us on track to from afghanistan despite turmoil...theodore roosevelt, checks a sailor’s...
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WAR ON TERRORISMMedal of Honor recipient who saved lives in Afghanistan dies at 41Page 3
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Volume 79, No. 20A ©SS 2020 CONTINGENCY EDITION SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2020
BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY
Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON — Five USS Theodore Roosevelt sailors have tested positive again for the coronavirus after they had already recovered and were allowed to return to the ship, according to the Navy.
The five sailors had developed flu-like symptoms this week and went to be medically evaluated, Cmdr. Myers Vasquez, a Navy spokesman, said in a state-ment. They were immediately removed from the ship and placed in quarantine.
Additionally, 18 other sailors who had interacted
closely with those five have been taken off the aircraft carrier, retested and are waiting for their results in quarantine, according to a U.S. defense official.
The sailors who retested positive did so after they had “met rigorous recovery criteria,” according to Vasquez, and the Navy’s “recovery criteria exceeds all [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines.”
The sailors had adhered to strict social distancing protocols put in place by the Navy while they were on the ship, he said.
SEE ROOSEVELT ON PAGE 5
VIRUS OUTBREAK
Second outbreak5 USS Theodore Roosevelt sailors retest positive for the coronavirus, 18 others taken off the ship
Senior Chief Petty Officer Elwin Familiar, assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, checks a sailor’s temperature on the pier at Naval Base Guam on April 30. Five sailors who were cleared to return to the aircraft carrier after contracting the coronavirus have tested positive again, according to a Navy spokesman. ROBYN B. MELVIN/U.S. Navy
BY ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The U .S. is ontrack to meet its commitment to theTaliban to withdraw several thou-sand troops from Afghanistan by summer, even as violence flares, thepeace process is stalled, and Kabulstruggles in political deadlock.
U.S. officials say they will reduceto 8,600 troops by July 15 and aban-don five bases. And by next springall foreign forces are suppose towithdraw, ending America’s lon-gest war. Yet the outlook for peaceis cloudy at best. In the absence of Afghan peace talks, the Trump ad-ministration may face the prospectof fully withdrawing even as theTaliban remains at war with thegovernment.
That has concerned some law-makers, including Rep. Liz Cheney,a Wyoming Republican and mem-ber of the House Armed ServicesCommittee. She says the U.S. needsto keep a military and intelligencepresence in Afghanistan to preventextremist groups like al-Qaida andthe Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate from forming havens from which toattack the U.S.
“Withdrawing U.S. troops fromAfghanistan won’t end the war — itwill just let the terrorists win,” shetold The Associated Press.
Some question whether the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in Doha,Qatar, on Feb. 29, which the Trumpadministration billed as “a decisive step to achieve a negotiated peace,”SEE TROOPS ON PAGE 3
US on track towithdraw troopsfrom Afghanistan despite turmoil
The U.S. agreed to withdraw not just military forces but also all intelligence agency personnel, private security contractors, trainers and advisers.
PAGE 2 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
T O D A YIN STRIPES
American Roundup ..... 16Comics/Crossword ...... 15Health & Fitness ........ 11 Lifestyle ................12-13Opinion ..................... 17 Sports .................. 19-24Video Games .............. 14
BUSINESS/WEATHER
Military ratesEuro costs (May 18) .............................. $1.06Dollar buys (May 18) ........................€0.8992British pound (May 18) ........................ $1.19Japanese yen (May 18) ......................104.00South Korean won (May 18) ..........1,198.00
Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................0.3776British pound .....................................$1.2157Canada (Dollar) ...................................1.4071China (Yuan) ........................................ 7.1032Denmark (Krone) ................................6.8813Egypt (Pound) .................................... 15.7403Euro ........................................ $1.0837/0.9227Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................. 7.7509Hungary (Forint) ..................................327.17Israel (Shekel) .....................................3.5361Japan (Yen) ........................................... 107.07Kuwait (Dinar) .....................................0.3091Norway (Krone) .................................10.2190Philippines (Peso)................................. 50.76Poland (Zloty) .......................................... 4.21Saudi Arabia (Riyal) ...........................3.7567Singapore (Dollar) ............................. 1.4249South Korea (Won) ...........................1233.00Switzerland (Franc)............................0.9708
Thailand (Baht) .................................... 32.07Turkey (Lira) ......................................... 6.9170(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.)
EXCHANGE RATES
INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 3.25Discount rate .......................................... 0.25Federal funds market rate ................... 0.053-month bill ............................................. 0.1230-year bond ........................................... 1.29
WEATHER OUTLOOK
Bahrain83/75
Baghdad102/72
Doha95/69
KuwaitCity
97/79
Riyadh98/69
Djibouti94/80
Kandahar86/59
Kabul66/51
SATURDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST SUNDAY IN THE PACIFIC
Misawa60/53
Guam85/81
Tokyo76/57
Okinawa78/75
Sasebo69/65
Iwakuni64/61
Seoul72/57
Osan72/57 Busan
65/60
The weather is provided by the American Forces Network Weather Center,
2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.
Mildenhall/Lakenheath
57/45
Ramstein60/44
Stuttgart61/44
Lajes,Azores63/60
Rota66/55
Morón68/55 Sigonella
85/59
Naples81/63
Aviano/Vicenza63/54
Pápa63/45
Souda Bay78/71
SATURDAY IN EUROPE
Brussels58/37
Zagan55/44
Drawsko Pomorskie
53/44
Carnival announces mass layoffs Associated Press
MIAMI — Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise company, announced on Thursday it will be laying off hundreds of employees due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The company’s CEO Arnold Donald said the combination of layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts were “necessary” as the pause on cruise travel enters its third month.
The majority of affected em-
ployees in the U.S. will be in Flor-ida, California and Washington state, Carnival Corp. said in an email.
The company is eliminating 820 positions and furloughing 537 employees for up to six months in Florida out of a workforce of about 3,000 employees.
Carnival Corp. did not reveal the number of job eliminations in the other states or countries around the world.
“Taking these extremely dif-
ficult employee actions involving our highly dedicated workforce is a very tough thing to do. Un-fortunately, it’s necessary, given the current low level of guest operations and to further endure this pause,” Donald said in a statement.
Carnival Cruise Line, one of the company’s brands, an-nounced earlier this month it will start cruising again beginning in August to Caribbean destinations from Florida and Texas.
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY WYATT OLSON
Stars and Stripes
Ronald Shurer, the Green Beret medic awarded the Medal of Honor for aiding the wounded during a six-hour firefight in Af-ghanistan in 2008, died of lung cancer Thursday. He was 41.
His death was announced by the U.S. Secret Service, for whom Shurer had worked since retiring from the Army in 2009.
“Today, we lost an American Hero: Husband, Father, Son, Medal of Honor Recipient - Spe-cial Agent Ronald J. Shurer II,” the Secret Service said in a tweet. “From a grateful Nation and Agency - your memory and lega-cy will live on forever.”
Shurer was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2017 and had chronicled his treatment and hospitalization on Instagram.
From his room at Sibley Memo-rial Hospital in Washington, D.C., Shurer posted a message Wednes-day with a photo of him with an oxygen tube in his mouth. Beside him was his wife, Miranda, smil-ing hopefully.
“Very upset to write this … been unconscious for a week,” the message said. “They are going to try and take it out in a couple hours, they can’t tell me if it will work.”
Shurer was awarded the Medal of Honor on Oct. 1, 2018, an up-grade from the Silver Star origi-nally presented for his actions in the fight that would become known as the Battle of Shok Val-ley in Nuristan province.
Shurer said during the award ceremony that he had not even been aware that the Silver Star was under consideration for an upgrade at the time he learned he would receive the Medal of Honor, the highest honor the mili-tary bestows for valor.
On April 6, 2008, a 12-man Green Beret force from Opera-tional Detachment-Alpha 3336 were on a mission to kill or cap-ture a leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group.
The Green Berets and about 100 Afghan commandos were dropped from hovering helicop-
ters because the icy mountain-side was too steep to land on. The assault force was immediately faced with scaling a 100-foot cliff to reach the enemy compound.
But within minutes, heavy machine fire and rockets rained from enemy positions above.
Shurer, then a senior medi-cal sergeant, was the only medic on the operation, and his frantic work to save lives began imme-diately with wounded Afghan commandos.
Capt. Kyle Walton, the oper-ation’s ground commander, ra-dioed Shurer to advance up the slope as casualties mounted.
Shurer scaled the mountain-side under fire.
“When he showed up, nearly everybody was wounded,” Wal-ton told Stars and Stripes in 2018. “We were under direct fire. We were pinned down with nearly nowhere to go except down that 100-foot cliff.”
While treating the wounded, Shurer was hit twice — once in the arm and once by a stunning round to his helmet.
One of the Green Beret soldiers who was critically wounded in the hip credited Shurer for his survival.
“Without Ron Shurer at my side, I would have died that day. No question,” Dillon Behr told Stars and Stripes in 2018. “His presence gave me the confidence to know I could make it. There’s a good chance if he would have been critically injured or killed on the battlefield … we all might have died out there.”
As coalition air strikes began pummeling the enemy positions, Shurer moved the wounded to be evacuated.
“While moving down the mountain, Staff Sergeant Shurer used his own body to shield the wounded from enemy fire and debris caused by danger-close air strikes,” the Medal of Honor cita-tion said.Stars and Stripes reporter Corey Dickstein contributed to this [email protected]: @WyattWOlson
BY J.P. LAWRENCE
Stars and Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan — Green Beret medic and Medal of Honor recipient Ronald Shurer was re-membered Friday by Afghans who fought alongside him as a brave soldier who helped to establish Af-ghanistan’s special operations units.
“I feel like I lost my blood brother,” said Bahroz Mohmand, who served as an interpreter during the fierce, six-hour Battle of Shok Valley, for which Shurer received the Medal of Honor.
“Ron was a great warrior. His legacy in Afghani-stan is that he trained the first commando battalion and made them an example for the rest of the army,” Mohmand said.
Shurer, 41, died Thursday after a long battle with lung cancer.
He received the military’s highest decoration in 2018 for aiding the wounded during the April 6, 2008, battle in the country’s eastern Nuristan province.
“We started in 2007 with one special forces bat-talion, but now we have an entire corps of thousands
and they are the elite, most well-trained forces, ca-pable of fighting terrorism,” said Lt. Gen. Farid Ah-madi, head of Afghan army special operations.
“It was all because of the great help from thoseU.S. Green Berets,” said Ahmadi, who led the com-mandos who fought at Shok Valley.
Shurer and his team joined 100 Afghans for thebattle against an insurgent group.
While treating the wounded, Shurer was hit twice by fire — once in the arm and once to his helmet. Onthe way back down the mountain, he used his body to shield the wounded, his Medal of Honor citationsaid.
While Shurer has said he merely did what hecould that day in 2008, another Afghan who foughtalongside him credited him with much more.
“He was a help for the commandos, and for our na-tion,” said Brig. Gen. Abdul Mateen Sulaimankhail,who was a company commander during the battle.Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this [email protected]: @jplawrence3
Medal of Honor recipient dies of cancer
EVAN VUCCI/AP
President Donald Trump awards the Medal of Honor to former Army Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II for actions in Afghanistan in the White House in 2018.
Afghan commandos recall Shurer
WAR ON TERRORISM
FROM FRONT PAGE
was instead mainly a withdrawal agreement. President Donald Trump had campaigned on bring-ing troops home from foreign wars. And though the Afghan government publicly supported the deal, it did not participate di-rectly in the negotiations and has not, in Washington’s view, capi-talized on the chance for peace talks.
“President Trump promised to bring our troops home from over-seas and is following through on that promise,” the White House said when the Doha deal was signed.
The deal stipulated that the
Taliban would start intra-Afghan peace negotiations on March 10, but that has not happened. The Taliban and the Afghan govern-ment also have squabbled over a promised release of each other’s prisoners.
“A lot of this boils down to: Was the U.S.-Taliban agreement any kind of serious negotiation at all, or was it just totally a fig leaf to cover abject withdrawal? I suspect the latter,” said Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs and a former adviser to U.S. com-manders in Kabul.
“It gave away almost all the leverage we had in exchange for
virtually nothing,” he added. “It looks very much like a situation in which the Taliban have con-cluded that the Americans are out, and they’re going to play out the string and see what happens when we’re gone.”
The Trump administration has expressed frustration with the lack of movement toward peace talks, but it has not threatened publicly to pull back from its commitment to fully withdraw. It did conduct an airstrike against the Taliban in defense of Afghan ground forces in early March just hours after Trump had what he called a good conversation by phone with a senior Taliban lead-
er, Abdul Ghani Baradar.Although the drawdown is re-
quired by the Doha agreement, U.S. defense officials had said for many months that they wanted to reduce to 8,600 — the approxi-mate number of troops that were supporting Afghan forces and conducting counterterrorism op-erations when Trump took office.
American officials constructed the Doha agreement mainly as a way of ending U.S. involvement in the war, rather than as an assured path to peace. The withdrawal is subject to Taliban assurances, but it does not require a peace settlement.
The deal also is seen by the U.S.
as a way to enlist the Taliban in the fight against the Islamic Stategroup. The American militaryconsiders the group’s Afghan af-filiate as a greater threat than theTaliban.
The U.S. agreed to withdrawnot just military forces but alsoall intelligence agency person-nel, private security contractors,trainers and advisers. NATO al-lied forces also are to withdraw.
Defense Secretary Mark Esperhas said that getting out of Af-ghanistan would advance his aimof devoting more forces to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, which he sees as the No. 1 long-term threat to the U.S.
Troops: Deal seen as effort to reduce US commitment in Afghanistan
PAGE 4 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY DAN LAMOTHE
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A senior defense of-ficial who has overseen the Pentagon’s use of the Defense Production Act in the coro-navirus response has been removed from her job, defense officials said Thursday.
Jennifer Santos, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy, will be reassigned to the Navy to oversee “critical projects,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Andrews, a Pentagon spokesman.
A senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Defense Department is seeking someone stronger on the nuances of the Defense Production Act as it prepares to identify and manufac-
ture vaccines for the coronavirus.The Navy will get a strong “teammate”
in Santos, the senior official said, though her role is not yet clear.
Scott Baum, the Pentagon’s principal di-rector for industrial policy, will take over the role that Santos is vacating on an acting basis, Andrews said in a statement. Santos, meanwhile, will be reassigned to work for James Guerts, the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.
“The department’s commitment to close-ly partnering with the defense industry re-mains unwavering, and we will continue to identify and mitigate impacts from the COVID-19 national emergency to ensure readiness and modernization,” Andrews said.
The news, first reported Thursday by Politico, comes after months of criticism of the Defense Department’s early response to the coronavirus.
The Pentagon continues to suffer through numerous vacancies in senior po-sitions. Santos had held her position since January 2019, when she took over in a pe-riod of transition in the Pentagon following the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. She replaced Eric Chewning, who became former Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s chief of staff. Chewn-ing also has since left the Pentagon.
Kelly Magsamen, a Pentagon official during the Obama administration, said Thursday that the department “made a serious organizational and management error” from the outset of the crisis by not
working with the White House closely andexecuting the Defense Production Act.President Donald Trump delayed invoking the act, which provides wartime powersthat compel private companies to provideneeded equipment, until March 18.
Magsamen said the Defense Department needed a high-level DPA task force begin-ning in January that should have been runby someone “far more senior” than a dep-uty assistant secretary or undersecretaryof defense.
The Defense Department has defendedits role in providing equipment over thelast two months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently said that the Pentagon hasbeen “ahead of the curve” in dealing withthe pandemic.
BY ANDREW DYER
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — The hospi-tal ship Mercy was to return to San Diego on Friday after seven weeks in Los Angeles assisting with patients during the corona-virus pandemic, the U.S. North-ern Command said.
Mercy was to leave the Port of Los Angeles early Friday and arrive at Naval Base San Diego Friday afternoon, the statement said.
The ship left San Diego March 23 just as community spread of the novel coronavirus was in-creasing and state officials were concerned hospitals would be in-undated with patients. The Mercy was to serve as a relief valve, tak-ing on noncoronavirus patients and freeing up space in Los An-geles hospitals.
The ship saw 77 patients over about six weeks. It discharged its final patient May 5.
While in Los Angeles, the med-ical staff of the Mercy performed several surgeries, including the ship’s first-ever pacemaker replacement.
They also treated a single victim of a vehicle collision, performing eight surgeries, skin grafts and an orthopedic spine procedure on the patient, the Navy said. All treatment was free to patients.
While the COVID-19 patient wave never overwhelmed L.A. hospitals, the ship did fight its own coronavirus outbreak on board. Several sailors tested positive and were removed. John Fage, a spokesman for the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, said in an email that the majority of those sailors have recovered and have returned to duty.
Some medical personnel are staying in Los Angeles and Or-ange County to assist at skillednursing facilities. About a monthago, 40 sailors began working off the ship at one such facility. TheNavy says 20 more will also re-main to help at others.
The director of the California Office of Emergency Services,Mark Ghilarducci, said Thurs-day the Mercy was “critical” tothe state’s response to the virus.He thanked the Navy, the FederalEmergency Management Agencyand federal administrators.
On the East Coast another hos-pital ship, the USNS Comfort, de-ployed to support the pandemicresponse in New York. Unlikethe Mercy, the Comfort treated COVID-19 patients among the 182 patients it served on board. Itleft New York April 30.
BY JOHN VANDIVER
Stars and Stripes
STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. Africa Command hasn’t launched an airstrike in Somalia in five weeks, the longest halt in more than a year, as torrential rains complicate the battlefield environment.
“With the rainy season there can be shifts in Al-Shabab and broader activity,” AFRICOM spokesman Col. Chris Karns said. “There is always effort, not always opportunity to conduct airstrikes. There is certainly no pause.”
Somalia has been hard-hit by floods that have displaced nearly 300,000 people this spring, the United Nations has said.
The most recent U.S. strike in Somalia occurred April 10 — around the time the rainy season started — capping a series of at-tacks against the al-Shabab mili-tant group, which is aligned with al-Qaida.
Even with the five-week lull, AFRICOM has so far conducted about 40 airstrikes in the coun-try this year, putting it on pace to eclipse last year’s tally of 63.
The number of strikes has in-creased in recent years as part of an effort to aid Somali forces in their long-running battle against al-Shabab.
Despite the strikes, al-Shabab has proven resilient and is still able to carry out high-profile at-tacks in the country and neighbor-ing states such as Kenya, where three Americans were killed in January when a base used by U.S. forces was ambushed.
Still, Shabab controls less ter-rain now than it did at its peak in 2011 when it held swaths of terri-tory in Somalia and threatened
to overrun the country’s capital, Mogadishu.
AFRICOM has faced criticism from some human rights groups who say civilians have been caught in the crossfire and ca-sualties from U.S. airstrikes are higher than have been reported. The command has disputed sev-eral of those claims and recently begun releasing quarterly reports on potential civilian casualties.
Officials also said the airstrike campaign keeps militants off-bal-ance and confused.
“Where confusion exists, mis-takes occur,” Karns said. “The armed overwatch capability very much remains an option. Where opportunity presents itself and airstrikes are the appropriate op-tion, strikes will resume.”
AFRICOM also is involved in building up a specialized com-mando brigade in Somalia that has emerged as a key force in the fight to reclaim territory held by al-Shabab.
While Shabab hasn’t demon-strated an ability to conduct at-tacks outside of eastern Africa, AFRICOM says the group could evolve into such a force if left unchecked.
“We’re very mindful of the need to contain this threat and prevent its spread,” Karns said. [email protected]: @john_vandiver
MILITARY
AFRICOM: Fight persists despite dip in airstrikes
USNS Mercy set to return home after helping LA in virus battle
Pentagon reassigns official overseeing Defense Production Act
MARK J. TERRILL/AP
The USNS Mercy enters the Port of Los Angeles on March 27. The Navy hospital ship temporarily docked in Los Angeles Harbor to help during the coronavirus crisis is set to depart Friday .
‘ There is always effort, not always opportunity to conduct airstrikes. ’
Col. Chris KarnsAFRICOM spokesman
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 5
BY MATTHEW M. BURKE Stars and Stripes
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — In late March, the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt stopped its patrol of the Western Pacific to steam toward Guam and the promise of medi-cal attention for the outbreak sweeping its decks.
Thousands of miles away, an anxious Navy Lt. Rodney Posley and about 100 of his colleagues from the 3rd Medical Bat-talion at Camp Foster, Okinawa, also de-parted for the U.S. island territory. They arrived April 1, and with staff from U.S. Naval Hospital Guam, formed Task Force Medical to test and treat the nearly 5,000 sailors assigned to the carrier.
“We walked in to [Roosevelt] sailors that were already known COVID positive,” Posley, an intensive care unit nurse, said in a May 13 phone interview from Guam, where he was still caring for patients from the carrier. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“We knew there was testing being done so we immediately came in and started treating COVID-related signs and symp-toms,” he said. “Also doing isolation cri-teria to people who were COVID negative and those who were COVID positive so that they wouldn’t spread the virus.”
It was an unprecedented situation, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jennifer Knapp, officer in charge of the medical side of the Okinawa-based detachment.
“This is honestly the most complex and dynamic operation I’ve ever been in charge of,” she said by phone on May 13. “Since we’ve been here, we’ve been essen-tially writing the book on how to respond to a COVID outbreak on a U.S. naval vessel as large as the one we’re dealing with.”
Within a day of their arrival, Posley and his colleagues constructed a six-bed, pop-up, field ICU and observation center at Naval Base Guam, where the Roosevelt was docked. They also manned an isola-tion site where they could check sailors’ temperatures and vitals, looking for coro-navirus symptoms.
Nearly 5,000 sailors were moved off the carrier at various times and all were checked out by the task force.
The team from Okinawa brought medi-cal expertise but also extra beds and ven-tilators, Roosevelt spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Julie Holland wrote Thursday in an email to Stars and Stripes.
Roosevelt crew members who tested positive were moved to isolation on base, under medical care, Holland said. Those who tested negative went into quarantine in off-base hotels. Their movements were restricted, and they were evaluated daily.
Roosevelt sailors were tasked with re-porting any signs or symptoms and they did so swiftly, Posley said. The task force’s job was to intervene early, before coronavirus symptoms got serious, following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization guidelines.
They monitored oxygen levels and fe-vers, Knapp said. If something dipped out of a healthy range, they brought the pa-tients to an observation center for around-the-clock treatment.
Navy officials declined to say how many patients from the Roosevelt became criti-cal, but more than 1,150 sailors ultimately tested positive for the coronavirus. One, Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thack-er Jr., 41, of Fort Smith, Ark., died on April 13.
By April 23, the entire Roosevelt crew had been tested, Holland said. On April 29, sailors who had tested negative for the coronavirus three times began moving back on board.
More than half of the crew was back aboard as of May 4, according to a CBS News report.
However, five of those sailors tested positive again, the Navy said May 14. They were immediately removed from the Roos-evelt and returned to quarantine.
Knapp said having experienced sailors like Posley boosts task force members’ confidence that they will succeed. She called Posley a “fantastic” ICU nurse.
“We know this will possibly make his-tory because this is a new disease process as far as the COVID-19,” Posley said. “The big thing for us is trying to get the T.R. sail-ors back to sea.”
Crew from the Roosevelt made signs and notes thanking the sailors and Marines that were posted on Facebook by the Navy.
“We greatly appreciate the continued support of the team from 3rd Medical Bat-talion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, for all our shipmates residing off ship,” Holland said. “Third Medical Battalion, 3rd Ma-rine Logistics Group, alongside Naval Hos-pital Guam, has provided incredible care as we go through this unprecedented time together.”[email protected]: @MatthewMBurke1
Saturday, May 16, 2020
FROM FRONT PAGE
Sailors who test positive must isolate for at least 14 days, have no symptoms for at least three days, and then are re-quired to have two consecutive negative tests in a greater than 48-hour period before they are allowed to return to the ship, Vasquez said.
The Navy statement did not say how the sailors could have retested positive after meeting the recovery criteria or what these new cases mean for the re-deployment of the nuclear-powered air-craft carrier, which has been in port in Guam since March 27 to deal with the outbreak aboard the ship.
The Roosevelt had more than 1,100 active cases among its nearly 4,800-member crew as of April 30, the last up-date that the Navy has provided about cases associated with the ship’s out-break. The Navy had reported 100% of the crew had been tested for the virus at that time and many of them were returning to the ship after weeks of quarantine on Guam. The ship has also
undergone cleaning and sanitizing in preparation of returning to sea, accord-ing to the Navy.
The Navy has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the military at 2,191 as of Thursday, according to the Pentagon.
The military has a total of 5,472 cases and two deaths, including one sailor from the Roosevelt.
The positive tests come as the Pen-tagon’s inspector general announced Monday that the office was starting an evaluation into the Navy’s approach to preventing the spread of infectious dis-eases aboard its ships and submarines after the Roosevelt and the destroyer USS Kidd had coronavirus outbreaks while at sea.
The Navy is conducting its own inves-tigation into the service’s response to the Roosevelt outbreak, which reported its first case March 24. The investiga-tion is expected to be submitted May 27 to Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations.
BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY
Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON — A transgen-der Navy officer is now permitted to serve openly as her preferred gender, the first such waiver since April 2019 when a Pentagon poli-cy began to restrict transgender individuals in the military.
The acting Navy Secretary James McPherson approved the waiver to the transgender policy in this individual case, Lt. Brit-tany Stephens, a Navy spokes-woman, said in a statement.
“This service member re-quested a waiver to serve in their preferred gender, to include ob-taining a gender marker change in the Defense Enrollment Eli-gibility Reporting System and being allowed to adhere to stan-
dards associated with their pre-ferred gender, such as uniforms and grooming,” Stephens said.
The Pentagon’s policy does not allow the vast majority of men and women who have been diag-nosed with gender dysphoria to enlist in the military or continue to serve as the person’s preferred gender without a waiver. Gender dysphoria is the medical condi-tion associated with individuals who do not identify with their birth sex.
The policy overturned a 2016 policy from former President Barack Obama’s administration that allowed transgender service members to serve openly.
In a joint statement Friday, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & De-fenders and the National Center
for Lesbian Rights, legal orga-nizations for LGBTQ rights and advocacy, said they had filed a lawsuit in March on behalf of the Navy officer who received the waiver. The government was going to file a response to the law-suit next week, according to the statement.
“While we are relieved that our client, a highly qualified Naval of-ficer, will be able to continue her service, there are other equally qualified transgender service members who have sought waiv-ers and are still in limbo, despite being perfectly fit to serve,” Jen-nifer Levi, the director of GLAD’s Transgender Rights Project, said in the prepared statement.
The Navy officer, who has served two extended tours of duty
in nine years, is seeking emergen-cy relief from the policy in order to continue serving, according to a news release about the lawsuit. She had come out after the April 2019 policy was put into effect and needed a waiver to continue serving.
Requiring transgender ser-vice members to seek a waiver to serve is discriminatory, NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter said in the statement.
“Being transgender has noth-ing to do with a person’s fitness to serve, and transgender individu-als should be held to the same standards as other service mem-bers,” Minter said.
The waiver “is an important victory for this sailor,” Peter Perkowski, the legal and policy
director for the Modern MilitaryAssociation of America, a LGBTQnon-profit, said in a statement.
“Over the past year, we’vecontinued to hear from qualifiedtransgender patriots who want toserve their country but can’t be-cause of the Trump-Pence trans-gender military ban,” Perkowskisaid. “As our nation faces unprec-edented challenges, the last thingour military should be doing isrejecting qualified individualswho want to serve simply becauseof their gender identity.”
Modern Military Association of America represents six service members in a lawsuit challenging whether the ban is constitutional,according to the statement. [email protected]@caitlinmkenney
Navy officer receives first waiver to Pentagon transgender policy
MILITARY
Unprecedented situation Navy nurse offers inside look at care operation for Roosevelt crew
Roosevelt: 5 sailors retest positive
JORDAN GILBERT/U.S. Marine Corps
Navy Lt. Rodney Posley, left, an intensive care unit nurse with 3rd Medical Battalion at Camp Foster, Okinawa, trains two hospital corpsmen at Naval Base Guam in April.
PAGE 6 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY ANDREW TAYLOR AND ALAN FRAM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Democrats began pushing Congress’ biggest coronavirus relief bill yet toward expected House passage Friday, a $3 trillion behemoth they said a beleaguered country badly needs but that Republicans called a bloated election-year wish list.
Democratic leaders were press-ing ahead despite grumbling from party moderates leery of the measure’s massive price tag and liberals who wanted bolder steps, like money to cover work-ers’ salaries.
The bill was sure to go nowhere in the GOP-led Senate, let alone reach President Donald Trump’s desk, where a promised veto awaited. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said the leg-islation is Democrats’ opening offer in what is expected to blos-som into negotiations with the White House and congressional leaders of both parties.
In a scene that’s become un-comfortably familiar since the virus took hold, the sparsely pop-ulated House chamber was dotted with members and aides wearing protective masks, though some Republicans were not.
There were few clusters of chatting lawmakers and Pelosi edged away from anyone who stepped near her. Each vote was expected to last an hour or more, with members voting in alphabet-ical order in groups of around 70 to reduce crowding.
The bill would flush almost $1 trillion to state and local govern-ments and provide more money for virus testing and to pay front-line emergency workers. It would renew $1,200 cash payments for individuals and extend the added $600 weekly unemployment
benefits being paid during the pandemic.
Democrats rejected GOP ar-guments that the measure was simply an effort by Democrats to display their priorities to voters.
“I don’t give a damn about sending a message,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “I want to send help to those in desperate need.”
Pelosi has loaded the 1,815-page measure with a slew of Democratic priorities, including funding to cover rent payments and utility bills, “hazard pay” for essential workers. It also has grants to thousands of munici-pal governments grappling with sagging revenues and provisions helping voters cast ballots by mail and increasing food aid to low-income people.
Few Republicans were ex-pected to vote for the bill, despite popular provisions that also in-cluded help for the Postal Service and local schools and $175 billion to help homeowners and renters stay in their homes.
“This bill is nothing more than the Democratic policy agenda masquerading as a response to the coronavirus crisis,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. He said the bill is “going nowhere, and is going nowhere fast.”
Republicans are now calling for a “pause” before consider-ing more aid, reflecting disunity between conservatives who feel enough has been done and more pragmatic lawmakers who favor steps like rescuing the Postal Service from looming insol-vency, while delivering cash to revenue-starved state and local governments.
Underscoring the stakes, it’s also becoming clear that the next coronavirus response bill will probably be the last.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
Democrats push $3T relief bill; GOP resistant
Trump vows to replenish national stockpile, increase US production
Health officials finally release edited guidance on reopening
BY JILL COLVIN AND DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Presi-dent Donald Trump says he intends to prepare for future pandemics by replenishing the national stockpile and bringing manufacturing of critical supplies and equipment back to the U.S. His comments came the same day a whistleblower told Con-gress the Trump administration had failed to properly prepare for the current pandemic.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Trump said Thursday during a visit to a Pennsylvania distributor of medi-cal equipment. “My goal is to pro-duce everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines.”
Trump had complained about supply chains in a television in-terview that aired before he left Washington for the trip to Owens and Minor Inc. in Allentown.
“These stupid supply chains that are all over the world — we have a supply chain where they’re
made in all different parts of the world,” Trump said in the inter-view with Fox Business Network. “And one little piece of the world goes bad, and the whole thing is messed up.”
“We should have them all in the United States,” he said.
It was Trump’s second trip outside Washington in as many weeks as tries to convince the public that it’s time for states to begin to open up again, even with the virus still spreading. Trump’s remarks came as federal whis-tleblower Rick Bright testified before a House panel on Thurs-day about his repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of res-pirator masks that he says went nowhere.
In Pennsylvania, Trump added to the pressure Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is under from home-state Republicans to roll back stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns after effectively con-taining the state’s outbreak early on.
“We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening
things up a bit,” Trump said dur-ing a speech at the warehouse.Trump claimed some placesin the state had been “barely affected.”
The president arrived in Al-lentown on a campaign-like visit to highlight a U.S. medical equip-ment distributor that is helpingmake and ship gowns, gloves andother personal protective gear across the country.
Trump did not wear a face cov-ering as he stepped off Air ForceOne. During the flight, chief ofstaff Mark Meadows wore a navy blue face mask embossed with thepresidential seal in gold. Officials wiped down the handrails on thestaircase before Trump arrived.
Scores of people lined the mo-torcade route, and the crowd grew thicker — with many of thembarefaced — and began to chant“USA!” and “Four more years!”as Trump arrived at Owens andMinor.
“I’m determined that Americawill be prepared for any of the fu-ture outbreaks,” Trump said.
BY MIKE STOBBE AND JASON DEAREN
Associated Press
NEW YORK — U.S. health officials on Thursday released some of their long-de-layed guidance that schools, businesses and other organizations can use as states reopen from coronavirus shutdowns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted six one-page “decision tool” documents that use traffic signs and other graphics to tell organizations what they should consider before reopening.
The tools are for schools, workplaces, camps, childcare centers, mass transit sys-
tems, and bars and restaurants. The CDC originally also authored a document for churches and other religious facilities, but that wasn’t posted Thursday. The agency declined to say why.
Early versions of the documents included detailed information for churches wanting to restart in-person services, with sug-gestions including maintaining distance between parishioners and limiting the size of gatherings. The faith-related guid-ance was taken out after the White House raised concerns about the recommended restrictions, according to government emails obtained by The Associated Press and a person inside the agency who didn’t
have permission to talk with reporters and spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, a Trump administration official also speaking on condition of ano-nymity said there were concerns about the propriety of the government making spe-cific dictates to places of worship.
President Donald Trump has champi-oned religious freedom as a way to connect with conservative evangelical voters and has shown eagerness for in-person reli-gious services to restart. He consulted in-terfaith leaders last month for suggestions on how to reopen and said on a recent Fox News town hall that “we have to get our people back to churches, and we’re going
to start doing it soon.”The CDC drafted the reopening guid-
ance more than a month ago and it wasinitially shelved by the administration, the AP reported last week.
The agency also had prepared even moreextensive guidance — about 57 pages of it— that has not been posted.
That longer document, which the AP ob-tained, would give different organizationsspecifics about how to reopen while still limiting the spread of the virus.
Some health experts and politicians havepushed for the CDC to release as muchguidance as possible to help businesses and organizations decide how to proceed.
EVAN VUCCI/AP
President Donald Trump participates in a tour of Owens & Minor Inc., a medical supply company Thursday in Allentown, Pa.
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 7Saturday, May 16, 2020
Large-scale vaccine tests text in summer
WASHINGTON — Having aCOVID-19 vaccine by January is “a stretch goal,” but the head of the National Institutes of Health is gearing up for a master experi-ment to rapidly tell if any reallywork.
At least four or five possiblevaccines “look pretty promising” and one or two will be ready tobegin large-scale testing by July with others to follow soon, NIHDirector Francis Collins told TheAssociated Press on Thursday.
The NIH in partnership withsome of the world’s largest phar-maceutical companies is creatinga master plan that vaccine mak-ers can follow.
The goal is to have 300 milliondoses available to distribute toAmericans by January.
Working together so each po-tential vaccine is tested the sameway instead of each company devising its own methods will further speed answers and allowaccurate comparisons, Collinssaid.
CDC warns of related condition in children
The federal Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention is warning doctors about a seri-ous rare inflammatory condi-tion in children linked with thecoronavirus.
In an alert issued Thursday, theCDC called the condition multi-system inflammatory syndromein children. The agency’s case definition includes current or re-cent COVID-19 infection or expo-sure to the virus, a fever of at least100.4 for at least 24 hours, severeillness requiring hospitalization, inflammatory markers in bloodtests, and evidence of problemsaffecting at least two organs .
The condition has been report-ed in at least 110 New York chil-dren and in several kids in other states. A few children have died.
FDA warns rapid test may be inaccurate
WASHINGTON — The head ofthe Food and Drug Administra-tion said Friday his agency hasprovided new guidance to theWhite House after data suggestedthat a rapid COVID-19 test usedby President Donald Trump andothers every day may provide in-accuracies and false negatives.
Commissioner Steve Hahn saidthat if a person is suspected of having the disease caused by thecoronavirus, “it might be worth,if the test is negative, getting asecond confirmatory test. That’swhat our guidance is about.”
The test, by Abbott Laborato-ries, is used daily at the WhiteHouse.
The FDA said it was review-ing the data with Abbott and wasworking on a letter to health careproviders about potential accu-racy issues.
Regulators said they are re-quiring Abbott to conduct follow-up studies on the test’s accuracy. From The Associated Press
Associated Press
BERLIN — Germany and several other European countries where the coronavirus spread has slowed were moving ahead Friday with relaxing border restrictions, while flare-ups in Mexico and elsewhere served as a re-minder the pandemic is far from over.
Slovenia, which has been gradually eas-ing strict lockdown measures, declared that the spread of the virus is now under control and that European Union residents could now enter from Austria, Italy and Hungary.
Germany, meantime, was preparing to open its border entirely with Luxembourg at midnight, and increase the number of cross-ings open from France, Switzerland and Aus-tria. Travelers will still need to demonstrate a “valid reason” to enter Germany and there will be spot checks, but the goal is to restore free travel by June 15.
Germany’s states have also agreed to drop a mandatory 14-day quarantine for travelers entering from the European Union and sever-al other European countries, including Brit-ain, said Armin Laschet, the governor of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“Germany will only overcome the corona crisis if European freedom of movement for people, goods and services is fully restored,” Laschet said.
Germany has seen more than 170,000 COVID-19 infections and nearly 8,000 deaths, but more than 150,000 people have recovered and the country has been seeing fewer than 1,000 new cases per day.
Austria and Switzerland were also mov-ing ahead with easing some border restric-tions, and Austria reopened all cafes and restaurants.
Restaurants were reopening in more Ger-man states Friday as well, and the country was to resume professional soccer on Satur-day after a two-month hiatus.
In Sydney, many cafes and restaurants opened again Friday as New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, granted per-mission for them, as well as places of worship, to reopen with up to 10 people so long as dis-tancing rules are in place.
In Japan, some schools, restaurants and other businesses started to reopen after the country lifted its national coronavirus emer-gency, while keeping in place restrictions in limited urban areas like Tokyo where risks remain.
As countries move ahead with relaxing re-strictions, the head of the World Health Or-ganization’s Europe office, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that distancing guidance and other protective measures were more important than ever.
“It’s very important to remind everyone that as long as there is no vaccine and effec-tive treatment, there is no return to normal, ” he said on French radio Europe-1. “This virus won’t simply disappear, so the personal be-havior of each of us will determine the behav-ior of the virus. Governments have done a lot, and now the responsibility is on the people.”
Worldwide, there have been more than 4.4 million coronavirus infections reported and 300,000 deaths, while nearly 1.6 million peo-ple have recovered according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
A first case was confirmed among the 1 million refugees from Myanmar living in dire, overcrowded conditions in southern Bangladesh. Another, a local person living in the Cox’s Bazaar district, also tested positive, refugee commissioner Mahbub Alam Takuk-der said.
Aid workers have been warning of the po-tential for a serious outbreak if the virus reaches the camps, and teams were activated to treat patients and trace, quarantine and test people they may have encountered.
Ahead of Mexico’s plan to partially reopen key industries such as mining, construction and auto plants on May 18, authorities sound-ed a note of concern as the country reported its largest one-day rise in coronavirus case numbers.
There were 2,409 new COVID-19 test con-
firmations Thursday, the first time that num-ber has exceeded 2,000 in one day.
Deaths have neared 4,500 and there were signs that hospital capacity was nearing its limit in Mexico City, the hardest-hit area. The Health Department reported that 73% per-cent of the city’s general-care hospital beds were full; the percentage was lower for inten-sive-care beds, but that was partly because of the expansion of improvised ICU units at hospitals and other venues.
In Brazil, news website G1 reported that 900 people in Rio de Janeiro were waiting for an intensive-care bed in one of the state’s overwhelmed units. President Jair Bolsonaro warned of looming “chaos” as he once again lambasted governors and mayors who intro-duced lockdowns in cities to limit spread of the new virus.
“I’m sorry, many will die, but even more will if the economy continues to be destroyed by these measures,” Bolsonaro told journalists in Brasilia on Thursday. “These lockdowns, closing everything, is the path to failure. It will break Brazil.”
Colombian President Ivan Duque has or-dered all residents of the Amazonas Depart-ment, near the border with Brazil, to stay inside except to buy food or get medical care. Local hospitals are being overwhelmed as cases rise in a vulnerable part of the Amazon, home to many indigenous groups.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Despite White House claims, the U.S. still lacks a comprehensive battle plan against the coronavirus in critical areas including masks, testing, treatments and vaccines, whis-tleblower Rick Bright warned Thursday in testimony before a House committee.
“Our window of opportunity is closing, ” he declared.
The nation could face “the darkest winter in modern his-tory” if the virus rebounds, the government vaccine scientist told lawmakers.
Bright’s appearance came after his ouster last month as head of
a Health and Human Services biodefense agency, an action he alleges was retaliation by the Trump administration.
“We need still a comprehen-sive plan, and everyone across the government and everyone in America needs to know what that plan is, and what role they play,” he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “There are critical steps that we need to do to prepare ... we do not still have enough personal protective equipment to manage our health care workers ... we still do not have the supply chains ramped up for the drugs and vaccines, and we still don’t have plans in place for how we distribute those
drugs and vaccines. We still do not have a comprehensive testing strategy.”
At the White House, President Donald Trump said Bright looked like an “angry, disgruntled em-ployee,” and Bright’s boss, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, said, “Ev-erything he is complaining about was achieved. ”
“So this is like somebody who was in a choir and is now trying to say he was a soloist back then,” Azar added.
Trump, said later, at a Pennsyl-vania medical equipment distrib-utor, that the U.S. is ramping up production of COVID-19-related items and that his goal “is to pro-duce everything America needs
for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines .”
Bright spoke in measured tones and rarely raised his voice during five hours of questioning.
He didn’t question the fact that there’s now an all-out effort, financed by billions in taxpayer dollars, to procure masks and other supplies, develop better tests and treatments and discover an effective vaccine.
His point was that those efforts aren’t being fitted together in a coherent strategy that will get supplies and medicines to where they’re most needed to protect people and prevent shortages and price gouging.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
CHINATOPIX/AP
Workers line up so medical workers can swab them for the coronavirus at a large factory in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province Friday .
Europe begins to relax border controls
Whistleblower: US lacks cohesive strategy
PAGE 8 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas — Two weeks into the reopening of Texas, coronavirus cases are climbing. New outbreaks still crop up. And at Guero’s Taco Bar in Austin, which offers the occasional celeb-rity sighting, a log of every diner and where they sat is begrudg-ingly in the works.
“It seems like a huge invasion of privacy,” said owner Cathy Lipincott, who is nonetheless try-ing to comply with Austin’s local public health guidelines by ask-ing, but not requiring, customers to give their information.
Few states are rebooting quick-er than Texas, where stay-at-home orders expired May 1. With cases still rising, including sin-gle-day highs of 1,458 new cases and 58 deaths Thursday, Repub-lican Gov. Greg Abbott has de-fended the pace by emphasizing steadying hospitalization rates and pointing out that Texas’ 1,200 deaths are still behind similarly big states, including California and Florida.
But on the cusp of even more restrictions ending Monday, in-cluding gyms cleared to reopen, a political confrontation is growing over attempts by big cities to keep some guardrails. The dispute underscores the gulf between Democrats who run city halls and GOP leaders who call the shots in the capital in Texas, where unlike other states, the governor’s orders supersede all local mandates dur-ing the pandemic.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week lashed out at the cities of Dal-las, Austin and San Antonio over what he called “unlawful” local orders that are tougher than re-strictions prescribed by Abbott, and threatened lawsuits if the cities don’t back off. The warn-ing came one day after El Paso pleaded to postpone easing up on any more lockdown measures in light of the number of COVID-19 cases there surging 60% over the past two weeks.
California SACRAMENTO — California
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed $14 billion in budget cuts on Thurs-day because of the coronavirus, with more than half coming at the expense of public schools already struggling to educate children from afar during a pandemic.
The cuts are part of a plan to cover a $54.3 billion budget defi-cit caused by plummeting state revenues after a mandatory, state-wide stay-at-home order forced most businesses to close and put more than 4.7 million people out of work.
Thursday, Newsom proposed to fill that hole through a com-bination of cuts, tax increases, canceled spending, internal bor-rowing and tapping the state’s re-serves. It also includes a 10% pay cut for all state workers, includ-ing the governor himself. Overall, the $203 billion spending plan is
about 5% lower than the budget lawmakers approved last year.
“Nothing breaks my heart more than having to make budget cuts,” he said. “There’s a human being behind every single number.”
Newsom said all of those cuts could be avoided if the federal government approves a $1 trillion aid package for state and local governments. The state would need that money before July 1 to avoid the cuts .
Minnesota MINNEAPOLIS — The Mall
of America, which is the larg-est shopping and entertainment complex in North America, will partially reopen on June 1 in compliance with Minnesota’s new safety protocols for slowly re-opening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, mall man-agement announced Thursday.
Gov. Tim Walz’s decision Wednesday to allow his stay-at-home order to expire and to allow retailers to start reopening on Monday was “promising news” for the mall and all retailers, the operators of the mall in the Min-neapolis suburb of Bloomington said in a statement. The mall, which has more than 520 stores and restaurants, temporarily closed on March 17, though some of its merchants recently began offering curbside service
“Mall of America is home to more than 175 small business owners in addition to hundreds of national and global brands,” the statement said. “We are pre-pared to open our doors, so they can open theirs giving them the opportunity to begin rebuilding their business.”
North Carolina RALEIGH — Conservative
Christian leaders sued Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday, asking a court to throw out his restric-tions on indoor religious services in North Carolina during the COVID-19 pandemic. They ar-gued the limits, initiated by Coo-per with health in mind, violate their rights to worship freely.
Two Baptist churches, a minis-ter and a Christian revival group filed the federal lawsuit seeking to immediately block enforce-ment of rules covering religious services within the Democratic governor’s executive orders. The latest order still largely prevents most faith organizations from holding indoor services attended by more than 10 people.
“Freedoms curbed eventually becomes no freedom at all,” the Rev. Ron Baity, pastor of Ber-ean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, said at a rally of roughly 500 people next to the Legislative Building. Baity, who is a plaintiff along with Berean Baptist and the Return America group he leads, said the use of church buildings have been an integral part of U.S. history for centuries: ”If there’s ever been a time our communi-
ties need the church, it is now.”
New Mexico SANTA FE — New Mexico is
woefully short of professionals devoted to contact tracing that can alert people who are exposed unknowingly to the coronavirus, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.
The state needs at least 670 people for telephone debriefings to effectively trace contacts in-volving infections, she said.
“We’re at about 100-110 people, and it’s not enough,” she said.
The Democratic governor said the state is contracting with a company named Accenture to improve its capabilities for trac-ing possible exposure to COVID-19 as the state prepares to lighten restrictions on many nonessential businesses.
Ohio COLUMBUS — Ohio restau-
rants had the option beginning Friday to offer outdoor dining, the next step toward resuming normal business operations under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s state reopening plan.
DeWine has said that 90% of the state’s economy will be back online this weekend with Ohioans having returned to offices, facto-ries, construction jobs and retail stores, and now outdoor eating. In-person dining can resume on May 21.
The governor and Health Di-rector Dr. Amy Acton made it clear at a Thursday briefing that Ohioans must still take numer-ous precautions from wearing masks to frequent hand-washing to proper social distancing.
“This is a time when we’ve got to really continue to do that,” DeWine said. “Even as people move around more, they’ve got to even be more cautious.”
Pennsylvania HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom
Wolf will announce Friday that more counties can see some of
his tightest pandemic restrictions lifted, as counties and lawmakers kept up pressure on him to ease up on his orders.
In a telephone news conference Thursday with reporters, Wolf said he will make his decision on Friday morning. However, he has not changed his criteria for decid-ing which counties can emerge from his stay-at-home order and his order for non-life-sustaining businesses to close, he said.
His health secretary, Dr. Ra-chel Levine, echoed that, saying that the administration will con-tinue to count cases in prisons, factories, nursing homes and other large settings prone to out-breaks against a county’s total.
That is bad news for counties such as Beaver and Huntingdon that blame much of their out-break on a single institution, like a prison or nursing home, and re-main under the governor’s tight-est restrictions.
Rhode IslandPROVIDENCE — Rhode
Island’s summer camps will re-open, but organized sports likely won’t make a return, Gov. Gina Raimondo said Thursday.
The Democrat said details about the planned June 29 reopen-ing of camps are being finalized, but said parents can expect their children will be kept in small, set groups in order to limit the risk of virus transmission.
“It’s going to be different, but fun,” she said.
For now, Raimondo said she’s sticking to federal guidelines that recommend canceling all organized youth sports, includ-ing Little League and travel team competitions.
But she said her administration is looking into allowing other ways athletes can still compete, such as allowing sports camps to reopen or allowing other limited gather-ings, such as team practices.
Virginia RICHMOND — Virginia’s
capital city and a rural county on
the Eastern Shore are opting outof beginning to reopen Friday, saying it is still too soon to ease restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Ralph Northam grantedrequests from the city of Rich-mond and Accomack County on Thursday afternoon to delay a gradual reopening of some non-essential businesses just hoursahead of when those areas were set to start reopening.
The governor is easing some restrictions in most of the state Friday. He delayed the Rich-mond and Accomack reopeningsby two weeks, which he’d previ-ously done for several localities in northern Virginia.
“As I have said previously,Virginia’s Phase One guidelinesrepresent a floor, not a ceiling,”the Democratic governor said ina statement. “I have encouragedlocal leaders to request exemp-tions when appropriate.”
West Virginia CHARLESTON — The path to
reopening in West Virginia runsthrough the phone.
Gov. Jim Justice on Thursdaysaid he is lifting coronavirus re-strictions on gyms after business owners called his office, a dayafter he bent to similar requests from tanning salons.
“We’ve got an awful lot of callsrequesting that our health clubsand our gyms be allowed to openup,” Justice said, adding that he will issue safety guidelines for the fitness centers to follow whenthey reopen on Monday.
The Republican governor has aggressively ramped up his re-opening strategy to allow severalbusinesses to resume operationsnext week, just before MemorialDay weekend.
Tanning salons, restaurants at half capacity, big-box stores, and businesses that rent all-ter-rain vehicles, bicycles and other outdoor recreational items can reopen Thursday, May 21. Camp-grounds can also reopen for in-state residents the same day .
Saturday, May 16, 2020
VIRUS OUTBREAK ROUNDUP
Tensions rise as Texas governor pushes to open
JEFF CHIU/AP
People wear face masks in front of a poster outside of a boarded up Optometrix eye care center n San Francisco, on Thursday .
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 9Saturday, May 16, 2020
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Senate has passed legislation that would extend a set of expired federal surveillance tools designed to help law enforcement officials track suspected terrorists and spies, moving one step closer to reviving them.
The legislation passed the Sen-ate 80-16 on Thursday. The bill is a bipartisan compromise that has the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Major-ity Leader Mitch McConnell. The Justice Department, which had been part of the negotiations, said it appreciated that the expired au-thorities had been reauthorized but expressed disappointment with the tweaked version of the bill that ultimately passed.
It’s unclear how quickly the legislation can become law. The House passed the bill in March, but will have to pass it again due to a change in the Senate. The House has been holding votes on a limited basis due to the corona-virus pandemic.
President Donald Trump has said he will support the compro-mise, but GOP senators who are longtime skeptics of federal sur-veillance have tried to change his mind. They want him to veto it.
The bill would renew the ex-pired surveillance authorities and impose new restrictions to try to appease civil liberties ad-vocates in both parties.
The provisions at issue allow the FBI to get a court order for business records in national se-curity investigations, to conduct surveillance without establishing that the subject is acting on be-half of an international terrorism organization, and to more easily continue eavesdropping on a sub-ject who has switched cellphone providers to thwart detection.
“The attorney general and members of Congress have worked together to craft a com-promise solution that will im-
plement needed reforms whilepreserving the core nationalsecurity tools,” McConnell saidon the Senate floor Wednesday. “These intense discussions haveproduced a strong bill that bal-ances the need for accountability with our solemn obligation to pro-tect our citizens and defend ourhomeland.”
McConnell urged senators to vote against amendments alter-ing the bill. He said the legislationwas already a “delicate balance”and warned changing it couldmean the underlying provisions won’t be renewed.
But senators adopted oneamendment anyway, with more than three-fourths of the cham-ber supporting it. Another amend-ment came just one vote short ofthe 60 votes needed.
The successful amendment,from Republican Sen. Mike Leeof Utah and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, wouldboost third-party oversight to protect individuals in some sur-veillance cases. It was adopted77-19.
In a statement, Justice Depart-ment spokesman Marc Raimondisaid the department appreciates the Senate’s vote but that, as amended, the legislation “wouldunacceptably degrade our ability to conduct surveillance of terror-ists, spies and other national se-curity threats.”
The proposal that fell just short of 60 votes would have preventedfederal law enforcement from ob-taining internet browsing infor-mation or search history withoutseeking a warrant.
A third amendment, by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a longtime skep-tic of surveillance programs, wassoundly defeated 11-85. It wouldhave required the government togo to a traditional federal court,instead of the secretive ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Court,to get a warrant to eavesdrop onan American in a national secu-rity investigation.
Associated Press
ATLANTA — Democratic candidate Joe Biden said that if he wins the presidency he would not use his power to pardon Don-ald Trump or stop any investigations of Trump and his associates.
“It is not something the president is en-titled to do, to direct a prosecution or de-cide to drop a case,” Biden said Thursday on MSNBC. “It’s a dereliction of duty.”
The former vice president made his statement in response to a voter who asked him on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, “The Last Word,” whether he would “commit to not pulling a Gerald Ford in giving Don-ald Trump a pardon under the pretense of healing the nation.”
Biden responded, “I commit,” before offering a more lengthy explanation of his view that the president must allow the Justice Department to operate without
interference.Ford became president in 1974 when
Richard Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment. Ford later pardoned his predecessor before any criminal charges related to the Water-gate burglary could be filed. Ford went on to lose the 1976 presi-dential election.
The House im-peached Trump in December on charges related to his effort to withhold congressionally appropriated funds from Ukraine in exchange for of-ficials there assisting Trump in sullying Biden. The Senate acquitted him in Febru-ary on a nearly party line vote.
Biden also said on O’Donnell’s show that voters who believe the former Senate staffer who has accused him of sexually assaulting her in the early 1990s prob-ably shouldn’t cast their ballots for him in November.
“I think they should vote their heart, and if they believe Tara Reade they prob-ably shouldn’t vote for me,” Biden told O’Donnell. “I wouldn’t vote for me if I be-lieved Tara Reade.”
Biden repeated his firm denial of Reade’s assertion that he assaulted her in a Senate hallway 27 years ago. Biden, who served in the Senate 36 years before two terms as vice president, said he does not recall Reade at all.
He said any woman who makes a claim of harassment or assault “should be taken seriously” but the account should be “thor-oughly vetted in every case.” He noted
“changes” in Reade’s account over time.In 2019, Reade was among several
women who accused Biden of touchingthem in ways that made them uncomfort-able, but none of those accounts at the timeincluding accusations of assault. Reade came forward anew in March with more explicit accusations against the former vice president.
“This is just totally, thoroughly, com-pletely out of character, and the idea that ina public place, in a hallway I would assaulta woman, I mean, anyway I promise you, itnever happened,” Biden said.
The accusation has not derailed Biden’s path as the presumptive Democratic nomi-nee, but it’s an uncomfortable circum-stance for the 77-year-old, who has pledgedto name a woman as his running mate andoften recounted his work as lead sponsor ofthe Violence Against Women Act.
NATION
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Thursday his com-mittee is opening a wide-ranging inquiry into the Russia investigation, but rejected President Donald Trump’s call to bring in former President Barack Obama to testify.
“I am greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for over-sight,” said Graham, a South Carolina Republican and staunch Trump ally. “No president is above the law. However, the presidency has executive privi-lege claims against other branches of government.”
Graham noted the surprising nature of his an-nouncement, saying: “To say we are living in un-usual times is an understatement.“
The U.S. has a sitting president accusing the former president “of being part of a treasonous conspiracy to undermine his presidency,” Graham said. “We have the former president suggesting the current president is destroying the rule of law” by dismissing a case against Trump’s first national se-curity adviser, Michael Flynn. “All of this is occur-ring during a major pandemic.“
The Judiciary Committee will first delve into the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss its pros-ecution of Flynn, as well as actions by the Obama administration to view Flynn’s name in intelligence
reports during the Russia probe, Graham said.“We must determine if these requests were le-
gitimate,” Graham said, referring to requests by top Obama administration officials to “unmask” Flynn’s name. The requests are common, including during the Trump administration, which has made thousands of “unmasking” requests.
Graham also said the committee will look into potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveil-lance Act, or FISA, during a probe of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FBI identified Page during the early days of its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and se-cretly targeted his electronic communications.
A federal watchdog later concluded that the FBI made significant errors and omissions in applica-tions it made to a U.S. foreign intelligence court for the authorization to eavesdrop on Page. Those mistakes prompted internal changes within the FBI and spurred a congressional debate over whether the bureau’s surveillance tools should be reined in.
“My goal is to find out why and how the system got so off the rails,” Graham said.
The Judiciary Committee also will look at wheth-er Robert Mueller should have been appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe. The decision to appoint Muller was made in 2017 by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
Biden: No pardon for Trump if he’s elected
Biden
Senate votes to renew surveillance powers
Graham to probe Russia investigation
CAROLINE BREHMA, CQ ROLL CALL, POOL/AP
Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., takes off his mask as he arrives for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday .
PAGE 10 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines — Ty-phoon Vongfong’s ferocious wind and rain left at least one dead and damaged hundreds of coronavi-rus isolation facilities and homes, along with rice and corn fields in five hard-hit eastern towns alone, a governor said Friday.
Gov. Ben Evardone of East-ern Samar province, where the typhoon slammed ashore, said some residents were weeping in desperation after their houses were destroyed or blown away in the towns he inspected. One dis-traught villager who lost his home slashed his wrist but was treated in time, he said.
A man bled to death after he was hit by glass shards in a school building he was trying to open to take shelter in, Evardone said.
“The damage I saw was very extensive. The roof of one church was ripped off completely, its iron bars twisted badly by the ty-phoon,” Evardone told The Asso-ciated Press by telephone.
He said that he and his group of military, police and local authori-ties failed to travel to two towns hit by the typhoon, Jipapad and Maslog, due to fallen trees on the road. Cellphone and two-way radio communications to the far-flung areas were down and Evar-done appealed to the military to deploy a helicopter to inspect
and carry out food drops if army troops were not able to reach the area by Saturday.
In the outlying region of Bicol, northwest of Eastern Samar, more than 145,000 people were riding out the weakening typhoon
in emergency shelters on Friday after a mass evacuation that was complicated and slowed by the coronavirus.
Vongfong weakened into a se-vere tropical storm after hitting land Thursday and was blowing
northwest toward the populous main northern island of Luzon, government forecasters said.
The typhoon’s maximum sus-tained wind speed dropped to 68 miles per hour with gusts of 93 mph but it remains dangerous, es-
pecially in coastal and low-lying villages, forecasters said. Vong-fong was expected to blow out ofthe country’s north on Sunday.
Office of Civil Defense Direc-tor Claudio Yucot said the evacu-ations took time because workersneeded to wear masks and pro-tective suits and could not trans-port villagers to shelters in largenumbers as a safeguard againstCOVID-19.
“Our ease of movement hasbeen limited by COVID,” Yucottold AP by telephone from Albay province in the Bicol region,which has had dozens of corona-virus infections, including fourdeaths, and remains under quar-antine. “In the evacuation cen-ters, there are more challenges.”
In an evacuation room, whichcould shelter up to 40 families be-fore, only four families could beaccommodated now.
The occupants should knoweach other and are required to report any infected person, Yucot said.
The coast guard said morethan 600 cargo truck drivers and workers were stranded due to thetravel suspension.
The typhoon hit as the Phil-ippines struggles to deal withcoronavirus outbreaks, largely with a lockdown in Luzon that is to be eased this weekend, except in metropolitan Manila and two other high-risk areas.
WORLD
Associated Press
SINGAPORE — An American cargo pilot who admitted to “poor judgment” in breaking a quaran-tine order to buy medical supplies became the first foreigner im-prisoned in Singapore for breach-ing its restrictions meant to curb the coronavirus, his lawyer said Friday.
FedEx pilot Brian Dugan Year-gan, 44, of Alaska, was sentenced to four weeks Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to leaving his hotel room for three hours to buy masks and a thermometer, de-fense lawyer Ronnie Tan said.
Singapore has one of the larg-est outbreaks in Asia, with 26,000 cases. More than 90% of those infected are foreign workers liv-ing in crowded dormitories, while the government recently began easing restrictions for the local population.
The tiny city-state has strict penalties for those who breach quarantine rules, don’t wear masks in public or fail to adhere to social distancing measures. Quarantine violators face up to six months in jail, a fine of up to $7,000 or both.
Tan said Yeargan and his two co-pilots were taken to an airport hotel to serve 14-day quarantines upon arriving from Sydney on April 3. It was required because
they stated in their health decla-rations they had visited China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan and the United States in the two-week period before their arrival, Tan said.
Health officials checking on Yeargan found him missing from his room on April 5. Yeargan told the court he took the metro down-town to buy a thermometer and a few boxes of masks before he was to fly home on April 6.
Tan said Yeargan needed the items because they were in short supply back home and his wife has been ill. Yeargan’s wife had breathing difficulties but tested negative for the coronavirus in March, he said.
Tan said Yeargan lost his daughter in a tragic incident four years ago and the possibility of another death frightened him. Yeargan told the court his two co-pilots had flown out on April 6 as scheduled but he had been held back in his room. He also said he had to give up an assignment to fly a humanitarian aid mission to COVID-19-hit countries for the U.S. Air Force due to his blunder in Singapore.
“In his address in court, Year-gan said he was sorry, he made a poor judgment and that he shouldn’t have gone out,” Tan said. The American also said he
has “the highest regard for the Singapore people and its laws,” Tan added.
The court said in its ruling that Yeargan should have asked some-one to obtain the items for him.
Tan said Yeargan was relieved because prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to eight weeks. He said he will apply for a remission for good behavior, which could see the American being released in three weeks.
The Anchorage Daily News re-ported Yeargan is from the Eagle River community and serves with the Alaska Air National Guard. It said he last spoke to his parents on Mother’s Day. “He’s taking care of himself,” Jim Yeargan was quoted as saying.
FedEx spokeswoman Davina Cole told the newspaper the com-pany adhered to all regulations from government authorities re-lated to containing the virus.
Associated Press
HONG KONG — Tear gas is among the new flavors at a Hong Kong ice cream shop.
The main ingredient is black peppercorns, a reminder of the pungent, peppery rounds fired by police on the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese city during months of demonstrations last year.
“It tastes like tear gas. It feels difficult to breathe at first, and it’s really pungent and irritating. It makes me want to drink a lot of water immediately,” said custom-er Anita Wong, who experienced tear gas at a protest. “I think it’s a flashback that reminds me of how painful I felt in the movement, and that I shouldn’t forget.”
The flavor is a sign of support for the pro-democracy movement, which is seeking to regain its mo-mentum during the coronavirus pandemic, the shop’s owner said. He spoke on condition of anonym-ity to avoid repercussions from the pro-Beijing government.
“We would like to make a fla-vor that reminds people that they still have to persist in the protest movement and don’t lose their passion,” he said.
He tried different ingredients, including wasabi and mustard, in an effort to replicate the taste of tear gas.
Black pepper, he said, came
closest to tear gas with its throat-irritating effects.
“We roast and then grind wholeblack peppercorns and makethem into gelato, the Italian style. It’s a bit hot, but we emphasize itsaftertaste, which is a sensationof irritation in the throat. It just feels like breathing in tear gas,”the 31-year-old owner said.
More than 16,000 rounds oftear gas were fired during theprotests, according to Hong Kongauthorities, many in denselypopulated districts where narrowstreets are filled with small res-taurants and apartment blocks.
The protests began over pro-posed legislation that would have allowed criminal suspects to beextradited to mainland China toface charges. While the bills werewithdrawn, demonstrations con-tinued over concerns Beijing iseroding the civil liberties grantedto the former British colony when it was returned to Chinese rule in1997.
At about $5 a serving, tear gasice cream has been a hit. Prior to social distancing regulations overthe coronavirus outbreak, theshop’s owner said he was selling20-30 scoops per day.
The demonstration have mostlydied away as the city fights thecoronavirus, but there are wide-spread expectations that largeractions may emerge during thesummer.
Deadly typhoon damages Philippine towns
Ice cream shop in Hong Kong serving up ‘tear gas’ flavor
US pilot in Singapore is jailed for breaking order
MELCHOR HILOTIN/AP
Residents ride a boat along a flooded village as typhoon Vongfong passes by Sorsogon province, northeastern Philippines on Friday .
THE STRAITS TIMES/AP
Brian Dugan Yeargan walks outside a court in Singapore on Wednesday.
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 11Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY CATHERINE MARFIN
The Dallas Morning News
By now, we’re familiar with the rule: Stay 6 feet away from other people for your best chance of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Even as some states — and countries — begin to reopen more businesses, social distancing is still being emphasized. But some offi cials’ guidelines for how much space to keep between yourself and others has varied.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended at least a 6-foot gap. The World Health Organization has recommended half that distance — and only when people are coughing or sneezing.
However, other health experts have said even more space may be needed in some situations.
So how much social distancing is enough? Here’s what you need to know :
Where does the 6-foot rule come from?
Health experts have said the recommen-dation for 6 feet of social distancing comes from studies of diseases in the 1930s and 1940s, mainly the work of William F. Wells, who studied tuberculosis.
COVID-19 is believed to be spread mainly through large respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze. The droplets typically travel 3 to 6 feet.
Health experts say that because the drop-lets are larger and can usually be seen with the naked eye, gravity will cause them to fall to the ground within that distance.
Why are some concerned about the 6-foot rule?
There are questions about whether the virus can be transmitted through micro-scopic droplets, called aerosols, which linger in the air.
Health experts have pointed to studies and incidents that suggest there’s a risk the virus can linger. One study in the New Eng-land Journal of Medicine suggested COVID-19 can live in the air as long as three hours
in the right conditions.Experts also expressed concern about
aerosol transmission after about 60 choir members gathered for a practice in Mount Vernon, Wash., and dozens of them contract-ed the virus.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in late March found that droplets that were produced when someone coughs or sneezes can travel up to 27 feet. The study wasn’t conducted on the COVID-19 virus specifi -cally, however, and droplets survive and fall at different rates depending on their size and factors such as temperature, humidity and air currents.
The study could have implications for the novel coronavirus, but there’s still a lot that isn’t known about the disease, such as how much of the virus survives in smaller particles and how much of a living virus it takes to make someone sick, health experts say. Even if the virus lingers in respiratory droplets in the air, health experts still can’t say whether the droplets hold enough of the virus to cause concern.
“The question is not how far the germs can travel, but how far can they travel before they’re no longer a threat,” Dr. Paul Pottinger, an infectious disease professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine told USA TODAY. “The smaller the germ particles, the lower the risk that they might infect somebody who would breathe them in or get them stuck in their nose or their mouth.”
What about social distancing when you exercise?
Because of the varying theories about aerosol transmission, questions have been raised about safe social distances outdoors.
Some experts say the risk of transmission outside is low because air fl ow dilutes any expelled air. Generally, health experts say you’re safer engaging in outdoor activities than indoor ones, where air fl ow can be restricted, people are closer together and frequently touched items are abundant.
“Usually there’s a lot more social distanc-ing outside,” Dr. Kevin Winthrop, a profes-sor of infectious diseases in epidemiology
and public health at Oregon Health & Sci-ence University in Portland, told National Public Radio. “And environmental factors like wind and UV make it less likely you’re going to come in contact with viral par-ticles.”
But one recent study found that when people walk briskly or run, their bodies cre-ate wakes of air that can carry respiratory droplets up to 15 feet.
The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published, and it has signifi cant limitations. For example, it didn’t focus on the risk of infection or the COVID-19 virus specifi cally.
“The results look reasonable,” Linsey Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech who studies air fl ow, told The New York Times. “Common sense and this study suggest that if someone is walking or running, we need to allow for more space around them.”
Other health experts say allowing more space makes sense because people breathe heavier and harder when they’re exercising.
“The mnemonic I like to use is double your distance,” Dr. Ben Levine, a professor of medicine and cardiology at the Univer-sity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told NPR. “The greater volume and rate of breathing that occurs during exercise has the risk of spreading droplets farther ... I think it’s reasonable (to increase social distancing) based on the known changes in breathing during exercise.”
So, is 6 feet enough?Many health experts say 6 feet of distance
is a good minimum to aim for, based on what is known about the virus’ main method of transmission.
Health experts also recommend taking personal factors into account, such as how vulnerable an individual is and how well air is fl owing.
“Everything is about probability,” said Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine . “Three feet is better than nothing. Six feet is better than 3 feet. At that point, the larger drops have pretty much fallen down. Maybe if you’re out of spitting range, that could be even safer, but 6 feet is a pretty good number.”
S P A C E D O U T
How far is enough for social distancing to be effective?
HEALTH & FITNESSBad breath? What to do now that you’ve found it
Wearing a face mask will keep you and others safer when you have to leave the house. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that you now realize you suffer from halitosis. More than 80 million people suf-fer from chronic halitosis, or bad breath, according to Know Your Teeth.
Although bad breath can hap-pen because of a medical infec-tion, diabetes, kidney failure or a liver malfunction, the most com-mon reason is poor oral hygiene.
When food particles are left on your teeth or tongue, the bacteriacause odors in your mouth.
Here are fi ve ways to combat bad breath and make wearing a mask a more pleasant experi-ence :
Avoid certain foodsOnions and garlic add fl avor
to many foods but also add odors not easily brushed away.
“The substances that cause their bad smells make their way into your bloodstream and travel to your lungs, where you breathe them out,” dentist Richard Price, a spokesman for the American Dental Association, told WebMD.
The best way to avoid the prob-lem is to avoid the foods.
Stop smokingTobacco products adversely
affect your health in ways other than causing cancer, like damag-ing your gums, staining your teeth and causing bad breath. Isolation might be a good time to break the smoking habit. Nico-tine patches or gum can help, or make an appointment with a doctor, WebMD recommends.
Avoid dry mouth“Saliva is the key ingredient
in your mouth that helps keep the odor under control because it helps wash away food par-ticles and bacteria,” according to Know Your Teeth. If you aren’t producing much saliva, try drinking water or chewing sugarless gum.
Brush and fl ossWebMD recommends you
brush your teeth at least twice a day and fl oss at least once to reduce plaque. The sticky buildup on your teeth collects bacteria that cause bad breath, and trapped food adds to the problem.
Don’t overdo things, though, the experts warn. If you brush too hard you can wear down yourteeth, making them vulnerable to decay.
Scrape/brush your tongueBacteria don’t just live on
your teeth. To rid your tongue of odor-causing bacteria, remem-ber to brush it when you clean your teeth. If your toothbrush is too big to reach the back of your tongue, buy a scraper.
Scrapers are “designed spe-cifi cally to apply even pressure across the surface of the tongue area. This removes bacteria, food debris and dead cells that brushing alone can’t take care of,” hygienist Pamela L. Qui-nones, past president of the American Dental Hygienists’ Association, told WebMD.
— Nancy ClantonThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Quentin Heyward, a flight attendant and purser at Delta Air Lines, left, and the Rev. Martini Shaw, right, an Episcopal priest at the Historic African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, walk together, but apart, March 26 to maintain about a 6-foot distance at the Race Street Pier in Philadelphia . Heyward and Shaw are friends who worked out at the same gym prior to the coronavirus.
JESSICA GRIFFIN, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/TNS
PAGE 12 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
LIFESTYLE
BY ROBIN GIVHAN
The Washington Post
Fashion always fi nds a way. Human beings are undaunted in their search for ways to stand out, to communicate, to thrive in a treacherous environ-
ment. And so the face mask — once purely functional, once perceived as an exotic acces-sory — has evolved at breakneck speed into something more.
It’s more essential because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recom-mended that Americans wear a mask when interacting with others. It’s more aesthetically pleasing. It’s also a more complicated cultural proposition. And, of course, the face mask is po-litical because both the president and the vice president have refused to wear one on highly public occasions and because some protesters have insinuated that masks are un-American.
As the country moves toward reopening, masks are assuredly part of our future. And
in some ways, their evolution is the perfect encapsulation of how much life has changed in a blink of an eye — and how challenging, both intellectually and emotionally, it will be for us to go forward.
“The question about face masks is, how will they morally change us? To some extent, the answer depends on our motivation for wearing them,” says Liz Bucar, a professor of religion at Northeastern University. “If you are wear-ing a mask to protect yourself from others, you are forming a habit of fear. Every time you put a mask on, every time you see someone else wearing one, you will reinforce this fear.
“But if you are wearing the mask to protect others, wearing it will create a feeling of con-nection to those in your community,” she says. “You’ll see others wearing masks as a sarto-rial sign that they are willing to sacrifi ce some freedom and comfort for the common good.
“The meaning we give to these masks matters.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 13
Ports 1961
Face masks have entered the fashion scene, and they’re quickly becoming
a way for people to express themselves
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 13Saturday, May 16, 2020
LIFESTYLEFROM PAGE 12
In the beginning, which is to say in March, our experts said that healthy civilians didn’t need to wear face masks. A nonmedical mask was superfl uous because it could not protect the wearer from the microscopic droplets on which the virus traveled. The only purpose was to prevent the wearer from coughing and sneezing the infection on others — and if one was displaying those sorts of symp-toms, you really shouldn’t be out in the world.
In Paris, crowded international fashion shows were still unfurling as scheduled. A few design houses offered guests disposable masks — presented on a tasteful tray held by a handsome young usher at the entrance, the way a waiter might offer a glass of champagne. Unlike with bubbly, there were few takers. Those who did slip on a mask were rarely American and most often from Asia, where wearing a mask isn’t a matter of fear or paranoia, but consideration for others. Consideration.
Yet even in Paris, the center of the fashion universe, the masks were basic. White. Black. (Surely you didn’t think they’d be as awful as institutional blue?) Disposable.
By early April, a good Samaritan army of fashion indus-try workers was stitching up masks for fi rst responders. They too were straightforward, generic. It didn’t matter who was creating the masks — whether it was Louis Vuit-ton reinventing its leather-goods factories or independent entrepreneurs in New York or Los Angeles opening up their small ateliers. There were no logos. Function was the only consideration.
took less than a week from concept to e-commerce. And after about a week selling online, she’s moved about 1,000 masks, with the most favored version a sequined one for $20.
“It used to be that we really only saw tourists wearing them,” Kim says, referring to visitors from Asia. “Now, we are those people.”
There may be no other piece of clothing that has had a trajec-tory like face masks — something that began as purely protec-tive transforming into a fashion statement in no time at all.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at FIT.
The closest comparison that comes to her mind is the parka. What began as lifesaving covering in Inuit culture took thou-sands of years to evolve into what is now a staple of winter life. Masks in various forms have also been around for centuries, but we’ve been drawn mostly to admiring their aesthetics or exploring their magical connotations. Pure, physical func-tionality didn’t transfer to the masses. We didn’t use masks.
The modern surgical mask — essentially multiple layers of gauze — dates to the late 1800s. For generations, masks have been common on streets in Japan and China, worn during cold and fl u season or as protection from pollution and aller-gens, and gaining ground during the SARS outbreak.
Street-infl uenced menswear incorporated face masks into its vocabulary more than a decade ago. In the spring 2002 Raf Simons collection, presented not long after the 9/11 ter-rorist attacks, models stalked the darkened runway wear-ing face coverings that left little but their eyes visible. The masks referred to rebellion, to defying the establishment.
‘The meaning we give to these masks matters.’Designer Christian Siriano was using a pattern issued
by the New York governor’s offi ce, and Fashion Girls for Humanity — a nonprofi t organization founded in the after-math of the 2011 earthquake in Japan — offered down-loadable patterns and construction information gathered from medical professionals.
Soon, however, function met form. That same month, the CDC changed course and advised everyone to wear a mask in public. The fashion industry fully committed to the effort. If a shopper goes to Etsy, there are — at last count — 250 pages of colorful, patterned nonmedical masks to click through. Neighborhood blogs are fi lled with offers from home sewers willing to stitch up distinctive masks for locals.
There are masks for every taste and budget. Some are printed with Edvard Munch-like open-mouthed screams. Goth masks mimic skeletal jaws. Disney is offering a preorder on four-packs of masks featuring its signature characters. High-end versions are constructed from fi ne Italian fabrics that really should be hand-washed rather than thrown into the Maytag. Others are covered in se-quins. Some masks look to be so dense that they’d impede breathing; nonetheless, they’re stunning.
Almost all of them come with a promise of a charitable donation or a reassurance that no one is profi ting ... too much.
That’s the unwritten rule, so far. Ronald van der Kemp unveiled one-of-a-kind masks in Amsterdam to benefi t refugees. Some of them were more like fantastical, all-encompassing millinery than mere masks, as they were resplendent with gold chains, pearl-like beads and fl owers. A designer is allowed to recoup expenses — materials and labor.
But there was a social media fi restorm when images showed masks from Off-White, the coveted men’s street-style brand, selling online for as high as $1,205. (The masks were subsequently removed for price gouging.) Before the pandemic, Off-White’s fashion masks were sell-ing to its style-forward customers for about $100, which is still quite expensive for two rectangles of cloth about the size of a pocket paperback.
But fashion pricing has never been based on actual value. It’s calculated based on perceived value, which is driven by desire, status and rarity. Nonmedical masks have worth because of their function. We’re not yearn-ing for them. As a culture, we are just edging our way out of denial about what the near future holds and mincing our way to acceptance. And perhaps, the more stylish the masks become, the more willing people will be to put them on.
“I see people wearing masks for a while,” predicts New York designer Eugenia Kim. And if people have to wear them, if they have to have this piece of cloth front and center on their face, why not make the best of the situa-tion? “They’re obviously functional, but I think they can be uplifting.”
She compares these fashion masks to T-shirts. Useful and common, yet endlessly variable. And enduring.
Kim is a milliner. The addition of masks to her collection
The early fashion masks were a way to stand apart from a logo-driven, fl ashy society. They used anonym-ity as style statement.
Just after the presidential inauguration in 2017, menswear designers in New York incorporated face masks into their collections as part of a uniform of liberal protest of the Trump administration and its targeting of immigrants, minorities, women and the LGBTQ community. More recently, face masks have symbolized the dangers of climate change.
Masks, part of the greater universe of face cover-ings, stir up long-held stereotypes that frame the person behind the mask as dangerous or suspicious . We are leery of what we cannot see. The enduring image of bandits shapes that perception. But so do Islamophobia and racism.
Some black men have expressed their fear of being mistaken for an assailant if they enter a store wearing a mask, particularly a home-made one. They’d rather risk COVID-19 than an unpredictable encounter with police. And Asian Americans have faced verbal and physical abuse from those who blame them for a virus that fi rst appeared in Wuhan, China.
“We’ve policed face coverings,” says Bucar, the religion professor, who’s the author of “Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress.” “It ‘oth-ers’ us to wear one.”
But they are not likely to be discarded soon. “We’ve started thinking about how we’ll deal with these masks on campus,” Bucar says. “Will my kid use one in seventh grade? Will police offi cers?”
Already, masks are standard attire for gro-cery clerks and customers, delivery folks, Uber drivers, pharmacists and baristas. It’s not a leap to envision visitors strolling through museums wearing masks, or music lovers at-tending an outdoor concert wearing one .
If masks become common, they can serve as a personal reminder of how one should behave in public. That’s the power of a par-ticular form of attire. It connects us. It’s an expression of solidarity.
In Houston, designer Priscilla Von Sorel-la pulled Italian fabrics from her archive and stitched up masks from silk, velvet and metallic brocade. Are these little bits of sparkle lighting up the future? Expunging some of the fear?
“I thought, ‘Why don’t we bring a little bit of normalcy to our lives and express ourselves?’ ” Von Sorella says. “You would treat this like a high-end garment.”
Eugenia Kim
Von Sorella
Kiki Pedro-Hall
Von Sorella
From top: An embroidered mask in Italian velvet from Priscilla Von Sorella; a sequin face mask by Eugenia Kim; A mask by Kiki Pedro-Hall made from a recycled dust cover; a silk mask by Priscilla Von Sorella.
PAGE 14 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRD
Special to The Washington Post
Perhaps it was when I unspooled tape from an old reel-to-reel player and created a beast out of its ribbons, or maybe it was when I saw a tree sprout hot air balloons. It also could have been when I watched an elephant lead a
menagerie in an underwater procession.Each is among the possibilities for the mo-
ment I decided that Paper Beast should be counted among the handful of truly great games available on PlayStation VR. Developed by Eric Chahi, creator of the renowned early ’90s adventure game Another World, Paper Beast throws players into a hallucinatory cyberscape running on a quantum computer — a place that visually evokes the work of the surrealist painters Dali and Magritte.
VIDEO GAMES
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRD
Special to The Washington Post
In many ways, Gareth Damian Martin’s In Other Waters feels like a game from another time. Its minimalist graphics fl y in the face of much contem-porary video game design that tends to prioritize
visual appeal. For those of a certain age, the game’s aesthetics may recall the PC games of late 1980s and early ’90s, which emphasized the more technical as-pects of travel — the instrumental readouts, trajectories between coordinates and the like. However, other aspects of In Other Waters — its hypnotic, atmospheric music and elegant text narrative — betray its more modern-day sensibilities.
In Other Waters tells the story of Dr. Ellery Vas, a xenobiologist who has spent much of her career exploring alien planets in a fruitless search for life. Her fortunes change after she receives a mysterious transmission from Minae Nomura, a former colleague and love interest, ask-ing her to come to a planet that Vas assumes has already been ruled clear of life. On the ocean-covered planet, Vas fi nds a thriving ecosystem situated along an expansive coral reef.
Traveling amidst basalt towers, gullies and other underwater geological structures, Vas comes across vari-ous types of creatures ranging from fungal “stalks” that
communicate using spores, to creatures which resemble “di-aphanous veils.” To her knowl-edge, these are the fi rst forms of life to have been discovered outside of Earth.
Mankind’s home planet con-tains few warm memories for Vas, who thinks of it as a dead planet, a resourceless place left to those with too little money to leave it. (From now until who
knows when, expect to see more cultural objects that succinctly meld themes of climate change and economic inequality.)
Assuming the role of the AI system responsible for overseeing Vas’ explorations, players spend the majority of their time poring over a nautical chart, lining up points for Vas to travel between (which appear as little triangles on the map) and operating the diving suit’s various subsystems that handle tasks such as sample collection, propulsion, obstacle clearance and drone retrieval, i.e. fast travel back to your base.
Speaking as someone who is not exactly at home in car-tography, I found it fascinating how, over time, I invested more and more meaning into those on-screen dots and squiggles that represent the various kinds of phenomena
that Vas encounters. At a certain point, I had no trouble seeing a canopy of stalks in a series of dots spread fan-like over the screen.
I was able to fi nd beauty in such abstractions through the lens of Vas’ descriptions of her surroundings. So evocative are her observations that I couldn’t help but read them with David Attenborough’s voice in my head. For example, here is a description of the predatory Snare Veils: “Wide, delicate silken panels of bioluminescent cells, they work in unison to entrap and digest crea-tures which come too close.” The edge of their chain is described as, “Here, the tangle is receding, a few of its trailing veils hanging still in the dark water like the poised limbs of a dancer.”
As Vas continues her exploration of the planet, she trips over other mysteries that challenge her fundamen-tal assumptions and make her rethink her relationship to her missing colleague, Minae.
In Other Waters is a game where observation becomes an end in itself. Its simple gameplay mechanics are supported by a quiet, vibrant narrative that works to put players into the mind of a working scientist.
If you’re not put off by its low-key, text-centered nature,you may well fi nd it to be one of the more serene games to have recently pulled into port.
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PCOnline: jumpovertheage.com
In Other Waters takes players on a journey through an alien ocean
A stunning VR adventureMove through a wild simulated ecosystem
by solving puzzles in dreamlike Paper Beast
Playstation
Before running the quantum computer, you must tab through a user agreement that asks, among other things, if it can use part of your neural network while you sleep. Upon registering your responses, the computer sets about its quantum calculations and a pop-up text appears on the screen asking if you’d like to play the SwirlyBeat music app while you wait. Trust me, you do.
Clicking on the app transports you to your own private party: a small room festooned in confetti and streamers, pulsing with light and Japanese rock music. On the fl oor are rocks that can be grabbed and tossed using either the DualShock or Move control-lers. As the song fades, a glitchy sound rings out and the environ-ment goes dark. Then, in a won-derful transition, you fi nd yourself standing on a narrow patch of terrain, surrounded on all sides by curtains, listening to the song from the music app coming from a reel-to reel player on the ground.
Pulling aside the curtain reveals that you are standing underneath a dinosaurlike creature whose skeletal frame appears to be made out of spools of paper. Surround-ing you and the creature is a desert whose bright colors and fl at surfaces are like something out of a Dali painting. A little later you’ll be in an elevated spot, overlooking a message scrawled in the sand: “this is not a simulation.”
I’m reluctant to say much about the ensuing journey because one of the elements I most appreciated about Paper Beast was that I had no idea what to expect from one moment to the next — something I seldom experience in video games. That said, I don’t think it’s ruinous to say that the game involves observing the different paper beasts you encounter. You learn their goals and motivations and can then manipulate them for what are, generally, mutually benefi cial ends.
Although ultimately innocu-ous, some of the solutions to the game’s puzzles are still deliciously twisted. For example, one puzzle requires players to dangle the young offspring of a family of crabs out of their reach, promptingthe adult crabs (inadvertently) to help out another band of desperate creatures.
The beasts themselves are a treat to watch. Their abstract forms complement the game’s colorfully refi ned, low-polygon environments. Admittedly, I felt a bit like a psycho tossing some of them about and compelling them to do my bidding, but I promise notone crab was harmed.
Paper Beast is an inspired game that makes as good a case as any for the relevance of VR. Don’t be surprised to see it on the year’s best list.
Platform: PlayStationVROnline: playstation.com/en-us/
games/paper-beast-ps4
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 15Saturday, May 16, 2020
PAGE 16 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •
1 in custody after man shot with crossbow
NC HICKORY — North Carolina authorities
took a homeowner into custody Wednesday, hours after someone was shot in the head with a cross-bow on his property, a sheriff’s office said.
Burke County deputies located Siegfred Albert Jackson, 28, less than 1 mile from the Hickory home where a man was discov-ered suffering from a serious head injury, the agency said in a statement.
The victim was airlifted to a hospital. An update on his condi-tion was not immediately given.
Investigators said a crossbow was discovered nearby and Jack-son was spotted leaving the scene. Officials did not say whether Jackson was charged.
Driver leads deputies on two-state pursuit
ND GRAND FORKS — A driver has been ar-
rested after authorities say he led law enforcement officers on a chase through North Dakota and Minnesota.
Sheriff’s officials in Polk Coun-ty, Minn., say the Moorhead man was stopped by a deputy for reck-less driving on Highway 75 north of Climax.
Authorities said the 34-year-old driver is wanted on a Minnesota felony warrant and took off when other deputies arrived.
KFGO reported deputies pur-sued the driver into Traill and Grand Forks counties in North
Dakota. Authorities later found his SUV abandoned, but he was later located and arrested by Grand Forks officers.
Wildlife officials relocate 3 grizzlies
MT KALISPELL — Three grizzly bears trapped
along Swan Lake in Montana were relocated after weeks of roaming the area, invading yards and rav-aging garbage and hummingbird feeders, wildlife officials said.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks on Friday captured and released two females, weighing 173 pounds and 222 pounds, near the Whale Creek drainage area, and a male, weighing 241 pounds, near the Canada border, Daily Inter Lake reported.
All three bears were fitted with GPS radio collars, which will be used to monitor their future movements, officials said.
Department specialist Tim Manley first received reports of bear activity on April 18 when the grizzlies were seen feeding on grass along the west shore of the lake and again on May 1 when the bears knocked over a barbe-cue and rummaged through un-secured garbage.
The bears continued to roam near residences and were spotted eating dog food, avoiding traps placed by wildlife officials.
Vehicle strikes and kills panther, officials say
FL LABELLE — An en-dangered Florida pan-
ther has died after being struck by a vehicle.
It’s the 12th panther death at-tributed to fatal collisions, out of 13 total deaths this year, accord-ing to the Florida Fish and Wild-life Conservation Commission.
The remains of the 7-year-old male panther were found in Hen-dry County on a rural road east of LaBelle, wildlife officials said.
Florida panthers once roamed the entire Southeast, but now their habitat mostly is confined to a small region of Florida along the Gulf of Mexico. Up to 230 Florida panthers remain in the wild.
Invasive lizard sighted for 3rd year in a row
GA REIDSVILLE — An invasive South Ameri-
can lizard Georgia officials are attempting to eradicate was sight-
ed for the third year in a row, areptile conservation group said.
The lizard — known as tegus— was recently found in Tattnall County, the Orianne Society saidin a Facebook post. The GeorgiaDepartment of Natural Resourc-es said the Argentine lizards likely originated in the state as escaped pets or were releasedinto the wild.
The tegus, which can grow to4 feet long, poses a threat to pro-tected native wildlife, including American alligators and gophertortoises. The black and white tegus have been documented using gopher tortoise burrows andeating tortoise and alligator eggs,as well as the tortoise young.
3 charged with making counterfeit money
ME OGUNQUIT — Three New Hampshire
residents have been arrested oncharges of making counterfeitmoney and trying to spend it inMaine.
They were arrested in an in-vestigation of the production and passing of counterfeit currency inOgunquit, according to police.
Authorities discovered the sus-pects passed counterfeit bills incommon denominations at sev-eral businesses in the area.
William Sylvia, of Somer-sworth , was charged with ag-gravated forgery and unlawfulpossession of scheduled drugs. Nicole Ashline, of Manchester,and Kendra LeBlanc, of Somer-sworth, were charged with ag-gravated forgery.
The number of college acceptances received by a set of iden-tical twins from Milwaukee. Arielle and Arianna Williams are graduating from high school at the top of their class. The twins have the two highest grade point averages in their class at Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy and have each been accepted
to 37 colleges. The Williams twins say they decided to stay local and will be going to Marquette University to study nursing.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
From wire reports
AMERICAN ROUNDUPDad gives daughter graduation ceremony
TN MEMPHIS — Xavier University’s cancella-
tion of its graduation ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic didn’t stop one Tennessee senior from walking across the stage.
That’s because Torrence Bur-son decided to throw his daughter her own personal graduation cer-emony in the front yard of their Memphis home, complete with a stage to walk across, a podium for speeches and a supporting audi-ence in the street.
Gabrielle Pierce told Fox 13 in Memphis that she was devastated when her university had to cancel its ceremony. Burson said he felt her pain and decided to take ac-tion, even if his wife thought he was crazy.
When the day came, Pierce walked to the stage as a loud-speaker blared “The Graduation March” and neighbors lined the street to cheer her on.
“I was amazed. I couldn’t be-lieve a lot of people showed up. People were driving by yelling congratulations,” said Pierce, who plans to join the Air National Guard and then study epidemiol-ogy. “It was just amazing. Better than the actual graduation, be-cause it was more personal.”
Teen learning to park runs over and kills dad
FL TARPON SPRINGS — A Florida teenager
accidentally drove a pickup truck over her father while learning how to park the vehicle on Tues-day evening, police said.
The 46-year-old man died at the scene. He was teaching his 15-year-old daughter to park the truck at a park in Tarpon Springs, police said.
The man was standing in front of the 2017 Ford F-150 so his daughter could park the vehicle herself, news outlets reported.
He thought the girl was going to back into the parking spot, but she “unintentionally” hit the accelerator while the truck was in drive, police said. The truck drove forward over a curb before hitting the man and then a tree.
Officers said that when they arrived at the scene, the girl was tending to her father. He was later pronounced dead.
Troopers shoot andkill runaway emu
PA COLLEGEVILLE — A runaway emu that dis-
rupted travel by wandering along a major highway in the Philadel-phia area was shot and killed by state police after attempts to cap-ture it failed.
The emu was spotted on the median of Route 422 near Colle-geville on Wednesday. The bird’s presence caused lengthy backups in both directions, as authorities used tasers as part of their efforts to corral the emu.
KYW radio reports the emu was eventually shot for “the pro-tection of officers and the commu-nity,” according to state police.
Authorities say the large bird’s owner apparently lost control of the emu shortly after buying it.
THE CENSUS
Boardwalk patrol
37
Los Angeles police officers patrol the Venice Beach boardwalk on horseback during the coronavirus outbreak Wednesday , in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County reopened its beaches Wednesday in the latest cautious easing of coronavirus restrictions.
MARK J. TERRILL/AP
Saturday, May 16, 2020 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 17
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BY HENRY OLSEN Special to The Washington Post
China’s murky role in the genesis and spread of the new coronavirus has disturbed the entire world. Its attempts to economically coerce
Australia into its geopolitical orbit should disturb the world even more.
Australia is one of the United States’ staunchest allies. It was saved from Japa-nese invasion in World War II by the U.S. victory in the Battle of Coral Sea and has stood side by side with America ever since. Australian troops, known as “diggers” Down Under, have fought in every major U.S. military engagement thereafter, in-cluding the Korean and Vietnam wars, both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aus-tralia and the United States are also bound to one another by a mutual defense treaty and a free trade agreement.
China nonetheless wields significant economic influence on our ally. Australia is a fount of metal and other raw materials that has prospered greatly by selling those products to its massive neighbor. More than a third of its annual exports go to China, eclipsing what is sent to the United States, Japan and South Korea combined. Chinese travelers made more than 1.4 million vis-its to Australia in 2018, contributing 27% of the money tourists spent there in the 12 months ending November 2019. And more than 100,000 Chinese students are enrolled in Australian universities, providing those institutions with tuition revenue that many need to stay afloat.
This makes recent Chinese actions highly threatening to the U.S.-Australian relationship. The Communist govern-ment has halted Australian beef imports in response to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19
in China. Chinese officials have gone fur-ther, with its ambassador to Australia im-plying there might be a student boycott of the country’s universities. Beijing has also threatened to impose tariffs on Australian barley and reduce tourist travel after the pandemic subsides. The message is clear: If a country takes Chinese money, it must toe China’s line.
China has tried the same tactics against U.S. businesses. Its attempt to coerce the National Basketball Association into pre-venting its players, employees and fans from criticizing China’s actions in Xinji-ang province and Hong Kong attracted national attention. It has also pushed Hol-lywood into censoring the movies it shows in China and regularly uses its economic partnerships with U.S. companies to lobby against President Donald Trump’s trade war. It has even censored a public state-ment by the European Union’s ambassador to China. Chinese money might appear to come from its private sector, but that sec-tor always seems to behave exactly as the government wants it to.
This means the U.S. and its allies have a hard decision to make. The more China’s economy grows, the more economic power its government can wield. Beijing is in-creasingly emboldened to use that power to force obedience to its dictates. Those dictates are not, and will not, be friendly to Western freedoms and democracy.
A slow but steady decoupling of West-ern companies from China could limit Beijing’s power, but this will be difficult in the pandemic’s aftermath. China’s foreign reserves make it a tempting partner to countries looking to mitigate debt burdens while its markets offer tempting opportu-nities for growth. Taking the bait will only increase China’s already malign influence on Western mores and culture.
Western leaders should look to bringmanufacturing and investment back homeor to other, more politically similar coun-tries. The United States can encouragemore investment in Mexico or Canada. Europe can invest in its Eastern Europeanneighbors. Asian manufacturers can turn to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia or evenVietnam. India also offers an appealingdestination for companies that seek low-cost labor or high-quality English-speak-ing professional talent. The change cannothappen overnight, but it must happen if China’s rising influence is to be curtailed.
There are encouraging signs that itmight happen. Politicians in the United States, Britain and Australia are alreadycalling for such moves. European leadersare generally more cautious, but they stillresist attempts by the Chinese telecommu-nications company Huawei to build thosenations’ 5G networks. Public opinion in the West is also generally negative toward China. The Pew Research Center found inlate 2019 that residents of most U.S. alliesviewed China negatively, and a recent pollof Germans found more than 70% believed China bore at least some blame for COVID-19’s spread and one-third wanted to reduce ties between the two nations.
Chinese emperors used to force envoys from neighboring states to recognize theirtotal superiority by use of the kowtow— abjectly prostrating oneself on the floorbefore the emperor and his officials. It also forced those nations to acknowledge Chinaas “the Middle Kingdom,” i.e., the centerof the world. Communist China’s actions to suppress international criticism is just the first step toward a resumption of that des-potic ritual. The U.S. and the West need tostand proudly on their feet and resist. Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
BY BRIAN KLAAS Special to The Washington Post
Since 2017, so many events in U.S. politics that were previously un-thinkable have come to pass. Don’t believe me? A few days ago, the
president of the United States baselessly accused a cable television host of murder and it barely made a blip in the news cycle. The shocking has become unsurprising — almost routine — under Donald Trump’s unhinged presidency.
We don’t know whether Trump will be reelected. But, as we head toward Novem-ber, you have to ask yourself: If he loses, would it be more surprising if Trump gra-ciously accepts defeat and congratulates his opponent or if he claimed to be the vic-tim of a rigged election and a “deep state” plot? The answer seems clear.
I’ve studied genuinely rigged elections across the globe. The tactics, context and strategies vary enormously from Azerbai-jan to Zimbabwe. But one trait they have in common is this: The winner doesn’t claim they were rigged.
Not so with Trump. In 2016, when he nar-rowly defeated Hillary Clinton despite los-ing the popular vote by a historic margin, he claimed that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally. That is a lie. But it raised an obvious question: If Trump claimed that an election he won was rigged, what will he do with an election he loses?
Already, he has insinuated that Demo-cratic victories are the result of rigged elections. It’s part of a deliberate strategy to discredit the legitimacy of his political opponents, but it also endangers the peace-ful transfer of power, which is a corner-stone of democratic government.
It’s worth reiterating that Trump’s
claims are lies. The evidence is clear. Voter fraud is an minuscule problem in the Unit-ed States. One comprehensive study found 31 cases of voter fraud of more than 1 bil-lion ballots cast from 2000 to 2014, a rate of 0.0000031% of all votes. And lest you think that study was somehow biased against Re-publican claims, George W. Bush’s Justice Department went looking for voter fraud and basically came up empty. Indeed, as Lorraine Minnite, a political science pro-fessor at Rutgers University, has noted, in 2005, more people were charged with vio-lating migratory-bird statutes than voter fraud. And that was while Bush’s admin-istration was actively seeking fraud cases to prosecute.
Even the logic is absurd. Trump falsely claims that fraud is largely carried out by undocumented immigrants in California. To believe that, you have to believe that undocumented immigrants (who generally go to extreme lengths to avoid interaction with a government that could deport them) eagerly waltz into polling locations. You have to also believe that they eagerly risk going to jail or being deported to cast a bal-lot for a candidate that they already know will carry the state by a wide margin. As Minnite put it: “It’s like committing a fel-ony at the police station, with virtually no chance of affecting the election outcome.”
With any president, an attempt to dele-gitimize elections that your side loses can be destabilizing. But with Trump, it’s dan-gerous. For years, Trump has pumped out a Twitter stream of endless victimhood complexes, bogus accusations against a mythical “deep state” lurking in the shad-ows and the mainstreaming of lunatic conspiracy theories. Those messages are aimed at a group of people that is also dis-
proportionately armed.Consider his now-infamous “liberate”
tweets, in which he called on his support-ers to rise up against state governmentsthat were following the official publichealth guidance given by the White House.In one tweet, he twinned that message witha message about the Second Amendment.Was that an accident? Or was it a not-so-coded signal to pair displays of weaponrywith MAGA-driven political intimidation?The photos of heavily armed militias whoheeded his call — including one man whotook a break from protesting to order a Sub-way sandwich while carrying an antitankrocket launcher — provide the answer.
What will happen if Trump loses and then takes to Twitter to say he actuallywon? It’s not hard to see how deadly thatcould become, particularly given that FoxNews personalities are already absurdly throwing around the word “coup” to de-scribe lawful investigations and oversightof the president’s conduct. When people in positions of authority and influence invokethe language of political violence and thenlose power, violence often ensues. It wouldbe a mistake to assume the United States issomehow immune from that possibility.
Republicans who care about the repub-lic must act now: They need to call out thepresident when he spreads lies and stokesfears about voter fraud that are rooted onlyin conservative mythology. Otherwise,we can pretend to be shocked, but nobodyshould be surprised if Trump tries to dis-credit the 2020 election — no matter the consequences — if he loses.Brian Klaas is an assistant professor of global politics at University College London . He is theco-author of “How to Rig an Election” and the author of “The Despot’s Apprentice” and “The Despot’s Accomplice.”
China tips its hand in treatment of Australia
Prepare for Trump possibly rejecting election results
PAGE 18 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 19
Associated Press
Brad Keselowski celebrated his first pole win of the season — and perhaps the most memorable of his career — from afar.
After waiting nearly a full hour Thursday evening, the Team Pen-ske driver watched NASCAR’s chief scorer Kyle McKinney fi-nally pluck the No. 1 ball out of a random draw — giving the 2012 series champion the top starting position when the Cup season resumes Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
“1st. Woooooo,” Keselowski wrote on Twitter.
He will be joined on the front row by Alex Bowman of Hendrick Motorsports. Matt DiBenedetto, Kyle Busch and Aric Almirola close out the top five spots.
Smith beats some PGAplayers in Scottsdale
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Zach Smith won the Scottsdale Open on Thursday, closing with an 8-
under 62 for a three-stroke victo-ry in the mini-tour event that saw some PGA Tour players return to competition.
The PGA Tour suspended play in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is set to return June 11-14 for the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas.
Smith finished the three-round tournament at Talking Stick Re-sort at 18-under 192. Carson Roberts was second, following a second-round 61 with a 68.
Pro tennis tours extend hiatus until end of July
The professional tennis tours extended their suspensions caused by the coronavirus pan-demic through at least the end of July on Friday, bringing the total number of scrapped tournaments around the world to more than 40.
In addition to the ATP and WTA announcements, which also affect lower-tier events, the Inter-
national Tennis Federation said its tournaments would go on hia-tus for the same period, including for juniors, seniors and wheel-chair players.
The tours already had been on hold at least until July 13 .
Howe, 73, in ICU aftercontracting COVID-19
HOUSTON — Former major league manager and infielder Art Howe is in intensive care in a Houston hospital with the coronavirus.
The 73-year-old Howe, bestknown as the manager of the “Moneyball” Oakland Athleticsplayoff teams in the late 1990sand early 2000s, confirmed to Houston TV station KPRC 2 onThursday night he has been deal-ing with the illness since first feeling symptoms of COVID-19on May 3.
Howe told the station he found out he was positive two days afterbeing tested and tried to recover at home. He went to the hospitalby ambulance on Tuesday, andremained in ICU.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
SCOREBOARD/GOLF/SPORTS BRIEFS
Go to the American Forces Network website for the most up-to-date TV schedules.myafn.net
Sports on AFN
Deals
Thursday’s transactionsBASEBALL
Baseball Hall Of FameNATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME
— Appointed Ken Kendrick to the Board of Directors.
FOOTBALLNational Football League
INDIANAPOLIS COLTS — Signed DT Robert Windsor and WR Dezmon Pat-mon.
NEW ORLEANS SAINTS — Re-signed G/T Patrick Omameh.
WASHINGTON REDSKINS — Signed CB Aaron Colvin.
HOCKEYNational Hockey League
ARIZONA COYOTES — Announced that the team and President and CEO Ahron Cohen have mutually agreed to part ways.
TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS — Signed F Adam Brooks to a two-year contract ex-tension.
National Women’s Hockey LeagueBUFFALO BEAUTS — Signed D Domi-
nique Kremer.BOSTON PRIDE — Signed 2020 first-
round draft pick F Tereza Vanisova.CONNECTICUT WHALE — Signed D
Maggie LaGue.METROPOLITAN RIVETERS — Signed
2020 third-round pick G Tera Hofmann.
Pro basketball
NBAEASTERN CONFERENCE
Atlantic Division W L Pct GBToronto 46 18 .719 —Boston 43 21 .672 3Philadelphia 39 26 .600 7½Brooklyn 30 34 .469 16New York 21 45 .318 26
Southeast DivisionMiami 41 24 .631 —Orlando 30 35 .462 11Washington 24 40 .375 16½Charlotte 23 42 .354 18Atlanta 20 47 .299 22
Central DivisionMilwaukee 53 12 .815 —Indiana 39 26 .600 14Chicago 22 43 .338 31Detroit 20 46 .303 33½Cleveland 19 46 .292 34
WESTERN CONFERENCESouthwest Division
W L Pct GBHouston 40 24 .625 —Dallas 40 27 .597 1½Memphis 32 33 .492 8½New Orleans 28 36 .438 12San Antonio 27 36 .429 12½
Northwest DivisionDenver 43 22 .662 —Utah 41 23 .641 1½Oklahoma City 40 24 .625 2½Portland 29 37 .439 14½Minnesota 19 45 .297 23½
Pacific DivisionL.A. Lakers 49 14 .778 —L.A. Clippers 44 20 .688 5½Sacramento 28 36 .438 21½Phoenix 26 39 .400 24Golden State 15 50 .231 35
AP sportlightMay 16
1976 — The Montreal Canadiens win their 19th Stanley Cup with a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers, capping a four-game sweep.
1980 — The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers 123-107 to win the NBA title in six games. Rookie guard Magic Johnson fills in at center for in-jured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and finishes with 42 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists to win Finals MVP honors. The 42 points are the most by a rookie in an NBA Finals game.
1982 — The New York Islanders win the Stanley Cup for the third straight year, completing a four-game sweep of the Vancouver Canucks with a 3-1 vic-tory.
1992 — America3, Bill Koch’s high-tech racing machine, wins the America’s Cup 4-1 in the best-of-seven final series with a 44-second victory over Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia.
1996 — Steve Yzerman scores 1:15 into the second overtime as Detroit advances to the Western Conference finals with a 1-0 victory over the St. Louis Blues in Game 7. It’s the second time in NHL his-tory that a Game 7 is scoreless heading into overtime.
1999 — The New York Knicks become the second eighth-seeded team in NBA playoff history to defeat a number one seed in the playoffs when they beat the Miami Heat in five games.
Johnson, McIlroy prep for returnBY DOUG FERGUSON
Associated Press
Dustin Johnson left The Players Champion-ship two months ago and didn’t play another round of golf until four days ago, the start of a crash course for his return to playing before a television audience.
He also owes it to his partner, Rory McIl-roy, to practice.
They play against Rickie Fowler and Mat-thew Wolff on Sunday at Seminole Golf Club in a charity skins game, the first live golf on tele-vision since the opening round of The Players Championship on March 12. It was canceled — along with sports worldwide — because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I figured I probably should play a little bit of golf before we tee it up here this Sunday,” Johnson said on a conference call Thursday. “But I’ll be ready. Don’t you worry.”
McIlroy has been playing some but not re-ally working. He expects that to start after the Sunday match, giving him three full weeks of hard practice to get ready for the PGA Tour’s return at Colonial.
But it’s more than golf that will be on dis-play from Seminole, the Donald Ross design along the Atlantic Ocean that has hosted the game’s best over the years, just never on TV.
Along with $4 million or more for COVID-19 relief efforts, this is as much about how golf will look when it returns for real.
The players will not have caddies and will carry their own bags. The advantage there goes to Wolff, who was still at Oklahoma State this time last year and has recent experience lugging his own clubs.
Social distancing is paramount.“I think we have a big responsibility on our-
selves to make sure that we practice all the guidelines that the PGA Tour is going to set in place,” Johnson said. “Obviously, everyone is going to be watching what we’re doing, so I
think it’s very important for us to do it all cor-rectly. We have a responsibility to ourselves and all the other players to stay safe and stay healthy.”
Bunkers will not have rakes. They won’t be needed, anyway, not with only one match on the course. Just in case, a PGA Tour rules of-ficial will carry a rake with him. Players will be encouraged to putt with the flagstick in the cup. If it needs to be removed, that’s the job of another PGA Tour rules official.
Andy Levinson, the tour’s senior vice presi-
dent of tournament administration, said allfour players have gone through a diagnostic PCR test for the virus, and there will be addi-tional testing, temperature taking and health questionnaires for everyone at Seminole (anumber likely to be around 50).
“It’s a great opportunity for us to implementsimilar procedures to what we’re going to beimplementing when we return to competitionon the PGA Tour and see how they work, al-beit in a very much smaller manner,” Levin-son said.
KAMRAN JEBREILI/AP
Dustin Johnson, left, and Rory McIlroy, right, will compete in a charity match Sunday against Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla.
Briefl y
Keselowski drawspole for Darlington
BEN MARGOT/AP
Former Oakland Athletics manager Art Howe, 73, is in intensive care in a Houston hospital with the coronavirus
PAGE 20 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY ANDREW DAMPF
Associated Press
ROME — Baseball. In Japan. At the Olympics.
For World Baseball Softball Confederation president Ricca-rdo Fraccari, it seems like such a sure home run that he can’t even imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be involved.
No wonder the refusal of Major League Baseball and its players’ association to send top stars to the Tokyo Games has frustrated Fraccari for years.
Now, with the Olympics post-poned for a full year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the current MLB season on hold, Fraccari has the unexpected op-portunity to make one final pitch to the sport’s biggest league.
“Considering the damages from the coronavirus, baseball needs the Olympics now more than ever to boost the sport’s glo-balization, expansion and mass appeal,” Fraccari said in a recent interview.
“We need to make sure our sport doesn’t get trampled over by other sports that are becom-ing more popular with younger audiences,” Fraccari said from Switzerland. “The coronavirus is going to make us understand how important the Olympics are for baseball and softball.”
The only MLB players permit-ted to play in the Premier12 tour-nament last year were those not on 40-man rosters. Not surpris-ingly considering the rules, the United States finished fourth and failed at its first chance to qualify for the Olympics.
MLB, the union and USA Base-ball changed the rule in February and said players not on 26-man active rosters or injured lists would be eligible for an Ameri-cas qualifying tournament that had been scheduled for Arizona in March before being postponed indefinitely because of the virus.
But teams that want to block players have claimed in the past they are unavailable because of nagging injuries. In addition, MLB teams imposed pitch limits on their players who went to the Premier12.
While Fraccari wasn’t inter-ested in debating whether MLB teams were unfairly preventing players qualifying, he noted that “it won’t be good” for the sport if the U.S. team doesn’t make it to Tokyo. He added that he is wait-ing for the “right moment” before talking to MLB.
And Fraccari isn’t alone: For-mer National League MVP Bryce Harper recently called it a “trav-
esty” that MLB refuses to send its top players to the Olympics.
“You’re going to grow the game as much as possible and you’re not going to let us play in the Olympics because you don’t want to (lose) out on money for a two-week period?” Harper said on the Barstool Sports podcast. “OK, that’s dumb.”
With the World Baseball Classic pushed back from 2021 to 2023, the Tokyo Games represent the sport’s only major international competition for several years.
“Why does soccer want to be in the Olympics? It’s obvious: because the Olympics — despite everything — is still the biggest event on the planet,” Fraccari said. “(The Olympics) is going to help revive the profile of baseball worldwide.”
The 2008 Beijing Games marked the last time that men’s baseball and women’s softball were contested at the Olympics, after the IOC voted in 2005 to re-move them.
As separate bids, the two sports failed to return for the 2016 Olym-pics in Rio de Janeiro.
A move promoted by Frac-cari to consolidate baseball and softball into one confederation in 2013 helped achieve reinstate-ment for the Tokyo Games as one of five additional sports.
With baseball Japan’s most popular team game, ticket de-mand for the Olympic tourna-ment was unprecedented — at least until the games were post-poned to 2021.
BY NOAH TRISTER
Associated Press
Less than a month after Nikhil Kumar qualified for the Olympics in table tennis, the Tokyo Games were postponed until 2021. Like so many other ath-letes, he is now trying to stay sharp and in shape.
What’s different for Kumar are the logis-tics. All things considered, his situation is pretty manageable.
“For my sport, a little lucky that we’re able to have everything indoors, and it’s not taking up too much space and everything,” Kumar said. “Not many sports are as lucky as ours is right now, to be able to have the opportunity to continue playing on a daily basis.”
The coronavirus crisis has forced many athletes to be creative as they try to continue their training, but in some Olympic sports, working from home is fairly routine. Kumar has been able to practice with a robot that shoots balls at him. Weightlifter Kate Nye trains in her garage. Everyone is facing chal-lenges during this pandemic, but some competitors have been fortunate.
“When everything kind of started shutting down, it obviously affected our lives in other ways — but weightlifting wasn’t one of them,” Nye said. “I’ve kind of just been going as scheduled.”
Kumar’s challenge is pretty mundane. He recent-ly upgraded his device that shoots table tennis balls at him in rapid succession.
“With this new one, I’m able to give different spin, like every single ball, and keep alternating,” he said. “It’s just more advanced.”
He also does some weight training and running on the treadmill. The biggest concern at this point is probably the mental grind.
“It’s just a different experience. But now, once I got the hang of it, the practice is going well,” said Kumar, who is from California. “But it’s also hard to have to mentally want to push myself, every single day, to come and practice, because it’s a little dif-ferent feeling than if you were to practice with a person.”
Nye had actually set up her garage gym before the virus really became an issue .
For air rifle shooter Lucas Kozeniesky, the base-ment is where he’s been able to set up. There is enough room for him to practice at his home in Colo-rado — at the Olympic length of 10 meters.
“I opened up a couple doors, and like a hallway connected, and I’m like, ‘Oh look, this is actually
perfect,’ ” he said.The logistics of training these days can vary
widely within a sport.American cyclist Chloe Dygert is favored to win
two gold medals at the Tokyo Games, one in the time trial on the road and one with her pursuit team onthe track. She recently moved to Idaho to be nearher coach, and she says not a whole lot has changedfor her because she can still do individual trainingrides or ride indoors on a stationary bike.
A BMX track, on the other hand, has jumps and ramps that aren’t easy to simulate at home.
“I do have an elite training site with minimal rid-ers accessing the facilities and hopefully those will open soon,” American BMX racer Alise Post saidrecently.
For Nye, the training has been simple — althoughthat certainly doesn’t mean things are normal right now. She’s a student at Oakland University whowants to go to medical school. The postponement ofthe Olympics has created a lot of uncertainty in her life outside of sports.
The weightlifting, though, she can keep up with.“I’ve had it pretty easy. My life hasn’t changed a
whole lot. School went online, and I’m working at mygarage as usual,” Nye said. “What is my future goingto look like, emotionally? That’s hard, but everyone’s dealing with that on some level.”
OLYMPICS
Home team: For some, training is barely disrupted by shutdown
FERNANDO LLANO/AP
Weightlifter Kate Nye of Berkeley, Mich., has been training at home the way she always does, by lifting weights in her garage. The coronavirus crisis has forced many athletes to be creative as they try to continue their training, but in some Olympic sports, working from home is fairly routine.
MANU FERNANDEZ/AP
Cyclist Chloe Dygert, who recently moved to Idaho to be near her coach, said she can still do individual training rides or ride indoors .
Baseball head pitches MLB on Olympics, again
KEN ARAGAKI/AP
With the Olympics postponed for a year and the MLB season on hold, World Baseball Softball Confederation president Riccardo Fraccari has the opportunity to make a final pitch to the sport’s biggest league to compete in the Olympics.
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 21
BY JENNA FRYER
Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ryan Newman says he has no memo-ries of his harrowing accident on the final lap of the Daytona 500. He doesn’t remember being in the hospital, who came to visit or anything else about his two-night stay for treatment of a head injury.
The first thing Newman can recall is walking out of a Florida hospital holding hands with his two young daugh-ters. When he later watched a replay of the crash, he was flabber-gasted by the violence of the wreck.
“As I watched the crash and had to make myself believe what I had went through, I really looked to my dad to say, ‘Hey, did this really happen?’ ” Newman said Thursday. “It’s crazy. I’m happy I’m here.”
Newman will return to racing Sunday at Darlington Speedway in South Carolina exactly three months after he crashed Feb. 17 attempting to win his second Daytona 500. The coronavirus pandemic allowed Newman ad-ditional time to heal and he ulti-
mately missed just three races.It’s a remarkable recovery
from a frightful flight down the final stretch at Daytona. Newman was bumped from behind and his Ford Mustang made a sharp right into the wall, went airborne and was hit again by Corey LaJoie as the crumpled wreckage tumbled along the track with Newman inside.
Newman doesn’t know if La-joie’s car compromised his cock-pit; there is no definitive video showing how his head-and-neck restraint system was damaged or how his helmet was “crushed.”
“I don’t have anything that is conclusive that says that his car hit my helmet. I do know that parts of the inside of my car hit my helmet and crushed it,” New-man said. “My helmet did have contact and my HANS did have contact, and I was being moved backwards in my seat as his car was moving me forward.
“Everything happened really quick and everything was all in that compartment, basically, and I guess it would be like a case of high-quality whiplash that kind of happened when I was hit.”
He was sedated, he said, almost immediately to calm him and ul-timately keep him settled so that his brain could heal. He said he suffered “a brain bruise.”
“I kind of put it in layman’s terms of having a bruised brain because everybody knows what a bruise is,” said the Purdue engi-
neering graduate and Indiana na-tive. “You can’t see a concussion. It’s just a medical diagnosis. But a bruise you can see.
“So I kind of self-diagnosed myself with that bruised brain because the reality is you need to give time for a bruise to heal and that’s what I needed was time for my brain to heal.”
His return coincides with NAS-CAR’s return to competition this weekend. The series will race without spectators at Darlington, Newman’s favorite track.
He was healing fast enough three weeks after the accident that Roush-Fenway Racing took Newman to NASCAR’s oldest superspeedway to test. It was be-fore the shutdown and the eight postponed races kept Newman in contention for a playoff spot. He’s 29th in the standings after four races and still eligible to race for the championship.
Newman said he was eager to get back into the car when he tested in March.
“I actually had to slow myself
down and make sure that I didn’tgo out there and fence it on thefirst lap by trying too hard,” New-man said. “I never felt like I hadto be apprehensive towards it, other than the fact that I wantedto make sure that I didn’t messup my own test. I was there toprove that I was valid in the seatagain.”
Newman, long known as thehardest driver in NASCAR to pass, said he’s race fit for Sunday’sevent on one of the most technicaltracks in the series.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
NFL/AUTO RACING
BY DAVID FISCHER
Associated Press
MIAMI — Police in South Florida are trying to find New York Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker and Seattle Seahawks cor-nerback Quinton Dunbar after multiple witnesses accused them of an armed rob-bery at a party, authorities said Thursday.
Miramar police issued arrest warrants for both men Thursday on four counts
each of armed rob-bery with a firearm. Baker faces an ad-ditional four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm. The residential communi-ty is located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
Baker, 22, and Dun-bar, 27, were attending a cookout at a Mira-mar home Wednesday
night when a fight broke out, and Baker pulled out a handgun, the warrant said. Baker, Dunbar and two other men began robbing other people at the party of thou-sands of dollars in cash, watches and other valuables, witnesses told investigators.
Police said the four men then fled the
home in three vehicles: a Mercedes Benz, a Lamborghini and a BMW. Witnesses said the vehicles were parked in a way that
would make it easy to leave quickly, lead-ing detectives to believe the robbery was planned. No injuries were reported.
Baker and Dunbar are both from Miami.
Baker was one of three first-round draftpicks the Giants had last season. He wasthe 30th pick overall out of Georgia. Heplayed in all 16 games, starting 15. He had61 tackles and no interceptions. He was the last of the three New York picks in thatfirst round.
“We are aware of the situation. We have been in contact with DeAndre,” the Giantssaid in a statement. “We have no further comment at this time.”
Dunbar signed with the Washington Redskins as an undrafted free agent outof Florida in 2015 and was traded to the Seahawks in March. He started 11 games last season, making 37 tackles and four interceptions.
“We are aware of the situation involvingQuinton Dunbar and still gathering infor-mation,” the Seahawks said in a statement.“We will defer all further comment to league investigators and local authorities.”
Dunbar spent Thursday morning on avideo conference with the Seattle media for the first time since being traded from Washington to the Seahawks in March.
“You just want to feel wanted at the endof the day. ... I just hope to repay them with the way I carry myself as a person,” Dun-bar said on the video conference.
Dunbar, Baker accused of armed robbery in Florida
PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP
Cornerback Quinton Dunbar, who was traded by the Washington Redskins to the Seattle Seahawks in March, has been accused of an armed robbery at a party.
Baker
Newman eager to get back on racetrackDriver will return at Darlington forfirst event since Daytona accident
CHRIS O’MEARA/AP
Ryan Newman, top, goes airborne after crashing into Corey LaJoie (32) during the Daytona 500 on Feb. 17 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Newman, who suffered a head injury in the crash, will race Sunday when NASCAR resumes its season at Darlington Raceway.Newman
PAGE 22 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Saturday, May 16, 2020
MLB
BY RONALD BLUM
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Lawyers for the baseball players’ union asked Major League Baseball to submit a slew of financial documents that detail the industry’s finances, a person familiar with the request told The Associated Press.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday because neither side announced the step.
Baseball owners on Monday ap-proved a proposal that could lead to the coronavirus-delayed sea-son starting around the Fourth of July with a regular-season sched-ule of 82 games per team, includ-ing 13 against each division rival. Owners also gave the go-ahead to propose basing players’ salaries on a 50-50 revenue split, which the union says is a salary cap and a framework players will never agree to.
“It’s hopeful that we will have some Major League Baseball this summer. We are making plans about playing in empty stadiums,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday on CNN, adding he is confident of reaching a deal with players.
The type of financial disclo-sure the union asked for is more common during overall collective bargaining talks, which play out for many months or years, rather
than the limited negotiation time available now.
“There’s so many ways to hide the money,” Cincinnati pitcher Trevor Bauer said in a video he posted Wednesday on Twitter.
Bauer said owners could reduce ticket prices and at the same time charge more for parking garages they control through different en-tities that do not benefit the club.
Describing himself as being only slightly lighthearted, the outspoken 29-year-old took a shot at the commissioner.
“If I’m going to have to trust my salary to Rob Manfred mar-keting the game to make more money for the game, I am out on that,” Bauer said. “Let me market the game and we’ll all make more money.”
Teams made a presentation to the union Tuesday that included a dire financial forecast but no for-mal proposal.
Management fears even more financial difficulty if regular-season games are played, causing players to be paid their salaries, and the postseason is canceled because of a second wave of the new coronavirus. Players do not draw salaries during the post-season, when MLB receives the largest portion of its national broadcasting revenue.
Players are waiting to receive detailed medical and testing pro-tocols from MLB.
The Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Salt Lake City, which conducts test-ing for players with minor league contracts and participated in the recent coronavirus antibody study, would handle MLB’s test-ing for the virus and promised a 24-hour turnaround.
“All of our players would be tested multiple times a week, PCR testing to determine whether or not they had the virus,” Manfred told CNN. “That testing would be supplemented less frequently by antibody testing.” Teams say they would lose money if games are played in empty ballparks. Man-fred says 40% of revenue is gate and related to gate and told CNN
if there is no season losses wouldapproach $4 billion.
“We hope that we will be able toconvince the vast, vast majorityof our players that it’s safe to re-turn to work,” Manfred told CNN.“The protocols for returning toplay, the health-related proto-cols are about 80 pages in length.They’re extraordinarily detailed. They cover everything from how the players will travel, privatecharters, how those charters have to be cleaned, who has access to the ballpark, strict limits on num-ber of people, tiering of employ-ees, so even those people who arein the ballpark will be isolated in general from the players.
“So we’ll hope that we’ll be able to convince them that it’s safe,” he added. “ We would never forcethem or try to force them to come back to work. They can wait until they feel they’re ready to come.”
Teams would play six gamesagainst each rival in the same re-gion’s division in the other league, creating six games each betweenrivals such as the Yankees and Mets, Cubs and White Sox, Dodg-ers and Angels, and Giants and Athletics.
MLB’s preference is for teamsto use their regular-season ball-parks. Manfred said he has spo-ken with the 18 governors whosestates host MLB teams.
BY RYAN ZIMMERMAN
For The Associated Press
Growing up, I always just thought of the DH as the differ-ence between the two leagues. But I also did have a sense of: “This is silly. Why don’t we all just play by the same rules?”
For me, it’s just a cleaner game with the DH. You know what’s going on. You know the lineup. The pitcher can just worry about pitching.
Over the last five or so years, the idea of a universal DH really gained steam. You’ve seen some pitchers get hurt, whether it’s hit-ting or running the bases.
Guys like Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Madison Bumgarner — they still work at hitting. But 95% of the pitchers don’t really even try anymore.
When you look back at the ’90s and early 2000s, pitchers took a lot of pride in it. They got the bunts down. Some of them could hit-and-run pretty regularly. “Pitchers who hit” was actually a part of the game.
Now, I feel like, a majority of the
time that spot’s an out. And when they’re supposed to be advancing runners, it looks like not many of them really even care anymore. If you really watch the games in the NL, most pitchers don’t even really want to be up there.
No one comes to the field to watch pitchers bunt or hit. At least I don’t think they do. I’d much rather see those guys throw eight shutout innings than lay a
bunt down — especially when the other team is just going to inten-tionally walk the next guy to set up a double play, anyway.
I guess I’ve probably changed on the DH rule a little bit. Com-ing up, being a defensive player, I took so much pride in the way I played defense. My whole life and the beginning of my career, I almost thought of myself as more of a defensive player, and then the offense sort of came as I got older and more mature — to the point that now I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done at the plate in the big leagues.
Now you’re talking about real career extension for a guy like me that could play first base three or four days a week, and then DH three or four days a week.
Also, with all the new thoughts and worries about time of game, for all the talk that the DH adds time to AL games, I actually think their games run smoother. In the NL, if the pitcher makes the last out of an inning, or a pitcher is on second base when the last out is made, I feel like some pitchers take five minutes to get back out there to the mound.
I know the counter-argument is
the NL has so much more strate-gy with double-switches, and youneed to worry about if you wantto leave your pitcher in for anextra inning, maybe, if he’s up to90 pitches and he’s doing well butyou’re down one run and have thebases loaded in the sixth inning:“Do you pinch-hit for the pitch-er?” I get that aspect of it, as well.
But if there’s a DH rule, all thepitchers need to worry about ispitching.
If I’m a fan, I’d rather watchMax Scherzer pitch and someoneelse hit.
Special feature
Zimmerman finewith NL using DH Suggests leagues play by same rules
JULIO CORTEZ/AP
The Washington Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman waits for a pitch from Miami Marlins pitcher Caleb Smith during the first inning of a spring training game on March 10 in Jupiter, Fla.
Ryan Zimmerman is a two-time All-Star infielder who has played 15 years in the majors, all with the Washington Nationals. He holds most of the team’s career hitting records, and his two hom-ers and seven RBIs last postsea-son helped the Nationals win their first World Series championship. With baseball on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, Zim-merman occasionally will offer his thoughts — as told to AP sports writer Howard Fendrich — while waiting for the 2020 season to begin.
Source: Players ask for slew of financial documents
RICK SCUTERI/AP
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer says there are many ways for Major League Baseball owners to hide their revenue.
• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 23Saturday, May 16, 2020
BY FRED GOODALL
Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Tampa Bay Rays All-Star pitcher Blake Snell says he will not take the mound this year if his pay is cut further, proclaiming: “I’m not playing unless I get mine.”
“I’m not splitting no revenue. I want all mine,” the 2018 AL Cy Young Award winner said on a Twitch stream Wednesday. “Bro, y’all got to understand, too, be-cause y’all going to be like: ‘Bro, play for the love of the game. Man, what’s wrong with you, bro? Money should not be a thing.’ Bro, I’m risking my life. What do you mean, ‘It should not be a thing?’ It 100% should be a thing.”
A 27-year-old left-hander, Snell agreed in March 2019 to a $50 million, five-year contract that in-cluded a $3 million signing bonus, a $1 million salary last year and a $7 million salary this season.
As part of the March 26 agree-ment between Major League Baseball and the players’ associa-tion to deal with the delay in the season caused by the coronavi-rus pandemic, Snell is being ad-vanced $286,500 for the first 60 days of the season through May 24 but would not get any more in 2020 if no games are played. The deal calls for players to receive prorated shares of salary if the season does start; Snell would get $43,210 for each day of the schedule.
Teams say they would lose money if games are played in empty ballparks, and owners on Monday approved making a pro-posal to the union to base salaries on a 50-50 split of revenue. The union says the concept amounts to a salary cap, which players have long voted never to accept.
“If I’m going to play, I should be at the money I signed to be get-
ting paid,” Snell said. “I should not be getting half of what I’m getting paid because the season’s cut in half, all on top of a 33% cut of the half that’s already there, so I’m really getting like 25%. On top of that, it’s getting taxed. So imagine how much I’m actually making to play, you know what I’m saying? Like, I ain’t making (expletive). And on top of that, so all of that money’s gone and now I play risking my life.”
Rays manager Kevin Cash did not want to talk about Snell’s views of the finances but did dis-cuss their medical worries.
“I would imagine there are play-ers that feel — that have concerns about their specific health and the health of their families and teammates,” Cash said Thursday during a telephone news confer-ence. “And, I think that’s fair. We all should, to a degree.”
“Health and safety is the No. 1 priority right now for myself, our organization, MLB, of our players, our staff, our fans, and our specific communities,” Cash said.
Bargaining began Tuesday when MLB made an initial pre-sentation of a plan that calls for
an 82-game schedule starting around the Fourth of July, which would reduce Snell’s salary to $3,543,210 under the March 26 deal. Frequent coronavirus test-ing would be part of the plan.
Safety is among players’ top concerns.
“If I get the ’rona, guess what happens with that? Oh, yeah, that stays — that’s in my body forev-er,” Snell said. “The damage that was done to my body, that’s going to be there forever. So now I got to play with that on top of that. So, y’all got to — I mean — you’all got to understand, man, for to go, for me to take a pay cut is not happen-ing because the risk is through the roof, it’s a shorter season, less pay. Like, bro, this — yeah, man, I’ve got to, no, I’ve got to get my money. I’m not playing unless I get mine, OK? And that’s just the way it is for me. Like I’m sorry if you guys think differently, but the risk is way the hell higher and the amount of money I make is way lower. Why would I think about doing that?”
Snell’s Twitch stream was post-ed to Twitter by a person who was a freelance logger with the MLB Network until spring training stopped in March.
“In my head, I’m preparing for next season. I’m preparing — well, I’m actually preparing for right now but as if I’m prepar-ing for next season. Like it’s super weird, man,” Snell said. “I’m just saying, man, it just doesn’t make sense for me to lose all of that money and then go play and then be on lockdown, not around my family, not around the people I love and get paid way the hell less, and then the risk of injury runs every time I step on the field. I love baseball to death. It’s just not worth it.”
BY TIM DAHLBERG
Associated Press
I’m not really sure what Twitch is, but I do know this — Blake Snell will wish he was never on it.
He said on the social gaming site what a lot of Major League Baseball players are proba-bly thinking. Like him, they’re anxious about risking their health by returning to play and not happy they have to take a pay cut to do so.
But after an ill-advised and tone-deaf rant, Snell is now the poster child for spoiled mil-lionaire ballplayers everywhere.
And, really, let’s face it. He deserves all the vitriol coming his way.
“I’m not playing unless I get mine,” Snell proclaimed, saying he would sit out any re-sumed season if his $7 million pay is cut too much. He said other things, too, but his main point seemed to be that even a pandemic shouldn’t spoil the paychecks he so richly deserves.
Let’s try to cut the 27-year-old Snell some
slack. Maybe he’s been playing video games so much he hasn’t had time to pick up a news-paper or watch the news on TV.
He might not have seen the headlines that 36.5 million Americans have filed for unem-ployment in the last eight weeks, or the poll that shows 46 percent without jobs are wor-ried they will not have enough food to make it through the end of the month.
And maybe he didn’t peek into his bank ac-count and notice that $286,500 has already been deposited there for this season without throwing a pitch. He’s also scheduled to get $43,210 for each day of the schedule should the season resume.
No, it’s not the $7 million he signed up for. But that was silly money even before the virus spread across the country.
The bottom line is there’s going to be a new reality when sports resume and the real costs of the pandemic become known. Guarantees that players had in the past aren’t as solid any-more and it’s anyone’s guess how it all plays out economically.
Without fans in the stands, MLB signaled this week it wants to split revenues with play-ers on an 82-game season as a way of reducing the risk of big losses. That idea was essen-tially branded a non-starter by the players’ union, which has always been quick to dig its heels in whenever the golden goose seemed threatened.
But what Snell and the players’ union don’t seem to get is that they’ll have to compromise in some way if there is to be any hope of a sea-son this year. What they also don’t seem to get is no one wants to hear any complaining about having to take smaller paychecks to make it happen.
Go ahead, sit the season out, or play if you want. But don’t whine about having to make sacrifices to do it.
America is hurting too much right now to listen.
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg
MLB
Tampa Bay pitcher says he won’t take mound on Twitch stream: ‘I want all mine’
Rays All-Star Snell rejects pay cut
ORLIN WAGNER/AP
Tampa Bay Rays All-Star pitcher Blake Snell, right, says he will not take the mound this year if his pay is cut further. On Monday, owners approved making a proposal to the union to base salaries on a 50-50 revenue split. The union says the concept amounts to a salary cap, something long rejected by players.
Commentary
Snell comes off spoiled, out of touch with rant
BY DENNIS WASZAK JR.Associated Press
Bob Watson, an All-Star slug-ger who became the first black general manager to win a WorldSeries with the New York Yankeesin 1996, has died. He was 74.
The Houston Astros, for whomWatson played his first 14 seasonsin a baseball career spanning sixdecades, announced his deathThursday night. The team didnot provide details, but son Keithwrote on Twitter that he died in Houston from kidney disease.
“He was an All-Star on the field and a true pioneer off of it,admired and respected by ev-eryone he played with or workedalongside,” the Astros said in astatement. “Bob will be missed, but not forgotten.”
Watson, nicknamed “TheBull,” made the All-Star team in1973 and ’75, hit over .300 fourtimes and drove in at least 100runs twice while hitting in themiddle of the Astros’ lineup. Healso holds the distinction of scor-ing the 1 millionth run in majorleague history — on May 4, 1975,against the San Francisco Giantsat Candlestick Park.
Commissioner Rob Manfred lauded Watson as a “highly ac-complished figure” and “deeply respected colleague.”
Watson also played for Boston (1979), the Yankees (1980-82)and Atlanta Braves (1982-84),finishing with a .295 career bat-ting average with 184 home runs,989 RBIs and 1,826 runs scored while primarily playing first baseand left field. Watson also hit .371 in 17 career postseason games.He was the first player to hit forthe cycle in both leagues — forHouston in 1977 and Boston two years later.
Two-time All-Star, GM Watson dead at 74
AP photo
In this July 1978 photo, Astros first baseman Bob Watson slides into home during a game in Houston. Watson, a two-time All-Star as a player who later became the first African American general manager to win a World Series with the New York Yankees in 1996, has died.
Saturday, May 16, 2020S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Saturday, May 16, 2020
SPORTSMLB
Rays’ Blake Snell: ‘I’m not playing unless I get mine’
Page 23
Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Blake Snell says he will not take the mound this year if his pay is cut further after owners approved making a proposal to the union to base salaries on a 50-50
split of revenue on Monday.
JOHN BAZEMORE / AP
Pioneering World Series-winning GM Watson dead at 74 » Page 23
Idle handsDefensive backs Baker, Dunbar
wanted for armed robbery » Page 21
Commentary: Snell now poster childfor spoiled millionaire ballplayers
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