Marjah: Microcosm of Afghanistan?Six years ago,

Volume 74, No. 193B
© SS 2016
Search for
12 missing
Marines
continues
BY WYATT OLSON
Stars and Stripes
MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII — The Hawaii Coast Guard
established a 7-mile safety zone
out into the sea spanning the entire North Shore of Oahu as the
search for 12 missing Marines
from two helicopters continued
Friday afternoon.
“That is a huge area,” said
Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Scott
Carr during a news conference.
He said searchers had found
debris “consistent with a military
aircraft” across that entire area.
The Marines were crewmembers and instructor-trainers
aboard two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters on routine nighttime training, said Capt. Timothy
Irish, a Marine spokesman at the
same news conference.
They were assigned to the Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron
463, Marine Aircraft Group 24,
1st Marine Airlift Wing, and were
permanently assigned to Marine
Corps Base Hawaii. They were
returning to the base when they
were lost, Irish said.
“This is still an active searchand-rescue operation,” Irish
said. “We’re still looking for
survivors.”
Irish said it was unknown why
the aircraft went down. It isn’t
known whether they collided, he
said.
The Coast Guard is searching
the area with two cutters, a helicopter and a C-130 plane.
MIDEAST EDITION
SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 2016
stripes.com
Free to Deployed Areas
Marjah: Microcosm
of Afghanistan?
Six years ago,
US forces swept
through Marjah.
How did it end
up back under
Taliban control?
Pages 4-5
Staff Sgt. Christopher Whitman
points out the location of a
Taliban position in Marjah
district, Afghanistan, and yells
for his men to start firing in
March 2010.
Stars and Stripes
SEE SEARCH ON PAGE 2
Iran releases former US Marine Hekmati, 4 others
BY
AND
BRADLEY K LAPPER
A LI A KBAR DAREINI
Associated Press
VIENNA — Iran released four detained
Americans in exchange for seven Iranians held or charged in the United States,
U.S. and Iranian officials said Saturday
in a major diplomatic breakthrough announced as implementation of a landmark
nuclear deal appeared imminent. A fifth
American detained in Iran, a student, was
released in a move unrelated to the swap,
U.S. officials said.
Washington
Post
reporter
Jason
Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah
Khosravi-Roodsari,
whose
name had not been previously made
public, were to be flown from Iran to
Switzerland aboard a Swiss aircraft and
then taken to a U.S. military hospital in
Landstuhl, Germany, for medical treatment, U.S. officials said.
Rezaian’s wife and mother were expected to be on the plane.
The student, identified as Matthew
Trevithick, was released independently of
the exchange on Saturday and already was
on his way home, said U.S. officials. They
MUSIC
MILITARY
Bowie transcended
definition over course of
groundbreaking career
A look back
at the Gulf War,
25 years later
Pages 16-17
Page 3
spoke about the prisoner exchange on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to discuss it publicly.
In return, the U.S. will pardon or drop
charges against seven Iranians — six
of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens
— accused or convicted of violating U.S.
sanctions.
SEE RELEASE ON PAGE 11
Military: Decision on Bergdahl medals to wait for court-martial » Page 2
PAGE 2
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
MILITARY
Army tables Bergdahl medals decision
BY DAN L AMOTHE
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The Army will not decide whether suspected deserter Sgt. Bowe
Bergdahl will receive two significant medals
that could be associated with his five years of
captivity until after he is court-martialed for
deliberately walking away from his infantry
platoon’s base in 2009, an Army official said.
The awards are the Prisoner of War Medal
and the Purple Heart. The POW Medal goes
to servicemembers who are granted “creditable U.S. military service” and who were held
captive while involved in a conflict with an opposing force, while the Purple Heart goes to
troops who are killed or wounded by an enemy
force. Bergdahl, who had been deployed to Afghanistan, was held hostage by the Haqqani
network, a group affiliated with the Taliban,
and was tortured while held captive, according to Army officials who have testified in the
soldier’s criminal case.
The Army also will not decide whether
Bergdahl is eligible to receive the Afghanistan Campaign Medal and the NATO Medal
until after the trial. The campaign medal goes
to servicemembers who served in Afghanistan for 30 days consecutively or 60 days non-
consecutively, while the NATO Medal goes
to servicemembers who serve in a variety of
international commands in which NATO is
involved.
“To ensure compliance with governing statutes and regulations, the Army cannot determine Sgt. Bergdahl’s eligibility for any award
until the conclusion of his court-martial,” said
Lt. Col. Jerry Pionk, an Army spokesman, in
an email to The Washington Post.
Bergdahl, 29, faces charges of desertion
and misbehavior before the enemy in connection with his disappearance and could be
sentenced to up to life in prison. His disappearance spawned a massive manhunt by the
U.S. military in Afghanistan that endangered
U.S. troops and altered operations across the
country for months, U.S. military officials
have said.
Bergdahl was recovered in May 2014 by
a U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan
following a controversial prisoner swap approved by the White House in which five
Taliban officials were released to the Qatari
government.
The decision to withhold any medals until
the end of the court-martial was met on Friday with criticism from Bergdahl’s civilian attorney, Eugene Fidell. The lack of the awards
was raised by another attorney for Bergdahl,
Army Lt. Col. Franklin Rosenblatt, during a
pretrial hearing on Tuesday, but it was not
clear when the issue would be resolved.
“Sgt. Bergdahl was advised just the other
day to initiate the paperwork for the four additional decorations to which he is entitled,”
Fidell said in a statement. “If higher-ups in
the Army have indeed decided to withhold
them without even waiting for his submission,
we are both surprised and disappointed. Preventing the accused from wearing his or her
decorations is a major issue in a court-martial. A soldier has a right to appear in court
wearing all military decorations to which he
or she is entitled. Why can’t Sgt. Bergdahl be
treated like any other soldier — and afforded
the presumption of innocence?”
Dwight Mears, a medically retired Army
major and former history professor at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., said
that it is unlikely that the service will want to
award the POW Medal to Bergdahl even if he
is acquitted of the charges he faces because
he already admitted to walking away from his
post deliberately.
“Even if he wasn’t playing with a full deck,
he’s still admitted some culpability in leaving
the base,” said Mears.
Search: Wind, heavy surf complicating search, rescue effort
FROM FRONT PAGE
Joining them are two Navy
destroyers, an MH-60 helicopter crew from the 37th Helicopter Squadron out of Marine
Corps Base Hawaii and other
vessels from the Honolulu Fire
Department.
“Everyone’s putting every
available resource they have to
try and find the survivors from
this accident,” Carr said.
Although the rain and high
winds are likely dissuading casual beachgoers from taking a
swim from the beaches of the
North Shore, those conditions
are a magnet for many surfers.
Carr said the establishment of
the safety zone was intended to
encourage everyone to stay out of
the water.
“There is debris out there that
could cause potential harm to
you,” he said. “We certainly don’t
need more search-and-rescue
cases because of that.”
The search is severely hampered by the high winds, making
it “probably one of the most difficult we’ve had in the year and a
half I’ve been here,” Carr said.
Searchers are dealing with 25mph winds, swells up to 16 feet
and breaking surf up to 30 feet
high. Forecasts have been calling for breaking surfs of up to 40
feet.
“That is moving that debris all
over the place,” he said. “It’s very
difficult to find things right now.”
The Coast Guard has not yet recovered any of the debris, which
Carr described as “from small to
good-sized pieces.”
Carr said the Coast Guard
learned of the missing helicopters when a civilian called in at
about 11:39 p.m. Thursday, saying he’d seen aircraft flying that
then disappeared, followed by a
“fireball.” Within minutes another caller told the Coast Guard of
seeing “a flare,” he said.
Carr said the decision had
not yet been made whether the
search would continue through
the night.
“As we get closer to the evening
and through this operational period, operational commanders
will look and they’ll make that
decision later today,” Carr said.
olson.wyatt@stripes.com
W YATT O LSON /Stars and Stripes
Marine Corps Capt. Timothy Irish, left, and Hawaii Coast Guard Lt.
Scott Carr speak with reporters Friday at Marine Corps Base Hawaii
about the search for 12 Marines missing from two helicopters that
disappeared late Thursday night off Oahu’s North Shore.
•STA
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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PAGE 3
MILITARY
Left: A U.S. Marine armored
vehicle crewman wears a
nuclear-biological-chemical
protective mask while taking
part in NBC training during
Operation Desert Shield.
Department of Defense
Below: An Abrams tank from the
2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
roars through a breached sand
berm separating Saudi Arabia
from Iraq, paving the way for
advancing allied troops.
Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes
U.S. servicemembers are silhouetted against the desert sun in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert
Shield, the preface to the Gulf War.
THE GULF WAR:
25 YEARS LATER
Stars and Stripes
“B
GOD WE’VE KICKED THE VIETNAM SYNDROME ONCE AND FOR ALL!”
When President George H.W. Bush finished a speech with those
words on March 1, 1991, the U.S. was flush with the completeness of its
victory in Iraq — an overwhelming air campaign, a 100-hour ground
war whose speed and domination left even veteran tankers breathless and a Middle
Eastern ally grateful for an American rescue.
The U.S. had just won the Cold War in Europe. Now it had prevailed in a hot war in
the Middle East, while taking few casualties and establishing American dominance
among one of the world’s most important regions. Above all, the war was popular at
home, its troops welcomed back warmly.
American power appeared to be at its zenith.
Yet where some saw victory, others saw a job unfinished. And where some in the
Middle East thanked the U.S. for its help, others thought it was time for the Americans
to go home. Seeds of the next war in Iraq were planted in 1991, and future victories
there would prove much more elusive.
Y
Department of Defense
U.S. Army Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf, U.S. Central
Command commander-in-chief,
inspects troops while visiting
a base camp in Saudi Arabia
during Operation Desert Storm
on April 5, 1991.
Courtesy of the U.S. Army
President George H.W. Bush
speaks during a welcoming
ceremony for military personnel
just returned from deployment
in Saudi Arabia during Operation
Desert Storm at Sumter, S.C.,
on March 24, 1991.
AN INTERACTIVE LOOK BACK
AT stripes.com/gulfwar25
FEATURED
CONTENT
Timeline looking at key
events leading up to and
during the war.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
uses deception to pull off “left
hook” Hail Mary.
Stars and Stripes
Iraqi prisoners of war are checked after their surrender to Americans
from Iron Troop, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in February 1991.
U.S. tanks destroy famed
Republican Guard in 40
minutes.
Photo galleries
Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
Lt. Col. George Wagasky of the
1st Tactical Fighter Wing scans
the horizon from his F-15D
Eagle aircraft while on a combat
patrol near the Iraqi border
during Operation Desert Shield.
PAGE 4
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
WAR/MILITARY
STORMING MARJAH – AGAIN
A look at how US-led
coalition lost Afghan
district to Taliban
BY H EATH DRUZIN
Stars and Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan
ix years before U.S. Army Staff
Sgt. Matthew McClintock was
killed in a firefight on the outskirts
of Marjah, thousands of Marines
were poised to strike that same patch
of ground in a battle that coalition commanders confidently predicted would
mark the beginning of the end of the
Taliban insurgency.
The plan was for Marines to sweep
through Marjah and its opium poppy
fields, driving out the insurgents, and
then roll out a prepackaged local government to resolve all the complaints of
villagers who had rallied to the Taliban
cause. Lessons learned in Marjah could
then be applied nationwide.
“We’ve got a government in a box,
ready to roll in,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and international
forces, told The New York Times in February 2010. On the eve of battle, the commander of British troops, Brig. James
Cowan, told his soldiers the Marjah operation “will mark the start of the end of
the insurgency.”
Today, Marjah is back under Taliban
control. McClintock’s death on Jan. 5 illustrates how badly things have deteriorated since the United States began
pulling out its troops and NATO ended its
combat mission a year ago.
Experts say U.S. officials failed to take
into account how much time and resources it would take to cement gains won on
the battlefield.
U.S. and British troops did take control
of the collection of rough farming villages
that make up Helmand province’s Marjah district and nearby Nad Ali. But the
hope that a “government in a box” would
cement those gains proved illusory.
Despite years of fighting in Helmand
that cost nearly 1,000 foreign troops’
lives, effective local governance never
took hold in many rural areas.
“In a counterinsurgency, you’re only as
good as the government you support, and
in Marjah, the government didn’t have
the support of the people,” said David
Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert
and author.
S
Operation Moshtarak
In 2010, Operation Moshtarak — Dari
for “together” — as the campaign to retake Marjah was known, went well militarily. Marines captured the area, and the
Taliban melted away. It was the beginning of the so-called troop surge, an influx of foreign troops sent in to roll back a
suddenly resurgent Taliban, and this was
its much-publicized showpiece, touted for
weeks before the actual operation.
Stars and Stripes
Kneeling in a poppy field in the Marjah district of Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan, U.S. Marines return fire
against a Taliban machine-gun position in March 2010. The 2010 effort was supposed to be a model of counterinsurgency
strategy, but six years later, U.S. forces were back in Marjah working with Afghan forces to recapture it yet again.
“As we push the Taliban out, there is
nothing but a bright future ahead: good
schools, good health clinics, a free-flowing
market,” Marine Lt. Col. Brian S. Christmas said during a meeting with Marjah
elders, according to a 2010 U.S. military
news release.” Marjah can do nothing but
grow, and what a great place to grow because there is an awful lot here.”
Even the choice of the name for the operation carried foreboding for the pending governing and development portion
of the counterinsurgency effort, which
pinned success on winning over the people. “Moshtarak” is a Dari word, and Dari
is largely the language of the country’s
north; residents of the southern province
of Helmand overwhelmingly speak Pashto and often feel little kinship with Dari
speakers.
Although guerrilla fighters scattered
in the face of U.S. firepower, the Taliban
maintained a covert presence, and the
governance side went wrong almost immediately after the violence subsided.
With no eyes and ears on the ground
inside the Taliban-controlled area before
their operation, U.S. forces had trouble
discerning friend from foe once local
fighters put down their weapons, said Dr.
Theo Farrell, head of the department of
war studies at King’s College London who
has conducted assessments for American
and British forces in Afghanistan. Many
of the Taliban who had controlled Marjah
‘
In a counterinsurgency, you’re only as good as
the government you support, and in Marjah, the
government didn’t have the support of the people.
David Kilcullen
counterinsurgency expert
melted back into the population, coming
out at night to intimidate the population,
keeping many from openly supporting
the government.
Since the command wanted to woo
fighters away from the Taliban, troops
were told in effect to tolerate their presence as long as the fighters didn’t openly
threaten them.
“It was impossible for ISAF to get
intelligence assets into Marjah ahead
of time,” Farrell said of the International Security Assistance Force, as the
NATO-led coalition was known then.
“No one knew what was happening in
Marjah. How can you realistically go
in and rapidly establish governance in
a place where you don’t know what was
happening?”
McChrystal’s hand-picked Marjah district governor, Abdul Zahir Aryan, had
spent the last 15 years in Germany, four
of them in prison for stabbing his stepson, who intervened when Aryan was
beating his wife. In Marjah, he lived on a
U.S. military base, was out of touch with a
country he had left so many years before
and was despised by local residents. He
lasted six months in the job before being
quietly removed. He was later murdered
under mysterious circumstances.
Dari-speaking
Afghan
soldiers
brought from other parts of the country
were nearly as ill-prepared as Americans to keep abreast of what was happening around them.
Also, there was no concurrent wave
of foreign civilians behind the military
to help build up government structures,
the local economy and, perhaps most
crucially, a local justice system, Kilcullen said.
A breakdown in law and order and the
terror of rapacious warlords during Afghanistan’s bloody civil war in the early
1990s is exactly what led to the Taliban’s
initial popularity — locals saw them and
their strict brand of Islamic justice at
first as a brutal but welcome alternative
to the murder, rape and robbery that had
become the norm.
SEE MARJAH ON PAGE 5
•STA
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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PAGE 5
WAR/MILITARY
Marjah: Misunderstanding Afghan ideology
key to coalition’s failure to maintain control
FROM PAGE 4
It’s a history of which Kilcullen says many in
the international coalition were ignorant, and
those who did understand it lacked the resources
to address the problem.
“We always kind of treated the rule of law as a
secondary issue, but it’s fundamental to the life
of Afghans,” he said.
Despite all of the problems, U.S. and British
forces did achieve enough security gains while
they were there to allow some infrastructurebuilding and stability in the area. They built
schools, dug wells and fixed roads.
While experts agree that there were multiple
failures in the reconstruction effort in Marjah
and across Helmand, the main factor they point
to in the near-Taliban takeover last year was simply that international troops left.
Former Afghan Defense Minister Rahim
Wardak said the coalition was too eager to end
its war and that the administration of then-President Hamid Karzai pushed too hard for foreign
troops to leave and give Afghans a chance to secure their own country before they were ready to
take over the fight.
“The whole transition process was premature,” said Wardak, who served during the initial Marjah invasion and left office in 2012. “The
international community wanted to relieve itself
of the burden, and in the meantime, the Afghan
government pushed for national sovereignty.”
Successful counterinsurgency operations generally take 10 to 15 years, Kilcullen said. The
surge lasted 30 months.
“We just didn’t put the time in,” he said.
A most dangerous posting
What the U.S. and their its allies left behind
when they turned over the Helmand military
hub Camp Leatherneck to Afghan control at the
end of 2014 was a still-shaky Afghan security
force and even more lackluster local political
leaders who were unprepared for the insurgent
onslaught to come.
Wardak said there was no mechanism to continue the work of international forces on both a
civil and military level. Money for projects dried
up, along with military intelligence, surveillance
and air power.
“The PRTs disappeared with all their resources and backup and professionalism,” he said,
using the acronym for Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the military units tasked with civil
projects.
Afghan troops were poorly supplied, and for
the most part, only troops without connections
ended up in Helmand, arguably the Afghan security forces’ most dangerous posting. The official
troop numbers included many “ghost soldiers”
on the rolls, meaning many units were undermanned, as chronicled by a recent Associated
Press report.
So unresponsive was the central government to
Helmand’s woes that Deputy Provincial Governor Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar took to Facebook
in December to write an urgent plea to Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani, begging for military
support as much of the province crumbled to
Taliban forces. Ghani subsequently fired him.
A year after the NATO-led coalition formally
ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, the U.S.
sent McClintock, a Green Beret, and other special operations forces out with Afghan counterparts into the dusty farmland of Marjah on Jan.
5 to again try to retake the district. The Taliban
were on the doorstep of the provincial capital,
Lashkar Gah, threatening to overrun an entire
province for the first time since the initial U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 — an even more
embarrassing prospect than their brief takeover
of the country’s fifth-largest city, Kunduz, in
September. It was exactly the scenario the 2010
operation aimed to avoid.
The January operation succeeded in driving
out insurgents and opening the once-heavily
Human shields
used in Ramadi,
slowing progress
BY SUSANNAH GEORGE
Associated Press
JOSH SMITH /Stars and Stripes
An Afghan policeman rides in the back of a
truck during a patrol in Helmand province
on Sept. 23.
mined road between Marjah and Lashkar Gah
for the first time in two months. But given the
history of the area — even with thousands of U.S.
and British troops in the province, Helmand was
contested — there is no guarantee the Taliban
won’t come back.
“They don’t pay attention if there is a threat to
a district,” said longtime Helmand resident Sardar Mohammad Hamdard, head of the provincial
government watchdog Helmand Civil Society.
“When it falls to insurgents and all the equipment and ammunition
is taken (and) the disWe always
trict governor’s office
and the police station
kind of
are burned, only then
treated
will they take action.
“After the Marjah
the rule of
offensive (in 2010),
law as a
there were some fundamental
projects
secondary
implemented,
there
issue,
was money spent; it
was completely peacebut it’s
ful after; there was atfundamental
tention to health and
to the life of
education,” Hamdard
said. “But unfortuAfghans.
nately, those achieveDavid Kilcullen
ments could not be
counterinsurgency
maintained by the auexpert
thorities because they
didn’t pay attention to
threats.”
Helmand’s troubles have been particularly
dramatic, owing in part to it being part of the Taliban’s original heartland, giving them deep roots
in the province. But what’s happened there is a
microcosm for the situation across the country:
Lack of faith in government is keeping Afghans
from openly supporting Kabul, undermining security and emboldening insurgents.
Also, with the U.S.-led military coalition now
slimmed down to about 13,000 troops tasked primarily with training and advising Afghan forces
and with an eye on the exit, few see that as a
problem that can be fixed quickly.
“We in the West expect to see the rapid development of governance so we can get out, but of
course, you’re in a part of the world where corruption and incompetence is the norm,” Farrell
said. “I’m afraid the history shows consistently
that the United States, in particular, is very bad
at this, and the reason is very simple: Governments have political and financial interest in not
reforming, and those interests will far outweigh
any leverage that any foreign power can bring to
bear.”
‘
Zubair Babkarkhail contributed to this report.
druzin.heath@stripes.com
Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes
RAMADI, Iraq — Six times in
the past harrowing month, Um
Omar and her family got a knock
on the door of whatever home they
were occupying in the extremist-held city of Ramadi, Iraq: It
was an Islamic State militant, she
said, ordering them to pick up and
move with them as human shields
because the Iraqi army was
approaching.
“Every time the army would advance, Daesh would knock on our
door and say, ‘OK, time to go,’ ” the
woman said in an interview with
The Associated Press, using an alternate term for the Islamic State
group.
The knock came again Thursday morning in the Soufiya neighborhood of northeastern Ramadi,
Um Omar said, and to her surprise, it was the counterterrorism
forces of the Iraqi military. She
and about 60 other people had just
been rescued.
It’s still a little unclear to her
what happened to the extremists,
said the woman, who spoke on condition she not be identified by her
full name to protect relatives who
may still be trapped in Ramadi.
Either all of the Islamic State
fighters were killed during clashes Wednesday night, or they fled
further into the neighborhood and
didn’t have time to bring their
captives along to another part of
Ramadi.
The capital of sprawling Anbar
province fell in May to the Islamic
State group. It was the biggest setback for Iraq’s military since the
city of Mosul fell to the group in
the summer of 2014.
Iraqi troops, working with the
counterterrorism forces, retook
the center of Ramadi last month
with heavy air support from the
U.S.-led coalition.
Ramadi still cannot be considered fully liberated, with pockets
of Islamic State fighters still holed
up in half to two-thirds of the
city’s neighborhoods in the east
and north.
As Iraqi government forces
advanced from west to east from
downtown Ramadi and expelled
Islamic State militants in Decem-
ber, the extremists have pulled
back with their civilian captives
as shields, leaving behind houses
booby-trapped with explosives
and roadside bombs.
Fighters with the elite counterterrorism forces that are leading
operations in the Anbar provincial
capital, 70 miles west of Baghdad,
say the practice is slowing them
down and complicating the already messy challenge of houseto-house urban warfare.
Heavy airstrikes and the Islamic State group’s scorchedearth practices have left most of
Ramadi in ruins. The devastating
combination razed nearly every
building along its main thoroughfare. On most city blocks, no house
is spared damage; others are reduced to rubble.
But as Iraqi forces continue to
advance, evacuations like the one
that brought Um Omar and her
family to safety are draining time
and resources from the fight to retake territory, according to troops
and commanders.
“The main problem now are
the civilians. That is what’s slowing our progress,” said Maj. Gen.
Fadhil Barwari, the commander
of the counterterrorism unit in
Ramadi.
Working out of a marble-tiled
home that his unit has transformed
into an operations center, he juggles phone calls and local TV interviews. Off to the side, one of his
men unrolls a map and reads out
coordinates to someone speaking
in Australian-accented English on
the other end of the line.
“We thought it was going to be
easier because we have airstrikes
and air support,” Barwari said,
referring to the intense waves of
coalition bombing that paved the
way for his forces’ initial advance
in western Ramadi. “But now,
when the pilot sees civilians, they
don’t strike.”
Unlike other Iraqi cities like Tikrit and Beiji, where troops have
pushed out the militants, thousands of civilians remained in
Ramadi under months of Islamic
State rule. While the U.S.-trained
counterterrorism forces are the
most effective unit in the Iraqi
military, they still largely depend
on air support to retake ground.
PAGE 6
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WAR ON TERRORISM
US drone strike kills 3 militants in Yemen
BY A HMED A L-HAJ
Associated Press
SANAA, Yemen — A U.S. drone strike
killed three suspected al-Qaida militants
in southern Yemen on Saturday, according
to local tribesmen.
Believed to be the first drone strike this
year in Yemen, it targeted the militants’ vehicle while they were traveling in Shabwa
province, the tribesmen said. They spoke
on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. It was not immediately
possible to verify their account. U.S. officials rarely comment on the covert drone
program.
The latest strike comes amid reports of
divisions and defections among al-Qaida’s
rival group, the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Yemen, as a defected group leader gave online testimony claiming that
the Islamic State group fabricated videos
in order to exaggerate their strength and
presence.
In testimony posted online by al-Qaida
supporters, a man calling himself Antar
al-Kanadi said he defected from the Islamic State group because its leadership
had become too extreme. Al-Kanadi’s
allegations seem to match reports elsewhere of dissension within the ranks of
the Yemeni Islamic State group affili-
ate. According to The Long War Journal,
which monitors the activity of militant
groups, more than a dozen Islamic State
leaders and scores of the group’s fighters
have rebelled against the top leader, Abu
Bilal al-Harbi, for alleged violations of Islamic Shariah law.
“Seventy members of the Islamic State’s
Yemeni branch announced their ‘defection’ from the Islamic State’s wali in a letter published online on Dec. 15,” it said.
Al-Kanadi also alleged that the Islamic
State group in Yemen released two videos
of training camps in Hadramawt province
and fraudulently claimed they were elsewhere in the country.
Yemen has been mired in conflict between Shiite Houthi rebels and an internationally recognized government backed
by a Saudi-led military coalition. Both the
Islamic State group and al-Qaida in Yemen
have exploited Yemen’s chaos and expanded their reach over the past year.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has
long been described by Washington as the
global network’s most active and dangerous branch. The Islamic State affiliate in
Yemen has claimed responsibility for a
series of bloody attacks including four suicide bomb attacks on mosques in Sanaa in
March and the assassination of the governor of Aden province.
DOD video shows
strike on Islamic
State cash stockpile
Associated Press
Screenshot from video courtesy of the Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve
A coalition airstrike destroys an Islamic State cash and finance distribution center near Mosul, Iraq.
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has released
a video showing the U.S. dropping bombs on an Islamic State
cash stockpile in Mosul, Iraq, on
Monday.
The 47-second, black-andwhite video begins with an overhead shot of the targeted building
in Mosul, which is the Islamic
militant group’s main stronghold
in Iraq.
The Pentagon’s video then
shows the facility being hit with
two 2,000-pound bombs.
Clouds of paper the Department of Defense says is money
can be seen floating above the
bombing site after the coalition
airstrikes.
U.S. officials say that millions
of dollars were destroyed, but
the exact amount of money is
unknown.
It’s at least the second time
the U.S. has bombed cash stockpiles for the Islamic State group.
Combined with attacking the
militants’ oil resources, it is part
of an effort to sap their financial
strength.
Russia says the West is ‘politicizing’ the situation in Syria
BY A LEXANDRA OLSON
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS — Russia dismissed
a Security Council meeting Friday on the
siege of Syrian towns as “unnecessary
noise” that politicizes a humanitarian crisis
and risks derailing upcoming peace talks.
Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir
Safronkov questioned the motives of Britain, France and the United States in calling for the Security Council meeting. He
accused them of “double standards” by focusing on the suffering in Madaya, a rebelheld town besieged by Syria’s government,
while minimizing suffering in other towns
under siege by rebels.
Safronkov said the insistence on holding
the Security Council debate “gives the impression” that “attempts are being made to
undermine the launch of the inter-Syrian
dialogue scheduled for Jan. 25” in Geneva.
“As the date for the launch draws closer,
there is all this unnecessary noise,” Safronkov said.
The three Western council members
called for the debate to intensify the pressure on Syria’s warring parties to lift sieges
that have cut off 400,000 people from aid.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said
both the Syrian government and the rebels
are committing war crimes by deliberately
starving civilians.
Reports of starvation deaths in Madaya
have reinforced the scale of the humani-
tarian catastrophe in the town and other
besieged areas.
Trucks from the United Nations and
other humanitarian
organizations
enAs the
tered Madaya this
week for the first
date for
time in months. Two
the launch
other communities,
the villages of Foua
(of peace
and Kfarya in northtalks in
ern Syria, besieged
Syria) draws by rebels were also
closer, there included in the aid
operation.
is all this
British
Deputy
unnecessary Ambassador Peter
Wilson said the Secunoise.
rity Council should
Vladimir call on all parties to
Safronkov lift the sieges, but he
Russian deputy emphasized that the
ambassador Syrian government
“has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians.”
In a reference to Russia, Wilson said “let
council members with ties to the regime
use their influence, and not their air force,
to address this horrific situation.”
The Security Council is divided on how
to handle the Syrian war, with Russia supporting President Bashar Assad and the
Western powers opposing him. Russia is
conducting an air campaign in Syria that
‘
’
PETER SOUSA /The White House
President Barack Obama chairs a United Nations Security Council meeting at U.N.
Headquarters in New York on Sept. 24, 2009.
Moscow says is aimed at the Islamic State
group and other extremists, but the U.S.
and its allies say is also hitting moderate
groups fighting Assad’s army.
Safronkov said Russia is engaging with
“the relevant Syrian authorities, prompting them toward constructive cooperation
with the United Nations.”
Addressing the council, Syrian Deputy
Ambassador Mounzer Mounzer denied his
government was using starvation as a war
tactic. He dismissed U.N. accusations that
the Syrian government has impeded humanitarian access to civilians, saying any
delays are due to the need to safeguard humanitarian workers and prevent aid deliveries from falling into the wrong hands.
“The Syrian government had deployed all
of its efforts and resources to provide assistance to all those who are suffering without
discrimination,” Mounzer said.
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WAR/MILITARY
Complications dog
4-nation meeting
on Afghan peace
BY H EATH DRUZIN
Stars and Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan — New
insurgent attacks and concerns
over the lack of female representation could complicate fourcountry talks on Monday aimed at
ending Afghanistan’s 14-year war.
The meeting of representatives
from Afghanistan, the United
States, Pakistan and China is
aimed at drawing a road map for
peace negotiations to end the war,
which started in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks. Insurgent groups
have not been invited to the preliminary talks.
Since the first four-nation meeting in Islamabad last week, insurgents have attacked a Pakistani
consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and the residence of an Afghan diplomat in Pakistan. No
diplomats were killed in either incident, although a consular official
was slightly injured in Jalalabad.
The attacks come as part of a
wave of violence, including several car bombings in Kabul, that
followed Afghan President Ashraf
Ghani’s New Year’s Eve announcement of the talks.
The most recent violence appears to be a new tactic by insurgents with two goals: to strain
relations between Kabul and Islamabad and to demonstrate that
they are not beholden to Pakistan,
which has long been considered
the Taliban’s most important
backer, experts said.
“It is kind of putting pressure
on Afghanistan and Pakistan by
the insurgents to accept their high
demands during the peace talks,”
said Shahla Farid, a political analyst and professor of law and political science at Kabul University.
“This is a new step that the Tal-
iban are taking. In the past, they
would carry out massive attacks
and kill lots of civilians whenever
there were starting, but now they
target diplomatic facilities to show
themselves to be stronger and
more independent.”
Such attacks on diplomatic compounds could threaten recent improvements
in the oftenfraught
Women’s
relations
rights
between Afactivists in ghanistan
and PakiAfghanistan stan, which
have traded
have been
fighting for accusations
for years of
years for a supporting
place at the insurgents
within the
table where other’s
borders.
the future
“Since
of their
Pakistan is
a major part
country
of the peace
is being
talks, such
attacks can
decided.
make them
Heather Barr
angry and
Human Rights erode their
Watch support for
peace,” said
Mohammad Hassan Hakiyar, a political
analyst and former Taliban deputy minister.
After the Islamabad meeting,
Human Rights Watch voiced concern about the absence of women
in the peace negotiations, saying
Kabul had failed to fulfill its own
national action plan to include
them.
“Women’s rights activists in
Afghanistan have been fighting
for years for a place at the table
‘
’
A SSOCIATED PRESS
OF
PAKISTAN /AP
Delegates from Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the United States attend a meeting at the foreign
ministry in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Monday, hoping to lay the road map for peace talks with the Taliban.
where the future of their country
is being decided,” Heather Barr,
the group’s senior researcher on
women’s rights said in the statement. “The Afghan government’s
failure to meet the promised deadline for developing this plan suggests a lack of seriousness about
giving women the role to which
they’re entitled.”
In an interview with Afghan
news agency Pajhwok published
Friday, Zalmay Khalizad, the
former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, criticized the initial
Islamabad meeting for failing to
produce a commitment from the
capital to bring Pakistan-based
militants to the table and conduct
military operations against those
who refuse.
“[The Islamabad] meeting
was not encouraging to me,” he
was quoted as saying. “What is
needed is really to move against
the groups that are not reconcilable and are based in Pakistan
so that their incentive to engage
in the peace process increases or
they are no longer able to [conduct] military operations. That is
the vital part moving toward the
peace process.”
Security in the capital will be
tight on Monday. Afghan authorities are not disclosing the venue
ahead of time because of the
threat of attacks, Foreign Minis-
try spokesman Shakaib Mustaghni said. He said insurgent groups
have not been invited because part
of the agenda is to agree on whom
to included in formal talks.
Only Hezb-i-Islami, an insurgent group unaffiliated with the
Taliban or the Islamic State group,
has publicly stated support for the
process.
The United States sent Special
Representative for Afghanistan
and Pakistan Richard Olson to the
initial meeting.
A senior Obama administration
official, speaking on background
to reporters in Washington, said
he was encouraged by cooperation between Kabul and Islamabad at the initial meeting, but he
cautioned that the Taliban would
still take convincing to come to
the table: “It’s clear that the Taliban have not yet decided to join a
process, a reconciliation process,
but we are proceeding on the basis
that we have to test the proposition,” he said.
Ghani’s first stab at peace talks
fell apart last summer when it
emerged that longtime Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammad Omar
had been dead for two years.
News of Omar’s death sparked a
power struggle within the Taliban
that continues today. The leader,
Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, is opposed by a faction led by Mullah
Muhammad Rasool.
Experts say Pakistan’s role
in any peace agreement will be
critical.
Islamabad is under pressure
from other rebel groups besides
the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban, carry out regular
attacks on Pakistani government
and military targets. The Islamic
State group has also emerged as a
threat.
Acknowledging the difficulty in
convincing all of the rebel groups
to participate, Ghani has said the
process can start with the willing
factions even as the government
continues to fight others. The day
before the attack on the Pakistani
consulate, The Associated Press
quoted Deputy Foreign Minister
Hekmat Khalil Karzai as saying
that most Taliban want peace, but
that “we will use all the means we
have against those who do not.”
“Because there are different
groups fighting in Afghanistan, it
makes it hard to reach out to everyone and bring them to peace
talks,” said Hakiyar, the former
Taliban official. “You can’t end
the current war by just talking to
the Taliban leadership.”
Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this
report.
druzin.heath@stripes.com
Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes
PAGE 8
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NATION
Tenn. Powerball
winners: No big
changes to lives
BY ERIK SCHELZIG
AND A DRIAN SAINZ
Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The
small-town Tennessee couple
who bought one of three magic
tickets splitting the world-record
$1.6 billion Powerball jackpot
says they don’t plan to quit their
jobs nor to buy a new house.
Their daughter, however, wants
a horse.
After appearing on national
television, John Robinson and
wife Lisa went to the Tennessee
lottery headquarters in Nashville
on Friday to have their winning
ticket verified by lottery officials.
The couple’s lump sum payout is
about $327 million after buying
the ticket for Wednesday night’s
drawing at a grocery store in
their west Tennessee hometown
of Munford, population 6,000.
Two other winning tickets were
bought in California and Florida.
At a news conference Friday,
the Robinsons said they won’t
stop working and won’t make any
wild purchases. They’ll pay off
their mortgage and their daughter’s student loans, but have no
desire to move from their gray,
one-story house in a close-knit
community into a luxurious compound somewhere.
Lisa works at a dermatologist’s
office. John is a warehouse supervisor. Both plan to return to work
Monday, they said. Friends and
neighbors say the Robinsons are
a hard-working, responsible family with the ability to deal with
their new fortune humbly.
“That’s what we’ve done all
our lives, is work,” John Robinson said. “You just can’t sit down
and lay down and not do nothing
anymore. Because how long are
you going to last? We do want to
enjoy a little bit of our earnings,
and maybe invest a little bit of it
so our son and daughter will have
it and they’ll never need anything
again.”
M ARK HUMPHREY/AP
Rebecca Hargrove, second from right, president and CEO of the Tennessee Lottery, presents a
ceremonial check to John Robinson, right, his wife, Lisa, second from left, and their daughter, Tiffany,
after the Robinsons’ winning Powerball ticket was authenticated Friday at the Tennessee Lottery
headquarters in Nashville, Tenn.
No one has produced the other
winning tickets, which overcame
odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land
on all six numbers at a Publix supermarket in Melbourne Beach,
Fla., and a 7-Eleven in Chino
Hills, Calif.
In California, any winnings
not claimed within a year automatically go to the state’s schools.
Florida gives winners six months
to come forward before transferring 80 percent of unclaimed
prizes to an educational trust
fund, and 20 percent into a pool
Coal suspension
affects 30-plus
mining projects
teed tomorrow,” Robinson said.
“We just wanted a little piece of
the pie. Now we’re real grateful
we got the big piece of the pie.”
Tennessee Lottery executive
Rebecca Hargrove said the couple would get a “small check today
for a few million,” and would collect the full lump sum in about 10
business days.
Robinson said earlier Friday
that they would help certain
friends, give to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, and donate to their church.
Police say man in
vehicle stolen from
Ore. refuge arrested
BY M ATTHEW BROWN AND M EAD GRUVER
BY K EITH R IDLER
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — At least 30 applications from
companies seeking to mine hundreds of millions of
tons of coal face suspension as the government reviews its sales of the fuel from public lands, U.S. officials disclosed Friday.
The coal leasing program is on hold for up to three
years while the Interior Department reviews fees
paid by mining companies and the environmental
effect of burning coal, agency Secretary Sally Jewell said.
The Associated Press obtained a Bureau of Land
Management list of affected sites ahead of its public release, and it includes mining proposals in nine
states.
Some of the largest projects are in the Powder
River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, the nation’s
top coal-producing region. Other projects are in
Utah, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado,
Oklahoma and North Dakota.
The announcement marks another major blow to
the struggling coal industry, which has been hit with
increased competition from cheap natural gas, new
anti-pollution regulations and faltering international
coal markets that have dimmed hopes to boost exports. The nation’s second-largest coal company, Arch
Coal of St. Louis, declared bankruptcy Monday.
Even before further leasing was suspended, work
at many of the sites was unlikely to begin for years
because of the time it takes companies to navigate
the government coal program.
Mining already underway on public lands will be
allowed to continue, as could 17 other lease applica-
for future lottery prizes.
Robinson said he reached out to
his brother for help finding lawyers and financial planners before
deciding to take the winnings in a
single lump sum of nearly $328
million, rather than let the lottery
invest the prize and pay him 30
annual installments totaling an
estimated $533 million.
Why pass up on a certain income totaling more than $200
million?
“We’re going to take the lump
sum, because we’re not guaran-
Associated Press
M ATTHEW BROWN /AP
A mining dump truck hauls coal in April 2013 at
Cloud Peak Energy’s Spring Creek strip mine near
Decker, Mont. The government is reviewing its
sales of the fuel from public lands.
tions, many of which had been approved or whose
environmental studies were completed but still
were being processed.
Mining representatives and elected officials from
coal states decried the suspension.
“President [Barack] Obama is wrong, and once
again Montana’s working families are bearing the
brunt of his unilateral action,” said Montana Gov.
Steve Bullock, also a Democrat.
But the coal industry effectively has been under
its own leasing moratorium in the Powder River
Basin for the past few years. Several companies,
including Alpha Natural Resources, which filed
for bankruptcy protection last year, have asked the
government to delay action on coal tracts previously
nominated for leasing.
No federal coal reserves in Wyoming or Montana
have been leased since 2012.
“This is just such a great time to take a pause in
the federal coal program. There is so much uncertainty about the future of coal,” said Shannon Anderson with Powder River Basin Resource Council,
a conservation group made up of landowners.
BURNS, Ore. — Authorities arrested a man they said was driving a government vehicle stolen
from a wildlife refuge being occupied by an armed group protesting federal land policies as
the standoff in Oregon’s high desert hit the two-week mark.
Kenneth Medenbach, 62, of
Crescent was arrested by Oregon
State Police at a grocery store in
Burns for investigation of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
It was unclear if he has a lawyer. Medenbach is already facing
charges in U.S. District Court in
Medford after authorities said he
illegally camped on federal land
between May and November last
year, according to federal court
records.
Authorities also said they recovered a second stolen vehicle
from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge but provided no other
details. U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service previously reported the
vehicles had been stolen.
So far, authorities have not
tried to remove the group from
the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge. As the situation drags on,
people in the local area are growing increasingly weary and wary
of the group.
Concrete barriers have been
erected to block streets around
the county courthouse in the
small eastern Oregon town of
Burns, where police from around
the state have set up a command
center.
About 30 miles to the south at
the refuge, other protesters carrying what appear to be militarystyle rifles scan the snow-covered
rangeland from atop an old fire
lookout that gives them a sweeping view of roads leading into the
area.
“If we all keep a calm about us,
everything will be OK,” Brenda
Pointere said Thursday as she exited a Burns restaurant. “It started out calm, but the longer it goes
on — you start to hear rumors.”
The occupation started Jan. 2
as a protest over two local ranchers who had been convicted of
arson being returned to prison to
serve longer sentences.
Afterward, a group led by
Ammon Bundy traveled to occupy
the refuge to protest the ranchers’
return to prison and to demand
that the 300-square-mile refuge
be turned over to local control.
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NATION
Bush sees similarities
between his foreign
policy and his dad’s
BY THOMAS BEAUMONT
Associated Press
CORALVILLE, Iowa — Jeb
Bush believes he’s got the best
prescription for American foreign policy, from his strategies
for deterring North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, to destroying the
Islamic State.
However, unlike his rivals in
the crowded 2016 Republican
race for the White House, Bush’s
foreign policy pitch comes with
a caveat: He’s as much his own
man as he is a member of the
Bush family.
In an extended interview with
The Associated Press, the former
Florida governor praised the approach of his father, former President George H.W. Bush, who
built a broad coalition to wage the
Persian Gulf War, and mobilized
U.S. military might to drive Iraq
out of Kuwait.
Jeb Bush said the aggressive
military policy he would pursue
as President Barack Obama’s successor would signal to the world
“we’re back in the game.”
While he said he would seek
the advice of his brother, former
President George W. Bush, in
foreign affairs, especially on the
Middle East, a Jeb Bush doctrine
would more closely resemble that
of Bush the father.
“It was a very successful foreign policy and one that I think
one could envision a bipartisan
consensus emerging around,”
Jeb Bush said of his father’s approach, “and one the American
people could support.”
He speaks of using military intervention “sparingly” but with
“awesome
force,” taking a page
out of the
playbook of
Colin Powell,
who served
as chairman
of the Joint
Chiefs
of
Staff under
his
father
Bush
and as his
brother’s first secretary of state.
Powell laid out a doctrine of
“overwhelming force” which he
applied in the 1990 Gulf War. But
Jeb Bush stresses the need for a
military and political strategy to
play out hand-in-hand.
“The one ingredient that I
think is so essential is to not just
have a military exit strategy, but
have a political strategy not create another void that has to be
filled again … where we have to
respond again to that void being
filled,” he said. “Syria is a good
example of that.”
Trump strikes back
at Cruz as Bush lands
key endorsement
BY SERGIO BUSTOS
AND BILL BARROW
Associated Press
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
— With two weeks to go until Iowans head to the polls in the first
vote of the 2016 primary season,
Republican front-runner Donald
Trump ramped up his attacks
against rival Ted Cruz on Friday,
while Jeb Bush scored a key endorsement for his White House
bid.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey
Graham announced he is backing Jeb Bush for the Republican
presidential nomination, praising
the former Florida governor’s approach to national security.
“I have concluded without any
hesitation, any doubt, that Jeb
Bush is worthy to be commanderin-chief on day one,” Graham said
Friday at a joint news conference
with Bush.
As South Carolina’s senior senator, Graham has been a coveted
endorsement for some candidates
running for the Republican nomination because he holds clout
among establishment Republicans in South Carolina, one of
the critical early voting primary
states. Bush was initially considered a top contender for the
Republican nomination for president, but his campaign eventually lagged behind candidates like
Trump and Cruz, who have each
positioned themselves as anti-establishment alternatives.
Graham launched his own
presidential campaign last summer, but dropped out of the race
last month having mustered little
support in the polls.
Graham noted that Bush was
the lone candidate in Thursday’s
debate to explicitly reject Trump’s
continued call to indefinitely ban
noncitizen Muslims from entering the United States.
“Donald Trump will damage
the ability to grow this party. He
will get creamed with Hispanics
and young women,” Graham said.
“Ted Cruz is an ideologue that has
no ability, in my view, to bring the
country together. So the top two
guys, I think, would lose an election we can’t afford to lose.”
Meanwhile, Trump kept up his
offensive against Cruz on Friday,
calling him “strident” and labeling his remarks about “New
York values” in the GOP debate
“disgraceful.”
C HARLIE NEIBERGALL /AP
Former President Bill Clinton listens as his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,
speaks in Ames, Iowa, in November.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign
deploys husband carefully
BY LISA LERER
Associated Press
KEENE, N.H. — Bill Clinton
promised voters in 1992 that
they’d be getting “two for the
price of one” if they elected him to
the White House — a presidential
duo of the young Arkansas governor and his Yale Law-educated
wife.
Nearly a quarter-century later,
the duo are back — but not quite
the same.
As Hillary Clinton fends off
a rising challenge from Bernie
Sanders, her campaign aides are
grappling with how best to deploy
what she has described as her
“not-so-secret weapon.”
Their answer: very, very
carefully.
During
campaign
swings
through Iowa and New Hampshire, Bill Clinton treaded fastidiously through tightly controlled
campaign events. A natural-born
chit-chatter, he was not giving interviews. When he stopped to talk
with reporters after one recent
event, campaign aides turned up
the music, making a conversation
all but impossible.
His remarks to voters have been
relatively subdued: long on history, statistics and nostalgia. He’s
dodged questions about Sanders
and Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who’s been baiting the
Clinton family with comments
about the former president’s past
sexual improprieties
“I’m not going there,” Bill Clinton said on Wednesday, when
asked about Sanders at a campaign event in New Hampshire.
“I came here to tell people why I
thought Hillary should be president and her ideas are better.”
While Bill Clinton remains a
popular figure among Democrats,
some of the key achievements of
his administration form the basis
of Sanders’ critique against his
wife — that she’s too willing to
compromise liberal ideals for political gain.
The Vermont senator has
denounced his rival’s policies
on trade, same-sex marriage,
crime and welfare cuts. He’s
made reinstating Glass-Stegall,
a Depression-era banking law
repealed under Bill Clinton’s administration, a central attack line
of his campaign.
“People don’t have a long memory, but Bernie’s doing his best to
remind them,” said Roger Hickey, a co-director of the liberal
Campaign for America’s Future.
“People don’t want a recycling of
Bill Clinton’s presidency. They
want somebody who’s willing to
stand up to the billionaires and
corporate power.”
Clinton aides say those critiques miss the larger picture of
wage growth, job creation and a
balanced budget. In a debate last
month, Clinton said she would
turn to her husband for economic
advice.
“He carries a message of peace
and prosperity under his presidency and I think a lot of Americans would like to get back to
those days,” Clinton said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show”
on Wednesday.
At an afternoon event in
Keene, voters recalled the Clinton presidency fondly, as a time of
prosperity.
“The best economic times for
my family were when Bill Clinton was president,” said Madeline
Smeaton, a graduate student in
Keene whose father lost her job
in the Great Recession. “We were
making a lot of money.”
Still, some of those economic
achievements face a skeptical reexamination within a party that’s
grown more liberal under the
Obama administration.
Bill Clinton has said that he
regrets approving the Defense
of Marriage Act and the “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy that banned
gays and lesbians from military
service. He also has looked back
with regret on signing the 1994
crime bill, which led to tougher
sentencing for drug offenses.
“I signed a bill that made the
problem worse,” the former
president told an audience at the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s
annual meeting in Philadelphia
in July. “And I want to admit it.”
The only veiled criticism
of Sanders came Friday in
Coralville, Iowa, with a reference
to Sanders’ support for a singlepayer health care system instead
of the 2010 federal health care
law, also known as Obamacare.
Saying that starting over on
health care legislation was not
politically viable, Clinton told voters, “We still need to live in the
reality-based world.”
In New Hampshire, some people said that while Bill Clinton
was still a compelling messenger
for his wife, they just weren’t sold
on her quite yet.
“He gave me every confidence
that she’d be a great candidate
and be a wonderful president,”
said Steve Taylor, a farmer from
Plainfield, New Hampshire. “But
Bernie is telling the truth about
the economy.”
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NATION
Answers elusive in
Calif. terror attack
BY A MANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press
NASA-TV/AP
U.S. astronaut Timothy Kopra emerges from the International Space Station Friday.
Spacewalk aborted due to
leak in astronaut’s helmet
BY M ARCIA DUNN
Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
— Two astronauts aborted their
spacewalk Friday and hurried
back into the International Space
Station after water leaked into
one of the men’s helmets in a
scary repeat of a near-drowning
2½ years ago.
The trouble cropped up after
the astronauts — including Britain’s 1st spacewalker — successfully restored full power to the
space station.
NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra
took everyone by surprise when
he reported a small water bubble
and then a film of water inside
his helmet. Mindful of another
spacewalker’s close call in 2013,
Mission Control terminated the
planned six-hour spacewalk at the
four-hour mark. It turns out Kopra
was wearing the same spacesuit
involved in the earlier incident.
Kopra said the water bubble was
4 inches long and getting thicker.
“I’m doing good,” he said on his
way back inside.
Lead flight director Royce
Renfrew stressed that the situation was not an emergency and
insisted neither spacewalker was
in danger.
An hour later, Kopra was safely
inside his orbiting home, along
with Timothy Peake, who attracted his own headlines by becoming
Britain’s first spacewalker Friday.
The astronauts waiting anxiously inside pulled off Kopra’s
helmet, then measured the water
that had leaked, presumably from
the suit’s cooling system. That
was the source of the leak last
time. Space station commander
Scott Kelly reported that he filled
a syringe with about 15 cubic centimeters of water.
NASA officials pointed out that
1 to 1½ liters of water that escaped into Italian astronaut Luca
Parmitano’s helmet and suit in
July 2013.
Kopra’s suit was the same one
Parmitano was wearing when
his helmet flooded. The suit was
refurbished following the 2013
incident. NASA said Kopra used
the same suit for a spacewalk last
month without any problem.
The cap that Kopra wore on his
head under his helmet was moist,
as were other parts of his suit.
Kopra and Peake completed
their No. 1 job early on. The pair
quickly removed the voltage
regulator that failed two months
ago, slashing station power by
one-eighth. The breakdown did
not disrupt work 250 miles up,
but NASA wanted the power grid
fixed as soon as possible.
Working in darkness to avoid
electrical shock from the solar
power system, the astronauts
quickly removed the bad unit
and popped in a spare, both about
the size of a 30-gallon aquarium.
They had just 31 minutes to complete the job, the amount of nighttime on that particular swing
around the world.
Following tests, Mission Control
said the spare — dubbed Dusty for
its 17-year tenure in orbit — appeared to be working properly.
Peake, in particular, received
a bounty of well wishes — from
space as well as Earth. He became the first spacewalker to
wear the Union Jack on the shoulder of his suit.
Earlier, as Peake floated out,
space station commander Scott
Kelly called, “Hey Tim, it’s really
cool seeing that Union Jack go
outside. It’s explored all over the
world. Now it’s explored space.”
Replied Peake: “It’s great to
be wearing it, a huge privilege, a
proud moment.”
Marathon bomber loses bid for a new trial
BY DENISE L AVOIE
Associated Press
BOSTON — A federal judge on Friday rejected
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s bid
for a new trial and ordered him to pay victims of the
deadly attack more than $101 million in restitution.
The restitution order, issued by Judge George
O’Toole Jr., is seen as largely symbolic because Tsarnaev is in federal prison and has no ability to pay.
Tsarnaev, 22, was convicted and sentenced to
death last year for the 2013 attack. Two pressure
cooker bombs placed near the marathon finish line
by Tsarnaev and his brother killed three people and
injured more than 260 others.
Tsarnaev also was convicted of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days
later. During the sentencing hearing Tsarnaev admitted that he and his brother committed the bombings and apologized to the victims.
His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died days
after the bombing following a gunbattle with police.
The judge, in his order denying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a new trial, noted that he and a federal appeals
court had previously rejected arguments from
Tsarnaev’s lawyers that he could not receive a fair
trial in Boston.
“There is no reason to think — and certainly no
specific evidence — that this extensive coverage
would have been any different in kind or degree if
the trial had been conducted elsewhere,” he wrote in
his order. “This was not a crime that was unknown
outside of Boston.”
The judge also rejected Tsarnaev’s renewed challenge to the constitutionality of the federal death
penalty. Tsarnaev’s lawyers cited a dissenting opinion in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year by Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who
said they think it’s “highly likely” the death penalty
is unconstitutional. But the judge in Tsarnaev’s case
said that whatever the merits of the dissent, the majority opinion was the binding precedent.
LOS ANGELES — Six weeks
after the San Bernardino terror
attack, the man leading the investigation said Friday that some of
the most basic questions remain
the most elusive to answer — was
anyone else involved, was more
violence planned, and why was
the attack site chosen?
David Bowdich, chief of the
FBI’s Los Angeles field office,
told The Associated Press that
of all the unanswered questions,
the one he most wants answered
is whether the husband-and-wife
killers had accomplices.
“We’re interested in anyone
who we find had anything to do
with this, anyone who turned their
head, anyone who participated in
any form or fashion in this,” Bowdich said in an interview in his office near Beverly Hills.
“We are not looking past anyone at this point,” he said. “We
have a very open mind on this
investigation.”
Another major question is why
the shooters, Syed Farook and his
wife, Tashfeen Malik, chose an
annual training of his co-workers
for their attack, as opposed to a
place with more targets, such as
a mall or movie theater.
Bowdich said, if Farook and
Malik truly had another target,
why wouldn’t they have acted in
the four hours that passed between the attack and their fatal
shootout with police?
Investigators also are continuing to try to fill an 18-minute gap
in the whereabouts of the husband-and-wife killers following
the attack. The agency has a number of tips about the gap, though
Bowdich declined to elaborate.
Federal authorities have said
Farook, a restaurant inspector,
and his wife, who came to the U.S.
from Pakistan in July 2014 so she
could marry him, were radicalized
Muslims long before the attack.
They amassed ammunition
and explosives at their home,
and on Dec. 2 donned black commando outfits and face masks and
launched their attack. Immediately afterward a post on a Facebook
page associated with Malik said
the couple pledged allegiance to
the leader of Islamic State, according to federal authorities.
High court will hear
appeal from ex-Va. gov.
BY M ARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON—TheSupreme
Court will hear former Virginia
Gov. Bob McDonnell’s appeal of
his corruption convictions.
The justices said Friday they
will review lower court rulings
that upheld the convictions based
on what McDonnell says is an
overly broad definition of bribery.
A jury in September 2014 convicted McDonnell and his wife,
Maureen, of doing favors for
wealthy vitamin executive Jonnie
Williams in exchange for more
than $165,000 in gifts and loans.
Williams was seeking state university research on his company’s
anti-inflammatory product.
The Obama administration
urged the court to reject the
appeal.
But Republicans and Democrats who once worked in the Justice Department and White House
joined McDonnell in contending
that the overly broad definition of
bribery on which he was convicted would make a crime of routine
actions by elected officials on behalf of their constituents.
The case probably will be argued in April and decided by the
end of June.
The justices have taken on several cases in recent years that
claimed prosecutors were too aggressive in their pursuit of whitecollar crimes. In 2010, the court
narrowed the use of an anti-fraud
law that was central in convicting
politicians and corporate executives in many of the nation’s most
prominent corruption cases.
Last year, the justices also declined to hear the government’s
appeal of a lower court ruling
that threw out insider trading
convictions.
McDonnell’s was among eight
new cases the justices agreed to
hear Friday. Others include:
A Missouri church’s challenge to its exclusion from a state
program that provides money to
use ground-up tires to cushion
playgrounds.
A dispute about whether a
board created to review patents
by a 2011 law is jeopardizing innovation by using a standard that
favors challenges to patents and
invalidating too many patents.
An appeal from Microsoft
Corp. over a class-action lawsuit
by disgruntled owners of the
Xbox 360 video-game system who
claim the console has a design defect that scratches game disks.
A bid by service advisers at
auto dealerships who say they are
entitled to overtime pay under
federal labor laws.
The action in McDonnell’s case
was not a surprise because the
justices voted in August to allow
McDonnell to postpone the start
of his two-year prison term while
his appeal was being considered.
Such votes typically signal the
court will hear the full appeal.
The court will not take up a second issue raised by McDonnell:
whether the trial judge did enough
to ensure that jurors could be impartial in spite of the heavy news
coverage of the McDonnells’ cases
in Virginia news outlets.
The case is McDonnell v. U.S.,
15-474.
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WORLD
12 arrested
in Indonesia
after attacks
Drug trial
in France
leaves man
brain dead
BY NINIEK K ARMINI
Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian police said Saturday they
have arrested 12 people suspected
of links to the Jakarta bombings.
The audacious attacks by suicide
bombers and gunmen on Thursday that targeted a Starbucks and
traffic police post in bustling central Jakarta killed seven people,
including two civilians. More than
20 people were injured.
It was the first major assault by
militants in Indonesia since 2009,
and police said the attackers were
tied to the Islamic State group
through Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with the group in
Syria.
National police chief Gen.
Badrodin Haiti told reporters that
arrests were made in west and
east Java and in Kalimantan.
Elaborating on an earlier claim
that the militants received funding from Bahrun, he said police
have determined money was
transferred to Indonesia via Western Union.
“One of those arrested had received money transferred from
ISIS,” Badrodin said, using an
acronym for the Islamic State
group.
Separately, authorities say they
have blocked more than a dozen
websites expressing support for
Thursday’s attack as they try to
counter radical Islamic ideology
online.
Communications
Ministry
spokesman Ismail Cawidu urged
Indonesians to report militant websites and social media
accounts.
In recent years, Indonesian
counterterrorism forces successfully stamped out the extremist
group Jemaah Islamiyah, which
was responsible for several attacks, including the 2002 bombings of bars in Bali that killed 202
people.
Terrorism experts say Islamic
State supporters in Indonesia are
drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah and other groups,
but are also trying to recruit new
members.
BY THOMAS A DAMSON
Associated Press
SUNDAY A LAMBA /AP
Rescuers work at the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Saturday after an overnight
seizure by al-Qaida-linked extremists.
Hotel seized in W. Africa
4 jihadi attackers killed in Burkina Faso capital; 23 others also die
BY BRAHIMA OUEDRAOGO
Associated Press
OUAGADOUGOU,
Burkina
Faso — The overnight seizure of
a luxury hotel in Burkina Faso’s
capital by al-Qaida-linked extremists ended Saturday when Burkina
Faso and French security forces
killed four jihadi attackers and
freed more than 126 people, the
West African nation’s president
said.
At least 23 other people from
up to 18 different countries were
killed in the attack at the Splendid Hotel and nearby Cappuccino
Cafe, establishments popular with
westerners in Ouagadougou, he
said.
According to CNN, U.S. forces
provided logistical support during the rescue. The United States
has about 75 military personnel
in Burkina Faso, including 15 assigned to the U.S. Embassy, CNN
said, citing a U.S. defense official.
An additional 60 help train and
advise the French military in the
nation.
Three attackers were killed at
the hotel and a fourth was killed
when security forces cleared out a
second hotel nearby.
Two of the three attackers at
the Splendid Hotel were identified
as female, President Roch Marc
Christian Kabore said on national
radio.
“We appeal to the people to be
vigilant and brave because we
must fight on,” said the president
when praising the security forces
and first responders. He also said
the country was grateful for the
military cooperation from French
and Americans. They helped free
at least 126 hostages, and the number of those freed may be as high
as 153, he said.
In a separate development,
Burkina Faso’s Minister of Security and Internal Affairs Simon
Compaore said a doctor and his
wife kidnapped in Burkina Faso’s
north are Australian, correcting
earlier reports by the ministry’s
spokeswoman that they were Austrian. The two were kidnapped
from Djibo, the capital of the
northern Soum province in the
Sahel near the border with Mali,
he said. The couple had been
doing volunteer work in the area
for years, said a local reporter.
The Islamic extremists stormed
the hotel and cafe Friday night. A
young black woman with dreadlocks and young Arabs entered
the cafe shouting Allahu akbar
(Arabic for “God is great”), said
Issouf Ouattara, who was at the
cafe where 10 people were killed
in the gunfire.
“There was general panic. After
about 20 minutes, the situation
calmed down and then the firing started again, and I think this
time it was the police,” said another witness, Inoussa Diarra.
Gunfire ramped up early Saturday as gendarme and military
forces fought to take back the
building, which had been blackened by a fire during the assault.
Onlookers were kept far away
from the fighting, which continued into daylight.
After the morning call to prayer
signaled a new day, security forces took control of the Splendid
Hotel and searched nearby hotels
for other extremists in hiding. The
search continued after security
forces found and killed a fourth
extremist at the Hotel Yibi, the
president said.
PARIS — One man was brain
dead and three others faced possible permanent brain damage
after volunteering to take part in
a drug trial for a painkiller based
on a natural brain compound
similar to the active ingredient
in marijuana, French authorities
said Friday.
The Paris prosecutor’s office
opened an investigation into what
French Health Minister Marisol
Touraine called “an accident of
exceptional gravity” at a clinical
trial lab in the western French
city of Rennes.
The trial involved 90 healthy
volunteers who were given the
experimental drug in varying
doses at different times, she told
reporters at a news conference in
Rennes.
Six male volunteers between
28 and 49 years old have since
been hospitalized, including one
man now classified as brain dead,
Touraine said, adding that the
other 83 volunteers were being
contacted.
The drug trial for the six hospitalized men began on Jan. 7 and
was halted Monday, a day after
the first volunteer fell ill.
The chief neuroscientist at the
hospital in Rennes, Dr. Gilles
Edan, said in addition to the
brain-dead man, three other men
could have “irreversible” brain
damage. A fifth man is suffering
from neurological problems, and
a sixth man is being kept in the
hospital but is in less critical condition, he said.
Edan said there’s no known
way to reverse the effects of the
experimental drug, which was
given orally to healthy volunteers
as part of a Phase 1 trial by Biotrial, a drug evaluation company
based in Rennes, on behalf of the
Portuguese pharmaceutical company Bial.
Release: Michigan’s Hekmati was in Iran to visit his ailing grandmother
FROM FRONT PAGE
Three were serving prison
terms and now have received a
commutation or pardon.
Three others were awaiting
trial; the last one made a plea
agreement.
The person in Iran said the four
were freed Saturday in exchange
for the release of seven Iranians
held in U.S. prisons.
The release of the prisoners,
along with the expected implementation of the nuclear deal and
sanctions relief, capped a week of
intense U.S.-Iran diplomacy that
took an unexpected turn on Tuesday with the detention by Iran of
10 U.S. Navy sailors and their two
boats in the Persian Gulf.
They were released in less than
24 hours after Kerry intervened
with Zarif in multiple telephone
calls that administration officials
hailed as a channel of communication opened because of the
nuclear negotiations.
Certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency
would allow Iran to immediately
recoup some $100 billion in assets frozen overseas.
The benefits of new oil, trade
and financial opportunities from
suspended sanctions could prove
far more valuable for Tehran in
the long run.
Kris Coratti, vice president of
communications and a spokeswoman for the Post, said that
“while we
are hopeful,
we have not
received
any
official word
of Jason’s
release.”
Hekmati’s lawyer,
Mahmoud
Alizadeh
Hekmati
Tabatabaei, said
Hekmati called him earlier Saturday from prison.
“He told me that judiciary of-
ficials have called for a meeting
with him. But I’ve not been formally informed if he is free now,”
he said, adding that negotiations
for the prisoners’ release has
been going on for the past two
months.
A report by the semi-official
ISNA news agency quoted a statement from the Tehran prosecutor’s office as saying the inmates
were freed “within the framework of exchanging prisoners.” It
did not elaborate.
Rezaian was born in California
and holds both U.S. and Iranian
citizenship.
He was convicted in closed
proceedings last year after being
charged with espionage and related allegations.
The Post and the U.S. government have denied the accusations, as has Rezaian, who was
the Post’s Tehran correspondent.
Hekmati, of Flint, Mich., was
detained in August 2011 on espionage charges.
Hekmati went to Iran to visit
family and spend time with his
ailing grandmother.
Abedini, of Boise, Idaho, was
detained for compromising national security in September
2012.
He was sentenced in 2013 to
eight years in prison.
PAGE 12
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OPINION
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Congress should join terrorism debate
Akron Beacon Journal editorial
P
resident Barack Obama often
faces the criticism from the Republican presidential campaign
trail and elsewhere about failing
to see fully the threat posed by the Islamic
State group. Those critics argue that the
country must go to war. They overlook that
the president already has responded with
military might. Airstrikes began more
than a year ago.
Those strikes have been indispensable
to slowing and reversing gains made on
the ground by the Islamic State group. The
president also has deployed special forces.
Are those steps aggressive enough? That is
the realm for debate, including the question
of what should be expected of this country
when the fight lacks a sufficient fighting
force from the Arab region to counter the
Islamic State group.
What better place for a discussion than
Capitol Hill? Unfortunately, the Republican majorities in Congress have resisted
calls for lawmakers to authorize a war.
The president has relied on the authority
provided by lawmakers after the Sept. 11
attacks. As he put it last month in speaking to the nation in the wake of the Paris
and San Bernardino, Calif., attacks and reiterated last week, Congress should act “to
demonstrate that the American people are
united and committed to this fight.”
The Islamic State group has been described as an “existential threat,” although
if it were, the likelihood is that Congress
— Democrats and Republicans — already
would have rallied to declare war. The
more illuminating view is that this is part of
a different kind of war, the country having
learned hard lessons in the form of 6,874
soldiers dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
cost approaching $2.5 trillion — or as much
as $6 trillion when accounting for injured
veterans and the need to restore military
hardware.
The president has examined the aftermath and expressed an understandable
reluctance to extend such a sacrifice. For
all the criticism hurled his way, fairly and
unfairly, he has taken up the task of shaping an alternative, and it is that discussion
Congress should join by debating the question of an updated authorization.
No doubt, there are sharp partisan divisions, Democrats preferring to see the
president with limited authority, Republicans advocating something broader and
more muscular. What a debate would encourage are actual choices, moving away
from easy talk on the stump to framing the
precise mission and commitment.
In the end, compromises may be struck.
The positive element for the country would
be Congress and the White House showing
a united front, both taking responsibility
for projecting military power abroad and
putting men and women at risk.
For now, lawmakers have avoided such
a duty, one defined in the Constitution, just
as they have not revamped their committees to enhance oversight of counterterrorism (as proposed by the 9/11 Commission)
or confirmed an able nominee to lead the
Treasury effort in tracking the finances
of terrorist organizations. The results are
lost opportunities to get better in the fight
against terrorism.
Google to partner ‘more and more’ on cars
BY LEONID BERSHIDSKY
Bloomberg View
T
he narrative about Silicon Valley,
Calif., disrupting the auto industry has a flaw: The likes of Google
probably aren’t going to build
their own vehicles, self-driving or otherwise. Traditional car companies will do
it for them, just as outside manufacturers
make mobile phones for top Silicon Valley
brands.
Oh, and the cars probably will have steering wheels.
At the annual Automotive News conference in Detroit last week, John Krafcik,
who runs Google’s self-driving car project,
explained that the tech company was going
to “need a lot of help in the next stage of our
project” and would be “partnering more
and more.” That’s because “automakers
have a track record of producing cars at
scale,” and Google doesn’t have experience
with mass production.
The Silicon Valley giant apparently was
overambitious when it decided to build its
own self-driving vehicles in 2014. Google’s
car initiative probably will resemble its
Nexus program for mobile devices: Phones
and tablets that are made and branded by
established manufacturers. They are only
Google devices because they come with
an unadulterated version of the company’s
Android operating system, free from any
manufacturer-introduced flavorings.
“The reason we build hardware with our
ecosystem partners,” Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said last year, is
“so we can guide the ecosystem forward.”
Google, however, doesn’t really build anything: The latest Nexus devices, the 5X and
6P smartphones, are made by LG and Huawei, respectively.
Now, 18 months after Google presented
its toasterlike test vehicles to the public, it
should be clear that carmakers aren’t going
to let Silicon Valley companies monopolize
the software that’s becoming increasingly
important to their business. Last year, German manufacturers pooled resources to
buy the Here navigation map business from
Nokia. Ford has developed an open- source
alternative to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay — the software products that link mobile devices to cars’ computer systems, and
Toyota has signed up to use it. It turned out
that automakers can produce or source cutting-edge software. They are working on
their own self-driving technology, too.
TONY AVELAR /AP
Riders enter Google’s self-driving prototype car during a demonstration last May at the
Google campus in Mountain View, Calif.
With car manufacturers wary of letting
Google and Apple take over an important
part of their product, the Silicon Valley
companies have a choice of two strategies:
One is to build their own car-manufacturing operation, which is an enormously expensive and risky proposition. The other
approach is to outsource, which can be done
two ways: The Apple-Foxconn model, in
which the Chinese contractor builds devices
to Apple’s specifications and under Apple’s
brand, and Google’s Nexus model.
I suspect that only the second is feasible,
even for Apple, which has its own secretive
auto program. No major car manufacturer,
and probably no major parts maker, will
build white-label cars for the tech companies: They have their own strong brands,
and they know Apple suppliers would be
forced to take huge risks.
One reason Google desperately needs a
partner is that it’s finding it hard to reinvent the four-wheeled vehicle. It has just
made public a report on the 272 cases in
15 months when its test cars’ software told
human drivers to take over, and the 69 when
the drivers grabbed the wheel because they
sensed danger. Google said the events were
increasingly rare, but even if their number
is cut down drastically, it’s unlikely that
Google would be able to fulfill its ambition
of producing cars without a steering wheel,
accelerator or brake pedal anytime soon.
Other companies testing autonomous vehicles also report numerous cases of driver
intervention (Tesla is the one exception),
but they never entertained the wheel-less
fantasy to start with.
The self-driving car will be, well, a car
— except that it will be able to drive itself
most of the time. Compared with today’s vehicles, it will be enhanced, not reinvented.
Therefore, it makes little sense for tech
companies to compete with traditional car
manufacturers and lots of sense to partner
with them. There are weaker competitors to
beat — for example, Uber and Lyft, which
have been “disrupting” transportation.
Bloomberg reported in December that
Google was planning to set up a separate
unit under its Alphabet holding company
that would offer rides in self-driving cars
for hire. Google’s resources are vastly superior to Uber’s, and if it finds strong manufacturing partners, it can be as disruptive to
the new transportation companies as they
themselves have been to the taxi business.
If that’s the way things work out, though,
the car industry may suffer, too. According
to a Barclays report last year, the arrival
of self-driving cars could reduce vehicle
ownership by 50 percent and annual auto
demand by 40 percent in 25 years.
Carmakers read these predictions, too.
It’s likely that they are working on their
own plans for self-driving-car-for-hire
businesses.
Incumbents don’t have to be passive victims as “software eats the world.” Manufacturing prowess still counts, especially
when coupled with open-mindedness and
flexibility.
Leonid Bershidsky, a Bloomberg View contributor,
is a Berlin-based writer.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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OPINION
Unleash US air power in Afghanistan
BY DAVID PETRAEUS
M ICHAEL O’H ANLON
AND
P
resident Barack Obama’s desire
to avoid large new ground commitments in the Middle East is, in
many respects, understandable,
given the experiences of some 15 years
of war. At present, however, the modest number of U.S. and coalition troops
in Afghanistan operate with one hand
tied behind their backs — at a time when
Afghan forces, though fighting hard, are
struggling. That should be changed. We
should unleash our air power in support of
our Afghan partners in the same way that
we support our Iraqi and Syrian partners
against extremists.
At present, U.S. and NATO air power
in Afghanistan is used only to attack validated al-Qaida targets, to counter specific
individuals or groups who have attacked
coalition forces previously, and to respond
directly to attacks on coalition forces. According to leaders on the ground, U.S. and
NATO forces are otherwise not allowed
to attack Taliban targets. The situation
appears to be in flux in regard to Islamic
State elements, but through 2015, they,
too, could be targeted only under narrow
circumstances.
The origins of this contorted policy
are, once again, somewhat understandable, even if the policy, itself, should be
changed. When he was Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai frequently objected to
NATO’s use of firepower, especially when
tragic accidents took the lives of Afghan
civilians. Though this war has probably
involved the most carefully controlled air
power in the history of warfare, with NATO
troops taking extraordinary measures to
protect innocents, mistakes inevitably occurred. Karzai’s accumulated frustration
led him to increasingly react to such tragedies not just with private outrage but also
public excoriation. At times, the mission’s
future hung in the balance. To minimize
such friction, while also prodding Afghans
to view the fight against the Taliban more
as their own and less as ours, Obama decided to end NATO targeting of the Taliban
in most situations.
Also, some administration lawyers harbor concerns that the authorization for the
use of military force approved soon after
9/11 does not extend to justify the continued use of force against the Taliban. That
is logic we believe unfounded; after all, it
was the Taliban that allowed al-Qaida the
sanctuary it used to plan the fateful attacks
15 years ago. In addition, the Taliban, in
cahoots with the Haqqani network and
other extremist elements, is trying to overthrow the very Afghan government that is
now committed to keeping al-Qaida and
the Islamic State at bay.
We have the tools in place to step up our
game considerably. When combined with
a motivated and competent ground force,
air power can be quite effective. This was
witnessed in 2001, when U.S. air power
and special operatives worked with the
Northern Alliance to oust the Taliban from
power. It was seen on a vast scale while
supporting coalition and host-nation forces
in Iraq and Afghanistan — increasing in
effectiveness, in fact, as the fleet of drones
and other precision-strike assets expanded
dramatically over the course of the “surges” in each war. It has also been seen of
late in Iraq and Syria, where U.S. air power
collaborated with Kurdish forces and other
partners in both countries to prevent further inroads by the Islamic State in 2014
and then to liberate places such as Sinjar
and Ramadi in Iraq and a number of villages near Kobani in Syria last year.
In Syria and Iraq, U.S. and coalition air
power has been used increasingly vigorously. In 2014, coalition aircraft dropped
ordnance during about 2,000 aircraft sorties; that number grew above 9,000 last
year.
But we have moved in the opposite di-
ROBERT C LOYS/Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
Tech. Sgt. Ritchie Videna, in the cockpit, and Staff Sgt. Matthew Crabtree, avionics
systems technicians of the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, perform a chaff-and-flare operations check Jan. 8 on an F-16 Fighting Falcon at Bagram
Air Field, Afghanistan.
rection in Afghanistan. Even though our
military footprint there is more firmly established, with nearly 10,000 U.S. troops
and 6,000 other foreign troops, and with
several major airfields accessible to NATO
forces in country, ordnance was dropped
during only about 400 sorties last year.
The corresponding tally for 2014 was about
1,100; in 2010, it was about 2,500.
The Taliban is not winning decisively
in Afghanistan by any means, but it has
learned that it can mass for attack in many
places without fear of NATO airstrikes.
Partly as a result, it temporarily took control of the provincial capital of Kunduz in
the fall; more recently it has taken large
swaths of Helmand province, as well as a
number of places in the country’s mountainous east.
We do not need a big U.S. troop buildup in
Afghanistan, but we should take the gloves
off of those who are there. Afghan forces
are doing perhaps 99 percent of the fighting on the ground, and that is as it should
be — though as the tragic recent casualties
in Helmand and near Bagram Air Field reminded us, Americans are certainly still in
the fight.
The development of the Afghan air force
will take a least a few more years. In the
meantime, we can and should do more to
ensure that the Taliban does not win the
war, which could lead to new sanctuaries
for al-Qaida and the Islamic State on the
eastern flank of their broader area of operations. Vigorous use of the air power we
already have in the region is the most logical and straightforward next step for doing
so.
David Petraeus, a retired Army general and chairman of the KKR Global Institute, and Michael
O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution , wrote for The Washington Post.
Old rules limit US forces in a changed Afghan War
BY ELI L AKE
Bloomberg View
A
s the Afghanistan War grinds
into its 15th year, many U.S. military officers are telling Congress
their hands are tied to go after
the enemy, particularly the Islamic State,
which is building up its presence in the
country despite fierce opposition from the
Taliban.
Current and former U.S. military officials tell me that the U.S. and NATO
mission in Afghanistan is almost entirely
focused on the re-emergence of al-Qaida
and that strikes against Islamic State leaders are scarce.
Afghan news media reported one such
strike over the weekend in the province of
Nangarhar. In July, U.S. airstrikes reportedly killed Hafez Saeed, an Islamic State
leader, in what the group has called its
Khorasan province. But U.S. officials tell
me the rules of engagement in Afghanistan
are highly restrictive.
“There are real restrictions about what
they can do against the ISIS presence in
Afghanistan,” Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told me about the rules of engagement
for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Thornberry said that the rules of engagement, combined with what he called micromanagement from the White House, have
led military officers to tell him they have
to go through several unnecessary and burdensome hoops before firing at the enemy.
“My understanding is it’s a very confused, elaborate set of requirements,”
Thornberry said. “I think the effect of
going through all of that makes it harder
for our people to conduct their missions.”
He would not get into specifics about
the rules, saying, “If the public were able
to know all the restrictions placed on our
troops, they would be unhappy about it,
and if the enemy knew this they would
have more of a leg up than they do now.”
Col. Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for
U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, declined to comment on the rules of engagement.
Congress is focusing on the rules in
Afghanistan after Green Beret Staff Sgt.
Matthew McClintock was killed earlier
this month in an operation to assist Afghan
national security forces in a battle against
the Taliban in Marjah, in Helmand province. A news site run by special operations
veterans called Sofrep reported this month
that the restrictive rules were one reason
it took so long for a Quick Reaction Force
to come to the aid of McClintock’s Green
Berets when they were pinned down in
Marjah.
A Pentagon spokesman recently disputed an element of that report, saying that an
AC-130 gunship was never waved off in the
rescue mission and that it fired at Taliban
positions in the fight.
Nonetheless, some lawmakers are asking
more questions. Rep Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.,
a retired Navy SEAL and member of the
House Armed Services Committee, wrote
Defense Secretary Ash Carter to ask whether the current rules “restrict the immediate
use of assets on hand” in the Marjah rescue
operation. Eight other Republican House
members also signed the letter.
Thornberry told me Pentagon officials
have briefed him about the battle, but he
still has questions. “I want to know what
happened and why and what the other options were,” he told me. “Whether it was
formal rules of engagement or having to
call back somewhere and ask, ‘Mother,
may I?’ ”
President Barack Obama intended for
this fighting to be over by now. He signed
off on a plan to withdraw all U.S. troops
from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. At
the end of that year, Obama reluctantly
agreed to leave a little less than 10,000 U.S.
forces in the country. But those forces were
no longer technically engaged in a combat
mission. They were there to “advise and assist,” to use the military’s favored phrase.
In the last year, however, U.S. forces and
the Afghan soldiers they advise and assist
have been very much involved in combat
as the Taliban increases its territory, alQaida expands and the Islamic State begins to establish its own foothold there.
This newly complex war, and the importance of rules of engagement, became obvious in October, after U.S. combat aircraft
bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, killing 30 civilians.
U.S. military officials have said the special operations forces operating the AC-130
gunship that attacked did not follow rules
of engagement; they fired even though
there was no video feed of the target on the
ground. That failure has placed U.S. forces
in Afghanistan under greater scrutiny.
David Sedney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia between
2009 and 2013, said the rules in Afghanistan were worrisome because they limited
how U.S. forces can support their Afghan
allies. “The rules of engagement appear to
be confused, contradictory and contrary
to our national interest,” he told me. “Our
inability to use air power to directly to
support Afghan forces is leading to a deterioration of the security situation that is
dangerous to the future of Afghanistan and
dangerous to our national security.”
The Obama administration still hopes
there won’t be much more fighting to do.
On Monday, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan
and the U.S. announced meetings aimed
at restarting the stalled peace process
with the Taliban to finally end the war in
Afghanistan.
In the meantime, the rules of engagement are written as though that war had
already ended. But U.S. forces in Afghanistan are still fighting it, as best they can.
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AMERICAN ROUNDUP
Man, 101, shovels
neighbor’s sidewalk
ST. PAUL — A 101MN
year-old St. Paul man
is receiving praise for shovel-
THE CENSUS
154
The number of U.S. stores Wal-Mart will close, starting at the end of the month. It has a total of
11,000 stories worldwide. More than 95 percent of the stores that will close are located within 10
miles of another Wal-Mart. The company will shutter all 102 of its U.S. Wal-Mart Express convenience stores. The retailer said it would work to ensure employees are placed in nearby locations.
ing the sidewalk of his next-door
neighbor after a light snowfall.
Another neighbor started recording when he saw Richard
Mann shoveling snow on the
walkway leading to his neighbor’s house. The video had nearly
787,000 views as of Friday.
The neighbor who recorded the
video said he usually tries to shovel Mann’s sidewalk, but this time
the 101-year-old beat him to it.
Mann said he wanted to help his
next-door neighbor because the
man was out of town and Mann
figured he could use the exercise.
He assured the neighbor that he
wasn’t going to overexert himself
because he knows his limitations.
Town has no groundhog
after mayor got bit
SUN PRAIRIE — Sun
WI
Prairie is without a
groundhog for this year’s Groundhog Day festivities, after the animal used at last year’s event bit
the former mayor.
Images of Jimmy the Groundhog
biting then-Mayor Jon Freund’s
ear were widely circulated.
Afterward, authorities told
Jimmy’s owners they needed a
license to own a groundhog. That
prompted Ti and Jeff Gauger to
release Jimmy into the wild.
Ti Gauger told the Wisconsin
State Journal that organizers of
the town’s Groundhog Day event
are scrambling for a replacement.
Gauger said the city’s event will
begin at sunrise Feb. 2 even if no
replacement is found.
But if a groundhog is found in
time, this year it will be kept in a
cage to avoid another nibble.
Woman had 50 pounds
of pot in foosball table
LEWISTON — AuthorNY
ities said a Canadian
woman has been caught trying to
smuggle more than 50 pounds of
marijuana into western New York
by hiding it in a foosball table.
The woman told officers she
was heading into New York state to
buy tickets for Wednesday night’s
$1.6 billion Powerball jackpot,
but a search by a K-9 team discovered 50 vacuum-sealed plastic
bags with marijuana stuffed into
a foosball table in her van.
Officials said the pot was worth
about $60,000. The woman was
turned over the New York State
Police.
The same day in neighboring
Vermont, a Canadian man was
arrested while pulling a sled
carrying more than 180 pounds
of prescription pills across the
border.
Fake cop gets extra 9
to 18 years for robbery
HOLLIDAYSBURG —
A western Pennsylvania man already in prison for gun
offenses must spend 9 to 18 more
years behind bars for robbing a
drug dealer while pretending to
be a narcotics officer.
PA
JAMES ROBINSON, PENNLIVE.COM /AP
Showing them how it’s done
Eva Gates, 12, of State College, Pa., rides a mechanical bull Wednesday at the Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pa.
The Altoona Mirror reported a
Blair County judge on Thursday
imposed the sentence against Stephen Espenlaub Jr., 42.
Espenlaub was sentenced to
seven to 15 years after his March
conviction for possession of illegal firearms.
The judge refused to allow Espenlaub to serve the sentences
concurrently after detectives
testified that Espenlaub made it
more dangerous for real officers
to do their jobs by robbing someone while pretending to be a cop.
Girl stabs boy in neck
with pencil on bus
BATTLE
CREEK
MI
— Authorities said a
13-year-old girl stabbed a boy in
the neck with a pencil while they
were on a school bus in southern
Michigan.
Battle Creek police responded
Thursday afternoon to the stabbing, which took place after crude
comments were being made toward the girl. Police said the
12-year-old boy was treated for
minor injuries.
Another boy was struck with
the pencil, but police said it didn’t
penetrate his clothing.
The girl was taken into custody
by police. Police said she’ll face a
felonious assault charge in juve-
nile court.
Wrongfully jailed man
accused of selling meth
SEATTLE — A Seattle
man who was wrongfully imprisoned a decade and
awarded nearly $500,000 from
the state is now back in custody.
The Seattle Times reported that
Brandon Olebar, 32, was accused
of selling methamphetamine,
driving a getaway car during a
burglary and selling stolen guns.
Olebar was released in 2013
after spending 10 years in prison
for a 2003 burglary and robbery.
His conviction was based solely
on witness testimony. He was the
first person to receive wrongfulconviction compensation from
the state.
Now he has three ongoing
criminal complaints, two in King
County Superior Court and another in U.S. District Court, accusing him of new crimes.
WA
Agency uses decoy
cameras on some trains
OAKLAND — Some of
CA
the security cameras
aboard San Francisco Bay Area
commuter trains are fake.
The Oakland Tribune reported
Friday that BART Director Gail
Murray said some of the cameras
are decoys and some are live.
The question arose after police refused to say if a killing on
a train car on Saturday was captured by security cameras.
BART police have been investigating the shooting since Jan. 9,
when a man shot a passenger to
death as a San Francisco-bound
train rolled into the West Oakland station.
The transit agency has many
surveillance cameras on the station platforms and at the fare
boxes. One of those cameras
caught images that police have
distributed of the gunman leaving the station.
Dispute over stirring
chili leads to attack
DETROIT — Police
MI
said a dispute over stirring a pot of chili led to an attack
that injured two people.
Officer Jennifer Moreno said a
26-year-old is accused of attacking his 35-year-old wife and a
30-year-old man who is a family
acquaintance around 5:10 a.m.
Friday on the city’s west side.
Moreno told The Detroit News
the acquaintance stirred the pot,
which was on the stove. The acquaintance told police the man
bit and stabbed him because he
“was unhappy about him stirring
the chili.”
The 26-year-old was arrested.
His name wasn’t immediately
released.
Police find underground
shooting range
CALWA — Officers
in Central California
found an underground shooting
range after neighbors reported
hearing gunfire.
The Fresno Bee reported Friday that the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office gang team found the
underground range at a home in
Calwa, just south of Fresno.
Officers found a hole dug into
the backyard of a property that
people were using guns for target
shooting.
Sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti
said the hole was covered by
heavy blankets and mattresses
to prevent the sounds of gunfire
from escaping. Neighbors had
reported hearing gunfire in the
past but thought it was from airsoft guns.
Botti said one person was arrested at the house for drug possession and for being a felon in
possession of a gun.
CA
From wire reports
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LIFESTYLE
JOHN L OK , THE SEATTLE TIMES/TNS
When Jonathan Nichols got a new cellphone in 2012, he didn’t expect to get the number once used by hip-hop legend Sir Mix-ALot. Since then, he’s gotten countless calls and texts. Nichols is at the Dick’s Drive-In mentioned in “Posse on Broadway.”
He cannot lie
Seattle man at first baffled, then amused after
getting rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot’s old phone number
BY NICOLE BRODEUR
The Seattle Times
T
he first text came not long after Jonathan
Nichols got his new phone.
“Check this guy out,” it said, with a link to
a YouTube video of a guy making beats out of
a synthesizer.
It was good, Nichols thought, but couldn’t have been
meant for him. He was a law student at Seattle University who had just switched to a local number to prepare for the job search ahead.
“That’s pretty cool,” Nichols, 33, texted back. “But
you clearly have the wrong number.”
Then he started getting phone calls from luxurycar dealerships — Ferrari, Lamborghini, Jaguar — all
asking if a Mr. Anthony Ray would like to come out to
the dealership and take one or two of their cars for a
spin.
“I’d love to,” Nichols would tell the very polite salespeople. “But I think you have the wrong guy. I’m a
broke law student.”
Then he started getting pictures of women in bikinis in various states of raunchy repose. So many that
Nichols told the sender, “You need to stop.”
Finally came the day in August when Nichols was at
a softball tournament and his phone started “blowing
up off the hook.”
Photos of women with lips pursed. Texts that said
“Love you,” and “Happy Birthday.” A photo of a bottle
of “Big Bottom” whiskey. More women. More lips and
kisses. And one telltale reference to the 1992 rap hit
“Baby Got Back.”
No way, Nichols thought. After the tournament, he
and his friends Googled Seattle hip-hop legend Sir
Mix-A-Lot.
His real name? Anthony Ray.
His birthday? Aug. 12. That very day.
“That’s when it all made sense,” Nichols, 33, said
one recent afternoon.
The phone number he had picked out at the Verizon store just because it was easy to remember had a
previous owner no one could forget: Sir Mix-A-Lot, the
Sir Mix-A-Lot’s advice for the man who
was given the rapper’s old cellphone
number:
“Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife.
That would be the first thing.
And don’t answer any texts
by saying ‘Yes,’ because
people take ‘Yes’ differently
with me. And usually you end
up opening your wallet.”
“Tell him any really sexy pictures — little in the middle,
and if she’s got much back —
give them the new number.”
man behind “Baby Got Back,” “Posse on Broadway”
and founder of Rhyme Cartel Records.
“Are you serious?” the rapper said when I called
him — on his new number — to tell him about Nichols.
“That is hilarious. Poor fella.”
What would he have told Nichols before the technological torch was passed?
“Don’t check any text messages in front of your
wife,” the rapper advised. “That would be the first
thing. And don’t answer any texts by saying ‘Yes,’ because people take ‘Yes’ differently with me. And usually you end up opening your wallet.”
Like with the car dealerships.
“That’s why I’m telling him, ‘Don’t say yes.’ ”
Nichols, a public-interest attorney with Moriarty
and Associates, has been tracking his adventures in
Mix-land on his Facebook page. Friends have suggested he start a blog with a sampling of the texts:
“Hi Ray (Minista) pls info if u attending freestyle
explosion and locale details. Thanks in advance.”
Nichols didn’t respond, then got another text: “O.K.
silence got it brush.”
Another: “What up bro this is SupaSam. I’m having
a morning show in-studio Christmas party. I need you
to come through!”
There have also been offers for free concert tickets
and visits backstage, which Nichols has found tempting. Why not just show up at the appointed place at the
appointed time and see what happens?
“But ‘no false representations’ is one of the rules of
the bar,” Nichols says, ruefully.
Nichols has saved only one voice message, from a
woman with a New Jersey area code. He found it on
his phone and handed it to me for a listen.
“This used to be Sir Mix-A-Lot,” a woman says
with a smile in her voice. “You get someone calling
you talking about they be Snoop Dogg, they really are.
Lucky you.”
Nichols got the new number so he would be local
when he started looking for a job.
But it turned out to be a secret weapon, a way to
stand out and be cool by pure coincidence.
“When interviewers have asked me, ‘What’s something interesting that no one else knows?’ or when people I meet working political campaigns tell me about
meeting Bill Clinton, I always say, ‘I have Sir Mix-ALot’s old phone number.’
“It’s a total mic drop.”
And one that comes with one very specific responsibility, according to the previous owner.
“Tell him any really sexy pictures — little in the
middle, and if she’s got much back — give them the new
number,” the rapper said with a laugh, then paused.
“But not the car dealerships.”
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MUSIC
DAV I D B O W I E
1947-2016
Icon’s songwriting transcended image
BY R ANDALL ROBERTS
Los Angeles Times
A
mong the many appreciations
and celebrations likely published
about David Bowie in coming
days, readers will learn about his
standing as a style icon, a groundbreaking
avatar of sexual fluidity and a shape-shifting artist who expanded the possibilities in
rock ’n’ roll performance.
But Bowie the icon is nothing without
Bowie the songwriter. Yes, in public, he
played with image and identity in ways
that will continue to influence generations.
Nestled within these visual creations,
though, rests the reason for his enduring
fame: the music, and his skill as a lyrical
storyteller.
“The dressing of a show is just a dressing. It’s a sort of perfunctory kind of thing,”
Bowie told interviewer Russell Harty
in 1975, a few years after Bowie had become a superstar as Ziggy Stardust. “But
the content has to stand. I mean, you can
dress a show with a trillion dollars — or
trillion pounds — worth of goodies, but if
the show is not substantial, there will be no
impact.”
Pressed further, Bowie replied, “I know
what songs I’m going to sing, which is the
most important thing.”
Listen to his breakout hit, “Space Oddity,”
and the sensation of travel to the outer limits remains sublimely cosmic. The work’s
first lines, a countdown to blast-off, could
be the opening lyrics of Bowie’s chapter
one, his “Call me Ishmael.” It’s 1969. We’re
going on a trip to the moon, and soon Our
Hero will be floating in space.
David Bowie
Blackstar (ISO/Columbia Records)
Two days before his death, David
Bowie released “Blackstar,” his 26th
album, which serves as a fitting musical
epitaph.
On “Blackstar,” he transforms himself once again, proving that at 69, he
still had plenty of
surprises up his
musical sleeve.
Recording primarily with an
avant-garde jazz
quartet and with
a longtime collaborator,
coproducer Tony
Visconti, Bowie crafted a haunting,
seven-song collection that deals thematically with death and despair — and now
will be endlessly parsed for clues about
his own impending mortality.
Far from being depressing, the album
The arc of his musical life ascended
along with that rocket. Once aloft, Bowie
transmitted universal songs about star men
who communicated via FM radio waves,
about humans longing to explore, and getting lost in the process. He penned works
about isolation, self-reflection, the rush of
enthusiasm that comes with new life and
being “strung out in Heaven’s high, hitting
an all time low.” As the years went on and
his body gave way, he frequently addressed
death and decay.
feels uplifting and relentlessly inventive.
Credit, of course, goes to Bowie, but his
new playmates here keep pace with him
note for note, especially drummer Mark
Guiliana, whose persistent beats provide an earthly tether to Bowie’s often
ethereal vocals, and saxophonist Donny
McCaslin, whose bleating playing often
gives the project a deliberately off-kilter,
discordant feel.
Whether on the disturbing title track,
which ties together two seemingly
disparate tunes and is rumored to be
about ISIS, the narrated-from-heaven
tale “Lazarus,” or the album closer, “I
Can’t Give Everything Away,” Bowie
has — for the last time — reinvented not
only himself, but popular music in a way
that challenges, but never alienates, the
listener.
It’s an appropriate and satisfying musical goodbye.
— Melinda Newman
Associated Press
That essence, that uniquely Bowie-ian
way with lyric and melody, wasn’t something that could be commoditized or compromised. But somehow these oblique
songs hit on an international scale. “Ashes
to Ashes” is about addiction and existential
dread: “The shrieking of nothing is killing
me” isn’t a line you’d expect near the top of
the charts, yet there it was.
Many children of the 1990s first heard
Bowie through Nirvana when the band
performed “The Man Who Sold the World”
on MTV Unplugged. When sung by a gravelly Kurt Cobain, himself struggling with
addiction, the version felt like a portent.
Conjuring a mysterious interaction in a
stairway, Bowie’s words echoed with new
meaning: “I thought you died alone, a long
long time ago.”
Those odd turns of phrases, the way
he snatched bits of strange dialogue and
turned them into foundations, are what defined Bowie the lyricist. Every line acted
as its own portal. Each was its own chapter
in an ongoing saga. But they were sturdy
enough to withstand reinvention.
Consider a scene from Wes Anderson’s
“The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,”
where Brazilian musician Seu Jorge serves
as Greek chorus while covering Bowie’s
songs. Stripped of Bowie’s glamour, his
style and everything but a man singing
about life on Mars and the importance of
turning “to face the strange,” the simply
rendered songs remain unsinkable.
Throughout his career, Bowie never professed to be an intellectual or begged for a
podium. He was reluctant in front of a microphone when he wasn’t performing. But
he did have a singular passion.
“Do I worship anything? Life. I very
much love life,” he said in 1973.
Four decades later he suggested another
passion during one of his final songs, from
“Blackstar.”
“I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen,” he sang
during “Lazarus.” It’s a song about being
untethered, drifting away, of being lost but
having nothing left to lose. It’s not hard to
hear the voice of Major Tom when Bowie
sings, “I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
— dropped my cellphone down below.”
David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter, released “Blackstar,” his 26th album, on Jan. 8, his 69th birthday, and two days before his death.
M ARTIN RICKETT, PA WIRE-ZUMA PRESS/TNS
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MUSIC
AP
Moments that
shaped his
varied career
BY JILL L AWLESS
‘Hunky Dory’
‘Space Oddity’
Bowie first displayed his knack for seizing the zeitgeist with
this out-of-this-world track released in 1969, the year of the
first moon landing. Beautiful and melancholy, it told the story
of astronaut Major Tom, adrift in space, lamenting “Planet
Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.” Real-life astronauts embraced the song, with Cmdr. Chris Hadfield memorably performing it
aboard the International Space Station in 2013.
Bowie appeared on the cover of
this 1971 album as an androgynous figure with long golden
locks — one in an ever-changing array of styles and personas he would
adopt and abandon. The songs explored
sexual ambiguity, fame, new fatherhood
and more. “Changes” was almost a career
mission statement, while “Life on Mars,”
the tale of a misfit girl and her wild imagination, became one of his most enduring
hits and gave its name to a 2006 TV show
set in the 70s.
I
Associated Press
t took years of hard work for David Jones to
become David Bowie. The aspiring artist
was a teen popster, a hippy-ish folkie and a
purveyor of novelty records (“The Laughing
Gnome,” best forgotten), before emerging from his
chrysalis to become one of the most unpredictable and
influential figures in music.
Here are 10 defining moments from the
career of rock’s greatest chameleon.
‘Young Americans’
Ziggy
Stardust
After Bowie killed off Ziggy in 1973, he
moved through guises including the edgy
Aladdin Sane before going to the United
States and immersing himself in the sound
of Philadelphia soul. Produced by frequent collaborator
Tony Visconti and featuring a roster of funk and soul
talent that included guitarist Carlos Alomar and a young
Luther Vandross, his 1975 album “Young Americans”
was a complete change of pace, and featured the exuberant title track and the acid-tipped dancefloor-filler
“Fame,” co-written by John Lennon.
‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’
Bowie was
perfectly
cast as an
alien adrift
in the New Mexico
desert in Nicholas
Roeg’s 1976 film,
which opened up a
parallel career path
as an actor. He went
on to play parts including a World War
II prisoner of war in
“Merry Christmas,
Mr. Lawrence,” a
vampire in “The
Hunger,” Pontius
Pilate in “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Andy
Warhol in “Basquiat.” On Broadway, critics praised
him as disfigured Victorian John Merrick in “The
Elephant Man” in 1980.
‘Heroes’
Exhausted by
work and too
much cocaine,
Bowie holed up
in West Berlin
in 1976, and
— working with
synth pioneer
Brian Eno
— produced
three of the
most remarkable
albums of his career. “Low,” “Heroes” and
“Lodger” fused electronic experimentation
and Cold War anxiety into a sound that inspired a new crop of musicians. The 1977
single “Heroes,” a defiant shout of love in
the face of potential armageddon, became an anthem
for a generation.
ILLUSTRATION BY BEV SCHILLING
Stars and Stripes
Bowie adopted the
persona of the flamehaired alien rock star
for his 1972 album “The Rise
and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and
the Spiders from Mars.” A generation of teenagers stopped and
stared when the andro- gynous,
seductive character appeared
on British TV show “Top of the
Pops” performing “Starman.”
Ziggy made Bowie a star, but
even then he was clear-eyed
about the capricious nature of
fame and ruthless about moving
on: “When the kids had killed
the man, we had to break up the
band,” he sang on the album’s
title track.
‘Ashes to Ashes’
Courtesy of
Shore Fire Media
“Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom’s a junkie”:
The first single from Bowie’s 1980 album “Scary Monsters (and
Super Creeps)” is a bittersweet sequel to “Space Oddity” that
Bowie called his epitaph for the 1970s. It also saw him looking to
the future and embracing the new art form of music videos, with
an eerie clip in which Bowie appeared as a spectral Pierrot alongside figures
from London’s emerging New Romantic scene.
‘Let’s Dance’
Bowie embraced the mainstream — or the mainstream finally
caught up with him — in 1983 for one of his biggest albums, considered by many to be the last flourish of his golden period. “Put
on your red shoes and dance the blues,” Bowie sang, and the fans
obeyed, flocking to shows on a monster North American tour.
‘Blackstar’
Another surprise album was released Jan.
8, Bowie’s 69th birthday — a jazz-inflected journey that saw Bowie continuing to
explore new sonic worlds. In the video for
the title track, a blindfolded Bowie offered
enigmatic incantations on life and death.
Two days later, Bowie died aged 69, following a battle with
cancer. Music writer
Graeme Thomson captured the shock felt by
many: “We were so thrilled to have him back, we failed to
notice he was saying goodbye,” he tweeted.
‘The Next Day’
After a decade of public silence, Bowie took fans and
music critics by surprise in 2013 with a new album,
“The Next Day.” It saw the musician looking back on
songs such as “Where Are We Now,” which referenced
his 1970s Berlin days. Fans hoped — in vain — that the new
songs meant Bowie might return to live performance.
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ENTERTAINMENT
Big leap into
fantasy
K IRSTY G RIFFIN, MTV/TNS
Poppy Drayton is Amberle on the fantasy TV series “The Shannara Chronicles, ” MTV’s first foray into a magical fantasy-type program.
Network pins hopes on ‘The Shannara Chronicles’
BY STEVEN ZEITCHIK
Los Angeles Times
S
ince its Buggles-led inception nearly 35 years ago,
MTV has been the arbiter of cool — unearthing
bands, genres of reality television and of course the
very idea of a music video.
But the winds have shifted, and the network is now seeking a different sort of magic: the actual kind.
The network has launched a story of elves, trolls, dwarfs
and a formidable demonic presence that has nothing to do
with Ozzy. The series is “The Shannara Chronicles,” and
it turns work from an old novelistic master, Terry Brooks,
into a movie-style epic as well as an intimate story of millennials in search of love and identity. (Millennial actors,
anyway, because this actually takes place in a future millennium.) Spells are cast, mysterious trees are guarded,
and secret powers are tapped into.
“The fantasy genre has become much cooler,” said Mina
Lefevre, who heads scripted development at MTV. “Even
and especially for females, who are a big part of our audience, the nerd factor has dropped from it. Ten years ago,
this would have been a very different discussion.”
Yes, the network of “Real World” and “Jersey Shore” is
now channeling Tolkien. “Shannara” is a counterpart of
sorts to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and seeks both to ride
that wave and set itself apart from it, though whether it
can do both simultaneously is among the more interesting
questions of the winter television window.
Nor is it just genre that makes “Shannara” a significant
bet for MTV. Self-acknowledged as the most expensive
original production in the network’s history, the series’ 10
episodes were shot in New Zealand, “Lord of the Rings”
style, and come with a top creative pedigree.
It includes the “Smallville” creators Alfred Gough and
Miles Millar, who developed, sold and write on the show;
“Battle: Los Angeles” director Jonathan Liebesman, who
directed the first episode; and “Iron Man” director Jon
Favreau, who serves as an executive producer.
“We’re going for something big and epic,” Favreau said.
“The beauty and the scope is something that I don’t think
has quite been done a lot on the small screen before.”
“Chronicles” derives from “The Elfstones of Shannara,”
the second book in Brooks’ original “Shannara” trilogy.
Published in 1982, it was an early entry in the oeuvre of
Brooks, a fantasy author who both preceded the heyday
of George R.R. Martin and makes him look like a mini-
malist. Over dozens of novels and short-story collections,
spinoffs and mainline mythologies, Brooks follows the stories of many generations in the Four Lands, a future place
where cataclysmic wars among humans have yielded a
new order.
In this vaguely North American topography, an unnamed
holocaust has long wiped out most of the humans, leaving
various troll, dwarf, elf and other species to endure. Theirs
is a pre-industrial, forest-dwelling, horse-riding existence,
and the groups sometimes battle one another, as well as
a set of demonic presences tenuously trapped in a place
called the Forbidding.
By adapting “Elfstones,” MTV has availed itself of the
opportunity for two demo-friendly lead protagonists — Wil
Ohmsford (Austin ButYes, the network ler), a 20-ish healer who
in the opening two-hour
of “Real World”
special is first beginning
and “Jersey Shore” to discover his powers
after a tragedy, and Amis now channeling
berle Elessedil (Poppy
Tolkien.
Drayton), an anointed
daughter of sorts who
lends the proceedings a strong, Hunger Games-style heroine.
Starting with a contest Amberle wins to become part of
the Chosen (a kind of inner circle guarding a mystical tree),
the debut soon sets Amberle on a quest outside her elfin
kingdom, where she will meet Wil, on his own journey. The
larger political context — it is here where “Shannara” gets
most “GOT”-like — has the elves (looking and acting like
humans, though with pointy ears that stigmatize them) prepare for war against a longtime enemy. Inevitably, Amberle
and Wil’s quest plays into this.
Despite the complex back stories and stylized costumes,
creators are hoping for a thematic relevance. This is a
story of young people finding themselves, and their behaviors and dilemma are not that different from those of a
young person today.
“These are mutations of humans — not Narnia, not
Westeros, not Middle-earth,” said Gough. “It’s our world,
thousands of years in the future, and I think that makes it
different than a lot of the material that’s come before.”
“Shannara” also is in keeping with the modern trend of
putting young women on an equal playing field in genre
stories, with Amberle as well as Eretria (Ivana Baquero),
an outlaw scavenger with a co-lead role. “These are two
extraordinary female characters who are very different
— they have conversations and a journey that isn’t about
romance. Yes, that’s a part of it, but they also have real
problems, real dilemmas, real strength that will all be relatable to a contemporary female audience,” Millar said.
It would be both correct and overly simple to call
“Shannara” a basic-cable answer to “Thrones.” The idea
of bringing a cinematic rigor to the fantasy genre and to
introduce it to legions of fans who may not dedicate themselves to it on a regular basis certainly runs parallel. But
“Shannara” will not go for the big provocations of “GOT,”
a factor that may slightly slow its social-media traction but
will also avoid that show’s tendency to polarize its viewing
base. There’s not likely to be a massacre of main characters.
In that vein, “Shannara” will also, despite the occasional
arrow battle or amorous exchange, not move in a hard-R
direction — Favreau called this show “just a little bit softer” — which, unlike “Thrones,” will make younger teens
more likely to watch it (or more accurately, their parents
to sanction it).
Millennials’ interest in “Shannara” (MTV’s core demographic is 12- to 24-year-olds) could be tempered by the
period of the source material. The target audience is certainly unlikely to be familiar with Brooks’ books, and it’s
an open question whether the ’80s-era material will speak
to 21st-century young people.
Series principals who are in that demographic say that
it will.
“It may look like this classic fantasy world, but there’s
a lot of unrequited love, love triangles, slight jealousy and
the messiness of love, which always resonates,” said Drayton, the 24-year-old British actress who plays Amberle.
“It’s about young people trying to find out who they really
are. I think MTV audiences can relate to that. We all can
relate to that.”
The network, for its part, is hoping that its large-scale
production values — not to mention the sheer novelty of
the gamble — will help attract viewers.
“This is an undertaking that I don’t think MTV has done
before and frankly basic cable doesn’t really take on very
often,” Lefevre said. “I think the audience is going to be
surprised. They would have expected that we’d do another
teenager with another superpower. And this is unexpected. That will be good for them, and I think it’s good for us.
The MTV brand has always been provocative and pioneering, and this keeps us moving in that direction.”
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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CROSSWORD AND COMICS
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD
GUNSTON STREET
“Gunston Street” is drawn by Basil Zaviski. Email him at gunstonstreet@yahoo.com. Online: gunstonstreet.com.
RESULTS FOR ABOVE PUZZLE
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GADGETS & CHARTS
GADGET WATCH
Get your groove on with these great goods
BY GREGG ELLMAN/Tribune News Service
T
here are some really cool products here in my
office, so here’s a little bit about a bunch of “stuff”
I have piling up — some new, some not so new.
ILLUSTRATION
BY
C HRISTOPHER SIX /Stars and Stripes
France finds use
for ‘Le doggy bag’
BY JENNY STARRS
The Washington Post
M
any highbrow French
foodies
perceive
doggy bags as American and, synonymously, uncouth.
But “Un doggy bag, s’il-vous
plait,” might become a more common request if environmentalists
have their way.
A new law in France requires
large restaurants to provide takeaway containers, or “les doggy
bags,” to any customers who ask
for one.
Aimed at cutting back on food
waste, the initiative launched at
the beginning of 2016 and applies to establishments with at
least 150 diners a day, reports
France24. More than 100 restaurants in Paris are already in compliance with the new regulation,
but shifting behaviors is another
thing entirely.
As one opinionated diner told
Reuters, “It’s not in the French
culture; it never has been. How
come Americans wear a revolver
on their belt and French people
don’t?”
Point taken. But are doggy bags
really American?
Today’s doggy bags are actually the descendant of a tradition
among Roman nobility that was,
surprisingly, a sign of courtesy.
In the 6th century B.C., banquet
guests wrapped their leftovers in
napkins and brought them home,
etiquette expert Dorothea Johnson wrote in her book “Tea & Etiquette: Taking Tea for Business
and Pleasure.” It was considered
rude to do otherwise, as if to say
the food was not good.
The practice stagnated until
the scarcity of the WWII years,
when the modern doggy bag was
born.In the 1940s, food shortages
affected Americans of all classes.
Economical pet owners were encouraged to minimize waste by
feeding their dogs table scraps,
says Smithsonian Magazine. Eateries started offering leftover food
packets for patrons to bring home
to their pets. Eventually, Americans realized that Fido doesn’t
need foie gras, and got take-away
containers for themselves.
By the 1980s, America had
firmly latched on to doggy bags.
People around the world eventually warmed up to the idea, too.
But France has been a holdout,
until the government gave them a
gentle push earlier this month.
GOgroove’s BlueSYNC RST
alarm clock is a great nightstand all-in-one with a dual
alarm clock, near field communication pairing, charging
station, wireless (Bluetooth)
speaker, FM radio and even a
mic for handsfree calls.
For charging, put your device
on the built-in holder and plug
in your charging cable to the
USB port.
Online: gogroove.com; $59.99
The Ventev USB Charginghub 400 should be on every
kitchen counter for every family. It charges four devices at
once with 5.4 amps of power to
divide among the four.
It runs off of AC itself and
works great. Just buy it.
Online:
mobileaccessories.
ventev.com; $34.06
The Plantronics backbeat Fit
Bluetooth headphones are obviously wireless, and they’re also
comfortable, waterproof sport
earbuds that allow you to safely
hear your surroundings. The
eight-hour battery is nice, too.
The earbuds are attached with
a flexible headband, which reverses for easy storage. There’s
also a built-in mic for calls.
Online: plantronics.com; $97
The TaoTronics TT-SK06
Bluetooth Speaker rocks, looks
great and doesn’t take up a lot
of room. It’s portable, has an internal 4000mAh rechargeable
battery, good for six hours and
a lifetime guarantee from Tao-
Tronics. Just don’t lose it, as I’m
sure the guarantee is only for
performance issues.
Online:
taotronics.com;
$54.57
The Magellan MiVue 658 HD
dash camera MiVue 658 gives
you high-quality video in full
1080p HD and is very easy to
set up and use from the dash of
your car.
Obviously it’s not for filming
your vacation, but it does a great
job filming some fun stuff and
recording video in the unfortunate event of an accident.
If you have an accident, according to Magellan, “the
built-in G-Shock Impact Sensor
automatically locks the recorded video footage, location data,
and date/time information prior
to the incident providing an accurate record of events.”
If you need still images of the
incident, take the dash cam and
switch it to camera mode since
it has an internal battery to keep
it going outside of the car.
You can connect the dash cam
to Wi-Fi to watch, save or share
your videos.
Other features include a
wide-angle lens to record in any
angle with the rotating mount.
The lens is a bright anti-glare F
Lens which is described as able
to reduce glare and absorbs reflection.
Online:
magellangps.com;
$199.99
BRACKETRON /TNS
The Bracketron JamSpot Bluetooth tablet stand does it all for
tablet users.
It keeps your tablet handsfree
in portrait or landscape position
in angles from zero to 70 degrees.
On the bottom is a pair of built-in
speakers to give you much better
sound than the tablet itself.
There’s also a rechargeable
battery to power the speakers.
When the stand isn’t in use, fold it
up and stick in a drawer.
Online:
bracketron.com;
$49.99
INNOD EVICE /TNS
InnoWave wired headphones
sound great, but what gets me excited is the styled, branded, wavy
and expandable headband that
attaches to the soft padded ear
cups.
Online:
innodevice.com/
innowave; $99 (in five colors)
M AGELLA N /TN
S
ITUNES MUSIC
SPOTIFY MUSIC ITUNES MOVIES VIDEO GAMES
The top 10 songs for the week
ending Jan. 1:
The most streamed tracks on Spotify
from Jan. 1-7:
The top 10 movies on iTunes
for the week ending Jan. 10:
Game Informer ranks the Top 10
Xbox One games for January:
The top iPhone apps for the week
ending Jan. 10:
1. “Love Yourself,” Justin Bieber
2. “Hello,” Adele
3. “Sorry,” Justin Bieber
4. “Stressed Out,” twenty one pilots
5. “Stand By You,” Rachel Platten
6. “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Shawn Mendes & Camila
Cabello
7. “My House,” Flo Rida
8. “Roses” (feat. ROZES), The Chainsmokers
9. “Ex’s & Oh’s,” Elle King
10. “Confident,” Demi Lovato
1. “Love Yourself,” Justin Bieber
2. “Sorry,” Justin Bieber
3. “What Do You Mean?”, Justin Bieber
4. “Hello,” Adele
5. “Jumpman,” Drake
6. “Me, Myself & I,” G-Eazy, Bebe
Rexha
7. “Hotline Bling,” Drake
8. “Roses,” The Chainsmokers
9. “Stressed Out,” Twenty One Pilots
10. “Don’t,” Bryson Tiller
1. “Sicario”
2. “Straight Outta
Compton” (Unrated
Director’s Cut)
3. “The Martian”
4. “The Visit”
5. “Sleeping with
Other People”
6. “The Walk”
7. “Trainwreck”
8. “Cop Car”
9. “A Walk in the Woods”
10. “Mission: Impossible — Rogue
Nation”
1. “Rise of the Tomb Raider,” Microsoft
2. “Fallout 4,” Bethesda
3. “Call of Duty: Black Ops III,” Activision
4. “Assassin’s Creed Syndicate,”
Ubisoft
5. “Halo 5: Guardians,” Microsoft
6. “Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition,” Focus Home Interactive
7. “Life is Strange,” Square Enix
8. “Just Cause 3,” Square Enix
9. “Rainbow Six Siege,” Ubisoft
10. “Star Wars Battlefront,” Electronic
Arts
1. Minecraft: Pocket Edition
2. Heads Up!
3. KIMOJI
4. Geometry Dash
5. Akinator the Genie
6. Facetune
7. Minecraft: Story Mode
8. Plague Inc.
9. THE GAME OF LIFE Classic Edition
10. MONOPOLY
— Compiled by AP
— Compiled by AP
— Compiled by AP
— Compiled by TNS
APPS
— Compiled by AP
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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BUSINESS/WEATHER
2016 stock slide is markets’ worst ever
BY A LEX VEIGA
Associated Press
Never before has Wall Street
gotten off to a worse start to a
year.
The stock market capped the
first two weeks of 2016 with a
steep slide Friday that sent the
Dow Jones industrial average
down nearly 400 points.
All three major stock indexes
— the Dow, the Nasdaq composite and the Standard & Poor’s 500
— are now in what’s known as a
correction, or a drop of 10 percent
or more from their recent peaks.
The market has been on a
stomach-churning ride since the
start of the year because of alarm
over a slowdown in China and the
plunging price of oil to its lowest
level in 12 years. Investors are
already seeing damage to U.S.
corporate profits, particularly at
energy companies.
The Dow slid 390.97 points, or
2.4 percent, to 15,988.08. The average had been down more than
500 points early in the afternoon.
The S&P 500 ended down 41.51
points, or 2.2 percent, at 1,880.33.
The Nasdaq dropped 126.59
points, or 2.7 percent, to 4,488.42.
The Dow and S&P 500 have
now fallen about 8 percent this
year, while the Nasdaq is off about
10 percent.
“Oil is the root cause of today,”
said Dan Farley, regional investment strategist at the Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank. “People
are uncertain, and when they’re
uncertain, they’re scared.”
Crude oil has dropped below
$30 a barrel from a high of over
$100 during the summer of 2014.
On Friday, Williams Cos. led a
slide among oil, gas and mining
companies, falling $2.19, or 12
percent, to $16.10.
Investors also got some discouraging economic news on Friday: The Federal Reserve said
U.S. industrial production, which
includes manufacturing, mining
and utilities, dropped in December for the third month in a row.
And another government report
indicated U.S. retail sales dipped.
Many investors expected oil
prices would stabilize. After a
market correction in August, few
forecast it would happen again so
soon. And the Federal Reserve’s
move in December to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly 10 years signaled to many that
the U.S. economy was healthy.
Despite the rough start, Wall
Street watchers are not ready to
say the bull market is over.
Intel dropped 9.1 percent after
the chipmaker posted its fourthquarter results, noting its personal computer business continues to
slump. The stock was the biggest
decliner in the Dow. It fell $2.98
to $29.76.
Benchmark U.S. crude fell
$1.78, or 5.7 percent, to $29.42 a
barrel in New York. Brent crude,
a benchmark for international
oils, fell $1.94, or 6.3 percent, to
$28.94 a barrel in London.
Stocks opened higher in Europe
but quickly fell. Germany’s DAX
lost 2.5 percent, while France’s
CAC 40 dropped 2.4 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 1.9 percent.
In China, the Shanghai Composite Index slid 3.6 percent to its
lowest close in 13 months. China’s
official Xinhua News Agency
reported that new bank loans
during the last month fell from
a year earlier, another sign that
the country’s economic growth
is slowing from the torrid pace of
the past few years.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng
dropped 1.5 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.5 percent and South
Korea’s Kospi 1.1 percent.
MARKET WATCH
EXCHANGE RATES
Military rates
Euro costs (Jan. 18) ..........................$1.1244
Dollar buys (Jan. 18) ........................ €0.8894
British pound (Jan. 18) ........................ $1.47
Japanese yen (Jan. 19) ......................115.00
South Korean won (Jan. 19) ..........1,181.00
Commercial rates
Bahrain (Dinar) ....................................0.3765
British pound .....................................$1.4263
Canada (Dollar) ...................................1.4540
China (Yuan) ........................................6.5861
Denmark (Krone) ................................6.8419
Egypt (Pound) ...................................... 7.8320
Euro ........................................ $1.0913/0.9163
Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................. 7.7931
Hungary (Forint) ................................. 289.11
Israel (Shekel) ..................................... 3.9616
Japan (Yen)........................................... 117.00
Kuwait (Dinar) .....................................0.3040
Norway (Krone) ...................................8.8359
Philippines (Peso)................................. 47.86
Poland (Zloty) .......................................... 4.11
Saudi Arabia (Riyal) ........................... 3.7490
Singapore (Dollar) ..............................1.4399
South Korea (Won) ..........................1,216.70
Switzerland (Franc)............................ 1.0019
Thailand (Baht) .....................................36.33
Turkey (Lira) .........................................3.0453
(Military exchange rates are those
available to customers at military banking
facilities in the country of issuance
for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the
Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For
nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e.,
purchasing British pounds in Germany),
check with your local military banking
facility. Commercial rates are interbank
rates provided for reference when buying
currency. All figures are foreign currencies
to one dollar, except for the British pound,
which is represented in dollars-to-pound,
and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)
INTEREST RATES
Prime rate ................................................ 3.50
Discount rate .......................................... 1.00
Federal funds market rate ................... 0.36
3-month bill ............................................. 0.23
30-year bond ........................................... 2.82
WEATHER OUTLOOK
SUNDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
MONDAY IN THE PACIFIC
SUNDAY IN EUROPE
Misawa
34/26
Kabul
56/28
Baghdad
65/42
Seoul
45/24
Kandahar
60/31
Kuwait
City
71/49
Mildenhall/
Lakenheath
41/33
Bahrain
69/62
Brussels
39/33
Lajes,
Azores
60/59
Doha
75/60
Riyadh
76/52
Osan
45/22
Ramstein
35/28
Stuttgart
30/26
Iwakuni
52/42
Sasebo
50/45
Guam
84/77
Pápa
36/25
Aviano/
Vicenza
41/26
Naples
52/39
Morón
57/42
Sigonella
51/48
Rota
63/42
Djibouti
85/75
Tokyo
50/38
Busan
53/33
Okinawa
72/59
The weather is provided by the
American Forces Network Weather Center,
2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.
Souda Bay
65/55
[PUB DAY]’s US temperatures
City
Abilene, Texas
Akron, Ohio
Albany, N.Y.
Albuquerque
Allentown, Pa.
Amarillo
Anchorage
Asheville
Atlanta
Atlantic City
Austin
Baltimore
Baton Rouge
Billings
Birmingham
Bismarck
Boise
Boston
Bridgeport
Brownsville
Buffalo
Burlington, Vt.
Caribou, Maine
Casper
Charleston, S.C.
Charleston, W.Va.
Charlotte, N.C.
Hi
57
25
31
44
36
38
35
42
49
41
57
39
55
20
47
-1
42
36
37
64
28
29
25
32
56
35
48
Lo
32
23
25
25
27
23
21
30
38
31
36
30
39
6
34
-16
30
28
29
45
23
24
17
16
44
28
35
Wthr
Cldy
Snow
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
Clr
Snow
Clr
Clr
Rain
Cldy
Cldy
Clr
Snow
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Rain
Cldy
Cldy
Chattanooga
Cheyenne
Chicago
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Colorado Springs
Columbia, S.C.
Columbus, Ga.
Columbus, Ohio
Concord, N.H.
Corpus Christi
Dallas-Ft Worth
Dayton
Daytona Beach
Denver
Des Moines
Detroit
Duluth
El Paso
Elkins
Erie
Eugene
Evansville
Fairbanks
Fargo
Flagstaff
Flint
Fort Smith
46
33
8
27
26
36
55
53
27
31
61
53
24
67
33
1
22
-6
58
31
28
49
29
7
-7
44
19
44
32
18
6
21
23
19
39
40
22
24
40
33
20
60
16
-5
18
-17
35
24
25
42
21
-3
-19
20
15
27
PCldy
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Snow
PCldy
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
Cldy
Clr
PCldy
Cldy
Rain
PCldy
Clr
Snow
Clr
PCldy
Cldy
Snow
Rain
Cldy
Clr
Clr
Clr
Snow
PCldy
Fort Wayne
Fresno
Goodland
Grand Junction
Grand Rapids
Great Falls
Green Bay
Greensboro, N.C.
Harrisburg
Hartford Spgfld
Helena
Honolulu
Houston
Huntsville
Indianapolis
Jackson, Miss.
Jacksonville
Juneau
Kansas City
Key West
Knoxville
Lake Charles
Lansing
Las Vegas
Lexington
Lincoln
Little Rock
Los Angeles
18
62
23
33
16
24
4
42
38
35
31
82
55
45
21
51
63
34
13
77
41
55
17
60
33
6
47
67
17
44
12
18
13
7
-5
33
28
25
15
67
41
30
19
34
51
29
10
71
31
41
15
40
24
0
28
49
Cldy
Cldy
Snow
Cldy
Snow
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Rain
Cldy
PCldy
Snow
PCldy
Cldy
Clr
Clr
PCldy
Louisville
Lubbock
Macon
Madison
Medford
Memphis
Miami Beach
Midland-Odessa
Milwaukee
Mpls-St Paul
Missoula
Mobile
Montgomery
Nashville
New Orleans
New York City
Newark
Norfolk, Va.
North Platte
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Orlando
Paducah
Pendleton
Peoria
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Pittsburgh
33
51
55
-1
54
44
77
61
3
-4
36
56
53
41
55
38
39
45
17
39
3
70
35
44
10
40
67
29
23
30
40
-5
40
28
69
29
0
-15
25
39
39
27
44
31
31
38
7
27
-3
61
22
33
10
31
45
24
Snow
PCldy
PCldy
Clr
Rain
Clr
Rain
PCldy
Clr
Clr
Cldy
Clr
PCldy
PCldy
Clr
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Snow
Cldy
Clr
Rain
PCldy
Rain
Clr
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Pocatello
Portland, Maine
Portland, Ore.
Providence
Pueblo
Raleigh-Durham
Rapid City
Reno
Richmond
Roanoke
Rochester
Rockford
Sacramento
St Louis
St Petersburg
St Thomas
Salem, Ore.
Salt Lake City
San Angelo
San Antonio
San Diego
San Francisco
San Jose
Santa Fe
St Ste Marie
Savannah
Seattle
Shreveport
39
33
47
37
39
43
9
50
42
40
31
4
58
21
67
83
48
38
61
59
65
58
62
39
10
59
49
54
30
24
41
28
17
35
-3
34
34
30
23
1
48
17
63
77
42
29
30
37
51
53
53
19
2
46
43
32
Cldy
PCldy
Rain
Cldy
PCldy
Cldy
Clr
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Snow
Clr
Cldy
Cldy
Rain
PCldy
Rain
Cldy
PCldy
Clr
Cldy
Rain
Rain
PCldy
Snow
Rain
Rain
PCldy
Sioux City
Sioux Falls
South Bend
Spokane
Springfield, Ill.
Springfield, Mo.
Syracuse
Tallahassee
Tampa
Toledo
Topeka
Tucson
Tulsa
Tupelo
Waco
Washington
W. Palm Beach
Wichita
Wichita Falls
Wilkes-Barre
Wilmington, Del.
Yakima
Youngstown
0
-4
13
38
14
30
30
60
69
21
17
67
36
46
54
40
77
25
50
31
41
37
27
-11
-17
13
32
12
19
26
48
64
20
15
39
28
29
32
31
68
21
29
26
31
31
23
Clr
Clr
Snow
Rain
Cldy
Snow
Cldy
PCldy
Rain
Snow
Snow
Clr
Cldy
PCldy
PCldy
Cldy
Rain
Snow
Cldy
Cldy
Cldy
Rain
Snow
National temperature extremes
Hi: Fri., 86, Edinburg, Texas
Lo: Fri., -17, Fosston, Minn.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
SCOREBOARD
Sports
on AFN
Go to the American Forces
Network website for the most
up-to-date TV schedules.
myafn.net
College basketball
Friday’s men’s scores
EAST
Baruch 88, CCNY 79
Canisius 65, Manhattan 62
Elmira 56, Utica 53
Fairfield 73, Niagara 68
Lehman 78, Hunter 61
Maine 81, Albany (NY) 79
Monmouth (NJ) 110, Iona 102
Siena 64, Quinnipiac 52
St. Lawrence 65, William Smith 56
MIDWEST
Augustana (SD) 102, St. Cloud St. 63
Bemidji St. 75, Minn. St.-Mankato 74, OT
Concordia (St.P.) 76, Minn.-Crookston 69
Crown (Minn.) 117, Martin Luther 113
Dayton 77, George Washington 70
Evansville 66, Illinois St. 55
Minn. St.-Moorhead 78, Sioux Falls 55
Minn.-Morris 85, Bethany Lutheran 64
Minot St. 88, Upper Iowa 83
North Central (Minn.) 84, Wis.-Superior 71
Northern St. (SD) 79, SW Minnesota
St. 63
Northland 82, Silver Lake 54
St. Scholastica 81, Northwestern
(Wis.) 74
Toledo 78, Akron 64
Wayne (Neb.) 93, Minn. Duluth 85
Winona St. 64, Mary 54
FAR WEST
S. Oregon 85, Coll. of Idaho 79
Friday’s women’s scores
EAST
CCNY 59, Baruch 56
Canisius 54, St. Peter’s 42
Lehman 74, Hunter 64
Marist 62, Iona 61
NYU 48, Emory 45
Northeastern 69, William & Mary 68, OT
Quinnipiac 61, Niagara 54
Siena 64, Monmouth (NJ) 54
St. John’s 65, Georgetown 60
Towson 85, Elon 79
Villanova 55, Seton Hall 45
SOUTH
Delaware 63, Coll. of Charleston 47
Hofstra 68, UNC Wilmington 64
James Madison 67, Drexel 56
MIDWEST
Bethany Lutheran 57, Minn.-Morris 53
Concordia (St.P) 80, Minn.-Crookston 73
DePaul 61, Butler 54
Drake 80, Indiana St. 55
Loyola of Chicago 60, Wichita St. 55
Marantha Baptist 69, Illinois Tech 25
Martin Luther 77, Crown (Minn.) 50
Mary 83, Winona St. 80
Minn. St. (Moorhead) 53, Sioux Falls 52
Minot St. 71, Upper Iowa 69
Missouri St. 55, Bradley 44
N. Iowa 65, Illinois St. 51
Northern St. (SD) 84, SW Minnesota
St. 64
Northwestern (Minn.) 74, St. Scholastica 49
St. Cloud St. 81, Augustana (SD) 71
W. Illinois 63, Denver 60
Wayne (Neb.) 68, Minn. Duluth 52
Wis.-Superior
85,
North
Central
(Minn.) 54
Xavier 71, Marquette 66
FAR WEST
Arizona St. 64, Colorado 37
Oregon St. 70, California 48
Stanford 64, Oregon 62
Utah 60, Arizona 55
Washington 64, UCLA 56
Washington St. 73, Southern Cal 61
EXHIBITION
Minn. St. (Mankato) 82, Bemidji St. 71
College hockey
Friday’s scores
EAST
Boston College 5, Boston U. 3
Penn St. 4, Wisconsin 3, OT
UConn 1, Maine 0
Northeastern 4, New Hampshire 2
UMass-Lowell 4, UMass 1
Harvard 3, St. Lawrence 2
Yale 3, Brown 2
RPI 1, Cornell 0
Colgate 4, Union (NY) 2
Providence 3, Vermont 1
Oswego St. 4, Utica 2
Mercyhurst 2, Sacred Heart 1
RIT 3, Bentley 2
Air Force 1, Army 0
Robert Morris 5, Holy Cross 4
Dartmouth 5, Clarkson 2
MIDWEST
Michigan 5, Ohio St. 5, OT, OSU wins
shootout 3-2
Ala.-Huntsville 3, Ferris St. 3, OT
Minn. St. (Mankato) 2, Michigan Tech
2, OT
Alaska 3, N. Michigan 2, OT
Notre Dame 7, Merrimack 2
St. Cloud St. 3, Minn.-Duluth 1
Bemidji St. 5, Arizona St. 0
Neb.-Omaha 4, North Dakota 3, OT
Minnesota 5, Michigan St. 2
FAR WEST
Denver 5, W. Michigan 3
Pro football
College football
Deals
NFL playoffs
Bowl schedule
Friday’s transactions
Wild-card Playoffs
Saturday, Jan. 9
Kansas City 30, Houston 0
Pittsburgh 18, Cincinnati 16
Sunday, Jan. 10
Seattle 10, Minnesota 9
Green Bay 35, Washington 18
Divisional Playoffs
Saturday, Jan. 16
Kansas City at New England
Green Bay at Arizona
Sunday, Jan. 17
Seattle at Carolina
Pittsburgh at Denver
Conference Championships
Sunday, Jan. 24
AFC: Kansas City-New England winner
vs. Pittsburgh-Denver winner
NFC: Green Bay-Arizona winner vs. Seattle-Carolina winner
Pro Bowl
Sunday, Jan. 31
At Honolulu
Team Rice vs. Team Irvin
Super Bowl
Sunday, Feb. 7
At Santa Clara, Calif.
AFC champion vs. NFC champion
Saturday, Dec. 19
Celebration Bowl
Atlanta
NC A&T 41, Alcorn State 34
New Mexico Bowl
Albuquerque
Arizona 45, New Mexico 37
Las Vegas Bowl
Utah 35, BYU 28
Camellia Bowl
Montgomery, Ala.
Appalachian State 31, Ohio 29
Cure Bowl
Orlando, Fla.
San Jose State 27, Georgia State 16
New Orleans Bowl
Louisiana Tech 47, Arkansas State 28
Monday, Dec. 21
Miami Beach Bowl
Western Kentucky 45, South Florida 35
Tuesday, Dec. 22
Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
Boise
Akron 23, Utah State 21
Boca Raton (Fla.) Bowl
Toledo 32, Temple 17
Wednesday, Dec. 23
Poinsettia Bowl
San Diego
Boise State 55, Northern Illinois 7
GoDaddy Bowl
Mobile, Ala.
Georgia Southern 58, Bowling Green 27
Thursday, Dec. 24
Bahamas Bowl
Nassau
Western Michigan 45, Middle Tennessee 31
Hawaii Bowl
Honolulu
San Diego State 42, Cincinnati 7
Saturday, Dec. 26
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Bowl
Marshall 16, UConn 10
Sun Bowl
El Paso, Texas
Washington State 20, Miami 14
Heart of Dallas Bowl
Washington 44, Southern Mississippi 31
Pinstripe Bowl
Bronx, N.Y.
Duke 44, Indiana 41, OT
Independence Bowl
Shreveport, La.
Virginia Tech 55, Tulsa 52
Foster Farms Bowl
Santa Clara, Calif.
Nebraska 37, UCLA 29
Monday, Dec. 28
Military Bowl
Annapolis, Md.
Navy 44, Pittsburgh 28
Quick Lane Bowl
Detroit
Minnesota 21, Central Michigan 14
Tuesday, Dec. 29
Armed Forces Bowl
Fort Worth, Texas
California 55, Air Force 36
Russell Athletic Bowl
Orlando, Fla.
Baylor 49, North Carolina 38
Arizona Bowl
Tucson
Nevada 28, Colorado State 23
Texas Bowl
Houston
LSU 56, Texas Tech 27
Wednesday, Dec. 30
Birmingham (Ala.) Bowl
Auburn 31, Memphis 10
Belk Bowl
Charlotte, N.C.
Mississippi St. 51, NC State 28
Music City Bowl
Nashville, Tenn.
Louisville 27, Texas A&M 21
Holiday Bowl
San Diego
Wisconsin 23, Southern Cal 21
Thursday, Dec. 31
Peach Bowl
Atlanta
Houston 38, Florida State 24
Orange Bowl (Playoff Semifinal)
Miami Gardens, Fla.
Clemson 37, Oklahoma 17
Cotton Bowl Classic (Playoff Semifinal)
Arlington, Texas
Alabama 38, Michigan State 0
Friday, Jan. 1
Outback Bowl
Tampa, Fla.
Tennessee 45, Northwestern 6
Citrus Bowl
Orlando, Fla.
Michigan 41, Florida 7
Fiesta Bowl
Glendale, Ariz.
Ohio State 44, Notre Dame 28
Rose Bowl
Pasadena, Calif.
Stanford 45, Iowa 16
Sugar Bowl
New Orleans
Mississippi 48, Oklahoma State 20
Saturday, Jan. 2
TaxSlayer Bowl
Jacksonville, Fla.
Georgia 24, Penn State 17
Liberty Bowl
Memphis, Tenn.
Arkansas 45, Kansas State 23
Alamo Bowl
San Antonio
TCU 47, Oregon 41, 3OT
Cactus Bowl
Phoenix
West Virginia 43, Arizona State 42
Monday, Jan. 11
College Football Championship Game
Glendale, Ariz.
Alabama 45, Clemson 40
Saturday, Jan. 23
East-West Shrine Classic
At St. Petersburg, Fla.
East vs. West
NFLPA Collegiate Bowl
At Carson, Calif.
National vs. American
Saturday, Jan. 30
Senior Bowl
At Mobile, Ala.
North vs. South
BASEBALL
American League
BALTIMORE ORIOLES — Agreed to
terms with RHP Brad Brach, INF Ryan Flaherty, RHP Miguel Gonzalez, INF Manny
Machado, RHP Chris Tillman, and OF/INF
Mark Trumbo to one-year contracts.
BOSTON RED SOX — Agreed to terms
with RHP Joe Kelly on a one-year contract.
CHICAGO WHITE SOX — Agreed to
terms with OF Avisail Garcia and RHP
Zach Putnam on one-year contracts.
CLEVELAND INDIANS — Agreed to
terms with RHP Cody Allen, OF Lonnie
Chisenhall, RHP Josh Tomlin and RHP Jeff
Manship to one-year contracts.
DETROIT TIGERS — Agreed to terms
with INF Jose Iglesias on a one-year contract.
HOUSTON ASTROS — Agreed to terms
with RHP Josh Fields, INF Marwin Gonzalez, LHP Dallas Keuchel and INF Luis Valbuena on one-year contracts.
KANSAS CITY ROYALS — Agreed to
terms with LHP Danny Duffy, C Drew
Butera, RHP Louis Coleman, C Tony Cruz
and OF Jarrod Dyson on one-year contracts.
MINNESOTA TWINS — Agreed to terms
with INFs Eduardo Escobar and Eduardo
Nunez, RHP Casey Fien and LHP Tommy
Milone on one-year contracts.
NEW YORK YANKEES — Agreed to
terms with RHP Michael Pineda and INFOF Dustin Ackley on one-year contracts.
Claimed OF Lane Adams off waivers from
Kansas City. Designated INF Ronald Torreyes for assignment.
OAKLAND ATHLETICS — Agreed to
terms with OF Josh Reddick and RHP Fernando Rodriguez on one-year contracts.
SEATTLE MARINERS — Agreed to terms
with LHP Charlie Furbush and RHP Evan
Scribner on one-year contracts.
TAMPA BAY RAYS — Agreed to terms
with INF Logan Forsythe on a two-year
contract and 1B Logan Morrison, RHP
Erasmo Ramirez, C Hank Conger and C
Rene Rivera on one-year contracts.
TEXAS RANGERS — Agreed to terms
with C Robinson Chirinos and RHP Tanner Scheppers on one-year contracts.
TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Agreed to
terms with LHP Brett Cecil, RHP Steve
Delabar, RHP Drew Hutchison, LHP Aaron Loup, OF Michael Saunders and RHP
Drew Storen on a one-year contracts.
National League
ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS — Agreed
to terms with C Welington Castillo, LHP
Patrick Corbin and RHPs Rubby De La
Rosa, Randall Delgado, Daniel Hudson
and Shelby Miller on one-year contracts.
ATLANTA BRAVES — Agreed to terms
with RHP Arodys Vizcaino on a one-year
contract.
CINCINNATI REDS — Agreed to terms
with SS Zack Cozart on a one-year contract.
COLORADO ROCKIES — Agreed to
terms with 3B Nolan Arenado on a oneyear contract.
LOS ANGELES DODGERS — Agreed to
terms with LHP Luis Avilan, C Yasmani
Grandal, RHP Kenley Jansen and INF Justin Turner on one-year contracts.
MIAMI MARLINS — Agreed to terms
with RHPs Jose Fernandez, Tom Koehler,
David Phelps, A.J. Ramos, Carter Capps
and Bryan Morris and SS Adeiny Hechavarria on one-year contracts.
MILWAUKEE BREWERS — Named Mike
Schwartz director of food & beverage
hospitality. Agreed to terms with RHP
Wily Peralta and LHP Will Smith to oneyear contracts.
NEW YORK METS — Agreed to terms
with RHP Matt Harvey, SS Ruben Tejada,
RHP Carlos Torres, RHP Addison Reed
and LHP Josh Edgin on one-year contracts and C Nevin Ashley on a minor
league contract.
PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES — Agreed to
terms with RHP Jeremy Hellickson on a
one-year contract.
PITTSBURGH PIRATES — Agreed to
terms with C Francisco Cervelli, RHP
Jared Hughes, RHP Mark Melancon, INF
Jordy Mercer and LHP Tony Watson on
one-year contracts.
ST. LOUIS CARDINALS — Agreed to
terms with RHP Seth Maness, INF-OF
Brandon Moss and RHP Trevor Rosenthal
on one-year contracts.
SAN DIEGO PADRES — Agreed to terms
with RHPs Andrew Cashner and Tyson
Ross on one-year contracts.
NFL injury report
NEW YORK — The updated National
Football League injury report, as provided by the league:
PITTSBURGH STEELERS at DENVER
BRONCOS — STEELERS: OUT: WR Antonio Brown (concussion), RB DeAngelo
Williams (foot). QUESTIONABLE: RB Will
Johnson (hamstring), QB Ben Roethlisberger (right shoulder). PROBABLE: S
Will Allen (not injury related), S Robert
Golden (shoulder), LB James Harrison
(not injury related), DE Cameron Heyward (back), LB Ryan Shazier (knee), TE
Matt Spaeth (not injury related), LB Vince
Williams (hamstring). BRONCOS: QUESTIONABLE: QB Brock Osweiler (knee).
PROBABLE: TE Owen Daniels (knees),
LB Todd Davis (shoulder), C Max Garcia
(groin), CB Chris Harris Jr. (shoulder), DE
Malik Jackson (illness), QB Peyton Manning (foot), LB Brandon Marshall (ankle),
LB Von Miller (illness), G Robert Myers Jr.
(illness), S Darian Stewart (hamstring),
RB Juwan Thompson (illness), S T.J. Ward
(ankle), LB DeMarcus Ware (knee).
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS at CAROLINA
PANTHERS — SEAHAWKS: DOUBTFUL:
RB Will Tukuafu (hamstring). PROBABLE:
DE Michael Bennett (toe), RB Marshawn
Lynch (abdomen), TE Luke Willson (concussion). PANTHERS: OUT: RB Fozzy
Whittaker (ankle). QUESTIONABLE: WR
Ted Ginn Jr. (knee). PROBABLE: DE Kony
Ealy (illness).
NFL calendar
Jan. 16-17 — AFC and NFC divisional
playoffs.
Jan. 24 — AFC and NFC championship
games.
Jan. 31 — Pro Bowl at Honolulu.
Feb. 7 — Super Bowl at Santa Clara,
Calif.
Feb. 23-29 — NFL Combine, Lucas Oil
Stadium, Indianapolis.
Tennis
Hobart International
Saturday
At The Domain Tennis Centre
Hobart, Australia
Purse: $226,750 (Intl.)
Surface: Hard-Outdoor
Singles
Championship
Alize Cornet (7), France, def. Eugenie
Bouchard, Canada, 6-1, 6-2.
Doubles
Championship
Han Xinyun, China, and Christina
McHale, United States, def. Kimberly
Birrell and Jarmila Wolfe, Australia, 6-3,
6-0.
Apia International
Saturday
At Olympic Park Tennis Centre
Sydney
Purse: Men, $404,780 (WT250);
Women, $687,900 (Premier)
Surface: Hard-Outdoor
Singles
Men
Championship
Viktor Troicki (3), Serbia, def. Grigor
Dimitrov (4), Bulgaria, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7).
Doubles
Men
Championship
Jamie Murray, Britain, and Bruno
Soares, Brazil, def. Rohan Bopanna, India, and Florin Mergea (4), Romania, 6-3,
7-6 (6).
ASB Classic
Saturday
At ASB Bank Tennis Centre
Auckland, New Zealand
Purse: $463,520 (WT250)
Surface: Hard-Outdoor
Singles
Championship
Roberto Bautista Agut (8), Spain, def.
Jack Sock, United States, 6-1, 1-0 retired.
Doubles
Championship
Mate Pavic, Croatia, and Michael Venus, New Zealand, def. Eric Butorac and
Scott Lipsky (4), United States, 7-5, 6-4.
WASHINGTON NATIONALS — Agreed
to terms with INF Anthony Rendon, RHP
Stephen Strasburg, INF Danny Espinosa
and OF Ben Revere on one-year contracts.
BASKETBALL
National Basketball Association
CHICAGO BULLS — Assigned F-C Cristiano Felicio to Canton (NBADL).
HOUSTON ROCKETS— Recalled G/F K.J.
McDaniels fromGrande Valley (NBADL).
MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES — Reassigned F
James Ennis to Iowa (NBADL).
FOOTBALL
National Football League
NFL — Fined Cincinnati CB Adam Jones
$28,940 for contact with an official, Pittsburgh G Ramon Foster $17,363 for unnecessary roughness, Cincinnati DE Wallace
Gilberry $8,681 for unsportsmanlike conduct, DT Domata Peko $8,681 for unnecessary roughness, Pittsburgh assistant
coaches Mike Munchak and Joey Porter
$10,000 each for their actions during a
Jan. 9 game.
CINCINNATI BENGALS — Named Ken
Zampese offensive coordinator and Jim
Haslett linebackers coach.
CLEVELAND BROWNS — Retained special teams coordinator Chris Tabor.
DENVER BRONCOS — Signed DE Derek
Wolfe to a four-year contract extension.
DETROIT LIONS — Named Kyle O’Brien
director of player personnel.
GREEN BAY PACKERS — Signed CB
Robertson Daniel from the practice
squad. Placed TE Andrew Quarless on
injured reserve.
INDIANAPOLIS COLTS — Signed Joe
Philbin offensive line coach.
MINNESOTA VIKINGS — Signed CB Melvin White to a reserve/future contract.
SAN DIEGO CHARGERS — Named Ken
Whisenhunt offensive coordinator, Giff
Smith defensive line, Craig Aukerman
special teams coordinator, Nick Sirianni
wide receivers coach and Shane Steichen quarterbacks coach.
TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS — Named
Dirk Koetter coach and Mike Smith defensive coordinator.
HOCKEY
National Hockey League
ARIZONA COYOTES — Traded D Victor
Bartley and F John Scott to Montreal for
D Jarred Tinordi and F Stefan Fournier.
Recalled F John Scott from Springfield
(AHL).
CAROLINA HURRICANES — Activated F
Nathan Gerbe from injured reserve. Reassigned Fs Phil Di Giuseppe and Brock
McGinn to Charlotte (AHL).
DETROIT RED WINGS — Traded D Richard Nedomlel to St. Louis for future considerations.
NASHVILLE PREDATORS — Acquired D
Stefan Elliott from Arizona for D Victor
Bartley.
NEW JERSEY DEVILS — Assigned D
Marc-Andre Gragnani and F Jim O’Brien
to Albany (AHL). Recalled Fs Reid Boucher and Brian O’Neill from Albany.
WASHINGTON CAPITALS — Recalled D
Ryan Stanton from Hershey (AHL).
USA Hockey
USAH — Named Mike Sullivan, John
Hynes, Phil Housley, Jack Capuano and
Scott Gordon assistant coaches for Team
USA for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
SOCCER
National Women’s Soccer League
CHICAGO RED STARS — Acquired two
2016 fourth-round draft picks from Boston for a 2016 third-round draft pick. Acquired two 2016 fourth-round draft picks
from Sky Blue FC for a 2016 third-round
draft pick.
PORTLAND THORNS FC — Traded a
2016 first-round draft pick, No. 4 spot in
the allocation ranking order and future
considerations to Boston for the No. 1
spot in the allocation ranking order.
SKY BLUE FC — Acquired a 2016 firstround draft pick and 2017 first- and
fourth-round draft picks from Portland
for the rights to F Nadia Nadim, a 2016
first-round draft pick and a 2017 secondround draft pick.
COLLEGE
ALABAMA — Announced RB Derrick
Henry and DL A’Shawn Robinson will enter the NFL Draft.
FLORIDA — Fired defensive backs
coach Kirk Callahan.
OHIO STATE — Named Tim Hinton executive director for football relations/
special assistant to the head coach and
Greg Studrawa offensive line coach.
SMU — Announced men’s junior basketball G Keith Frazier is transferring.
Golf
Sony Open
PGA Tour
Friday
At Waialae Country Club
Honolulu
Purse: $5.8 million
Yardage: 7,044; Par 70
Second Round
Brandt Snedeker
63-65—128
Kevin Kisner
63-66—129
Zach Johnson
64-66—130
Luke Donald
65-65—130
Zac Blair
65-65—130
Chez Reavie
67-63—130
Scott Piercy
65-66—131
Sean O’Hair
65-66—131
Jerry Kelly
65-66—131
Morgan Hoffmann
63-68—131
Si Woo Kim
64-67—131
Daniel Summerhays
67-65—132
James Hahn
67-65—132
Vijay Singh
63-69—132
Danny Lee
66-66—132
Francesco Molinari
68-65—133
Joburg Open
-12
-11
-10
-10
-10
-10
-9
-9
-9
-9
-9
-8
-8
-8
-8
-7
PGA European Open
Friday
At Royal Johannesburg and Kensington
Golf Club
Johannesburg
Purse: $978,310
e-East Course: 7,677 yards, par-72
w-West Course: 7,228 yards, par-71
Second Round
Ross McGowan, England 67e-62w—129 -14
J. Hugo, S. Africa
67e-65w—132 -11
H. Porteous, S. Africa
66e-66w—132 -11
Anthony Wall, England
65w-67e—132 -11
Felipe Aguilar, Chile
67e-65w—132 -11
Johan Carlsson, Sweden 66e-67w—133 -10
Stuart Manley, Wales
66w-67e—133 -10
Richard Bland, England
67w-67e—134 -9
Bjorn Akesson, Sweden
70e-64w—134 -9
E. van Rooyen, S. Africa
70e-64w—134 -9
Paul Dunne, Ireland
71e-63w—134 -9
J. Walters, S. Africa
65e-69w—134 -9
J. Scrivener, Australia
69e-66w—135 -8
D. Fichardt, S. Africa
70e-65w—135 -8
•STA
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MLB/SPORTS BRIEFS
MLB briefs
O’s reach deal with Davis
Associated Press
STEVE NESIUS/AP
The Baltimore Orioles agreed to a seven-year, $161 million contract
with slugging first baseman Chris Davis on Saturday.
BALTIMORE — Chris Davis
and the Orioles are together
again.
Multiple people with knowledge of the situation say Davis
has agreed to a seven-year, $161
million contract with Baltimore,
pending a physical.
The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of
anonymity Saturday because the
Orioles have not announced the
transaction.
The 29-year-old Davis has been
with Baltimore since 2011. He hit
a major league-leading 47 home
runs and amassed 117 RBIs last
year.
The Orioles were his most aggressive suitor, offering a sevenyear deal last month. Since
coming to the Orioles in a July
2011 trade with Texas, Davis
has been a sensational run producer and a positive force in the
clubhouse.
“I’ve said all along, Chris is
a body-of-work guy,” manager
Buck Showalter said. “When you
get through and step back, he can
do a lot of things that not many
people can do.”
Royals, Kennedy reach
five-year, $70M deal
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A person familiar with the situation
says the Kansas City Royals
and pitcher Ian Kennedy have
agreed to a $70 million, five-year
contract that includes an opt-out
after the first two years.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of
anonymity Saturday because the
deal will not be finalized until
the 31-year-old Kennedy passes
a physical.
The right-hander went 9-15
with a 4.28 ERA for the San
Diego Padres last season. He
has also pitched for the New
York Yankees and the Arizona
Diamondbacks.
The Royals were in search of
another starter to replace Johnny
Cueto, who became a free agent
after helping Kansas City win its
first World Series since 1985.
Angels sign veteran
reliever Alburquerque
ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Los
Angeles Angels have signed veteran reliever Al Alburquerque to
a one-year, $1.1 million contract.
The Angels confirmed the signing Friday night.
Alburquerque went 4-1 with
a 4.21 ERA in a career-high 62
innings of relief for Detroit last
season.
In other MLB news:
AL Cy Young winner Dallas
Keuchel and the Houston Astros
agreed to a one-year contract for
$7.25 million on Friday.
Stephen Strasburg and the
Washington Nationals agreed
Friday to a $10.4 million contract for next season, avoiding
arbitration.
Red Sox right-hander Joe
Kelly reached agreement on a
$2.6 million, one-year contract
with Boston on Friday to avoid
salary arbitration.
The Colorado Rockies have
avoided salary arbitration with
third baseman Nolan Arenado on
Friday by agreeing to a $5 million, one-year contract, nearly 10
times the $512,500 he earned last
year.
Miami Marlins ace Jose
Fernandez avoided arbitration
by agreeing to a $2.8 million contract for 2016, a big increase over
his salary of $651,000 last year.
Sports briefs
Clash between Steelers, Bengals results in $83,665 in fines
Associated Press
The NFL fined four players and two
coaches a total of $83,665 for their actions
in the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati wild-card
game.
Bengals cornerback Adam “Pacman”
Jones was fined $28,940 for contact with
an official, a foul that moved the Steelers
closer for their game-winning field goal in
the final seconds Saturday night.
His teammates Wallace Gilberry and
Domata Peko were each fined $8,681.
Gilberry’s fine was for unsportsmanlike conduct and Peko’s for unnecessary
roughness.
Steelers guard Ramon Foster was fined
$17,363 for unnecessary roughness.
Earlier this week, the league suspended
Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict three
games without pay for his conduct in the
game, which Pittsburgh won 18-16 to advance to Sunday’s AFC divisional round
game in Denver. Burfict was flagged for a
hit that knocked out Steelers star receiver
Antonio Brown, who was ruled out of Sunday’s game against the Broncos.
Although Burfict wasn’t issued any additional fines this week, he’ll miss out on
$502,941 of his $2.85 million salary in 2016
if his suspension is upheld.
Jones apologized Friday for claiming
Brown was faking a concussion at the end
of the game, posting a video on Instagram
in which he said “I apologize sincerely.
Get well.” Jones said in the aftermath of
the loss that Brown winked at him before
being helped off the field after taking a
shot to the head from Burfict.
Also, Pittsburgh assistant coaches Mike
Munchak and Joey Porter were each fined
$10,000.
G ARY L ANDERS/AP
Officials step in between players from the Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers during the second half of last Saturday’s wild-card
playoff game in Cincinnati. A total of $83,665 in fines were assessed between the two teams.
LeBron hopeful for QB Manziel
HOUSTON — LeBron James hopes
Johnny Football can get back to the player
he was in college.
The Cavaliers superstar dropped
Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel as a
business client earlier this month after his
numerous off-the-field issues. But he’s still
rooting for the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner to turn things around.
James said Friday: “The only concern
for everyone is to see him back on the football field, but doing it at a professional level
and being able to get back to the caliber of
player that he was back when he was an
Aggie.”
James was asked if he’d consider taking
Manziel on as a client in the future. He instead focused on Manziel’s well-being, saying: “What’s most important is him getting
things in order for him individually and
then the sport side of thing will take care
of itself.”
Phillips’ death ruled a suicide
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California coroner says imprisoned former NFL
running back Lawrence Phillips committed suicide while he was awaiting a trial
that could have brought him the death
penalty.
The 40-year-old Phillips was found unresponsive alone in his segregation cell at
Kern Valley State Prison early Wednesday
and died at a hospital.
PAGE 26
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NHL
Scoreboard
Eastern Conference
Atlantic Division
GP W
L OT Pts
Florida
44 26 13
5
57
Detroit
44 23 14
7 53
Tampa Bay
44 23 17
4 50
Boston
43 22 16
5 49
Montreal
44 23 18
3 49
Ottawa
44 20 18
6 46
Toronto
42 16 19
7 39
Buffalo
44 17 23
4 38
Metropolitan Division
Washington 43 33
7
3 69
N.Y. Islanders 44 24 15
5 53
N.Y. Rangers 43 23 15
5
51
Carolina
46 20 18
8 48
Pittsburgh
43 20 16
7
47
New Jersey
45 21 19
5
47
Philadelphia 41 19 15
7 45
Columbus
45 16 25
4 36
Bruins 4, Sabres 1
GF
118
110
116
130
123
120
106
101
GA
98
114
106
114
109
135
119
121
143
122
124
111
103
99
94
114
91
110
113
124
108
110
110
145
Western Conference
Central Division
GP W
L OT Pts GF GA
47 30 13
4 64 135 108
45 29 12
4 62 151 120
47 25 15
7
57 117 118
44 22 14
8 52 113 103
45 22 20
3
47 128 127
44 19 17
8 46 113 123
45 21 21
3 45 118 129
Pacific Division
Los Angeles 42 27 12
3
57 112 92
Arizona
43 22 16
5 49 122 131
San Jose
42 22 18
2 46 120 114
Vancouver
45 18 17
10 46 109 126
Anaheim
43 19 17
7 45 86 102
Calgary
42 20 20
2
42 115 129
Edmonton
45 17 23
5 39 109 133
Note: Two points for a win, one point
for overtime loss.
Thursday’s games
San Jose 2, Edmonton 1, SO
N.Y. Islanders 3, N.Y. Rangers 1
Washington 4, Vancouver 1
Chicago 2, Montreal 1
Carolina 4, St. Louis 1
Winnipeg 5, Nashville 4, OT
Colorado 3, New Jersey 0
Detroit 3, Arizona 2, OT
Friday’s games
Boston 4, Buffalo 1
Chicago 4, Toronto 1
Vancouver 3, Carolina 2, OT
Tampa Bay 5, Pittsburgh 4, OT
Winnipeg 1, Minnesota 0
Anaheim 4, Dallas 2
Saturday’s games
N.Y. Rangers at Philadelphia
New Jersey at Arizona
Ottawa at Los Angeles
Toronto at Boston
Washington at Buffalo
Colorado at Columbus
Montreal at St. Louis
Minnesota at Nashville
Calgary at Edmonton
Dallas at San Jose
Sunday’s games
Carolina at Pittsburgh
Vancouver at N.Y. Islanders
Florida at Tampa Bay
N.Y. Rangers at Washington
Montreal at Chicago
Philadelphia at Detroit
Los Angeles at Anaheim
Chicago
Dallas
St. Louis
Minnesota
Colorado
Nashville
Winnipeg
N ATHAN D ENETTE, THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP
Blackhawks right wing Patrick Kane, center, celebrates his second goal of the game with teammates
Duncan Keith, left, and Brent Seabrook while playing against the Maple Leafs Friday in Toronto.
Roundup
Kane’s hat trick helps
Hawks win 10th in row
Associated Press
TORONTO — Patrick Kane appreciated getting his first career
regular-season hat trick, though
it paled in importance to his first
two — which both came in the
playoffs.
Kane scored three goals and
the Chicago Blackhawks beat the
Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1 Friday
night for their 10th straight win.
“I think I’ve had a few two-goal
games but I guess it just never
really happened,” Kane said.
“I wouldn’t trade the two in the
playoffs for anything in the regular season but it’s nice to get the
first one.”
Kane’s first playoff hat trick
came on May 11, 2009, against
Vancouver in a 7-5 win in the
clinching Game 6 of the Western
Conference semifinals. His second was on June 8, 2013, against
Los Angeles in Game 5 of the
West finals, with his game-winner in the second overtime sending the Blackhawks to the Stanley
Cup Final.
Artemi Panarin also scored
and assisted on two of Kane’s
goals for the Blackhawks. Scott
Darling made 28 saves to earn
the win in net for Chicago while
Corey Crawford took the night off
after a 2-1 win in Montreal the
night before.
Kane, who added an assist for
a four-point night, now has an
NHL-leading 28 goals on the
season.
The win puts Chicago in first
in the Central Division, a point
ahead of the Dallas Stars, who
lost to Anaheim.
“We’re happy with the way
we’re trending but we’re not satisfied with where we’re at,” Kane
said. “We still feel like we can
improve, our coaches feel like we
can improve so there’s plenty of
things we can do better.”
Morgan Rielly scored for Toronto, which has lost four in a row.
James Reimer stopped 25 shots.
The Maple Leafs were whistled
for six penalties — including
four in the second period — with
Chicago earning two power-play
goals.
“I think that’s one of their skills
— the power play,” Rielly said.
“I think they’re really good at it.
They use each other well. They
really make the ice big and create
opportunities.
“Their D got pucks to the net
and created scoring chances and
that’s one of their strengths.”
Lightning 5, Penguins 4 (OT):
Vladislav Namestnikov completed a hat trick in overtime and
host Tampa Bay beat Pittsburgh
to extend its season-high fourgame winning streak.
Valtteri Filppula and Anton
Stralman also scored for Tampa
Bay and Steven Stamkos had two
assists. Andrei Vasilevskiy made
36 saves.
Ducks 4, Stars 2: At Anaheim,
Calif., Jakob Silfverberg had a
goal and an assist and the NHL’s
lowest-scoring team blasted the
highest-scoring team for four
goals in the first period.
After Silfverberg and Sami
Vatanen scored 31 seconds apart
in the opening minutes, Hampus
Lindholm and Corey Perry scored
33 seconds apart later in the first
period while the Ducks shredded
the Stars’ defense and goalie Kari
Lehtonen in a 12:32 stretch.
Canucks 3, Hurricanes 2 (OT):
Bo Horvat scored his second goal
with 1:35 left in overtime and visiting Vancouver beat Carolina.
Horvat also had two goals
against Carolina in a 3-2 win nine
days earlier and has scored four of
his eight goals this season against
the Eastern Conference foe.
Jets 1, Wild 0: Rookie Connor
Hellebuyck became the first goalie to shut out Minnesota this season, and visiting Winnipeg used
an early goal by Blake Wheeler
win the game.
Hellebuyck won his NHL debut
at Minnesota on Nov. 27 with a 31 decision and made 24 saves in
this one. Detroit is now the only
remaining NHL team that hasn’t
gone scoreless in a game this
season.
Bruins 4, Sabres 1: Zdeno
Chara floated in the go-ahead
goal from the left point 29 seconds into the third period and visiting Boston beat Buffalo.
Ryan Spooner scored an insurance goal with 9:07 left and added
two assists, and Brett Connolly
scored into an empty net with
1:09 remaining. Matt Beleskey
had a goal and an assist, and Boston snapped a 0-2-1 skid and improved to 2-4-1 in its past seven.
Friday
Lightning 5, Penguins 4 (OT)
Pittsburgh
1 1 2 0—4
Tampa Bay
1 2 1 1—5
First Period—1, Tampa Bay, Namestnikov 7 (Stamkos, Nesterov), 1:51. 2,
Pittsburgh, Letang 6 (Crosby, Hornqvist),
10:37.
Second Period—3, Tampa Bay, Filppula
6 (Johnson, Stamkos), 8:12 (pp). 4, Tampa
Bay, Namestnikov 8 (Hedman, Filppula),
10:47 (pp). 5, Pittsburgh, Hornqvist 10
(Malkin, Letang), 14:23 (pp).
Third Period—6, Pittsburgh, Daley 2
(Malkin, Kessel), 10:13. 7, Pittsburgh,
Kunitz 7 (Maatta, Hornqvist), 13:48. 8,
Tampa Bay, Stralman 5 (Filppula, Paquette), 15:21.
Overtime—9, Tampa Bay, Namestnikov
9 (Kucherov), 2:11.
Shots on Goal—Pittsburgh 8-11-183—40. Tampa Bay 7-6-10-2—25.
Power-play opportunities—Pittsburgh
1 of 4; Tampa Bay 2 of 5.
Goalies—Pittsburgh, Fleury 15-11-5 (25
shots-20 saves). Tampa Bay, Vasilevskiy
6-4-0 (40-36).
A—19,092 (19,092). T—2:42.
Boston
0 1 3—4
Buffalo
1 0 0—1
First Period—1, Buffalo, Legwand 3,
14:37.
Second Period—2, Boston, Beleskey 8
(Spooner, Eriksson), 1:01.
Third Period—3, Boston, Chara 6
(Spooner, Beleskey), :29. 4, Boston,
Spooner 10 (Eriksson, K.Miller), 10:53. 5,
Boston, Connolly 6, 18:51 (en).
Shots on Goal—Boston 9-9-13—31. Buffalo 10-16-8—34.
Power-play opportunities—Boston 0
of 2; Buffalo 0 of 4.
Goalies—Boston, Gustavsson 8-3-1 (34
shots-33 saves). Buffalo, Lehner 0-1-0
(30-27).
A—18,704 (19,070). T—2:30.
Blackhawks 4, Maple Leafs 1
Chicago
0 2 2—4
Toronto
0 0 1—1
Second Period—1, Chicago, Kane 26
(Keith, Panarin), 13:07. 2, Chicago, Kane
27 (Panarin, Seabrook), 17:13 (pp).
Third Period—3, Chicago, Panarin 16
(Kane, Seabrook), :21 (pp). 4, Toronto, Rielly 5 (Parenteau, Matthias), 3:47. 5, Chicago, Kane 28 (Teravainen), 17:48 (en).
Shots on Goal—Chicago 7-11-11—29.
Toronto 10-8-11—29.
Power-play opportunities—Chicago 2
of 6; Toronto 0 of 3.
Goalies—Chicago, Darling 5-3-2 (29
shots-28 saves). Toronto, Reimer 7-7-4
(28-25).
A—20,049 (18,819). T—2:30.
Canucks 3, Hurricanes 2 (OT)
Vancouver
1 1 0 1—3
Carolina
1 0 1 0—2
First Period—1, Vancouver, Vey 1,
13:14. 2, Carolina, Versteeg 8 (Slavin,
J.Staal), 18:27 (pp).
Second Period—3, Vancouver, Horvat
7 (Fedun, Bartkowski), 9:32.
Third Period—4, Carolina, Liles 4 (Nestrasil, Rask), 17:50.
Overtime—5, Vancouver, Horvat 8 (Vrbata, Tanev), 3:25.
Shots on Goal—Vancouver 6-5-7-4—22.
Carolina 9-19-11-1—40.
Power-play opportunities—Vancouver
0 of 0; Carolina 1 of 3.
Goalies—Vancouver, Markstrom 7-5-4
(40 shots-38 saves). Carolina, Ward 1411-5 (22-19).
A—11,657 (18,680). T—2:30.
Jets 1, Wild 0
Winnipeg
1 0 0—1
Minnesota
0 0 0—0
First Period—1, Winnipeg, Wheeler 13
(Little), 3:07.
Shots on Goal—Winnipeg 9-12-5—26.
Minnesota 13-4-7—24.
Power-play opportunities—Winnipeg
0 of 2; Minnesota 0 of 3.
Goalies—Winnipeg, Hellebuyck 11-6-1
(24 shots-24 saves). Minnesota, Dubnyk
18-13-4 (26-25).
A—19,222 (17,954). T—2:19.
Ducks 4, Stars 2
Dallas
0 1 1—2
Anaheim
4 0 0—4
First Period—1, Anaheim, Silfverberg
5 (Manson, Hagelin), 3:05. 2, Anaheim,
Vatanen 6 (Cogliano, Thompson), 3:36.
3, Anaheim, Lindholm 3 (Kesler, Silfverberg), 15:04 (pp). 4, Anaheim, Perry 17
(Theodore, Getzlaf), 15:37.
Second Period—5, Dallas, Janmark 10
(Moen), 1:15 (sh).
Third Period—6, Dallas, Ja.Benn 26
(Spezza, Demers), 11:58 (pp).
Shots on Goal—Dallas 7-6-11—24. Anaheim 19-7-9—35.
Power-play opportunities—Dallas 1 of
4; Anaheim 1 of 3.
Goalies—Dallas, Lehtonen 13-4-0 (35
shots-31 saves). Anaheim, Andersen 78-5 (24-22).
A—16,201 (17,174). T—2:36.
M ARK J. TERRILL /AP
Ducks goalie Frederik Andersen deflects a shot during the third
period of Friday’s game against the Stars in Anaheim, Calif.
•STA
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NBA
Scoreboard
Eastern Conference
Atlantic Division
W
L
25
15
21
19
20
21
11 29
4
37
Southeast Division
Atlanta
23
17
Miami
23
17
Orlando
20
19
Washington
19
19
Charlotte
18
21
Central Division
Cleveland
28
10
Chicago
23
16
Indiana
22
18
Detroit
21
18
Milwaukee
17 25
Toronto
Boston
New York
Brooklyn
Philadelphia
Bucks 108, Hawks 101 (OT)
Pct
.625
.525
.488
.275
.098
GB
—
4
5½
14
21½
.575
.575
.513
.500
.462
—
—
2½
3
4½
.737
.590
.550
.538
.405
—
5½
7
7½
13
Western Conference
PAT SULLIVAN /AP
The Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving, left, passes out of a double-team by the
Rockets’ Terrence Jones, center, and Patrick Beverley on Friday in
Houston. Irving scored 23 points in the Cavaliers’ 91-77 win.
Roundup
Cavaliers wrap up
road trip with win
Associated Press
HOUSTON — Kyrie Irving
scored 23 points, LeBron James
added 19 and the Cleveland Cavaliers wrapped up their longest
trip of the season with a 91-77 victory over the Houston Rockets on
Friday night.
The Cavaliers capped six
games away from home and were
playing for the second straight
night, but it was the Rockets who
looked tired and listless as Cleveland built a double-digit lead by
halftime and pushed it to 20 in
the third.
Cleveland got back on track
after a loss to San Antonio on
Thursday night that snapped an
eight-game winning streak before the team’s showdown with
Golden State on Monday.
Dwight Howard had 14 points
and 11 rebounds for the Rockets.
James Harden had 11 points on
2-for-10 shooting and missed all
five of his three-point attempts.
Thunder 113, Timberwolves
93: Russell Westbrook had his
23rd career triple-double, leading Oklahoma City to a victory
over visiting Minnesota.
Westbrook finished with 12
points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists
for his fourth triple-double of the
season.
Andrew Wiggins had 25 points
for the Timberwolves. They have
lost nine straight.
Heat 98, Nuggets 95: Hassan Whiteside had a triple-double
with 19 points, 17 rebounds and 11
blocks and injury-depleted Miami
rallied to beat host Denver.
Chris Bosh made the tiebreaking jumper with 55 seconds left
and scored 24 points.
Mavericks 83, Bulls 77: Dirk
Nowitzki scored 21 points to lead
visiting Dallas past Chicago.
Bucks 108, Hawks 101 (OT):
Giannis Antetokounmpo had 28
points and 16 rebounds, Khris
Middleton scored 26 points and
host Milwaukee beat Atlanta in
overtime.
Trail Blazers 116, Nets 104:
Damian Lillard had 33 points and
10 assists, reserve Allen Crabbe
added 19 points and visiting Portland beat Brooklyn for its third
straight victory.
Pelicans 109, Hornets 107:
Ryan Anderson hit six threepointers and had a season-high
32 points, and Anthony Davis
dunked Jrue Holiday’s alley-oop
lob with 2 seconds left to lift New
Orleans past visiting Charlotte.
Wizards 118, Pacers 104:
John Wall had 28 points, seven
rebounds and eight assists to lead
Washington past host Indiana for
its fourth straight victory.
Celtics 117, Suns 103: Isaiah
Thomas scored 19 points against
his former team, Marcus Smart
had his first career triple-double
and host Boston beat Phoenix.
Southwest Division
W
L Pct
San Antonio
35
6 .854
Dallas
23
18 .561
Memphis
22
19 .537
Houston
21
20 .512
New Orleans
13
26 .333
Northwest Division
Oklahoma City
29
12 .707
Utah
17
22 .436
Portland
18
24 .429
Denver
15 25 .375
Minnesota
12 29 .293
Pacific Division
Golden State
37
3 .925
L.A. Clippers
26
13 .667
Sacramento
16 23 .410
Phoenix
13
28 .317
L.A. Lakers
9
32 .220
Thursday’s games
Toronto 106, Orlando 103, OT
Chicago 115, Philadelphia 111, OT
San Antonio 99, Cleveland 95
Memphis 103, Detroit 101
Sacramento 103, Utah 101
Golden State 116, L.A. Lakers 98
Friday’s games
Oklahoma City 113, Minnesota 93
Washington 118, Indiana 104
Portland 116, Brooklyn 104
Boston 117, Phoenix 103
Dallas 83, Chicago 77
New Orleans 109, Charlotte 107
Milwaukee 108, Atlanta 101, OT
Miami 98, Denver 95
Cleveland 91, Houston 77
Saturday’s games
Milwaukee at Charlotte
Portland at Philadelphia
Golden State at Detroit
Boston at Washington
Brooklyn at Atlanta
New York at Memphis
L.A. Lakers at Utah
Sacramento at L.A. Clippers
Sunday’s games
Phoenix at Minnesota
Dallas at San Antonio
Miami at Oklahoma City
Indiana at Denver
Houston at L.A. Lakers
GB
—
12
13
14
21
—
11
11½
13½
17
—
10½
20½
24½
28½
Friday
Cavaliers 91, Rockets 77
CLEVELAND — James 7-14 4-6 19, Love
4-13 0-0 11, Mozgov 1-2 0-0 2, Irving 9-17
4-5 23, Smith 5-15 1-2 13, Dellavedova 1-6
1-2 3, Shumpert 1-7 0-0 2, Thompson 4-4
2-2 10, Varejao 1-5 2-2 4, Jefferson 1-2 1-2
4, Cunningham 0-2 0-0 0, Kaun 0-0 0-2 0.
Totals 34-87 15-23 91.
HOUSTON — Ariza 3-9 0-0 8, Capela 3-7
1-4 7, Howard 4-9 6-10 14, Beverley 5-8
0-0 13, Harden 2-10 7-7 11, T.Jones 1-6 1-2
3, Lawson 0-0 0-0 0, Thornton 1-10 0-0 2,
Brewer 1-4 1-2 3, Terry 2-6 0-0 5, Harrell
2-3 3-4 7, McDaniels 2-2 0-0 4. Totals 26-74
19-29 77.
Cleveland
23 23 22 23—91
Houston
21 14 16 26—77
Three-Point Goals—Cleveland 8-35
(Love 3-8, Smith 2-12, James 1-2, Jefferson 1-2, Irving 1-5, Cunningham 0-1,
Dellavedova 0-2, Shumpert 0-3), Houston 6-25 (Beverley 3-4, Ariza 2-4, Terry
1-4, Brewer 0-1, T.Jones 0-3, Thornton
0-4, Harden 0-5). Fouled Out—None. Rebounds—Cleveland 63 (Love 13), Houston
56 (Howard 11). Assists—Cleveland 19
(James 7), Houston 15 (Harden 5). Total
Fouls—Cleveland 24, Houston 20. Technicals—Cleveland defensive three second, Houston defensive three second.
A—18,320 (18,023).
ATLANTA — Bazemore 3-9 0-0 7, Millsap 10-19 2-2 23, Horford 9-23 0-0 18,
Teague 4-13 0-0 9, Korver 7-10 0-0 17, Sefolosha 1-5 2-2 4, Splitter 2-5 0-0 4, Schroder 6-10 2-2 16, Scott 1-5 0-0 3, Hardaway
Jr. 0-1 0-0 0, Holiday 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 43100 6-6 101.
MILWAUKEE — Antetokounmpo 1018 7-9 28, Parker 5-15 0-0 10, Monroe 416 7-12 15, Carter-Williams 5-15 3-3 15,
Middleton 11-23 4-5 26, Henson 3-6 4-8 10,
O’Bryant 2-3 0-0 4, Ennis 0-0 0-0 0, Vaughn
0-0 0-0 0. Totals 40-96 25-37 108.
Atlanta
28 23 25 19 6—101
Milwaukee
22 24 27 22 13—108
Three-Point Goals—Atlanta 9-30 (Korver 3-5, Schroder 2-3, Millsap 1-4, Scott
1-4, Bazemore 1-4, Teague 1-4, Hardaway
Jr. 0-1, Sefolosha 0-2, Horford 0-3), Milwaukee 3-10 (Carter-Williams 2-3, Antetokounmpo 1-2, Parker 0-1, Middleton
0-4). Fouled Out—Bazemore, Millsap. Rebounds—Atlanta 51 (Millsap 10), Milwaukee 74 (Antetokounmpo 16). Assists—
Atlanta 29 (Teague 10), Milwaukee 19
(Carter-Williams 7). Total Fouls—Atlanta
25, Milwaukee 14. A—15,144 (18,717).
Mavericks 83, Bulls 77
DALLAS — Parsons 4-9 0-0 8, Nowitzki
6-15 7-7 21, Pachulia 4-10 1-2 9, Williams
6-12 2-3 18, Matthews 4-10 0-0 8, Powell
0-2 0-0 0, Harris 1-3 2-2 5, Felton 0-3 0-0 0,
Barea 3-7 2-2 9, McGee 2-4 1-1 5, Villanueva 0-2 0-0 0. Totals 30-77 15-17 83.
CHICAGO — Snell 1-6 0-0 3, Gibson 4-10
1-2 9, Gasol 7-14 3-4 17, Rose 8-18 2-2 18,
Butler 2-11 0-0 4, Hinrich 1-3 5-5 7, Mirotic
0-4 2-2 2, Noah 1-2 0-0 2, McDermott 0-4
0-0 0, Moore 4-6 0-0 8, Brooks 1-4 0-0 2,
Portis 2-4 0-0 5. Totals 31-86 13-15 77.
Dallas
18 18 23 24—83
Chicago
22 24 15 16—77
Three-Point Goals—Dallas 8-22 (Williams 4-5, Nowitzki 2-5, Harris 1-1, Barea
1-3, Felton 0-1, Parsons 0-2, Matthews
0-5), Chicago 2-19 (Portis 1-1, Snell 1-4,
Brooks 0-1, McDermott 0-1, Hinrich 0-2,
Moore 0-2, Rose 0-2, Mirotic 0-2, Butler
0-4). Fouled Out—Pachulia. Rebounds—
Dallas 50 (Pachulia 10), Chicago 56 (Gibson 11). Assists—Dallas 20 (Williams 6),
Chicago 16 (Butler 6). Total Fouls—Dallas
16, Chicago 19. Technicals—Hinrich, Chicago defensive three second. A—22,056
(20,917).
Pelicans 109, Hornets 107
CHARLOTTE — Hairston 3-6 0-0 7, Williams 3-6 3-4 10, Zeller 2-7 1-1 5, Walker
9-17 2-2 25, Batum 11-22 1-1 25, Kaminsky
7-9 2-4 18, Lin 3-10 0-0 7, Hawes 2-5 0-0 4,
Daniels 2-4 0-0 6. Totals 42-86 9-12 107.
NEW ORLEANS — Cunningham 2-6 0-0
5, Davis 8-14 6-7 22, Asik 0-1 1-2 1, Gordon
4-12 0-0 10, Evans 5-10 0-0 12, Holiday 6-14
0-0 13, Anderson 12-19 2-2 32, Ajinca 2-2
0-0 4, Gee 3-5 2-2 8, Cole 1-4 0-0 2. Totals
43-87 11-13 109.
Charlotte
34 15 32 26—107
New Orleans
32 25 27 25—109
Three-Point Goals—Charlotte 14-35
(Walker 5-7, Kaminsky 2-2, Daniels 2-4,
Batum 2-9, Williams 1-3, Hairston 1-3,
Lin 1-5, Hawes 0-2), New Orleans 12-27
(Anderson 6-8, Evans 2-3, Gordon 2-6,
Holiday 1-3, Cunningham 1-3, Cole 0-1,
Gee 0-1, Davis 0-2). Fouled Out—None.
Rebounds—Charlotte 48 (Zeller 8), New
Orleans 45 (Gee 9). Assists—Charlotte 21
(Batum 8), New Orleans 29 (Holiday 10).
Total Fouls—Charlotte 17, New Orleans
15. Technicals—Hawes, Charlotte defensive three second, Ajinca. A—16,876
(16,867).
Trail Blazers 116, Nets 104
PORTLAND — Aminu 3-7 2-2 10, Vonleh
3-8 0-0 6, Plumlee 3-6 1-2 7, Lillard 13-24
2-3 33, McCollum 6-15 0-0 13, Crabbe 7-12
0-0 19, Leonard 3-7 0-0 8, Davis 6-6 2-4 14,
Harkless 2-4 0-0 4, Henderson 1-3 0-0 2,
Frazier 0-1 0-0 0, Connaughton 0-0 0-0 0.
Totals 47-93 7-11 116.
BROOKLYN — Johnson 5-13 2-2 15,
Young 5-11 1-2 11, Lopez 9-17 7-10 25,
Sloan 5-6 3-4 15, Ellington 4-11 0-0 10,
Robinson 4-7 3-4 11, Bargnani 4-7 3-4
12, Larkin 1-6 0-0 2, Bogdanovic 1-6 1-2 3,
Karasev 0-1 0-0 0, Brown 0-0 0-0 0. Totals
38-85 20-28 104.
Portland
22 34 27 33—116
Brooklyn
23 26 30 25—104
Three-Point Goals—Portland 15-35
(Crabbe 5-6, Lillard 5-10, Leonard 2-6,
Aminu 2-6, McCollum 1-4, Henderson 01, Harkless 0-1, Vonleh 0-1), Brooklyn 819 (Johnson 3-6, Sloan 2-3, Ellington 2-6,
Bargnani 1-1, Karasev 0-1, Bogdanovic
0-2). Fouled Out—None. Rebounds—Portland 50 (Davis 10), Brooklyn 55 (Robinson 10). Assists—Portland 26 (Lillard 10),
Brooklyn 22 (Sloan 9). Total Fouls—Portland 18, Brooklyn 10. A—14,749 (17,732).
Heat 98, Nuggets 95
MIAMI — Deng 5-13 2-2 12, Bosh 9-13
5-6 24, Whiteside 8-13 3-5 19, Udrih 5-10
0-0 11, Green 1-5 0-1 2, Winslow 3-5 0-0
8, Johnson 6-14 3-4 15, Richardson 1-4
0-0 2, Stoudemire 2-4 1-1 5. Totals 40-81
14-19 98.
DENVER — Gallinari 2-10 6-6 11, Arthur
8-12 2-2 18, Faried 4-9 6-7 14, Nelson 3-6
0-0 7, Harris 4-14 2-2 11, Barton 2-8 4-4 9,
Mudiay 5-11 4-4 16, Jokic 4-7 1-1 9, Foye
0-1 0-0 0, Kilpatrick 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 32-78
25-26 95.
Miami
20 26 30 22—98
Denver
31 31 16 17—95
Three-Point Goals—Miami 4-11 (Winslow 2-2, Bosh 1-2, Udrih 1-2, Deng 0-1,
Johnson 0-1, Richardson 0-1, Green 0-2),
Denver 6-18 (Mudiay 2-3, Nelson 1-2,
Barton 1-3, Harris 1-4, Gallinari 1-5, Foye
0-1). Fouled Out—None. Rebounds—Miami 49 (Whiteside 17), Denver 44 (Barton,
Arthur 8). Assists—Miami 26 (Udrih 11),
Denver 23 (Jokic 5). Total Fouls—Miami
20, Denver 18. Technicals—Miami Coach
Spoelstra, Miami defensive three second, Denver defensive three second.
A—15,406 (19,155).
Celtics 117, Suns 103
PHOENIX — Tucker 3-8 0-0 7, Morris 210 5-5 9, Chandler 2-4 2-2 6, Knight 7-15 00 16, Booker 2-9 5-6 9, Goodwin 1-8 0-0 2,
Brown 1-2 0-0 2, Warren 5-9 2-4 13, Weems
4-6 1-2 10, Leuer 3-5 0-0 7, Teletovic 5-13
8-9 22. Totals 35-89 23-28 103.
BOSTON — Crowder 5-13 5-6 17, Johnson 6-9 1-3 13, Sullinger 4-8 2-4 11, Thomas 5-11 6-6 19, Bradley 7-21 2-4 17, Turner
1-1 0-0 2, Smart 4-12 1-2 10, Jerebko 2-5
1-2 7, Olynyk 8-16 1-2 21, Hunter 0-0 0-0 0,
Young 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 42-96 19-29 117.
Phoenix
29 18 31 25—103
Boston
36 32 28 21—117
Three-Point Goals—Phoenix 10-27
(Teletovic 4-7, Knight 2-7, Weems 1-1,
Leuer 1-2, Warren 1-2, Tucker 1-3, Goodwin 0-1, Booker 0-4), Boston 14-30 (Olynyk
4-6, Thomas 3-5, Jerebko 2-3, Crowder 25, Sullinger 1-2, Bradley 1-4, Smart 1-5).
Fouled Out—None. Rebounds—Phoenix
57 (Chandler, Morris 9), Boston 66 (Smart
11). Assists—Phoenix 24 (Weems 5), Boston 30 (Smart 11). Total Fouls—Phoenix
22, Boston 19. Technicals—Boston defensive three second. A—18,624 (18,624).
Thunder 113, Timberwolves 93
MINNESOTA — Prince 2-2 0-0 4, Garnett 1-5 0-0 2, Towns 4-13 1-1 9, Rubio 2-6
0-0 6, Wiggins 10-22 5-5 25, Dieng 1-3 0-0
2, Pekovic 2-3 6-6 10, Muhammad 5-12 44 15, LaVine 5-9 2-3 13, Miller 0-1 0-0 0,
Bjelica 1-8 2-4 5, Rudez 1-1 0-0 2. Totals
34-85 20-23 93.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Durant 7-14 6-7
21, Ibaka 6-13 0-0 13, Adams 4-7 4-6 12,
Westbrook 6-10 0-0 12, Roberson 4-4 0-2
8, Kanter 3-8 1-2 7, Waiters 8-14 2-4 20,
Collison 1-1 0-0 2, C.Payne 6-11 1-1 14,
Morrow 0-3 0-0 0, Singler 2-3 0-0 4, McGary 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 47-89 14-22 113.
Minnesota
17 26 22 28— 93
Oklahoma City
31 26 25 31—113
Three-Point Goals—Minnesota 5-12
(Rubio 2-3, Muhammad 1-1, LaVine 1-1,
Bjelica 1-4, Wiggins 0-1, Towns 0-2), Oklahoma City 5-23 (Waiters 2-5, C.Payne 12, Durant 1-5, Ibaka 1-5, Westbrook 0-1,
Kanter 0-1, McGary 0-1, Singler 0-1, Morrow 0-2). Fouled Out—None. Rebounds—
Minnesota 52 (Towns 12), Oklahoma
City 52 (Westbrook 11). Assists—Minnesota 15 (Bjelica 4), Oklahoma City 31
(Westbrook 10). Total Fouls—Minnesota
19, Oklahoma City 21. Technicals—Minnesota defensive three second. Flagrant
Fouls—Wiggins. A—18,203 (18,203).
Wizards 118, Pacers 104
WASHINGTON — Oubre Jr. 2-6 2-4 7,
Dudley 1-3 0-0 3, Nene 4-9 0-0 8, Wall 1221 3-5 28, Temple 2-8 0-0 5, Gooden 4-9 0-0
8, Beal 9-15 0-1 22, Neal 5-10 0-0 12, Blair
6-8 0-0 12, Sessions 5-7 0-0 10, Eddie 1-2
0-0 3. Totals 51-98 5-10 118.
INDIANA — Miles 1-3 2-2 4, George 6-19
8-8 21, Mahinmi 3-5 1-2 7, G.Hill 8-14 1-2
19, Ellis 7-14 3-5 17, Budinger 1-4 2-3 4, Allen 6-8 3-4 15, Turner 4-8 2-2 10, J.Hill 0-2
1-2 1, Robinson III 0-1 0-0 0, S.Hill 0-0 0-0
0, Young 2-2 2-2 6. Totals 38-80 25-32 104.
Washington
24 35 29 30—118
Indiana
27 19 26 32—104
Three-Point Goals—Washington 11-25
(Beal 4-7, Neal 2-3, Dudley 1-2, Oubre Jr. 12, Eddie 1-2, Wall 1-3, Temple 1-4, Gooden
0-2), Indiana 3-17 (G.Hill 2-4, George 1-7,
Budinger 0-2, Miles 0-2, Ellis 0-2). Fouled
Out—None.
Rebounds—Washington
60 (Nene 8), Indiana 41 (G.Hill 8). Assists—Washington 26 (Wall 8), Indiana 19
(George 7). Total Fouls—Washington 29,
Indiana 12. A—18,165 (18,165).
DARRON CUMMINGS/AP
The Indiana Pacers’ Monta Ellis, left, prepares to pass against
the Wizards’ Drew Gooden on Friday in Indianapolis. Washington
knocked off Indiana 118-104 for its fourth consecutive victory.
PAGE 28
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Making it ‘crazy special’
Tournament ban leaves SMU focused on perfect finish
BY STEPHEN H AWKINS
Associated Press
DALLAS — SMU is halfway
to potential perfection in Hall
of Fame coach Larry Brown’s
fourth season and in the top 10 for
the first time in 30 years.
Yet, the No. 10 Mustangs know
there will be no return to the
NCAA Tournament, even if they
keep it up and do something
“crazy special” like win all their
games.
“This is it. We’ve got [14] games
left and our season’s over,” said
senior forward Markus Kennedy.
“We know there’s nothing else
after that, so why not just give it
our all. There’s no reason to save
anything.”
Because of NCAA penalties
handed down last fall, SMU (160, 5-0 AAC) is banned from the
postseason and will play only its
30 regular-season games a year
after its first NCAA Tournament
appearance since 1993. The sanctions included Brown missing the
first nine games.
The Mustangs are also playing
with only seven scholarship players with Keith Frazier away from
the team for personal reasons.
“They’ve overcome all that and
they’re doing what we said the
first day. The only way we can
turn this negative into a positive
is to do something crazy special,” associate head coach Tim
Jankovich said. “Obviously, they
are really trying to do that.”
Jankovich, who led the team
when Brown was suspended and
again when the 75-year-old coach
missed the second half of Sunday’s game after feeling dizzy,
said the best start in school history has been a bit surreal. But
he described the players as very
focused and competitive.
“We’ve got one goal, and that’s
to finish the season undefeated to
prove to ourselves and everyone
else in the world that we are one
of the best teams,” junior guard
Sterling Brown said.
The Mustangs, who play four of
their next six games on the road,
moved up five spots to No. 10 in
the Top 25 on Monday — their
first time in the top 10 since
February 1985. They have been
ranked that high only two other
times, in 1955-56 when they went
to their only Final Four and then
again the next season.
“I’m really proud. We were
hopeful we could someday be a
Top 25 team,” Larry Brown said.
“We’ve got a lot of games to go,
and you look at our bench, it’s
going to be difficult. With eight
(players), I think you can really
manage. Seven? You’ve got to be
really, really lucky.”
Along with Frazier’s absence, a
freshman guard decided to transfer, junior guard Ben Emelogu
(knee, back injuries) is sitting
out the season and Duke transfer
Semi Ojeleye opted to redshirt
instead of playing only a half this
season. SMU added two walk-on
practice players last week.
With no tourneys, the Mustangs have had to look for their
excitement in the regular season.
Senior point guard Nic Moore
made two three-pointers when
the Mustangs overcame a sevenpoint deficit in the final 3:40 to
beat Cincinnati last week, three
days before a 15-point win over
UCF. They routed East Carolina
79-55 on Wednesday night.
“Coach Jank, he talked real big
about making them remember
us now, and talk about us now
because come March they aren’t
going to be talking about us,” said
Kennedy, who has played despite
re-aggravating an ankle injury.
BRANDON WADE /AP
SMU coach Larry Brown celebrates with guard Nic Moore after the
team beat Cincinnati on Jan. 7. The Mustangs (16-0, No. 10) are
making the most of their remaining regular-season games because
NCAA sanctions left them unable to play in the posteason.
SMU hadn’t been ranked in
29 years before breaking into
the Top 25 in 2014, a month before hosting a watch party for
the NCAA Tournament selection
show — and then getting left out
of the field. The Mustangs instead
were the NIT runner-up after
being the No. 1 seed.
There was no campus watch
party last March, when the Mustangs did get an NCAA berth. But
the AAC champions lost their
opening game after a goaltending
call in the closing seconds against
UCLA.
Before this season, the NCAA
handed down sanctions following
an investigation that included a
look into online course work for
Frazier before his enrollment
into SMU. The preseason AAC
favorite can’t play in the conference tournament, either.
“Ever since we had that celebration when we didn’t get into the
tournament, it’s been one thing
after the other that you couldn’t
predict, and yet they’ve really
hung together and it’s great. It’s
neat to be part of it,” Brown said.
“I’m just worried personally that
there’s so many obstacles out
there that it’s going to be really,
really a challenge to keep this
thing going. But we’ll try.”
Valentine among season’s best performances
BY A ARON BEARD
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — Michigan State’s Denzel
Valentine started the first week of the season
with a triple-double in a marquee matchup,
while North Carolina’s Brice Johnson and Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield had their own huge performances once conference play began.
And LSU versatile freshman Ben Simmons has
been putting up big numbers all along.
Hard to believe, but this week marks two months
since the season’s tipoff. But now that college football is over and more fans will turn their attention
to college hoops, here’s a look at some
of the top individual performances
this season and a glimpse of some
possible highlights lurking around
the corner:
Denzel Valentine, Michigan
State: The 6-foot-5 senior had 29
points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists
in a 79-73 win against current
No. 1 Kansas in the Spartans’ second game on Nov.
17. That allowed him to
join program great Magic
Johnson as the only players
ever to post a triple-double
against the Jayhawks.
The performance
was a sign that
Valentine was a
candidate for
national player of the year
Michigan State
for a team that
guard Denzel
made a quick
Valentine
climb from No.
Reinhol d Matay/AP
13 in The Associated
Press preseason Top
25 to No. 1 by early
December.
A.J. English, Iona: English had a half straight out
of a video game against Fairfield on Dec. 1.
The 6-4 senior scored 32 of his 46 points after
halftime, going 11-for-15 from the field and 9-for-10
from three-point range to help the Gaels turn a fourpoint edge into a 101-77 win.
English ended up tying the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference’s single-game scoring record set
in 1985 and also set a league record with 13 threes,
while the 46 points were tied for the most in Division I this year through Monday’s games, according
to STATS.
Kay Felder, Oakland: Felder, the Horizon League’s
preseason player of the year, put on a two-game
show in December.
The 5-9 junior had 38 points and nine assists in a
97-83 win at Washington on Dec. 19, the program’s
first road win against a power-5 opponent in five
years. Three days later, he terrorized then-No. 1
Michigan State with 37 points — including two free
throws with 4.9 seconds left to force overtime — and
nine assists in a 99-93 loss at the Palace of Auburn
Hills, Mich..
Seventy-two hours, 75 points.
“He looked like one of the best players I ever saw
play here, and I said ever,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo
said, “and I’ve watched a lot of pro games here.”
Ben Simmons, LSU: The AP preseason all-American wasn’t fazed by his first Southeastern Conference game at Vanderbilt.
The 6-10 rookie finished with 36 points and 14 rebounds to go with four assists in the 90-82 win on
Jan. 2. He finished an efficient 10 for 15 from the
field while getting to the foul line 19 times, a terrific
performance in a season filled with them.
“I’m not really worried about what everyone
says,” Simmons said. “I know what I can be and who
I can be as a player. So I’m going to do that.”
Brice Johnson, North Carolina: Hall of Fame
coach Roy Williams has used tough love to push
the lean 6-10 senior for more. Johnson’s showing at
Florida State on Jan. 4 illustrated why.
Johnson had career highs of 39 points and 23 rebounds in the 106-90 win, with his 23 rebounds tied
M ARK WALLHEISER /AP
North Carolina’s Brice Johnson had a career high
39 points against Florida State on Jan. 4.
for the most in Division I through Monday’s games,
according to STATS.
Johnson — whose 28 second-half points surpassed his previous game high of 27 — became the
first UNC player in 40 years and the fifth ever to
have a 30-20 game.
“That was a man’s night,” Williams said, calling
the performance “about as good as any I’ve ever
seen. Particularly on the road.”
Buddy Hield, Oklahoma: The preseason AP AllAmerican was unstoppable in a 1-vs-2 triple-overtime classic.
The 6-4 senior guard finished with 46 points on
13-for-23 shooting and eight threes for the No. 2
Sooners at Kansas on Jan. 4. He also had eight rebounds and seven assists in a school-record 54 minutes in the 109-106 loss.
His 46 points were the most by an Oklahoma player since the 1990-91 season. But he also lamented
two late turnovers that tipped the balance in the
season’s top game.
“I wish I had one more overtime,” he said that
night. “I just hate losing.”
•STA
Sunday, January 17, 2016
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PAGE 29
AUSTRALIAN OPEN
Federer: Djokovic tops among ‘Big Four’
Defending Aussie Open
champ is clear favorite
BY DENNIS PASSA
Associated Press
MELBOURNE, Australia — Roger Federer says the so-called Big Four in men’s
tennis — he, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal — still exists, with
one possible notation and an addition.
“Novak deserves like a little star next to
his name right now because he’s been doing
extremely well,” Federer said Saturday.
The Australian Open begins Monday
with Djokovic set to defend his 2015 crown
and aim for title No. 6 at Melbourne Park.
Last year, Djokovic won 27 of his 28 matches in Grand Slam tournaments, capturing
three majors and finishing runner-up to
Stan Wawrinka at the French Open.
That run left Djokovic unquestionably as
No. 1, with Murray second, Federer No. 3,
Wawrinka ranked fourth and Nadal, after
a series of injuries, back to a spot in the top
five.
Order restored, says Federer.
“Who’s had the most success? The top
five guys really, with Stan, you know, Murray, myself, Novak and Rafa,” Federer,
who plays his first-round match Monday.
“Now the rankings are back to more normal again after Rafa’s worked his way
back up.”
Djokovic, in the same half of the draw
as Federer, will open his defense against
Chung Hyeon of South Korea and, if results go with rankings, could meet No. 7
Kei Nishikori in the quarterfinals and Federer in the semis.
Federer, who has won four Australian
titles among his 17 majors, opens against
Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia, and possibly Alexandr Dolgopolov in the second and
No. 27 Grigor Dimitrov in the third.
No 2-ranked Murray will open against
Alexander Zverev of Germany and, in
the same half of the draw, 2014 champion
Wawrinka takes on Dmitry Tursonov.
Nadal, who could meet Wawrinka in
the quarterfinals, opens with a tough encounter against fellow Spaniard and 2009
Australian Open semifinalist Fernando
Verdasco. Nadal beat Verdasco in an epic
17-time major champion
Roger Federer, bottom
left, said Saturday that
Novak Djokovic, left,
deserves to be ranked
at the top of the players
considered part of tennis’
‘Big Four’ of himself,
Djokovic, Rafael Nadal
(bottom center) and Andy
Murray (bottom right).
‘ Novak deserves like a
little star next to his name
right now because he’s
been doing extremely
well.
’
Roger Federer
Four-time Australian Open champion
AP Photos
five-setter that year and went on to win the
title.
“Not a lucky first round, I think, for
me. For him, either,” Nadal said Saturday.
“Will be a tough match.”
Asked to reflect on the 2009 result,
Nadal said: “Obvious that that match gave
me the chance to win the only Australian
Open that I won. That was an unforgettable
memory for me. “
Nadal won three titles last year but it was
the first year since 2004 that he didn’t win
a major. He was beaten by Djokovic in the
Qatar Open final two weeks ago and lavished praise on the Serbian, saying he was
virtually unbeatable in that match.
He continued the sentiment on
Saturday.
“Novak is playing at (a) better level than
the rest of the players now, that’s obvious,” Nadal said. “The way he’s playing,
it’s difficult to see him losing matches.
Just can congratulate him for making that
happen.”
Murray says he knows well and has practiced recently with his Tuesday opponent,
the 6-foot-6 Zverev.
“It will be a tough match,” Murray said.
“He serves well. For a big guy, moves
pretty well ... obviously improving all the
time.”
Murray and his wife, Kim Sears, are
expecting their first child in February. On
Saturday, he reiterated earlier comments
that he would return to London immediately if she went into early labor, even if it
was between the semifinal and the Jan. 31
final and it left the tournament without a
championship decider.
“For me, my child is more important to
me, and my wife is more important to me,
than a tennis match,” Murray said.
Williams dismisses talk of injury, draw
BY JOHN P YE
Associated Press
MELBOURNE, Australia —
Injury? What injury? The draw?
Don’t mention the draw.
Six-time Australian Open
champion
Serena
Williams
worked her way through the preGrand Slam rituals on Saturday,
practicing on the center court
at Melbourne Park, and fielding
questions about the inflammation in her left knee that restricted her preparations, and about a
tough road to another title.
After a tough opener against
Camila Giorgi, the highest
ranked of the unseeded players
in the women’s draw, Williams
may have to face former No. 1ranked Caroline Wozniacki in the
fourth round and No. 5-ranked
Maria Sharapova in a quarterfinal match that would feature last
year’s finalists.
“I don’t really ever look at the
draw, so I would appreciate it
if you didn’t mention it. Thank
you,” she said, shutting down
talk of another showdown with
Sharapova.
Both players withdrew from
tournaments in the first week of
the season, with Williams playing just one set in the Hopman
Cup — her first competitive outing since her pursuit of the calendar-year Grand Slam ended in
a semifinal loss at the U.S. Open
— and Sharapova withdrawing
before her opening match at the
Brisbane International because
of a sore left forearm.
On Saturday, two days before
her opening match, Williams said
she felt “a little tired” because
she’d been doing so much work,
hosing down speculation that she
was struggling during her hitting
session earlier in the morning. In
terms of training, she’s not just
working at 100 percent, she said,
“I’m at 120, 130 percent right
now.”
“I’ve had a really good preparation,” she said. “I didn’t have
the match play that I’ve wanted
to have but after playing for so
many years on tour, I should
be able to focus on that and the
fact that I have played a lot of
matches.”
She has won 21 major titles,
including the Australian and
French Opens and Wimbledon in
2015. She doesn’t expect injury to
be a problem.
“It’s actually really fine. I don’t
have any inflammation anymore,” she said. “It’s just that I
just needed some time to get over
that little hump.”
RICK R YCROFT/AP
Defending women’s champion Serena Williams said at a press
conference on Saturday that she is “130 percent” healthy heading
into this year’s Australian Open.
PAGE 30
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
NFL PLAYOFFS
Panthers’ Harper: ‘We are the better team’
Week 6 victory at Seattle gave
Carolina confidence for playoffs
BY STEVE R EED
Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The
Carolina Panthers no longer appear apprehensive about playing the two-time defending NFC
champion Seattle Seahawks.
In
fact,
they’re
pretty
confident.
“We are the better team,” Panthers safety Roman Harper said
matter-of-factly Monday.
Now Harper wants his teammates to prove it again Sunday
when the two teams meet in
Charlotte in the NFC divisional
playoffs. The winner advances to
play the Green Bay-Arizona winner for the NFC championship.
“We have to go out and show
confidence in who we are and the
things that we have done all year
— and don’t shy away from the
pressure,” Harper said.
The Panthers (15-1) took a big
step forward when they went
to Seattle and defeated the Seahawks 27-23 in Week 6, a victory
that served as a springboard to
their 14-0 start.
But it was more than just that.
That victory was about clearing a major obstacle for the
Panthers.
Before that they had lost four
times in three seasons to the Seahawks, including 31-17 in the
divisional playoffs last January in
Seattle.
“It tells you it can be done,”
Panthers coach Ron Rivera said
of his team’s confident-building
win in October.
The Panthers and Seahawks
appeared to be on a collision
course for the playoffs the final
Seattle Seahawks (10-6)
at Carolina Panthers (15-1)
AFN-Sports
7 p.m. Sunday CET
3 a.m. Monday JKT
two months of the season. Several
players said after that win they
expected to see the Seahawks
again in the postseason.
Harper even called it “fate.”
Many Panthers fans groaned
on social media Sunday when
Minnesota’s Blair Walsh missed
a chip shot field goal that would
have eliminated the Seahawks
from the playoffs — and possibly
given the Panthers a potentially
easier road to the NFC title game
by playing Green Bay rather than
Seattle.
But Carolina All-Pro cornerback Josh Norman, who is no
stranger to overcoming adversity
in his career, said that’s not the
approach the Panthers are taking
this week.
“Why would you want anything
in life that is easier?” Norman
said. “Shoot man, if you don’t go
for it head-on, then how can you
say you’re the best at anything?
That’s the way we are in our society — we want things the easy
way and we want stuff to be given
to us. We don’t want to work for it.
We want it handed to us. I don’t
DAVID T. FOSTER III/AP
The Seahawks’ Jimmy Graham, right, makes a catch in front of the Panthers’ Roman Harper during the
Panthers’ 27-23 victory on Oct. 18. The teams meet again Sunday with a spot in the NFC championship
game at stake. Last year, the Seahawks eliminated Carolina in the divisional round.
think that is the way it should be
done. ... Challenge yourself to be
the best. And if you want to be the
best, then go beat the best.”
Harper said the Panthers are
better prepared for the Seahawks
in this year’s playoffs than they
were last January when they
reached the postseason with a 78-1 record.
Carolina finished first in points
scored on offense this season and
led the league in takeaways.
“To be honest with you I don’t
think we were ready for it,”
Harper said of last year’s playoff defeat. “We were excited to
be there and have a ticket to the
dance. [This year] we have a better-looking date because we’re
15-1 and at home. This year we
are looking forward to them having to come here.”
The Panthers have not lost
at home since Nov. 16, 2014 — a
string of 11 straight games. That’s
the longest home winning streak
in the NFL.
They will have to win two more
games to get to where they ultimately want to go — the Super
Bowl.
“This team is built for this,”
Harper said of a Panthers team
that has eight All-Pros, including
six on the first team. “This team
is built for this playoff run and I’m
looking forward to seeing who we
are going to rise up to be.”
Rubin, Mebane keys in Seattle’s top run defense
BY TIM BOOTH
Associated Press
RENTON, Wash. — From afar, Brandon Mebane would look at film of other
defensive tackles around the NFL and
what Ahtyba Rubin was doing in Cleveland
jumped off the screen.
What he saw on
the screen became
He can run even more impressive when Rubin
like deer.
decided to sign
Like a big
with Seattle last
offseason and play
deer.
alongside Mebane
Brandon Mebane on the Seahawks
Seahawks defensive defensive line.
tackle on teammate
“He runs down
Ahtyba Rubin the field like I
never seen no big
dude run down the
field,” Mebane said. “He can run like deer.
Like a big deer. He’s a great player.”
On a defense with stars like Richard
Sherman, Bobby Wagner, Michael Bennett and Earl Thomas — just to name a
few — players like Mebane and Rubin can
‘
’
get easily overlooked. It’s understandable
because their positions on the interior of
Seattle’s defensive line make it difficult to
stand out.
But ask around about why the Seahawks
had the best run defense in the NFL this
season giving up just 81.5 yards per game
and were successful twice in shutting down
Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson and the reasons point back directly to Mebane and
Rubin as the instigators of that success.
“They make plays and they make sure
that me and K.J. (Wright) never really get
touched,” middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “They’ve done a great job with
that. I don’t know if you guys have noticed
it on film, but sometimes [Mebane] calls
out the plays before it happens and [Rubin]
does a great job of two-gapping and keeping the double teams. They’re very crucial
to what we do as a team.”
The task before Mebane and Rubin this
week is among the most difficult they have
faced all season, trying to shut down Carolina in the NFC divisional playoff game on
Sunday. There may not be a more challenging or diverse run game in the NFL to try
to slow down. Whether it’s Jonathan Stew-
art carrying the ball, Mike Tolbert bulling his way through the line or the times
quarterback Cam Newton keeps the ball in
his own hands, there is not a more unique
running attack in the league, according to
the Seahawks.
“It is a really diverse run game. It is the
most that we will see in the NFL,” Seattle
coach Pete Carroll said. “There is nobody
that does more stuff and it’s basically because the quarterback is such a dynamic
part of it. ... This is the most difficult offense that we face and it really is because
Cam is such an adept player and they rely
on him.”
Both Rubin and Mebane entered this
season with questions about how they
could be effective for Seattle.
Mebane was coming back from a serious
hamstring injury that cost him the latter
half of last season and the playoffs. He was
also trying to come back from a significant injury at age 30 and playing a position
where strength and explosiveness with his
legs is a priority.
“Can you imagine how big his hammy
is? That’s a major surgery, a major injury
to come back from,” Carroll said. “As we
watched him in the offseason, through the
summer time, he worked so hard to get
back. I’ve said that he had one of his best
offseasons ever. He had to, to get back.
That usually pays you back, and he’s had a
really good year for us.”
Rubin was a bit of an unknown because
of the lack of attention defensive tackles
receive, but Seattle was confident in his
ability to play the “three-technique” defensive tackle position and be able to cover
two gaps of the offensive line. What caught
them a bit by surprise was Rubin’s speed
chasing the play downfield. He recovered
Adrian Peterson’s key fourth-quarter fumble last week 13 yards beyond the line of
scrimmage.
“It was really clear the first time we’d
sat down and really talked about it. I asked
him to try to be really stout as a three-technique at the line of scrimmage, and then
we’ve seen you running the football, be
great at doing that for us and show us that
you’re a big guy that can chase,” Carroll
said. “I wasn’t asking him something that
he wasn’t ready to do, but we just kind of
solidified what our expectations were. He’s
done that all year long.”
•STA
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NFL PLAYOFFS
Trouble: It took a while
for duo to adjust to O-line
FROM BACK PAGE
G ENE J. PUSKAR /AP
Steelers receivers, from left, Markus Wheaton, Martavis Bryant and Sammie Coates wait to run a drill
during practice Thursday in Pittsburgh. The Steelers face the Broncos without star receiver Antonio
Brown, while he recovers from a concussion, in an NFL divisional playoff game in Denver on Sunday.
Steelers embrace task
of playing without Brown
BY WILL GRAVES
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — Antonio
Brown leaned back in his locker
recently and allowed himself a
brief moment of introspection.
Fresh off the most productive
three-season stretch by a wide
receiver in NFL history, a run
that has garnered the Pittsburgh
Steelers star a pair of first-team
All-Pro selections while feeding
social media a steady stream of
GIF-worthy, open-field moves
and touchdown celebrations,
Brown listened as someone rattled off the list of Hall of Famers
whose numbers he has somehow
topped.
“I am the best though, right?”
Brown said in a way best described as a humblebrag. “Guys
haven’t done what I’ve done. But
we don’t want to talk about that.
We always want to grow. Growing
is never-ending.”
Even when it hurts.
Brown will miss the first playoff game of his career on Sunday
when the Steelers travel to Denver in the divisional round. The
four-time Pro Bowler and one of
the league’s most electric players
is out with a concussion sustained
in the final minute of last week’s
wild-card win over Cincinnati.
The injury deprives the Steelers
of their MVP against the league’s
best defense, one he lit up for 189
yards and two touchdowns in a
comeback victory a month ago.
Yet the Steelers insist they can
Pittsburgh Steelers (11-6)
at Denver Broncos (12-4)
AFN-Sports
10:30 p.m. Sunday CET
6:30 a.m. Monday JKT
get by without him. Having an apparently healthy-ish Ben Roethlisberger helps. The quarterback
is officially questionable with a
sprained right shoulder but threw
the ball well in practice on Friday,
according to teammates. It also
helps to have a group of receivers who have spent their time in
Pittsburgh absorbing what they
can from one of the most meticulous preparers in the league.
“We’ve all leaned on him in the
past, but it creates an opportunity
for us,” Markus Wheaton said
Friday.
One Pittsburgh hasn’t had
to face since a sprained ankle
forced Brown to skip three games
in 2012. Back then he was an
overachieving sixth-round draft
pick. Now he’s arguably one of
the NFL’s most unguardable
threats, his combination of speed
— Brown runs with the intensity
of a 6-year-old chasing down an
ice-cream truck — hands and
body control makes any one-onone matchup with him borderline
unfair. Look for no further than
355 receptions since the start of
the 2013 season as proof.
Heading to Denver without him
is less than ideal, yet it’s a challenge Wheaton, Martavis Bryant, Darrius Heyward-Bey and
Sammie Coates believe they’re
ready to embrace. None of them
have played a game in Pittsburgh
without Brown. Not having his familiar No. 84 in the huddle will be
weird. It won’t be the end of the
world.
“To not see him be there with
us, we’ve got to do some bigger
things that we haven’t done before to show him that we’ve got
his back,” said Coates, a rookie
who caught all of one pass in limited playing time.
In that sense, Brown’s own
development has hastened the
maturity of the rest of the group.
Offensive coordinator Todd Haley
requires each of Pittsburgh’s receivers to learn every route from
every position so they’re prepared when he finds something
he wants to exploit. Sometimes
that means putting Brown in the
slot. Sometimes it means putting
him in the backfield or in motion
at the snap. The Steelers expect
that constant tinkering to help
minimize the inevitable drop-off.
“Everybody knows where to be
and how to do everything,” Heyward-Bey said. “When somebody
goes down, it’s not like, ‘Oh no,
what do we do?’ ”
secure the AFC’s No. 1 seed.
They’ll host the Pittsburgh Steelers (11-6) Sunday.
“Both of them have played hard
all season. Both of them have
played through injuries,” Peyton
Manning said.
“I do think kind of like a quarterback develops timing with receivers, that both of those backs
are running behind five new offensive linemen for the most part.
That chemistry between those
seven, eight guys has taken time.
I think that’s certainly a lot better
than it was in Week 1 or 2.”
Denver’s O-line features three
first-time starters in Max Garcia, Matt Paradis and Michael
Schofield.
“I think that’s been a big difference in those guys seeing the
holes based off of how Max is
going to block or Matt is going to
block, and the linemen feel more
comfortable with those guys behind them,” Manning said.
The running backs also feel
more comfortable with each
other.
“My first year here, me and
Ronnie barely talked,” Anderson
said. “Part of it was because he’s
from L.A. and I’m from the Bay,
we didn’t get along. No, to be honest, that’s real. We just, we didn’t
see eye to eye.”
Hillman laughed off the geographical differences and said
their personalities just clashed.
While Anderson loves to talk,
Hillman doesn’t.
Asked for his thoughts last
week on which team he’d like to
face in the divisional round of the
playoffs, Hillman replied, “No.
Who has thoughts?”
Anderson, for one, and he loves
to share them.
“Yeah, he still talks too damn
much,” Hillman said. “You’ve
just got to get used to him.”
What Hillman and Anderson
do well is compliment — and
complement — each other.
Asked what impresses him
most about Hillman, Anderson
said: “The growth. Since I’ve
been here, the football IQ he has
now is just tremendous.
“And then you know him making those runs between the tackles that people said he can’t do,
him breaking tackles that people
said he can’t do. I mean, Ronnie’s
a dog. Ouch. You play with a dog,
it just makes you want to go out
there and be that same dog.”
Asked what impresses him
most about Anderson, Hillman
said: “He just bounces off tackles. All of a
sudden you
Both of just find guys
them have bouncing off
of him or you
played
know you see
hard all
something,
there’s nothseason.
ing there and
Both of
all of a sudthem have den somebody falls off
played
of him and he
through
runs for 15 or
20.”
injuries.
Hillman is
Peyton the speedster,
Manning Anderson the
Broncos QB power driver.
They both
see the game the same thanks to
all their sideline conversations
they have between series.
Anderson has learned to listen;
Hillman has learned to speak up.
“I just think when it comes to
football, me saying some things
that he can look at on tape and
say, ‘Damn, C.J.’s making sense’
probably built confidence on what
I’m saying,” Anderson said. “And
vice versa: he said some things
and I’m going, ‘Man, Ronnie’s
making some sense on that. I have
never thought of it that way.’ ”
The 24-year-old running backs
can still clash at times.
Anderson is seven months
older than Hillman, but Hillman
entered the NFL a year earlier.
“I’m
Big
Bro,”
insisted
Anderson.
“I’m still the Daddy in the
room,” retorted Hillman.
‘
’
DAVID Z ALUBOWSKI /AP
Broncos running back Ronnie Hillman celebrates with fans after
scoring during against the Chargers on Jan. 3 in Denver.
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Sunday, January 17, 2016
SPORTS
Cavalier attitude
Cleveland wraps up road trip
by beating Rockets » NBA, Page 27
NFL PLAYOFFS
DAVID EULITT, K ANSAS CITY STAR,
ABOVE , AND
STACIE SCOTT, C OLORADO SPRINGS G AZETTE,
RIGHT/TNS
Broncos running backs Ronnie Hillman, above, and C.J. Anderson, right, combined for 1,583 yards rushing.
Double
trouble
Denver RBs form terrific tandem
BY A RNIE STAPLETON
Associated Press
ENGLEWOOD, Colo.
here was a time when Ronnie Hillman
and C.J. Anderson didn’t even speak to
each other.
Now, they’re fast friends who have
given the Denver Broncos a terrific tandem in the
backfield heading into the playoffs.
The Broncos are one of two NFL teams with two
700-yard rushers. The other is Cincinnati.
Hillman led the team with a career-high 863
T
yards and seven touchdowns. Anderson ran for 720 yards and five TDs.
Both maneuvered their way through
a spate of injuries this season along
with the growing pains that came with
a new offensive line and Gary Kubiak’s
zone blocking scheme.
Doling out tips to each other between series, they hit their stride this month.
Denver’s double dose of trouble for defenses combined for 212 yards and two touchdowns against the
Chargers in Week 17. That helped the Broncos (12-4)
SEE TROUBLE ON PAGE 31
Inside: In matchup with Seahawks, Harper says Panthers are better team, Page 30
Federer: Djokovic should have a star by his name
Kane’s hat trick helps Blackhawks win 10th straight
Australian Open, Page 29
NHL, Page 26