dry fasting for a full day, Longo said, they risk side effects like developing kidney stones. Longer than that, and you start risking your life.

Some proponents of “dry fasting” eschew water but recommend hydrat-ing with fresh fruits and vegetables. Hydrating with fruit is certainly better than not hydrating at all. An orange has about a half-cup of water in it; to get to

the recommended 68 ounces of water a day, you’d have

to eat around 17 oranges. That’s a lot of peeling.


BY GREGG ELLMAN

Tribune News Service

Charging is just a way of life — we all love it when we have a fully charged device. Nimble charging

devices are among the best, pro-viding customers with high-qual-ity products with portable power and great looks.

Nimble is an eco-friendly personal tech brand, making its products from natural renewable sources like plant-based plastics and constructing sharp-looking soft non-slip grip exteriors made from recycled water bottles and organic hemp.

I tried the wireless chargers, which are made in several ver-sions. The Nimble wireless stand is simple; a kickstand charges the battery vertically, or users can keep the kickstand folded for fl at charging.

The portable (5-by-3.03-by-0.65-inch) battery delivers 10W of power for Samsung and An-droids and up to 7.5W of power to the Apple iPhone 8 or newer. There’s also an extra USB-A port to plug in another device needing a boost of power. A charging cable for the battery and a USB AC plug is included.

A nice Nimble feature: When you purchase a product from them, they send you a prepaid return envelope so you can send them any outdated electronics, and they will recycle responsibly.

The company makes a variety of other charging devices, smart-phone cases and cables, all with the environment in mind. This includes 100% recycled scrap paper in their shipping boxes.

Online: gonimble.com; $59.99 The Eufy Security Wi-Fi

Video Doorbell has a simple installation to your existing door-bell’s wiring and is packed with great home security features.

At 4.8-by-1.7-by-0.9 inches, the Eufy security camera doorbell ($159.99) is similar in size to other video doorbells but includes 4GB of built-in stor-age. This allows up to 30 days of video with a standard of 30 videos a day of 30 seconds each, to be stored and accessed from the companion app.

There’s no monthly fees or cloud subscription, and your data is stored with encryption. According to Eufy, the military-grade AES-256 chip ensures data is encrypted on transmis-sion and storage.

The video doorbell comes with a pair of mounting plates and connects to your existing Wi-Fi with a 2.4GHz wireless router. It functions as a standard doorbell with a push ring and sends the ringing alert to the included wireless electronic chime in ad-dition to sending a smartphone notifi cation letting you instantly know and see who is at the door. Each doorbell can be connected to up to four chimes.

When someone is at the door, you’ll see them through the Eufy Security app on your smartphoneand respond live with two-way audio or send a pre-recorded response you previously set up back to your subject at the door. Up to three instant responses can be stored and sent upon your command.

Videos stored actually give you an additional three seconds of footage before the initial alert sets off the recording. This can often give insight into who’s ap-proaching or other aspects of the situation.

The 160-degree angle of view camera has HDR imaging, which allows it to adjust for low light or backlit situations. The image is captured in a 4:3 aspect ratio for a much bigger image compared to others offering a 16:9 ratio and a resolution of 2560 x 1920.

During setup, you can cus-tomize the activity zone, which tells the camera where to detect motion. The camera has technol-ogy to detect human faces and body shapes so you don’t get an alert when neighborhood pets go running by.

The Eufy Security Wi-Fi Video Doorbell also connects to Alexa and Google Voice Assistant so you can check live views with a voice command.

As mentioned, installation is easy, but you are dealing with live wires for power from your existing doorbell, so use caution.

A battery-powered model with many of the same features is also available ($199.99).

Online: eufylife.com

GADGETS & TECHGADGET WATCHWirelessly charge and gowith eco-friendly Nimble

BY LOUISE DIXON

Associated Press

While taboos surrounding online dating are long gone, some of today’s app users are sick of the endless swiping and virtual pen-palling that leads no-

where when it comes to long-term relationships, according to industry leaders who are responding with new ways to get users off their phones and out meeting people in the real world.

David Vermeulen is one such leader. His Inner Circle, launched in 2012, is more closely curating users looking for meaningful connections, and he’s hosting offl ine events in cities around the globe to help make that happen among his 2 mil-lion-plus members. He said he saw a big shift in online dating attitudes toward the end of the de-cade as some people have become “Tinder tired.”

“They really now are looking for something more serious, something more genuine,” Vermeu-len said.

Justin McLeod, who launched Hinge in 2011, shares Vermeulen’s view that dating apps should be focused on getting people offl ine. Hinge’s tag line is the app that’s “designed to be deleted.”

In 2016, Hinge intentionally removed the swipe option to encourage more interaction. When they were told that people felt overwhelmed by their number of choices, they created a “most compat-ible” function. That, he said, “really helps people focus and get out on dates faster.”

The Inner Circle plans to add a “Let’s Meet” button to speed up the pathway from app to real-life date.

“If you both click it, you can within the chat select days and venues that we propose and then you can go on a date really quickly. And I mean going out for a coffee. I mean, that’s the fi rst step. But for a lot of people, it’s quite a big step, and we tried to make that much more easy,” Vermeulen said.

His app also plans to add an automated re-sponse to anyone who just messages “Hi” as an introduction, which is often a dating dead end.

“We’re gonna say, OK, this is not the best start for a conversation. You have to do better,” Ver-meulen said.

It’s not just the newer generation of apps that are adapting to changing dating attitudes. OkCu-pid is one of the original dating sites, started by two Harvard math graduates in 2004. Beginning life as a desktop website, it developed into an app with the advent of smartphones. Today, OkCupid boasts that it sets up 50,000 dates per week.

The site enforces certain restrictions to try and weed out those not interested in getting to that date. The company insists that users post more than one photo and puts them through a list of localized timely questions before a profi le can be set up. So if you thought you should avoid talking politics or religion on a fi rst date, it seems the tides are turning. Users can fi lter based on their views from climate change to Brexit.

“In the U.S., we may ask you, how do you feel the upcoming election? We may say, could you date someone that didn’t vote?” said OkCupid’s global chief marketing offi cer, Melissa Hobley.

According to a Pew Research Center study last year, 3 in 10 Americans have used a dating site or app and 12 percent have married or have been in a committed relationship with someone they met through online dating.

Hobley said one of the most exciting develop-ments as digital dating moves into the 2020s is in emerging markets including India, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, where dating hasn’t always been so easy.

In India, for example, a new generation of women are “going to university, and they’re working, and they’re saying arranged marriage is not for me, and I want the ability to fi nd my own person, and for my marriage to be a choice that I make,” she said.

Hobley has also seen strides in inclusiveness and support throughout LGBTQ communities, creating a safe space to express gender and sexu-ality preferences and to meet potential partners.

“An estimated 70 to 80 percent of LGBTQ rela-tionships started on a dating app,” she said.

For Hobley, the love doesn’t stop there. She said she gets an average of 5 to 20 wedding emails and invites a week.

“I will crash your wedding,” she jokes, “but we also send a gift.”

Online dating moving beyond the app screen

The end of the swipeiStock

As online dating gets more sophisticated, companies are looking for ways to get users off their phones and streamline the experience, including helping set up face-to-face meetings.

EUFY SECURITY/TNS

The Eufy Security Wi-Fi Video Doorbell is similar in size to other video doorbells, and includes 4GB of built-in storage.

The Nimble wireless stand has a portable battery with a kickstand for vertical charging.NIMBLE/TNS


Wednesday evening. The attack occurred near Gulf Breeze, just south of Pensacola, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conser-vation Commission news release.

The man was on his porch when the bear approached and scratched him on the chest, offi-cials said in a statement. The man declined medical attention. Santa Rosa deputies and wildlife com-mission staff went to the scene, but no bears were present.

Traps were set to capture the bear, officials said. Wildlife of-ficers were speaking with resi-dents about bear activity and how to avoid conflicts.

Zoo confirms it lost national accreditation

MD SALISBURY — A Maryland zoo recent-

ly confirmed that it lost its nation-al accreditation during a standard five-year renewal process.

The Association of Zoos & Aquarium cited the Salisbury Zoo for not meeting certain in-dustry standards during its fall 2019 evaluation, the zoo’s Acting Director, Leanora Dillon, told The Salisbury Times this week.

The zoo’s level of deferred maintenance, inadequately main-tained buildings and the lack of a full-time veterinarian all contrib-uted to the zoo losing its standing, the newspaper reported.

Representatives didn’t share further specifics on where the zoo fell short, but Dillon emphasized

that none of the concerns had to do with animal welfare and that zoo is not in danger of losing any animals immediately.

The zoo must wait one year to reapply for accreditation while making progress toward fixing its citations.

Town bans roosters; restricts other animals

LA LAKE ARTHUR — Complaints about noise

and smell prompted a Louisiana town to ban roosters and place re-strictions on other animals such as chickens and horses.

The Lake Arthur Town Council voted 4-1 on a measure Wednes-day to ban roosters within town limits, The American Press re-ported. The new rule also bans pigs, hogs, sheep, goats and emus.

Chickens and hens are now limited to six per resident and cannot roam at large. Residents must keep horses and cows on a minimum of four acres of land.

“I’ve gotten numerous com-plaints about chickens roaming in other people’s yards and roosters making noise when people who work nights are trying to sleep in the day,” Lake Arthur Mayor Sherry Crochet said.

Anyone who violates the ordi-nance could face a $500 fine and/or 60 days in jail.

Iconic soda shop and pharmacy to close

MS GULFPORT — An iconic soda shop and

pharmacy in Gulfport, Miss. , is set to close after more than six decades in business.

The Sun Herald reported that Triplett-Day will shut down on March 31. The owners of the striped green downtown business said in a Facebook post that they want to enjoy time with their chil-dren, grandchildren and a great grandchild.

Triplett-Day opened in 1955 and served breakfast and lunch. It was renowned for its beignets.

10-year-old boy fires shotgun during standoff

CA SAN DIEGO — A 10-year-old boy is in custo-

dy after he fired shotgun roundsat police in San Diego duringa two-hour standoff Thursdaymorning, according to The SanDiego Union-Tribune. There wereno immediate reports of injuries.

The boy turned himself in afterhe’d holed up behind a shed at hishome, San Diego Police Lt. ShawnTakeuchi told reporters.

His parents had called police shortly after 9 a.m. because hewas having an emotional and mental crisis, authorities said.Crisis negotiators and SWAT of-ficers responded to the home.

Man arrested in cockfighting probe

VA MANASSAS — Au-thorities have arrested

a northern Virginia man and seized more than 60 chickens aspart of an investigation into an al-leged cockfighting operation.

Prince William County Po-lice announced Wednesday that Arwin Pingol, 35, of Manassashas been charged with 38 felonycounts of animal fighting.

Police say they carried out a search warrant after receiving a tip and found 63 chickens and two dogs at Pingol’s home on Ells-worth Road.

AMERICAN ROUNDUP

The number of golden rainbow trout West Virginia of-ficials plan to add to state waterways later this month, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday. The program will add the fish to more than 60 lakes and streams between March 27 and April 4 in a bid to increase nature tourism

in the state. “We want as many people as possible to enjoy the thrill of fishing West Virginia’s pristine waters,“ said Justice, a Republican. The program also comes with the opportunity to win prizes. Some of the trout will have a numbered tag, which can be entered into a state website for a chance to win a range of prizes.

Woman goes to jail for 100th birthday

NC ROXBORO — For her 100th birthday, Ruth

Bryant crossed a significant item off her bucket list. She went to jail.

The Person County Sheriff’s Office helped fulfill Bryant’s un-usual wish when two deputies showed up at her assisted living facility to serve her a warrant charging her with indecent expo-sure, news outlets reported.

The two deputies handcuffed Bryant to her walker and placed her in a patrol car, giving her the full experience with lights and si-rens flashing and blaring. Before she got in, the deputies warned her not to put up a fight, and she playfully kicked at them, WRAL reported.

Once in the jail, Bryant was treated like, well, a criminal. She had a mugshot taken, spent a few minutes in a jail cell, and left with an orange shirt with the words “PERSON COUNTY JAIL” on it.

Before long, Bryant was re-leased. She returned to her as-sisted living center to a party complete with a birthday cake. No word on whether the cake had a file in it.

Town elects therapy dog as its pet mayor

VT FAIR HAVEN — A town in Vermont elected a dog

as its pet mayor on Wednesday.Murfee won the race in Fair

Haven, WCAX-TV reported. The therapy dog beat out the incum-bent goat, Mayor Mara Lincoln, and K-9 Sammy, a town police dog. Eight eighth-graders count-ed 350 ballots Wednesday morn-ing to determine the winner.

The pet mayor race aims to raise money for a new playground and get children interested in politics.

Murfee visits nursing homes, schools and hospitals as part of Caring Canines Therapy Dogs of Southern Vermont.

Livestream will feature peregrine falcon nest

VA RICHMOND — For the fourth year in a row, na-

ture lovers will be able to watch a livestream of a peregrine falcon nest in downtown Richmond.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has set up a live video feed of the nest on the 21st floor of the Riverfront Plaza building. The feed is avail-able for viewing online.

The department said in a news release that wildlife officials have confirmed that last year’s new male — identifiable by his bands — is back again with an unband-ed female. The falcon cam will remain live until July.

Black bear scratches man outside of his home

FL GULF BREEZE — A black bear attacked a

man and scratched him on the chest outside his Florida Panhan-dle home, officials said.

The man was not seriously in-jured in his brush with the bear

THE CENSUS

Arts in the Capitol

50K

From wire reports

Susan Patton uses a cellphone photograph of “Bluesman” McKinney Williams as her in hand model while putting the finishing touches to her oil painting as Williams plays in the rotunda of the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday . The Mississippi Arts Commission’s annual Arts Day at the Capitol brought a variety of performance, musical, visual artists and supporting organizations to mingle with lawmakers and stress the importance of the arts as both entertainment and educational.

ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP

Saturday, March 7, 2020 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 15

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BY JOSH GREENMAN

New York Daily News

“Don’t tell me this isn’t about sexism,” is what at least one feminist writer has said about Elizabeth

Warren’s failure to win the Democratic nomination.

Apologies in advance for mansplaining, but it isn’t about sexism. Warren didn’t lose; she ran a good race, much better than many other men and women in the field. She lasted longer, and was much more suc-cessful in setting the terms of the debate.

What happened was she was the almost-uber-progressive candidate in a race with an uber-progressive candidate, and an uber-progressive who came to the fight with a rabid, fired-up-and-ready-to-go net-work of support. Like Bernie Sanders, she was for decriminalizing border crossings, ending fracking, eliminating all (or almost all) college debt and providing single-payer health care to all.

But ultimately she couldn’t out-Sanders Sanders.

Not that she was trying, exactly. She of-fered herself as the more responsible, de-tail-oriented revolutionary. That sounds neat to a policy wonk, but revolutionaries aren’t really looking for road maps. They want to hear clarion calls. Long is the list of people with the lengthiest plans on their websites who never come close to winning the nomination.

And while many college-educated vot-ers admired the fluent way Warren could explain her novel wealth tax and her plans for breaking up big tech and restructur-

ing American corporations, it’s rare that American politics rewards true policy cre-ativity, whether it comes from a man or a woman. (Donald Trump’s campaign calls for a Muslim ban and a border wall are rare and depressing counterexamples.)

If Warren wasn’t the radical, she wasn’t trying to be the steady, incrementalist moderate, either, which left her stuck in the middle of the left, claiming she was the only one who could unify disparate strands of the party. Which was kind of also Pete Buttigieg’s message, and he also didn’t make it that far.

I was personally impressed by Warren’s debating skills and by her winning de-meanor on the stump. She’s amazingly smart, a very good communicator. She is sharp on the attack (not only against Mike Bloomberg) and has a John McCain-like way of disagreeing without seeming pro-foundly disagreeable. She seems to love the fight and be rooted firmly in real peo-ple’s struggles. The detail she offered on her policy plans is admirable.

But every politician who has strengths also has weaknesses, and those weakness-es are usually funhouse-mirror versions of their strengths. Warren got all tied up around the details she offered or failed to offer on “Medicare for All.” First, there was no price tag. Then, there was a price tag. Then, there was a transition plan that seemed to validate the arguments of many who criticize single-payer itself. What came through was a muddle on the policy centerpiece of her campaign.

To the extent electability is the thing understandably on everyone’s minds these days: Every candidate in the Democratic

field has advantages and vulnerabilitiesin a head-to-head matchup with Trump.A Warren nomination would’ve pit a Har-vard professor against a guy who presents himself as a man of the people. Many of uscan see through the stupid, meaningless caricatures, understanding that Warrenis far more of the people than Trump evercould be, but it’s fair to worry about how others might see the contrast, especiallygiven Warren’s penchant for offering a so-lution to nearly every problem.

So, too, the Native American DNA thing. Trump, the biggest pretender in the histo-ry of the presidency, would’ve weaponizedWarren’s little stumble in describing herfamily history. Surely some Democraticvoters feared how that would play out.

If we’re going to ascribe Warren’s failure to win the nomination to sexism, we’d becalling lots of Democratic women in earlyvoting states sexist. Warren finished thirdamong women in Iowa, and fourth amongwomen in New Hampshire. She didn’t winher home state of Massachusetts or heroriginal home state of Oklahoma.

Only a fool would claim sexism has no role in influencing how the electorate looksat female candidates. Of course it does, es-pecially in runs for president: Some share of the population is uncomfortable with awoman as our commander in chief. Plentyof critiques of women would never be lev-eled at men.

But only another type of fool blames sex-ism every time a talented but flawed fe-male candidate doesn’t make it across thefinish line with the trophy in her hand.Josh Greenman is the New York Daily Newseditorial page editor .

BY ROBIN ABCARIAN

Los Angeles Times

Elizabeth Warren may not have succeeded in her race for the Democratic nomination, but she certainly did not fail.

Among other achievements, Warren single-handedly smashed the gilded can-didacy of former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He had spent hundreds of millions of dollars before he stepped onto the debate stage in Nevada, and right into Warren’s righteous buzz saw.

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against — a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,’ ” said Warren, right off the bat. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talk-ing about Mayor Bloomberg.”

It was a stunning moment for a woman whose civility toward her Democratic op-ponents had been unflagging. I believe it will go down in history as one of the most consequential debate moments of all time. Warren’s anger and indignation were pal-pable. Hillary Clinton had to soft-pedal her emotions at every turn, lest she pay a polit-ical price. Warren’s calculated outburst in Nevada showed that women had had it with that double standard. Her controlled rage did not hurt her one bit; she was heralded far and wide as the winner of that debate, as the billionaire slayer.

“You can’t walk away from the reality that she was the strongest debater, best on her feet, and to me, she showed that women are up to that,” said Debbie Walsh, direc-tor of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute. “No matter what, she proved she is among the handful of people who could handle Trump in a debate.”

Warren appealed mightily to voters who

saw themselves in her: white, college-edu-cated women, mostly. But she was unable to expand her appeal. This I don’t fully un-derstand, as her progressive policies, her famous plans for everything and her op-timistic nature would seem to be just the things Democrats are seeking.

“She had so many great moments, she seemed unstoppable back in October,” said Walsh.

Unfortunately, she struggled on two daunting fronts.

First, her stunning Nevada debate mo-ment aside, she was unable to overcome the deeply rooted sexism that has always stymied female presidential candidates. For example, when Warren embraced “Medicare for All,” she was bombarded with demands to explain how she would pay for it, which she did in November. Ver-mont Sen. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has gotten a pass on the issue. Less than two weeks ago, when pressed on how he would pay for Medicare for All by An-derson Cooper on “60 Minutes,” Sanders said, “Well, you know, I can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime.”

When, in a recent column, I wondered why Warren had failed to catch fire, I re-ceived this email from a reader: “From those I’ve spoken to,” he wrote, “she re-minded many of the primary school teacher who wagged her finger at them in disapproval. Maybe her experience as a school teacher is the reason. She also has a weak, kvetchy voice.”

To which, I can only reply, oy.“You can talk to a male voter, and they

will say they want someone smart and highly educated, and here we have a Har-vard law professor and she’s still being criticized,” said Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women & Poli-tics Institute at American University.

“Screechy, schoolmarm … When was thelast time you heard a man being described that way? Those are terms that are not ap-plied to male candidates.”

Warren herself addressed the issue onThursday at a news conference in Cam-bridge, Mass. “Gender in this race, youknow, that is the trap question for everywoman. If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sex-ism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’And if you say there was no sexism, abouta bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’ I promise you this. I will havea lot more to say on that subject later on.”

The other big problem Warren had waspersuading voters that she was “electable,”that impossible-to-define quality that hasbecome the sine qua non of the current cycle.

“There is a sense that Democrats abso-lutely have to win,” said Walsh, “this sensethat Donald Trump is an existential threat to the planet and the universe. Out of thathas come what I would say was a kind of risk-aversion, and unfortunately, women and people of color are still perceived asrisky, outside the box.”

This is a little bit nutty when you consid-er that a) We’ve already had a black presi-dent; and b) Women are currently servingas U.S. senators, Supreme Court justicesand governors.

But everything about this cycle seemsnutty.

Warren has not endorsed a candidateyet; she is still deciding between Sandersand former Vice President Joe Biden.

I predict that whomever she endorses will end up being the Democratic nominee.

May she use her powers for the greatergood and opt, of course, for the electable candidate.Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times.

No, Warren’s loss isn’t about sexism

Warren changed the landscape, but that wasn’t enough


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

Coppin St. 63, Md.-Eastern Shore 60Delaware St. 100, Howard 88Norfolk St. 68, Morgan St. 62UConn 77, Houston 71

SOUTHAlabama A&M 58, Grambling St. 57Alcorn St. 80, Prairie View 71Bethune-Cookman 72, Florida A&M 70, OTFlorida Southern 80, Embry-Riddle 77Jackson St. 71, Alabama St. 59Memphis 68, Wichita St. 60Morehouse 72, Paine 54NC Central 86, NC A&T 80Nova Southeastern 93, Palm Beach At-

lantic 78Southern U. 89, Texas Southern 74

MIDWESTClark Atlanta 83, Central St. (Ohio) 77,

2OTIndianapolis 80, Southwest Baptist 68Michigan 82, Nebraska 58Missouri-St. Louis 53, Drury 51NW Missouri St. 73, Lincoln (Mo.) 56Ohio St. 71, Illinois 63Rogers St. 71, Pittsburg St. 69

SOUTHWESTS. Nazarene 61, Ouachita Baptist 49SE Oklahoma 83, S. Arkansas 69

FAR WESTAlaska 91, W. Oregon 88Alaska-Anchorage 85, NW Nazarene 76Arizona 83, Washington St. 62Chaminade 90, Academy of Art 64E. Washington 100, Idaho St. 75Hawaii 67, UC Davis 65Long Beach St. 80, Cal Poly 73, OTMontana St. 73, S. Utah 65N. Colorado 71, Montana 64New Mexico St. 83, Cal Baptist 50Oregon 90, California 56Oregon St. 68, Stanford 65Portland St. 80, N. Arizona 66UC Santa Barbara 55, Cal St.-Fullerton 53UMKC 61, Utah Valley St. 51Washington 90, Arizona St. 83Weber St. 72, Idaho 64

Thursday’s women’s scoresEAST

Bryant 65, Wagner 53CCSU 75, St. Francis Brooklyn 54Delaware 63, Coll. of Charleston 54Drexel 52, UNC-Wilmington 50Fairfield 58, Siena 46Fairleigh Dickinson 66, Mount St.

Mary’s 63Manhattan 54, Monmouth (NJ) 48Marist 59, Iona 47Md.-Eastern Shore 61, Coppin St. 46Quinnipiac 82, Niagara 76Rider 72, St. Peter’s 52Robert Morris 62, St. Francis (Pa.) 29Sacred Heart 64, LIU 55, OT

SOUTHAlabama A&M 72, Grambling St. 52Alcorn St. 77, Prairie View 39Bethune-Cookman 66, Florida A&M 64Howard 76, Delaware St. 71Jackson St. 76, Alabama St. 56James Madison 61, Elon 58Marshall 59, FIU 57, OTMiddle Tennessee 74, North Texas 63Morgan St. 73, Norfolk St. 55NC Central 65, NC A&T 52Southern Miss. 59, FAU 55Southern U. 59, Texas Southern 56Texas State 59, Louisiana-Monroe 53Texas-Arlington 73, Louisiana-Lafay-

ette 66UAB 64, Old Dominion 61, OTW. Kentucky 71, Charlotte 60William & Mary 66, Towson 62

MIDWESTBradley 68, Indiana St. 59Illinois St. 68, Evansville 51Missouri St. 85, Valparaiso 70S. Illinois 58, Loyola of Chicago 41UMKC 61, Utah Valley 53

SOUTHWESTArkansas St. 86, South Alabama 80Baylor 69, Texas 53Louisiana Tech 69, UTSA 30Rice 82, UTEP 59Troy 70, UALR 54

FAR WESTCalifornia Baptist 82, New Mexico St. 70UC Davis 71, CS Northridge 58UC Irvine 86, UC Riverside 76UC Santa Barbara 57, Hawaii 56

Women’sconference tournaments

America East ConferenceFirst RoundSemifinals

Sunday, March 8UMass-Lowell vs. MaineBinghampton vs. Stony Brook

ChampionshipAt Higher-Seeded Team

Friday, March 13Semifinal winners

American Athletic ConferenceAt Uncasville, Conn.

First RoundFriday, March 6

Tulane vs. TulsaTemple vs. East CarolinaWichita State vs. HoustonSMU vs. Memphis

QuarterfinalsSaturday, March 7

South Florida vs. Tulane-Tulsa winnerUConn vs. Temple-East Carolina winnerUCF vs. Wichita State-Houston winnerCinncinnati vs. SMU-Memphis winner

Atlantic Coast ConferenceAt Greensboro, N.C.

Second RoundThursday, March 5

Wake Forest 58, Virginia Tech 55Syracuse 67, Virginia 50Georgia Tech 68, Pittsburgh 58Boston College 85, Clemson 73

QuarterfinalsFriday, March 6

Florida State vs. Wake ForestLouisville vs. SyracuseNC State vs. Georgia Tech winnerDuke vs. Boston College

Atlantic Sun ConferenceFirst Round

Saturday, March 7Lipscomb at Florida Gulf CoastStetson at North AlabamaKennesaw State at LibertyNorth Florida at Jacksonville

Atlantic 10 ConferenceAt Dayton, Ohio


Dayton vs. RichmondSaint Louis vs UMassVCU vs. DavidsonFordham vs. Duquesne winner

Big East ConferenceAt ChicagoFirst Round

Friday, March 6Villanova vs. XavierProvidence vs. Georgetown


Marquette vs. Villanova-Xavier win-ner

St. John’s vs. CreightonDePaul vs. vs. Providence-Georgetown

winnerSeton Hall vs. Butler

Big Sky ConferenceAt Boise, Idaho

Monday, March 9Northern Arizona vs. Sacramento StateMontana vs. Southern UtahEastern Washington vs. Weber State

QuarterfinalsTuesday, March 10

Idaho vs. Northern Arizona-Sacra-mento State winner

Portland State vs. Montana StateNorthern Colorado vs Montana-South-

ern Utah winnerIdaho State vs. Eastern Washington-

Weber State winner Big Ten Conference

At IndianapolisSecond Round

Thursday, March 5Purdue 72, Michigan State 64Rutgers 63, Wisconsin 55Michigan 81, Nebraska 75Ohio State 77, Minnesota 56


Maryland vs. PurdueIndiana vs. RutgersNorthwestern vs. MichiganIowa vs. Ohio State

Horizon LeagueSecond Round

Thursday, March 5N. Kentucky 78, Milwaukee 58

Cleveland State 63, Wright State 52At Indianapolis

SemifinalsMonday, March 9

IUPUI vs. Cleveland StateGreen Bay vs. N. Kentucky

ChampionshipTuesday, March 10

Semifinal winnersOhio Valley Conference

At Evansville, Ind.Thursday, March 5

Eastern Illinois 49, Jacksonville State 46Southeast Missouri 82, Tennessee

Tech 81 OTSemifinals

Friday, March 6UT-Martin vs. Eastern IllinoisBelmont vs. Southeast Missouri

ChampionshipSaturday, March 7

Semifinal winnersPac-12 Conference

At Mandalay Bay Events CenterLas Vegas

First RoundThursday, March 5

California 71, Arizona State 67Utah 72, Washington 63Southern Cal 69, Colorado 54Oregon State 82, Washington State 55


Arizona vs. CaliforniaOregon vs. UtahUCLA vs. Southern CalStanford vs. Oregon State

Patriot LeagueFirst Round

Saturday, March 7Army at Loyola MarylandNavy at American

QuarterfinalsMonday, March 9

Army-Loyola Maryland winner at Bucknell

Navy-American winner at Boston U.Lehigh at ColgateLafayette at Holy Cross

Southeastern ConferenceAt Greenville, S.C.


Georgia 68, Alabama 61Arkansas 90, Auburn 68LSU 73, Florida 59Tennessee 64, Missouri 51


South Carolina vs. GeorgiaTexas A&M vs. ArkansasMississippi State vs. LSUKentucky vs. Tennessee

Southern ConferenceAt Asheville, N.C.

First RoundThursday, March 5

Samford 77, Western Carolina 62Furman 68, Wofford 54Mercer 63, Chattanooga 55UNC-Greensboro 57, ETSU 47

SemifinalsFriday, March 6

Samford vs. FurmanMercer vs. UNC-Greensboro

Summit LeagueAt Sioux Falls, S.D.

First RoundSaturday, March 7

South Dakota vs. OmahaSouth Dakota State vs. North Dakota

Sunday, March 8Oral Roberts vs. Western IllinoisDenver vs. North Dakota State

West Coast ConferenceAt Las VegasFirst Round

Thursday, March 5Santa Clara 72, San Francisco 65, OTSaint Mary’s (Cal) 72, Loyola Mary-

mount 63Second Round

Friday, March 6Pacific vs. Santa ClaraPepperdine vs. Saint Mary’s (Cal)

Third RoundSaturday, March 7

Portland vs. Pacific-Santa Clara win-ner

BYU vs. Pepperdine-Saint Mary’s (Cal) winner

Pro football

XFLEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L Pct PF PASt. Louis 3 1 .750 91 62DC 2 2 .500 67 83New York 2 2 .500 49 73Tampa Bay 1 3 .250 64 74

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L Pct PF PAHouston 4 0 1.000 126 88Dallas 2 2 .500 78 72Los Angeles 1 3 .250 88 88Seattle 1 3 .250 64 87

Saturday’s gamesSeattle at HoustonNew York at Dallas

Sunday’s gamesSt. Louis at DCTampa Bay at Los Angeles

Tennis

Monterrey OpenThursday

At Club SonomaMonterrey, Mexico

Purse: $251,750Surface: Hardcourt outdoor

Women’s SinglesRound of 16

Anastasia Potapova, Russia, def. Ta-mara Zidansek, Slovenia, 1-6, 7-6 (3), 6-1.

Johanna Konta (2), Britain, def. Tat-jana Maria, Germany, 7-6 (4), 6-3.

Arantxa Rus, Netherlands, def. Lauren Davis (10), United States, 7-5, 6-0.

Elina Svitolina (1), Ukraine, def. Olga Govortsova, Belarus, 6-3, 6-4.

Women’s DoublesQuarterfinals

Wang Yafan, China, and Miyu Kato, Japan, def. Georgina Garcia Perez and Sara Sorribes Tormo (1), Spain, 6-7 (1), 6-4, 10-8.

Storm Sanders and Ellen Perez (3), Australia, def. Sabrina Santamaria and Ingrid Neel, United States, 6-4, 6-4.

Kateryna Bondarenko, Ukraine, and Sharon Fichman, Canada, def. Desirae Krawczyk, United States, and Giuliana Olmos (2), Mexico, 6-4, 6-4.

Lyon OpenFriday

At Palais des Sports GerlandLyon, France

Purse: $251,750Surface: Hardcourt indoor

Women’s SinglesRound of 16

Oceane Dodin, France, def. Jil Teich-mann (6), Switzerland, walkover.

Women’s SinglesQuarterfinalsDaria Kasatkina (7), Russia, def. Cami-

la Giorgi, Italy, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2.Anna-Lena Friedsam, Germany, def.

Viktoria Kuzmova (8), Slovakia, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2.

Women’s DoublesSemifinals

Laura-Ioana Paar, Romania, and Julia Wachaczyk, Germany, def. Vitalia Diatch-enko and Natela Dzalamidze, Russia, 6-3, 6-1.

Deals

Thursday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballAmerican League

BOSTON RED SOX — Signed RHP Collin McHugh to a one year contract. Desig-nated RHP Hector Velazquez for assign-ment.

NEW YORK YANKEES — Reassigned C Kellin Deglan to minor league camp. Reassigned C Wynston Sawyer to minor league camp.

OAKLAD ATHLETICS — Optioned RHP Daniel Gossett, RHP Grant Holmes and RHP James Kapriellian to the Los Vegas Aviators(PCL). Reassigned RHP Tanner Anderson, Wandisson and Miguel Rome-ro to minor league camp.

National LeagueLOS ANGELES DODGERS — Reassigned

RHPs Josiah Gray and Edwin Uceta to mi-nor league camp.

BASKETBALLNational Basketball Association

BOSTON CELTICS — Fined G Marcus Smart $35,000 for confronting and ver-bally abusing officials.

FOOTBALLNational Football League

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS — Signed OL Daniel Brunskill. TE Ross Dwelley, CB Em-manuel Mosley, QB Nick Mullens and RB Heff Wilson Jr. Excecised 2020 contract options for FB Kyle Juszczyk and CB K’Waun Williams.

HOCKEYNational Hockey League

WASHINGTON CAPITALS — Signed F Damien Riat to a two-year contract.

SOCCERMajor League Soccer

FC DALLAS — Agreed to terms with D Reggie Cannon on a four-year contract.

CHICAGO FIRE — Agreed to a new af-filiation with Forward Madison FC.

DC UNITED — Signed M Russell Ca-nouse to a three-year contract exten-sion.

College baseball

Thursday’s scoresEAST

Long Island 6, St. Peter’s 0SOUTHWEST

Oklahoma St. 2, BYU 0WEST

California Baptist 6, Nevada 5Seton Hall 6, Saint Mary’s 1UC Riverside 7, Holy Cross 6Washington St. 16, Niagara 7

College hockey

Thursday’s scoreEAST

UMass 1, Vermont 0

Pro baseball

Spring Training Thursday’s games

Houston 5, Boston 0N.Y. Mets 7, St. Louis (ss) 7Philadelphia 5, Toronto 3Tampa Bay 2, Pittsburgh 1Detroit 15, N.Y. Yankees 11Arizona 11, Texas (ss) 9Cleveland 7, San Francisco 1Texas (ss) 5, Chicago Cubs 0Chicago White Sox 7, Colorado (ss) 6Oakland 5, L.A. Dodgers 1Milwaukee 6, Cincinnati 4Minnesota 3, Baltimore 3San Diego 3, Seattle 0Colorado (ss) 9, Kansas City 1St. Louis (ss) 11, Washington 0

Friday’s gamesPhiladelphia vs. DetroitBoston vs. AtlantaTampa Bay vs. MinnesotaPittsburgh vs. TorontoChicago White Sox vs. Chicago CubsCincinnati vs. Oakland (ss)L.A. Angels (ss) vs. Kansas City (ss)Oakland (ss) vs. ClevelandSan Francisco vs. MilwaukeeColorado vs. ArizonaKansas City (ss) vs. L.A. Angels (ss)N.Y. Mets vs. HoustonBaltimore vs. N.Y. YankeesWashington vs. MiamiSeattle vs. L.A. DodgersTexas vs. San Diego

Saturday’s gamesMinnesota vs. DetroitToronto vs. Boston (ss)Miami vs. Washington (ss)Houston vs. St. LouisBoston (ss) vs. PhiladelphiaTampa Bay (ss) vs. AtlantaBaltimore vs. Tampa Bay (ss)N.Y. Yankees vs. PittsburghWashington (ss) vs. N.Y. MetsChicago White Sox vs. San FranciscoColorado vs. L.A. DodgersCincinnati (ss) vs. Kansas CityChicago Cubs (ss) vs. ClevelandTexas vs. MilwaukeeArizona (ss) vs. L.A. AngelsOakland vs. SeattleSan Diego vs. Arizona (ss)Cincinnati (ss) vs. Chicago Cubs (ss)

Pro soccer

MLSEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L T Pts GF GANew York 1 0 0 3 3 2Montreal 1 0 0 3 2 1Atlanta 1 0 0 3 2 1Columbus 1 0 0 3 1 0Toronto FC 0 0 1 1 2 2Orlando City 0 0 1 1 0 0Cincinnati 0 1 0 0 2 3Chicago 0 1 0 0 1 2New England 0 1 0 0 1 2D.C. United 0 1 0 0 1 2New York City FC 0 1 0 0 0 1Inter Miami CF 0 1 0 0 0 1Philadelphia 0 1 0 0 0 2

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L T Pts GF GASporting KC 1 0 0 3 3 1Minnesota United 1 0 0 3 3 1FC Dallas 1 0 0 3 2 0Colorado 1 0 0 3 2 1Seattle 1 0 0 3 2 1Los Angeles FC 1 0 0 3 1 0San Jose 0 0 1 1 2 2LA Galaxy 0 0 1 1 1 1Houston 0 0 1 1 1 1Real Salt Lake 0 0 1 1 0 0Nashville SC 0 1 0 0 1 2Portland 0 1 0 0 1 3Vancouver 0 1 0 0 1 3

Note: Three points for victory, onepoint for tie.

Saturday’s gamesChicago at New EnglandNew York at Real Salt LakeMontreal at FC DallasMiami at D.C. UnitedNew York City FC at Toronto FCCincinnati at AtlantaMinnesota at San JoseHouston at Sporting Kansas CityOrlando City at ColoradoVancouver at LA GalaxyColumbus at Seattle

Golf

Arnold Palmer InvitationalPGA TourThursday

At Bay Hill ClubOrlando, Fla.

Purse: $9.3 millionYardage: 8,400; Par: 72

First RoundMatt Every 32-33—65 -7Rory McIlroy 31-35—66 -6Talor Gooch 35-32—67 -5Scottie Scheffler 34-33—67 -5Sam Burns 31-37—68 -4C. Bezuidenhout 35-33—68 -4Tyrrell Hatton 35-33—68 -4Brendon Todd 35-33—68 -4Keith Mitchell 34-34—68 -4Graeme McDowell 35-33—68 -4Scott Brown 34-35—69 -3Sung Kang 34-35—69 -3Adam Long 36-33—69 -3Matt Wallace 35-34—69 -3Rob Oppenheim 37-32—69 -3Harris English 34-35—69 -3Hideki Matsuyama 33-36—69 -3Ian Poulter 36-33—69 -3Emiliano Grillo 36-34—70 -2Charley Hoffman 35-35—70 -2Harold Varner III 37-33—70 -2Xinjun Zhang 36-34—70 -2

Kevin Na 35-35—70 -2Collin Morikawa 37-33—70 -2Tom Hoge 36-34—70 -2Matthew Fitzpatrick 36-34—70 -2Rory Sabbatini 35-35—70 -2Sungjae Im 36-34—70 -2Patrick Reed 34-36—70 -2Matthew NeSmith 36-34—70 -2Danny Lee 37-34—71 -1Scott Harrington 35-36—71 -1Kevin Streelman 39-32—71 -1Lanto Griffin 38-33—71 -1Scott Piercy 36-35—71 -1Danny Willett 36-35—71 -1Troy Merritt 34-37—71 -1Bud Cauley 37-34—71 -1Ryan Moore 36-35—71 -1Byeong Hun An 37-34—71 -1Dylan Frittelli 37-34—71 -1Marc Leishman 35-36—71 -1Rickie Fowler 35-36—71 -1Jason Kokrak 33-38—71 -1Andrew Putnam 36-36—72 EBilly Horschel 38-34—72 EZach Johnson 36-36—72 ESteve Stricker 37-35—72 EMax Homa 36-36—72 EKyoung-Hoon Lee 37-35—72 EDavis Love III 37-35—72 EBrooks Koepka 37-35—72 ESi Woo Kim 34-38—72 E

Robby Shelton 34-38—72 EJoel Dahmen 38-34—72 EHarry Higgs 36-36—72 EKevin Chappell 36-36—72 EStewart Cink 35-37—72 ERod Perry 35-37—72 ECorey Conners 37-36—73 +1Matthew Wolff 39-34—73 +1Tyler Duncan 37-36—73 +1Jimmy Walker 36-37—73 +1Justin Rose 39-34—73 +1Alex Noren 34-39—73 +1Maverick McNealy 35-38—73 +1Doc Redman 36-37—73 +1Brian Gay 38-35—73 +1Vaughn Taylor 38-35—73 +1Denny McCarthy 37-36—73 +1Beau Hossler 39-34—73 +1Keegan Bradley 36-37—73 +1Nick Taylor 37-36—73 +1Jim Herman 37-36—73 +1Brendan Steele 37-36—73 +1Bryson DeChambeau 38-35—73 +1Xander Schauffele 36-37—73 +1Abraham Ancer 37-36—73 +1Patrick Rodgers 36-37—73 +1Padraig Harrington 38-36—74 +2Mark Hubbard 36-38—74 +2C.T. Pan 38-36—74 +2Joaquin Niemann 38-36—74 +2Kevin Kisner 36-38—74 +2


SPORTS BRIEFS/NBAScoreboard

Associated Press

HOUSTON — Kawhi Leonard scored 25 points and the Los Angeles Clippers rolled over the Houston Rockets 120-105 on Thurs-day night for their sixth straight victory.

The Rockets were done in by their shooting woes in a game that was billed as a matchup of two of the top teams in the Western Con-ference, but was a rout almost from the start. Houston had a chance to take the season se-ries and secure the tiebreaker over the Clip-pers, but the loss left the teams tied 2-2.

Los Angeles coach Doc Rivers was asked about Houston’s small-ball lineup where they play without a true center.

“What they do is smart for what they do, it really is, but we couldn’t get caught in trying to play that way and I thought we didn’t,” he said. “We stayed calm, moved the ball, found the open guy and our bigs were big.”

Houston made just 7 of 42 three-pointers to drop its second straight game in embarrass-ing fashion after losing to the lowly New York Knicks on Monday night. The Rockets ended their streak of 18 straight games with 10 or more three-pointers dating to Jan. 20.

Russell Westbrook led the Rockets with 29 points and 15 rebounds. James Harden was 4-for-17 and missed all eight three-pointers he attempted to finish with 16 points. The two stars and most of the other starters on both teams didn’t play for much of the fourth quar-ter with the game out of reach.

“We just didn’t do what we were supposed to do on both ends of the floor,” Harden said. “They made some tough shots. Defensively, we weren’t in our spots and we didn’t do what the game plan was.”

The Clippers built a 67-44 lead by halftime after a first half where the Rockets made just 2 of 22 three-point attempts. Ivica Zubac added 17 points and 12 assists for Los Angeles and Montrezl Harrell added 19 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.

“We positioned ourselves in the right place so even when we got deep, we either had Trez

(Harrell) or Zu (Zubac) back there when they swung it out,” Rivers said. “When you do that and make guys take contested threes, it’s a little harder.”

Houston’s shooting woes didn’t end after the break and the Rockets missed 11 of 12 three-pointers in the third quarter, including a couple of air balls. But the Rockets didn’t just struggle from long-range as they also missed several layups in the quarter to leave Los Angeles up 90-65 entering the fourth.

“It’s a great learning experience for us on both ends of the (floor),” Harden said. “We’ve got 21 games left to prepare ourselves for the bigger picture. So we watch film tomorrow and get better and be ready to go for the next game.”

Nuggets 114, Hornets 112: Jamal Mur-ray hit a running, off-balance 13-footer from the baseline with 5.1 seconds left and Denver overcame an eight-point fourth quarter deficit to beat host Charlotte.

Murray had 18 points, and Nikola Jokic added 14 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.

Devonte Graham had 24 points and seven assists for the Hornets. P.J, Washington added 20 points and Terry Rozier had 19. Rozier’s three-pointer at the buzzer rimmed out.

76ers 125, Kings 108: Tobias Harris had 28 points and 14 rebounds and short-handed Philadelphia beat Sacramento for its first road win in more than a month.

Shake Milton scored 20 points and Al Hor-ford had 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists for the Sixers, who also won in Sacra-mento for the first time since 2015. Alec Burks added 17 points and Raul Neto had 16.

De’Aaron Fox had 23 points and seven as-sists for Sacramento. Buddy Hield scored 22.

Philadelphia ended its nine-game road los-ing streak while continuing to play without Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Embiid sat out a fourth straight game because of a left shoulder sprain, while Simmons missed his sixth straight with a nerve impingement in his back.

Outbreak ends World Cup finalsMikaela Shiffrin’s chances of extending

her three-year reign as overall champion took another hit when the World Cup skiing finals were canceled Friday because of the virus outbreak.

Shiffrin already lost her lead in the stand-ings because of a month-long absence follow-ing the death of her father.

Shiffrin announced on Thursday that she was returning to the circuit in Europe but now she has only one set of races left in Are, Sweden — if she enters — to try to erase her 153-point deficit to Italian rival Federica Brignone.

Considering the virus, the Italian Winter Sports Federation was hoping to host the fi-nals, scheduled for March 18-22 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, without fans. But during an emer-gency International Ski Federation board meeting on Friday, every nation besides Italy voted to cancel the event, the Italian federa-tion said.

“It’s with great disappointment that I ac-cept this decision,” Italian federation presi-dent Flavio Roda said. “Every member of the board made their decision based on limita-tions that their respective governments have imposed in relation to the virus.”

World Cup rules prevent the finals from being moved to another location.

Nearly 150 people have died in Italy, the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe, and more than 3,000 have tested positive for the virus. Many nations have imposed travel restric-tions to Italy.

Also:� Despite the spreading virus, Tokyo Olym-

pic organizers have finally held a test event.The recent outbreak of the coronavirus has

forced them to rearrange or postpone several. But they allowed a sport climbing event on Friday to go ahead, with a few restrictions: no fans and no top athletes. Instead they used amateurs to test the climbing facility.

Almost all sports events and large gather-ings have been shut down in Japan.

Preseason baseball is being played without fans, the soccer J-League is suspended until March 18, and a spring sumo event will be contested in an empty arena. Schools are also closed across the country.

The International Olympic Committee and local organizers say the Olympics will open as scheduled on July 24. The Paralympics are set for Aug. 25.

Virologists, however, say it’s impossible to tell if the spreading virus will allow that to happen, and a cancellation or a postponement are possible.

Twelve deaths in Japan have been attrib-uted to the virus.

Jets’ Williams arrested for gunNEW YORK — New York Jets defensive

lineman Quinnen Williams was arrested for criminal possession of a weapon Thursday night when he attempted to board a plane, po-lice said in a statement.

New York/New Jersey Port Authority Po-lice said Williams, the team’s first-round draft pick last season, was arrested at LaGuardia Airport around 9:15 p.m. and charged. Po-lice said Williams has a permit in his home state of Alabama — but not in New York — for the Glock 19 pistol he was carrying onto the flight. It was not immediately known whether the gun was loaded.

The 22-year-old Williams was being pro-cessed by Port Authority Police late Thursday night. Police said the matter will be handled by the Queens district attorney’s office after Williams is released.

Williams was drafted with the No. 3 overall pick last year out of the University of Alabama. He played in 13 games as a rookie, including nine starts, and had 31 tackles with 2 ½ sacks and a fumble recovery for the Jets.

— Associated Press

Clippers roll past RocketsRoundup

Eastern ConferenceAtlantic Division

W L Pct GBx-Toronto 44 18 .710 —Boston 42 19 .689 1½Philadelphia 38 25 .603 6½Brooklyn 27 34 .443 16½New York 19 43 .306 25

Southeast DivisionMiami 40 22 .645 —Orlando 27 35 .435 13Washington 22 39 .361 17½Charlotte 21 41 .339 19Atlanta 19 44 .302 21½

Central Divisionx-Milwaukee 53 9 .855 —Indiana 37 25 .597 16Chicago 21 41 .339 32Detroit 20 43 .317 33½Cleveland 17 45 .274 36

Western ConferenceSouthwest Division

W L Pct GBHouston 39 22 .639 —Dallas 38 25 .603 2Memphis 31 31 .500 8½San Antonio 26 34 .433 12½New Orleans 26 36 .419 13½

Northwest DivisionDenver 42 20 .677 —Utah 39 22 .639 2½Oklahoma City 38 24 .613 4Portland 28 35 .444 14½Minnesota 19 42 .311 22½

Pacific DivisionL.A. Lakers 47 13 .783 —L.A. Clippers 43 19 .694 5Sacramento 27 35 .435 21Phoenix 24 38 .387 24Golden State 14 49 .222 34½

Wednesday’s gamesMilwaukee 119, Indiana 100Oklahoma City 114, Detroit 107Boston 112, Cleveland 106Memphis 118, Brooklyn 79Utah 112, New York 104Miami 116, Orlando 113Minnesota 115, Chicago 108Dallas 127, New Orleans 123, OTPortland 125, Washington 104

Thursday’s gamesDenver 114, Charlotte 112L.A. Clippers 120, Houston 105Philadelphia 125, Sacramento 108Toronto 121, Golden State 113

Friday’s gamesAtlanta at WashingtonOklahoma City at New YorkSan Antonio at BrooklynIndiana at ChicagoMiami at New OrleansOrlando at MinnesotaUtah at BostonMemphis at DallasPortland at PhoenixMilwaukee at L.A. Lakers

Saturday’s gamesHouston at CharlotteUtah at DetroitDenver at ClevelandAtlanta at MemphisPhiladelphia at Golden StateSacramento at Portland

Sunday’s gamesChicago at BrooklynL.A. Lakers at L.A. ClippersNew Orleans at MinnesotaMilwaukee at PhoenixOklahoma City at BostonIndiana at DallasMiami at WashingtonOrlando at HoustonDetroit at New YorkSan Antonio at ClevelandToronto at Sacramento

CalendarApril 15 — Regular season ends.April 18 — Playoffs begin.May 19 — Draft lottery, Chicago.June 4 — NBA Finals begin.June 25 — NBA Draft.

LeadersScoring

G FG FT PTS AVGHarden, HOU 58 578 589 2006 34.6Beal, WAS 54 561 368 1644 30.4Young, ATL 57 519 459 1689 29.6Antetnmpo, MIL 56 613 350 1658 29.6Lillard, POR 55 513 374 1616 29.4Doncic, DAL 50 469 346 1426 28.5Westbrook, HOU 51 548 260 1405 27.5Leonard, LAC 49 458 301 1320 26.9Davis, LAL 52 478 365 1381 26.6Booker, PHX 59 514 386 1531 25.9

Rebounds G OFF DEF TOT AVGDrummond, CLE 55 244 596 840 15.3Whiteside, POR 58 232 592 824 14.2Gobert, UTA 59 207 620 827 14.0Antetnmpo, MIL 56 129 643 772 13.8Sabonis, IND 59 179 554 733 12.4

Assists G AST AVGJames, LAL 57 610 10.7Young, ATL 57 529 9.3Rubio, PHX 54 475 8.8Doncic, DAL 50 439 8.8Simmons, PHI 54 442 8.2

Three-point percentage(minimum 200 attempts)

3PM 3PA PCTCurry, DAL 135 297 .455Redick, NOP 156 345 .452Robinson, MIA 225 505 .446McDermott, IND 118 265 .445Morris, LAC 116 264 .439

DAVID J. PHILLIP/AP

Clippers forward Paul George, left, drives past the Rockets’ Robert Covington for a bucket during the first half on Thursday in Houston. George had 13 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists in Los Angeles’ 120-105 victory. The Clippers have won six straight.

Briefl y


BY TIM REYNOLDS

Associated Press

It’s reasonable to think Milwau-kee is not going to win all 20 of its remaining games, which means not all is lost for the Golden State Warriors this season.

They’ll still be the only team in NBA history to win 73 games.

The Warriors were a record 73-9 in the 2015-16 season, and the Bucks are 53-9 after their win over Indiana on Wednesday. But there’s still a chance Milwaukee could be able to make a case as the most dominant team in league history in one regard — margin of victory.

This season’s Bucks are out-scoring teams by 12.4 points per game. That’s the best pace in NBA history, just ahead of the mark of 12.28 set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers — a team with a Hall of Fame coach in Bill Sharman, four Hall of Fame play-ers in Wilt Chamberlain, Gail Goodrich, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, and a player who would be-come a Hall of Fame coach in Pat Riley.

And the Bucks are in that stratosphere.

“We’ve still got a lot more bas-ketball to play,” guard Wesley Matthews said. “And we know where we’re at and where we want to be. It’s a pretty special thing to be where we’re at in the standings.”

Matthews then offered a sen-tence that should send shud-ders across the rest of the NBA: “There’s a lot of room for im-provement and growth.”

The way the Bucks are going, they’ll have the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference race sewn up by the last week of March and probably home-court advantage for the entirety of the NBA play-offs wrapped up not long after-ward. Yet they’re still focused on finding ways to get better.

Milwaukee coach Mike Buden-holzer was asked if it’s difficult to be critical when a team is off to one of the best starts in NBA history.

“It’s not hard,” Budenholzer said. “I mean, it’s I guess part of what makes coaching either mad-dening or a lot of fun. You can al-ways push them to be better and there’s always things we can do better and when we lose there’s things that we do well and it’s not all terrible. So hopefully we walk that line of keeping our guys, you know, hungry and growing and improving and recognizing when they do things well, also.”

Milwaukee is on pace for 70 wins this season. It’s likely that some players will be rested once the Bucks clinch all that can be clinched in the regular season, though Budenholzer also under-stands the delicate balance and the need to be playing the right way when the playoffs start in ba-sically a month and a half.

“It’s a fine line to walk,” he said.

Only three teams were better through 62 games than Milwau-kee: The 2015-16 Warriors were 56-6, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls were 55-7 and the 1996-97 Bulls were 54-8. There have been four other teams to start 53-9, most recently the 2015-16 San Antonio Spurs.

“At the end of the day you’re going to win some games and lose some games,” Bucks star and reigning NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo said. “We’re not going to go 82-0.”

The goal for the Bucks is clear — win 16 games in the playoffs. The rest, to them, doesn’t seem to matter much.

Not bad enoughThe worst team in NBA history

to make the playoffs, in terms of won-lost record, is the 1987-88 San Antonio Spurs. They went 31-51.

That dubious mark won’t be caught this season. Well, prob-ably not, anyway.

For the first time since 2015, a team — maybe more than one — with a losing record is likely going to get into the postseason. Orlando and Brooklyn are both well below the .500 mark and yet still have comfortable holds on what would be the last two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference. Memphis has the No. 8 spot in the West, with a .500 record.

Since the league went to 30 teams for the 2004-05 season, only 10 of the 240 playoff quali-fiers have finished the regular

season with losing records. The worst in that span: the 2007-08 Atlanta Hawks and the 2010-11 Indiana Pacers, both 37-45.

And the last time three sub-.500 teams went to the playoffs was 1997: Phoenix was 40-42, Minnesota was 40-42 and the Los Angeles Clippers were 36-46.

It could raise questions about why the NBA would want an ex-panded postseason format, the so-called “play-in” notion where the No. 9 and No. 10 teams from each conference would have a shot at making the field through

a mini-playoff.Such games would be dramatic,

which would be nice.Of course, such games would

also open the door to more badteams getting into the playoffs,which wouldn’t be so nice.

Expect competitive balanceacross the NBA to be a big talkingpoint again soon. After Monday’sgames, the league had 12 teams with winning percentages of .600 or better, one team at .597 — Dal-las, a mere game away from top-ping .600 — and the other 17 teams all below the .500 mark.

No stopping these Bucks

MORRY GASH/AP

The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo has been even better than during his MVP-winning campaign last season, averaging 29.6 points, 13.8 rebounds and 5.8 assists.

WILFREDO LEE/AP

Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez, right, looks for an opening past Miami Heat forward Jae Crowder on Monday. The Bucks lost the game and their chance to match the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors’ record of 73 regular season wins.

12.4Points per game the Bucks are outscoring opponents

this season. The full-season record is the 12.28 mark

by the 1971-72Los Angeles Lakers.

By the numbers

SOURCES: Associated Press; NBA.com

70Wins the Bucks will have at their current pace this

season.

119.1Points per game this season for the Bucks,

tops in the league.

Around the NBA

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry seemed every bit himself after a four-month layoff, save for a little long-range rust.

“He looks exactly the same to me,” coach Steve Kerr said.

Curry scored 23 points for Golden State in his anticipated return from a broken left hand, but the Toronto Raptors beat the Warriors 121-113 Thursday night to clinch a playoff spot.

After being sidelined 58 games, Curry led Golden State out of the tunnel to a big ovation — as loud as his neon sneakers, one pink and one yellow — and the crowd stirred every time he pulled up to shoot.

He missed his first two at-tempts, but had three quick assists, including a no-look, be-hind-the-back dish to Andrew Wiggins. He finished with seven assists and seven rebounds in 27 minutes.

“I was trying to be out there and not think about it,” Curry said. “If I needed to make that pass, make it and no hesitation. It was a good feeling, throwing the first one.”

The two-time MVP hit a 17-footer for his first basket early in the second quarter, then got a huge reaction for a three-pointer from well beyond the arc shortly before halftime. He was 3-for-12 from three-point range and 6-for-16 overall for the game, the only blemish on an otherwise encour-aging night for the three-time champion.

Norman Powell scored a ca-reer-high 37 points for Toronto, which won in a rematch of last year’s NBA Finals. The Raptors won that series in six games, fin-ishing with a victory in Golden State’s final game at its old arena in Oakland.

Kyle Lowry added 26 points and 10 assists for the Raptors, who ended a three-game losing streak on Tuesday at Phoenix.

Curry’s 23 not enough for Warriors

NBA

JEFF CHIU/AP

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry scored 23 points in his return from a broken left hand on Thursday, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Toronto Raptors, who wrapped up a playoff berth with a 121-113 victory in San Francisco.


COLLEGE BASKETBALL

Year after winning Pac-12, Huskies are in the basement

PHOTOS BY ELAINE THOMPSON/AP

Above: Washington’s Hameir Wright, right, is one of the few upperclassmen on the team. Below:Washington State’s CJ Elleby, left, dunks in front of Washington’s Sam Timmins on Feb. 28.

BY TIM BOOTH

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Until just a couple of weeks ago, the only loss on Baylor’s resume had come at the hands of Washington.

Until the end of December, the Huskies and their talented group of freshmen were ranked in the bot-tom half of the AP Top 25.

As Washington begins its final road trip of the con-ference season this weekend at the Arizona schools, the Huskies find themselves stuck in last place in the Pac-12. They are 3-13 in conference play, a dis-mal record that included a nine-game losing streak and a series of unfathomable losses.

Unless Washington can sweep Arizona and Ari-zona State and Oregon State loses its last two games, the Huskies will finish in last place a year after win-ning the regular-season title.

So, what happened?“We haven’t pulled off games due to a lot of dif-

ferent kind of scenarios,” Washington coach Mike Hopkins said. “It could be lack of foul shooting one game, it could be your defense wasn’t pinpoint, it could be a great player shoots at the end of a game when guys take over. ... You can’t rush the process. We are who we are, we just got to try to get better every day.”

There are many reasons Washington finds it-self in a situation that seemed unthinkable when the season began. They started with one of the top freshman classes in the country, anchored by Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels, and had added for-mer Kentucky guard Quade Green.

Stewart has been great, McDaniels has flashed his NBA potential at times, but it was the loss of Green to academic ineligibility in early January that started Washington’s downturn.

Couple Green’s loss with having to rely heavily on freshmen, some of the Huskies holdovers from last year’s team having plateaued or regressed, and it’s a recipe for a down season.

But no one expected the Huskies, with two likely first-round picks, to be this bad.

It’s a drastic turnaround from Hopkins’ first two seasons on Montlake. He led the Huskies to 21 wins two years ago then last year ended Washington’s long NCAA Tournament drought with a senior-laden team.

This year, the lack of experience has become ap-parent, especially in close games. Washington is 0-9 in conference play in games decided by six points or less. They’ve been excruciatingly competitive,

but unable to finish in the closing moments. For 35 minutes, Washington may be one of the best teams in the country. For the final five minutes, there have been some forgettable moments and unthinkable meltdowns, most notably losses at Stanford and at Utah.

“Experience matters. And that’s a big thing,” Hopkins said. “Doesn’t matter how talented you are if you don’t play together as a team, and I think that’s one thing with inexperience and youth is that process of building and molding over time helps.”

Hopkins is also responsible for some of the mis-steps. The loss of Green left the Huskies without a true point guard and ended up with Marcus Tso-honis having to burn his redshirt to be inserted into the lineup at midseason.

Fellow freshman RaeQuan Battle has seen his minutes fluctuate, while junior Nahziah Carter and Hameir Wright have been inconsistent.

But it remains an extremely talented group and that’s what Hopkins is trying to preach going into this weekend’s games and into next week’s confer-ence tournament in Las Vegas.

Hopkins still thinks the team that beat Baylor and nearly knocked off Gonzaga can re-emerge and pos-sibly make some noise in the tourney.

“It just takes a little bit of a spark. And, unfor-tunately, we’ve had a lot of opportunity to get that spark and we haven’t,” Hopkins said. “But at any time we can get it. Get some momentum going in the right direction. And that’s when magic happens.”

Kentuckyat Florida

AFN-Atlantic7 p.m. Saturday CET3 a.m. Sunday JKT

UCLAat USC

AFN-Atlantic9:15 p.m. Saturday CET5:15 a.m. Sunday JKT

On AFN

Louisvilleat VirginiaAFN-Sports

10 p.m. Saturday CET6 a.m. Sunday JKT

Seton Hallat CreightonAFN-Sports 2

10:30 p.m. Saturday CET4:30 a.m. Sunday JKT

Kansas objects toNCAA allegations

BY DAVE SKRETTA

Associated Press

LAWRENCE, Kan. — The Uni-versity of Kansas forcefully ob-jected to charges that its storied men’s basketball program, cur-rently No. 1 in the nation, and its football programs had committed significant violations tied primar-ily to recruit-ing when it issued its formal re-sponse to the NCAA’s notice of al-legations Thursday night.

In a series of documents totaling nearly 300 pages of arguments and support-ing materials, the school claims several facts involving Bill Self’s basketball program are in dis-pute, including charges that Kan-sas lacked institutional control and its Hall of Fame coach and his assistant, Kurtis Townsend, had committed a series of high-level violations.

“There is no reasonable con-clusion that members of the university, including the men’s basketball staff, knew or should have known about any violations of NCAA rules,” the response said. “Self had no knowledge of any NCAA rules violations or il-licit conduct exhibited by Adidas, its employees or its consultants. ... Voluminous evidence demon-strates uncontestably that Coach Self did, in fact, promote an atmo-sphere of compliance.”

The NCAA issued its original notice of allegations on Sept. 23, which included five violations for men’s basketball — all Level 1, the most severe — and two lesser

violations for football. The schoolthen received an amended no-tice Jan. 30 that added an eighth,low-level violation involving the current football staff led by LesMiles.

While the NCAA’s notice doesnot detail what Kansas is accusedof doing, the program was among the most prominent in an NCAA probe into a pay-for-play scheme that began with an FBI investiga-tion into apparel company Adi-das. One of its former employeestestified at trial that he madepayments to the family of oneKansas recruit and the guardianof a current player, and text mes-sages presented in court revealed a close relationship between Self and the Adidas employee.

The school had a Thursdaydeadline to issue its response. Ul-timately, a hearing will be sched-uled and Kansas will present its case. The NCAA will then issueits ruling, often within severalmonths, and the school retains the right to appeal.

The former Adidas employee,T.J. Gassnola, testified in Octoberthat he made a a $90,000 paymentto the family of then-Kansas re-cruit Billy Preston and $2,500 to the guardian of forward Silvio De Sousa, who just this week finisheda 12-game suspension for an un-related issue — he was involvedin a brawl during a game againstKansas State. Gassnola also saidhe paid $20,000 to Fenny Fal-magne, De Sousa’s guardian .

Gassnola, who avoided prisontime by cooperating with the FBI,insisted Self and his coaching staff were unaware of the pay-ments, even though text messagesdetailed their close relationship.But an attorney for former Adi-das executive James Gatto told ajury that his client approved the payment to Falmagne only after Self and Townsend requested it.

Self


Scoreboard

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

Men’sconference tournaments

America East ConferenceFirst Round

Saturday, March 7New Hampshire at UMBCUMass-Lowell at HartfordMaine at VermontAlbany at Stony Brook

Atlantic Sun ConferenceSemifinals

Thursday, March 5Liberty 66, Stetson 62Lipscomb 73, North Florida 71

ChampionshipSunday, March 8

Liberty vs. Lipscomb Big South Conference

At Radford, Va.Quarterfinals

Thursday, March 5Winthrop 106, SC-Upstate 70Gardner-Webb 72, UNC-Asheville 62Radford 62, Charleston Southern 48Longwood 53, Hampton 78


Radford vs. LongwoodWinthrop vs. Gardner-Webb

Colonial Athletic AssociationAt Washington


Drexel vs. UNC-WilmingtonElon vs. James Madison

Horizon LeagueSecond Round

Thursday, March 5Green Bay 78, Oakland 63Ill.-Chicago 67, Youngstown St. 61

At IndianapolisSemifinals

Monday, March 9Ill.-Chicago vs. Wright StateGreen Bay vs. Northern Kentucky

Missouri Valley ConferenceAt St. LouisFirst Round

Thursday, March 5Drake 75, Illinois St. 65Valparaiso 58, Evansville 55


N. Iowa vs DrakeBradley vs. S. IllinoisLoyola of Chicago vs. ValparaisoIndiana St. vs. Missouri St.

Mountain West ConferenceAt Las VegasQuarterfinals

Thursday, March 5San Diego St. 73, Air Force 60Boise State 67, UNLV 61Utah St. 75, New Mexico 70Wyoming 74, Nevada 71


San Diego St. vs. Boise StateUtah St. vs. Wyoming


Semifinal winnersNortheast Conference

SemifinalsSaturday, March 7

Saint Francis (Pa.) at Sacred HeartRobert Morris at LIU Brooklyn

Ohio Valley ConferenceAt Evansville, Ind.


E. Kentucky 58, Tennessee St. 48Austin Peay 76, E. Illinois 65


Belmont vs. Tennessee St.Murray St. vs. Austin Peay


Semifinal winners Patriot League

At Higher-Seeded SchoolsQuarterfinals

Thursday, March 5Colgate 83, Lehigh 70Bucknell 64, American U. 59Boston U. 69 Navy 63Lafayette 73, Army West Point 68

SemifinalsSunday, March 8

Lafayette vs. ColgateBoston U. vs. Bucknell

Southern ConferenceAt Asheville, N.C.

First RoundFriday, March 6

Samford vs. VMIWofford vs. The Citadel


ETSU vs. Samford-VMI winnerMercer vs. Western CarolinaFurman vs. Wofford-The Citadel winnerUNC Greensboro vs. Chattanooga

Summit LeagueAt Sioux Falls, S.D.


North Dakota St. vs. DenverSouth Dakota St. vs. Fort Wayne

Sunday, March 8Oral Roberts vs. Nebraska-OmahaSouth Dakota vs. North Dakota

Sun Belt ConferenceFirst Round

Saturday, March 7Arkansas State at LouisianaCoastal Carolina at UT Arlington

West Coast ConferenceAt Las VegasFirst Round

Thursday, March 5Loyola Marymount 75, San Diego 61Santa Clara 76, Portland 62

Second RoundFriday, March 6

San Francisco vs. Loyola MarymountPepperdine vs. Santa Clara

Roundup

San Diego St. overtakes Air ForceAssociated Press

LAS VEGAS — Jordan Schakel’s team-mates kept telling him to shoot. San Diego State needed every basket to avoid a major upset.

Schakel scored 14 of his 17 points in the sec-ond half as the fifth-ranked Aztecs rallied for a 73-60 win over Air Force in the quarterfi-nals of the Mountain West Conference tourna-ment on Thursday.

Schakel, who shot 1-for-5 in the first half, hit four three-pointers in the second half for the top-seeded Aztecs (29-1), who rode a 21-3 run to their 13th consecutive quarterfinal victory.

“Nothing different happened,” Schakel said. “I just had to keep shooting. My teammates continued to keep finding me and believing in me, so I thank them for that.”

Yanni Wetzell and Malachi Flynn had 16 points each for San Diego State, which is hoping to earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Flynn, the Mountain West’s player of the year and defensive player of the year, had three steals, seven rebounds and eight assists to offset a 4-for-10 shooting performance.

AJ Walker scored 18 points for Air Force (12-20) . Seniors Caleb Morris (12 points) and Sid Tomes (10 points) were the other Falcons in double figures.

No. 13 Oregon 90, California 56: Payton Pritchard led four teammates in double fig-ures with 20 points and the host Ducks used an early scoring outburst to pull away from the Golden Bears in the first half.

The win moved Oregon (23-7) back into a tie with UCLA for first place in the Pac-12 at 12-5 with the regular season ending Saturday.

Pritchard added nine assists in the Ducks’ 21st consecutive home victory, including all 16 home games this season. He shot 6-for-8 overall, including making all three of his three-point attempts.

Oregon shot 63% from the field overall, in-cluding 71% (12-for-17) on threes as Anthony Matthis added 17 points on 5-for-6 shooting from three-point range. Will Richardson and Addison Patterson each had 13, and Shakur Juiston chipped in 10.

Matt Bradley led the Bears (13-17, 7-10) with 15 points. Grant Anticevich added 10.

No. 19 Ohio State 71, No. 23 Illinois 63: Kaleb Wesson scored 19 points to lead the host Buckeyes past the Illini.

E.J. Liddell tied a career high with 17 points and had 11 rebounds for Ohio State (21-9, 11-8 Big Ten), which has won four in a row and nine of its last 11. The Buckeyes are playing well at a critical time, with a road matchup against No. 16 Michigan State looming this weekend and the Big Ten tournament begin-ning Wednesday in Indianapolis.

Ayo Dosunmu had 21 points and five as-sists to pace Illinois (20-10, 12-7), which saw its conference championship hopes fade a bit more after starting the day a half-game be-hind leaders Maryland, Wisconsin and Michi-gan State. Still, the Illini are poised for a berth in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in seven years.

UConn 77, No. 21 Houston 71: Christian Vital scored 26 points in his final home game and the host Huskies beat the Cougars.

Freshman James Bouknight added 17 points and Isaiah Whaley had 13 for Connecticut (18-12, 9-8 American Athletic Conference), which won its fourth straight game, but just its sec-ond this season over a ranked opponent.

Quentin Grimes scored 24 points and Caleb Mills added 20 for Houston (22-8, 12-5), which fell into a tie for second place in the conference.

No. 25 Michigan 82, Nebraska 58: Jon Teske scored 12 points and Zavier Simpson added 11 in their home finale, and the host

Wolverines beat the Cornhuskers as fans welcomed former coach John Beilein back to Crisler Center.

Nebraska (7-23, 2-17) was without guard Cam Mack, suspended for a violation of team rules. The Cornhuskers have lost 15 straight.

Isaiah Livers had 18 points and 10 rebounds for Michigan (19-11, 10-9 Big Ten), and Simp-son had 10 assists. Haanif Cheatham led Ne-braska with 19 points.

Beilein, who was in the crowd, coached the Wolverines for 12 seasons before accepting the head coaching job with the NBA’s Cleve-land Cavaliers.

Lafayette 73, Army 68: Leo O’Boyle scored 20 points, E.J. Stephens added 14 and Lukas Jarrett 13 as the fifth-seeded Leopards eliminated the fourth-seeded Black Knights in a Patriot League quarterfinal.

The win sets up a semifinal match against No. 1-seeded Colgate Sunday.

O’Boyle was 6-for-8 from the field, includ-ing 4-for-5 from beyond the three-point arc for Lafayette (19-11), which shot 52% in the

second half to break away and lead by asmany as 14.

Army’s Tommy Funk scored nine of his21 points in a late surge and cut the 14-point gap down to 69-65 with a layup at 1:10 left toplay. Funk also made 12 assists for the Black Knights (15-15).

Boston U. 69, Navy 63: Javante McCoyscored 19 points, Walter Whyte added 18 points and 10 rebounds as the third-seeded Terriers beat the sixth-seeded Midshipmenin a Patriot League quarterfinal.

BU moves on to host a seminfinal on Sun-day against No. 7 seed Bucknell (16-14). TheTerriers swept the season series against theBison.

Jonas Harper added 11 points for BU.Cam Davis scored 13 points to lead Navy

(14-16). Evan Wieck added 12 points and John Carter Jr. and Tyler Nelson had 10 apiece.

Navy pulled to 65-63 with 1:10 left followinga Davis three-pointer and a Greg Summers layup, but the Midshipmen then committed aturnover and missed their last three shots.

ISAAC BREKKEN/AP

San Diego State’s Yanni Wetzell dunks as Air Force’s Keaton Van Soelen defends during the second half of Thursday’s Mountain West Conference tournament quarterfinal in Las Vegas.


FROM BACK PAGE

helped New York end a three-game skid and pulled the Rangers within two points of the Islanders for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. He took a pass from Artemi Panarin and broke in alone and beat Ilya Samsonov with a backhand. Zibanejad is the first Rangers center with at least 35 goals in a season since Hall of Famer Eric Lindros in 2001-02.

“You’d be hard pressed to match that,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “Early on, he gets the hat trick and just doesn’t stop.”

The Rangers center is also the first play-er with five goals in a game since Winni-peg’s Patrik Laine did it in an 8-4 win over St. Louis on Nov. 24, 2018. Zibanejad joined Don Murdoch (Oct. 12, 1976) and Mark Pavelich (Feb. 23, 1983) as Rangers with five goals in a game.

“Sit back and watch it and enjoy it be-cause it was a special night in so many ways for him and for us obviously to win a game of that magnitude, the ebbs and

flows of it,” Quinn said.“It was a special night obviously, not just

for Mika, but for all of us to be part of it.”When Zibanejad first entered the locker

room after the game, it was empty — until his hiding teammates surprised him and quickly mobbed him with hugs.

“I didn’t expect that,” Zibanejad said. “I knew something was going on when I came in and no one was in here.”

His performance also wowed his team-mates on social media, including goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who tweeted: “Are you kidding me?? Did that just happen? What a performance!!”

Tony DeAngelo had a goal and two as-sists, Panarin had three assists and Alex-andar Georgiev made 29 saves for New York.

Alex Ovechkin had two goals, including the tying score with 43 seconds remaining to force overtime. That came after Zibane-jad scored on a rebound with 1:42 remain-ing to give New York a brief 5-4 lead.

“Crazy game,” Zibanejad said. “Even though they tie it up and they come after

us right after we score, we kept it going and found a way to win.”

Ilya Kovalchuk had a goal and an assist, and Carl Hagelin and Garnet Hathaway also scored for Washington. Samsonov had 33 saves for the Capitals.

Philadelphia, which extended its win-ning streak to eight games after beating Carolina, tied Washington for first place in the Metropolitan Division.

“Major credit to us to get that goal at the end (of the third), that says a lot,” Capitals coach Todd Reirden said. “And then we put our two best 3-on-3 guys out there and we let a player score his fifth goal of the game.”

Defense has been an issue for the Capi-tals, who have allowed at least three goals for the 10th consecutive game. It’s the first time they’ve done that since the 2006-07 season.

“It was nice to at least get a point when we probably didn’t deserve one,” said Cap-itals defenseman John Carlson, who had two assists.

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — The label has a nice ring to it around Philly: The first-place Flyers.

It’s a tie, for now, in the Met-ropolitan Division and it’s still March, but for a franchise that 15 months ago was nestled at the bottom of the standings and fired their coach, their GM, and ran through goalies like dirty laun-dry, the Flyers will enjoy their moment in the top spot.

“It’s quite normal for every-body to be excited,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “Players, coach-es, fans, Flyers fans, hockey fans. I mean, this is great hockey. The competition is unreal and we’re playing well right now. Every-body should be excited.”

Carter Hart stopped 28 shots and four players scored to lead Philadelphia to its eighth straight win, 4-1 over the Carolina Hurri-canes on Thursday night.

Ivan Provorov, Michael Raffl, Nicolas Aube-Kubel and Sean Couturier scored for the Flyers, who continued their scorching turnaround from last season and won their 24th home game (24-5-4). They won on consecutive nights after beating the Wash-ington Capitals 5-2 and have po-sitioned themselves as a serious threat to make run in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The Flyers moved into a tie for first place in the Metropoli-tan with the Capitals, who lost 6-5 in overtime to the New York Rangers.

The Flyers, who tied a franchise record with 10 wins in February, have been one of the best teams in the league the last three months and have fans in Philly excited about hockey again. They have scored at least four goals in each game of their winning streak.

“They play right. That’s how you win,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said.

Bruins 2, Panthers 1 (OT):

Torey Krug scored 4:08 into over-time, Patrice Bergeron also had a goal and Boston beat host Florida for its fourth straight win.

Jaroslav Halak stopped 32 shots for the NHL-leading Bruins.

Chris Driedger made 25 saves and MacKenzie Weegar scored, but Florida dropped a franchise-worst eighth straight home game and lost its fourth game in a row overall.

Lightning 4, Canadiens 0: An-drei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves, Victor Hedman scored twice and Tampa Bay blanked visiting Montreal.

Vasilevskiy completed his 21st career shutout to help Tampa Bay win for the second time in five games.

Penguins 4, Sabres 2: Patric Hornqvist scored twice in leading Pittsburgh to a win that extended host Buffalo’s losing streak to five straight.

Sidney Crosby and Marcus Pettersson also scored, and the Penguins won consecutive games after losing six in a row.

Predators 2, Stars 0: Filip Forsberg and Matt Duchene each scored power-play goals, and Nashville shut out visiting Dallas to snap a three-game skid.

Forsberg also ended his own 16-game skid with his first goal since Jan. 30, and Duchene scored his first since Feb. 15 to move the Predators back to the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot, at least for the moment.

Senators 4, Islanders 3: Craig Anderson made 37 saves and host Ottawa beat New York, spoiling Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s return to his former hometown after being traded 11 days ago.

Blackhawks 4, Oilers 3: Alex DeBrincat scored two goals, rookie Adam Boqvist had two assists, and host Chicago beat Edmonton.

Kings 1, Maple Leafs 0 (SO): Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe scored in the shootout, and Los Angeles beat visiting Toronto for its fourth consecutive victory.

Wild 3, Sharks 2: Zach Parise and Ryan Suter each had a goal and assist and Minnesota extend-ed its mastery on the road, beat-ing host San Jose.


NHLScoreboardRoundup

Fantastic: Zibanejad second player to score fifth goal in OT

Flyers beat Carolina, win eighth straight Eastern ConferenceAtlantic Division

GP W L OT Pts GF GABoston 68 43 13 12 98 222 169Tampa Bay 67 42 20 5 89 235 185Toronto 68 35 24 9 79 235 224Florida 67 33 26 8 74 225 226Montreal 69 31 29 9 71 209 213Buffalo 67 29 30 8 66 191 212Ottawa 68 24 32 12 60 185 234Detroit 68 15 48 5 35 136 257

Metropolitan DivisionWashington 67 40 20 7 87 233 210Philadelphia 67 40 20 7 87 229 193Pittsburgh 66 39 21 6 84 215 183Columbus 68 32 21 15 79 177 182N.Y. Islanders 66 35 23 8 78 186 185N.Y. Rangers 67 36 27 4 76 224 211Carolina 65 35 25 5 75 208 187New Jersey 66 26 28 12 64 177 219

Western ConferenceCentral Division

GP W L OT Pts GF GASt. Louis 67 40 17 10 90 216 185Colorado 66 40 18 8 88 226 177Dallas 67 37 22 8 82 178 172Minnesota 67 34 26 7 75 212 209Nashville 67 33 26 8 74 210 215Winnipeg 68 34 28 6 74 204 199Chicago 67 31 28 8 70 205 212

Pacific DivisionVegas 68 37 23 8 82 219 202Edmonton 68 36 24 8 80 217 209Calgary 68 35 26 7 77 204 208Vancouver 66 34 26 6 74 216 208Arizona 68 33 27 8 74 191 180San Jose 67 29 34 4 62 176 214Anaheim 67 27 32 8 62 174 214Los Angeles 67 26 35 6 58 165 206

Note: Two points for a win, one pointfor overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards perconference advance to playoffs.

Thursday’s gamesPhiladelphia 4, Carolina 1Pittsburgh 4, Buffalo 2Tampa Bay 4, Montreal 0N.Y. Rangers 6, Washington 5, OTOttawa 4, N.Y. Islanders 3Boston 2, Florida 1, OTNashville 2, Dallas 0Chicago 4, Edmonton 3Minnesota 3, San Jose 2Los Angeles 1, Toronto 0, SO

Friday’s gamesSt. Louis at New JerseyChicago at DetroitVegas at WinnipegArizona at CalgaryColorado at VancouverToronto at Anaheim

Saturday’s gamesCarolina at N.Y. IslandersWashington at PittsburghNashville at DallasMinnesota at Los AngelesBuffalo at PhiladelphiaMontreal at FloridaNew Jersey at N.Y. RangersOttawa at San JoseTampa Bay at BostonColumbus at Edmonton

Sunday’s gamesCarolina at PittsburghTampa Bay at DetroitVegas at CalgarySt. Louis at ChicagoMinnesota at AnaheimColorado at San JoseColumbus at Vancouver

Monday’s gamesWashington at BuffaloArizona at WinnipegFlorida at St. LouisVegas at EdmontonColorado at Los Angeles

KATHY WILLENS/AP

The Rangers’ Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad, right, celebrate after Zibanejad scored in OT against the Washington Capitals on Thursday in New York.

MATT SLOCUM/AP

Flyers goalie Carter Hart, left, blocks a shot as the Carolina Hurricanes’ Teuvo Teravainen looks for the rebound during Thursday’s game in Philadelphia. Hart stopped 28 shots in the Flyers’ 4-1 victory.


MLB

BY MAUREEN MULLEN

Associated Press

FORT MYERS, Fla. — By recent stan-dards, the heckling the Houston Astros heard at JetBlue Park was rather tame. Some boos during pregame introductions, a chant of “cheaters!” in the ninth inning.

Maybe that’s because Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and rest of their All-Stars were missing from the lineup against the Boston Red Sox.

Perhaps there was another more pointed reason.

“It could be here, too,” Astros manager Dusty Baker cautioned Thursday. “And then (the Red Sox) got to be careful of the reception.”

Major League Baseball continues to look into allegations the Red Sox illicitly swiped signals during their run to the 2018 World Series title. Manager Alex Cora and the team already have split — that was in the wake of his role as bench coach of the 2017 champion Astros and a sign-stealing scan-dal that rocked the sport and resulted in MLB punishment.

“We’re still waiting for our investigation to be over. So it’s still there,” said Ron Roe-nicke, who took over for Cora.

“But I think we’re pretty focused on what we’re doing and what we need to do. And then we’ll see what happens with ours. I know (the Astros are) going to have a tough time this year going through what they’re going through. But I hear everything that’s going on,” he said.

Jeered earlier this spring on exhibition stops in Lakeland against the Tigers and Port St. Lucie against the Mets, the Astros

weren’t harshly targeted by the Boston crowd.

The jeers and taunts, such as they were, were not nearly as loud and robust as the Astros have become accustomed to at other road games this spring. Indeed, they were rather lackluster and mild.

Carlos Correa and Josh Reddick were among the other recognizable names ab-sent from the lineup. None of Houston’s starters from the postseason last year made the 2 ½-hour trip from the Astros’ camp in West Palm Beach.

“When they first announced the Astros, there was some booing then, but the indi-vidual players no, because nobody knows who they are,” said Andrea Dardis, a Red Sox fan from Wakefield, Mass.

Dardis was with her sister, Maria Walsh,from Reading, Mass., and brother, ChrisFasciano, of Lincoln, Mass.

The three were sitting in box seats downthe first-base line, in an area with someAstros fans and some Houston players’family members.

“There are Astros fans out there, forsure, some cute kids in Altuve shirts,” Walsh said. “So, it’s kind of hard to boo them when the little kids are there.”

Some Red Sox fans, in fact, were down-right hospitable.

“We’re sitting next to a woman who saidthat her brother was the starting pitcherfor the Astros, Josh James,” Walsh said.“And she kind of let people know that andpeople were cheering for him.”

James pitched three scoreless innings inHouston’s 5-0 win. Kyle Tucker homered, doubled and singled.

“It’s not what I expected,” Dardis said.“I was expecting miniature bats banging on stuff. But I think nobody wants to tauntthese guys because nobody knows whothey are. But it is a little disappointing that there’s not more excitement, though.”

Baker said he wasn’t trying to protect his players from the wrath of opposing fans.It was simply for baseball reasons that hebrought a roster of virtual unknowns.

“When you got Altuve that was sick,you got (Yordan) Alvarez dealing with hisknee, Bregman played yesterday, Breg-man and Altuve went to Lakeland,” Baker said. “We got three long road trips, so Iwanted everybody to go on one. So, the factthat these guys are hurt or sick and theyplayed yesterday. I’m trying to play themon an every-other day basis.”

Source: Angels’ clubbie firedANAHEIM, Calif. — The Los Angeles

Angels have fired longtime visiting club-house manager Brian “Bubba” Harkins for allegedly aiding opposing pitchers in obtaining illegal substances to put on base-balls, a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press on Thursday night.

The person spoke on condition of ano-nymity because the Angels don’t publicly discuss the details of internal personnel matters.

The Angels confirmed Harkins’ dis-missal Thursday night to The Associated Press.

Harkins was fired Tuesday while the Angels are in Arizona for spring training. He has worked at Angel Stadium for most of the past four decades.

Major League Baseball has been crack-ing down this spring on the use of pine tar and other substances pitchers use to get a better grip on the ball. Such practices, including a popular concoction from sun-screen and resin, have technically been outlawed for years, but those rules had been enforced sparingly.

The Angels moved immediately to dis-miss Harkins after learning of his actions in previous seasons, the source told the AP.

Sources: Moncada gets $70MMESA, Ariz. — The Chicago White Sox

have agreed to a $70 million, five-year con-tract with Yoan Moncada, locking up an-other one of their promising young hitters.

The deal includes a $25 million club op-tion for 2025 with a $5 million buyout that if exercised would make the agreement worth $90 million for six seasons. Two people with direct knowledge of the nego-tiations confirmed the deal Thursday on condition of anonymity because the move had not been finalized.

The White Sox acquired the 24-year-old Moncada in the December 2016 trade that sent Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox. Long regarded as one of baseball’s top prospects, the third baseman broke out last season when he set career highs with a .315 bat-ting average, 25 homers and 79 RBIs.

Moncada would have been eligible for salary arbitration after this season and for free agency after the 2023 season.

Hoping to make the most of a painful rebuilding process, the White Sox have handed out several big deals to the pros-pects they accumulated during seven straight losing seasons.

Shortstop Tim Anderson agreed to a $25 million, six-year contract in March 2017. Young slugger Eloy Jimenez finalized a $43 million, six-year deal last March, and outfielder Luis Robert agreed to a $50 mil-lion, six-year pact in January. Key reliever Aaron Bummer got a $16 million, five-year contract last month .

Boston adds righty McHughFORT MYERS, Fla. — Right-hander

Collin McHugh agreed Thursday to a $600,000, one-year contract with the pitch-ing-needy Boston Red Sox, a deal that al-lows him earn up to $4.25 million.

However, he is recovering from a flexor injury in his pitching arm and is not ex-pected to be ready for opening day. He has not yet started a throwing program.

“They’re evaluating him still now,” manager Ron Roenicke said. “So, we don’t know when that period will be when he starts up.”

Boston ace Chris Sale will start the sea-son on the injured list. He was slowed by pneumonia, then felt elbow pain Sunday after he threw batting practice for the first time at spring training. The Red Sox trad-ed David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers last month .

— Associated Press

Astros paying the price; Red Sox await fateWho should they boo?

PHOTOS BY ELISE AMENDOLA/AP

Red Sox pitcher Kyle Hart wipes sweat during Thursday’s spring training baseball game against Astros in Fort Myers, Fla.

Houston Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena fields a ground ball.

BY SIMMI BUTTAR

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The puck kept finding Mika Zibanejad — and he kept burying them in the back of the net.

Five times.And, the last put him in the New

York Rangers’ record books and de-livered them a big-time victory.

Zibanejad scored five goals to match the franchise record,

capping the scoring spree 33 seconds into overtime in a wild 6-5 win over

the Washington Capitals on Thursday night.

“The puck followed me today, I guess,” he said. “You look at the goals and it’s unbelievable plays being made and today I was at the right spot at the right time.

“It’s a night I will remember for a long time.”

Zibanejad is the second player in

NHL history to score his fifth goal in OT, joining Detroit’s Sergei Fedorov, who accomplished the feat on Dec. 26, 1996 — also against Washington.

“I feel like I’m speechless right now, to be honest with you,” Zibanejad said.

Zibanejad’s 38th of the season

SEE FANTASTIC ON PAGE 22

Saturday, March 7, 2020S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Saturday, March 7, 2020

SPORTSNHL

Zibanejad matches franchise mark for goals as Rangers top Caps in OT

Fantastic five

Top: Rangers center Mika Zibanejad, pictured left, is mobbed by teammates after he scored in overtime against the Washington Capitals on Thursday in New York. It was Zibanejad’s fifth goal of the game, matching the franchise record, and 38th of the season. He is the first Rangers center with at least 35 goals in a season since Hall of Famer Eric Lindros in 2001-02. New York won 6-5.

PHOTOS BY KATHY WILLENS/AP

Forceful objectionKansas disputes charges levied by NCAA » Page 20

Curry’s return not enough to lift Warriors past Raptors » Page 19

‘ It’s a night I will remember for a long time. ’Mika Zibanejad

Rangers center, on his fi ve-goal effort in a 6-5 OT win over the Capitals on Thursday