Three sisters from Irbil have won gold and silver medals in weightlifting events in the regional 2021 Arab Weightlifting Championship. While preparing for future weightlifting competitions, the three Kurdish women are inspiring young girls to step into a male dominated field. VOA’s Ahmad Zebari reports from Irbil, narrated by Namo Abdulla.
Camera: Ahmed Zebari 
Produced by: Ahmed Zebari 
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The Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby, leaving in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s highest court to throw out his conviction and set him free from prison.

The high court declined prosecutors’ request to hear the case and reinstate Cosby’s conviction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year threw out Cosby’s conviction, saying the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

As is typical, the Supreme Court did not say anything in rejecting the case. The case was included in a long list of cases the court said Monday it would not hear.

The 84-year-old Cosby became the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a jury in 2018 found him guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. A jury had previously deadlocked in Cosby’s case, resulting in a mistrial in 2017.

Cosby spent nearly three years in prison before Pennsylvania’s high court ordered his release.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission. Constand has done so.
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Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” “Drive My Car” and “Summer of Soul” were among the big winners at the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards Sunday.

The ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally was held in a tent by the beach in Santa Monica, broadcast on AMC and IFC. It is the cool, casual counterpart to some of the more traditional film awards shows.

“If you don’t win, you can just walk straight into the ocean,” Offerman said.

Gyllenhaal won best feature, director and best screenplay for her adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel “The Lost Daughter.”

Through tears, Gyllenhaal said that more than anything she believes in love. She was effusive in her praise for her crew.

“You were the first people to tell me I was a director,” she said. “Thank you to Netflix — I can’t even believe this — for your support. … Nobody ever makes their first movie and comes out loving their financiers.”

“I love independent film,” Gyllenhaal added. “I grew up making independent film.”

Japan’s “Drive My Car, which has also been nominated for a best picture Oscar, picked up best international feature.

Taylour Paige won best female lead for “Zola,” which was based on a Twitter thread about a wild trip to Florida.

“Wow, I am in shock. I wrote something because I’m not eloquent and I’m drunk,” Paige said.

She thanked her grandmother who passed away on the day she got word of her nomination and Zola for, “knowing that your story was worth telling.”

Simon Rex won best male lead for playing an ex-porn star in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.” Rex said his career was in the dumps before Baker called him for the shoestring film.

“I’m reeling from the whole experience,” Rex said. “This is basically a glorified student film…I’m grateful and humbled.”

Mullally and Offerman got the show off to a lively start, both in three-piece suits and vests with no shirt underneath. Sarah Silverman made an appearance in a pre-taped segment offering her services as a backup host because Mullally and Offerman joined Twitter “before 2015.”

The married co-hosts said they’d hoped to be the biggest Hollywood couple in the room and were dismayed that Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard were there to upstage them.

“A-listers and indie stars? Pick a lane you greedy bastards,” Offerman said.

They acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Offerman said he hopes “Putin (expletive) off and goes home” and implored the audience to send him off with a “Spirit Awards salute.” Many raised their hands with a middle finger.

The show’s honorary chair Kristen Stewart also spoke about the war.

“We’re compelled to stand with the people of Ukraine,” Stewart said. “We stand with the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing this war.”

Historically, the Spirit Awards are held on the Saturday afternoon before the Oscars, but this year moved up a few weeks.

“Summer of Soul” won best documentary. The film brings back to life the largely forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

“I’m not going to cry right now, I’m not, I’m not,” “Summer of Soul” director Questlove said.

Troy Kotsur got another boost before the Oscars, winning best supporting actor for “CODA.” He also won the Screen Actors Guild prize.

“I can feel the spirit of the arts and we can celebrate together,” Kotsur said.

“Squid Game’s” Lee Jung-jae also followed up his SAG win with a Spirit Award.

Marlee Matlin, who presented the first screenplay award to Michael Sarnoski for “Pig,” implored the screenwriters to think of deaf actors when crafting scripts.

Andrew Garfield made an appearance to present the Robert Altman Award to his friend Fran Kranz, who he acted with in a Mike Nichols play. Kranz’s debut “Mass” is a small ensemble about a mediation in the aftermath of a school shooting between parents of a victim and parents of the perpetrator.

Best supporting female went to Ruth Negga, for her turn in Rebecca Hall’s “Passing.” A technical glitch muted the first part of her virtual speech. The black-and-white Netflix film also won best cinematography, for Edu Grau

The show can sometimes serve as a preview of what will happen on Oscar night. Last year, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” picked up best feature and director at the Spirit Awards before going on to win the top prizes at the Oscars. “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave” also all won at the Spirits before taking best picture at the Oscars.

Because of their production budgets, many top awards contenders this year were not eligible, including “Belfast,” “King Richard” and “The Power of the Dog.” To be considered, films must have cost less than $22.5 million to make.
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The 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race started Sunday with 49 mushers setting their sights on Alaska’s western coast.

The race will take the mushers across Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving terrain, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the unpredictable Bering Sea ice.

The winner is expected to cross the finish line in the western Alaska coastal community of Nome about nine days after the start.

For the first time ever in 2021, the race did not finish in Nome because of the pandemic. Instead, the race started in Willow, went to the ghost town of Iditarod and then doubled back to Willow.

Dallas Seavey won the 2021 race, matching musher Rick Swenson for the most wins ever with five apiece. Swenson, 71, last won in 1991 and hasn’t raced the Iditarod since 2012.

Seavey is looking to make history by becoming the first musher to hold six titles. Seavey has said he will likely take a break after this year’s race to spend time with his daughter.

There are two four-time champions in the race with Martin Buser and Jeff King. Buser is running in his 39th Iditarod, and King stepped in just days before the race started to run musher Nic Petit’s team after Petit said on Facebook he contracted COVID-19. Also in the race are 2018 winner Joar Leifseth Ulsom and 2019 winner Pete Kaiser.

Fifteen mushers signed up but withdrew from the race before it started, including Petit and the 2020 winner Thomas Waerner of Norway, who wasn’t able to secure travel documents to the U.S.
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The fledgling Basketball Africa League tipped off its second season in Dakar, Senegal, on March 5, 2022, with a dozen men’s club teams from as many African countries vying for the 2022 BAL championship title.

Senegal’s Dakar Université Club and Guinea’s Seydou Legacy Athlétique Club faced off in the season opener. They had their eyes on the prize claimed by Egypt’s Zamalek in last year’s inaugural season.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the BAL’s original 2020 launch date by a year and restricted its games to two weeks in Rwanda’s capital. This season’s 38 scheduled games will extend over three months among Dakar, Kigali and Cairo.

The BAL teams have been split into two conferences: Sahara and Nile. The Sahara teams — from Guinea, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia – will compete against each other through March 15 at the Dakar Arena. Nile teams – from Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, South Africa and South Sudan — will play April 9 through 19 at Cairo’s Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex. Each conference’s top four teams will qualify for the playoffs, with a single-elimination tournament and finals at Kigali Arena May 21 to 28.

The BAL is a joint venture of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). It represents the NBA’s first collaboration operating a league outside North America.

“The NBA is making an investment in growing the game across the continent, broadly speaking,” NBA Africa’s president, Victor Williams, said at a February event celebrating a new NBA office in Lagos, Nigeria. Its original Africa office opened in Johannesburg in 2010.

A FIBA official said this second BAL season would “expand the scope and the entertainment value of the game” beyond the inaugural season’s two-week run in Kigali.

“Countries across Africa will see the games firsthand,” Sam Ahmedu, president of FIBA Africa Zone 3, told VOA. “It will help to also popularize the game and attract more sponsorship.”

Among BAL’s backers are companies such as Nike, Pepsi, Hennessy cognac and RwandAir.

The BAL’s parent organization, NBA Africa, has drawn strategic partners such as former president Barack Obama and investors including former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While football is the continent’s dominant team sport, interest in hoops has been growing. CNBC has reported the NBA’s goal of making it a top sport on the continent within a decade, focusing on the continent’s predominantly young and growing population. Africa has the world’s youngest population, with 70% of those in sub-Saharan Africa under age 30, the United Nations reports.

This season, each BAL team will have one prospect from the NBA Academy Africa, a basketball training center in Saly, Senegal, for top high school-age prospects. It’s through a new program called BAL Elevate.

“There is a natural synergy between the BAL and NBA Academy Africa, and this program will provide another pathway for elite African prospects to reach their potential as players and people,” Amadou Gallo Fall, the BAL’s president, said in a press release.

A talent pipeline?

Right now, the NBA has more than 50 players who either were born in Africa or have at least one African parent, according to a BAL representative.

Those players include two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, raised in Greece by parents from Nigeria; Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers and Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors, both native Cameroonians; and Neemias Queta of the Sacramento Kings, whose parents hail from Guinea-Bissau.

Some see efforts such as the BAL or the Basketball Without Borders program as a pipeline to the NBA. Last year’s league play drew 15 NBA scouts or team representatives, the Raptors’ scouting manager, Sarah Chan, told VOA at the time.

But other hoops devotees such as Relton Booysen contend the BAL should cultivate and keep talented players on the continent.

“My opinion is that the BAL is a prize. It is a prize for anyone in Africa, in the world, to play in the BAL,” said Booysen, head coach of the Cape Town Tigers, a South African team making its league debut April 10 in Cairo against Angola’s Pedro de la Rionda club. “It’s not like you want to use the BAL to feed players for the NBA. … I believe that the BAL will grow as big as the NBA and bigger.”

Hoops as cultural diplomacy

Scott Brooks, a sociologist and associate director of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute, said he sees efforts such as the BAL as a form of cultural diplomacy. “This is a global kind of community when you’re talking about basketball,” he said.

“It’s not just American culture taking over. We always get a piece of other cultures coming back,” Brooks added. “That’s what really makes this exciting.”

Brooks praised programs such as Basketball Without Borders, the NBA and FIBA’s global community development and outreach program to nurture young players — not only in the sport but also in academics, health and values.

“It’s not just building athletes, it is building leaders in Africa,” said Brooks, who also lauded the BAL’s president, Amadou Gallo Fall, for playing an instrumental role in such development. “His vision is not just that they play basketball,” Brooks said, but that “they learn servantship … and they come back to the continent and help him build it.”

Participating teams hope the BAL tournament will raise their visibility and support.

For instance, the Rwanda Energy Group (REG), which qualified for this season’s competition, is relatively unknown to Kigali resident Jean de Dieu Rukundo. “I have no idea about REG, but anyway I wish them success,” he told VOA.

REG’s sports coordinator, Geoffrey Zawadi, expressed confidence in netting new admirers. He said the 5-year-old club already has won two national league trophies and “our fan base is increasing year after year.”

VOA will partner for a second season with the BAL, broadcasting 31 games across its extensive radio network in Africa. That includes select games in English, French, Portuguese, Kinyarwanda and Wolof. New this year, VOA and the BAL will collaborate on additional programming including weekly podcasts from Dakar, Cairo and Kigali that will air across VOA and BAL online platforms. Games will be livestreamed at NBA.com and TheBAL.com.

This report originated in VOA’s Africa Division. Contributors include: Joad Jose Santarita, Portuguese Service; Edward Rwema, Central Africa Service; Yacouba Ouedraogo and Tresor Matondo, French to Africa Service; and Mike Mbonye, English to Africa Service.
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Walter R. Mears, who for 45 years fluidly and speedily wrote the news about presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it, has died. He was 87.

“I could produce a story as fast as I could type,” Mears once acknowledged — and he was a fast typist. He became the AP’s Washington bureau chief and the wire service’s executive editor and vice president, but he always returned to the keyboard, and to covering politics.

Mears died Thursday at his apartment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight days after being diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer, said his daughters Susan Mears of Boulder, Colorado, and Stephanie Mears of Austin, Texas, who were with him.

They said he was visited on his last night by a minister, with whom he discussed Alf Landon, the losing Republican presidential candidate in 1936, a year after his birth.

Mears’ ability to find the essence of a story while it was still going on and to get it to the wire — and to newspapers and broadcasters around the world — became legend among peers. In 1972, Timothy Crouse featured Mears in The Boys on the Bus, a book chronicling the efforts and antics of reporters covering that year’s presidential campaign.

Crouse recounted how, immediately after a political debate, a reporter from The Boston Globe called out to the man from AP: “Walter, what’s our lead? What’s the lead, Walter?” The question became a catchphrase among political reporters to describe the search for the most newsworthy aspect of an event — the lead. “Made me moderately famous,” Mears cracked in 2005.

It was a natural question. Mears had to bang out stories about campaign debates while they were still underway. Newspaper editors would see his lead on the wire before their own reporters filed their stories. So it was defensive for others on the press bus to wonder what Mears was leading with, and to ask him.

Early in his Washington career, he was assigned to write updates on the 1962 congressional elections. His bureau chief asked a senior colleague to size up how Mears worked under pressure and report back. “Mears writes faster than most people think,” the evaluator wrote, then, tongue in cheek, “and sometimes faster than he thinks.”

“Walter’s impact at the AP, and in the journalism industry as a whole, is hard to overstate,” said Julie Pace, AP executive editor and senior vice president. “He was a champion for a free and fair press, a dogged reporter, an elegant chronicler of history and an inspiration to countless journalists, including myself.”

Kathleen Carroll, a former AP executive editor, said he taught generations of journalists “how to watch and listen and ask and explain.”

“Walter was also a wonderful human being,” she said. “He loved his family — being a grandfather was one of the great joys of his life. He loved golf and the Red Sox, in that order. He loved politics and he loved the AP.”

Mears didn’t seem to mind being known as a pacesetter. “I came away with a slogan not of my making, but one that stuck for the rest of my career,” he recalled in his 2003 memoir, Deadlines Past. Over four decades, Mears covered 11 presidential campaigns, from Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 to Bush-Gore in 2000, as well as the political conventions, the campaigns, debates, the elections and, finally, the pomp and promise of the inaugurations.

In tribute, Jules Witcover, who covered politics for The Sun in Baltimore, said Mears combined speed and accuracy with an eye for the telling detail.

“His uncanny ability to cut to the heart of any story and relate it in spare, lively prose showed the way for a generation of wire service disciples, and he did so with a zest for the nomad’s life on the campaign trail,” Witcover said.

At other times in his career, Mears served AP as Washington bureau chief and as the wire service’s primary news executive, the executive editor in the New York headquarters. But he missed writing and went back to it.

He left once, to be Washington bureau chief for The Detroit News, but returned to AP nine months later. “I couldn’t take the pace,” he said. “It was too slow.”

In 1977 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work covering the election in which Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated a sitting president, Gerald R. Ford, who had inherited his office through the resignation in disgrace of Richard M. Nixon.

It was the Pulitzer, not the Crouse catchphrase, for which Mears thought he would be remembered. Asked to address a later crop of Pulitzer winners, he told them they would never have to wonder what would be the first words of their obituaries: They would be, he said, “Pulitzer Prize-winning.”

Winning his Pulitzer, Mears said, was “the sweetest moment in a career that is like no other line of work.”

In his lead paragraphs, Mears captured the essence of events, not just the words but the music. 

When the 1968 Democrats, in a convention held in the midst of antiwar rioting on the streets of Chicago, finally chose their nominee, he wrote: “Hubert H. Humphrey, apostle of the politics of joy, won the Democratic presidential nomination tonight under armed guard.” 
When, earlier that year, a gunman killed John Kennedy’s brother: “Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds early today, prey like his president brother to the savagery of an assassin.” 
And, in 1976, when former peanut farmer Carter took the presidency from its accidental occupant: “In the end, the improbable Democrat beat the unelected Republican.”

Said Terry Hunt, former AP White House correspondent and deputy bureau chief in Washington: “You can’t talk about Walter without using the word legendary. He was a brilliant writer, astonishingly fast, colorful and compelling.”

David Espo, former special correspondent and assistant Washington bureau chief agreed. “No one ever wrote faster or with more clarity, nor worked harder and made it look easier than Walter did,” he said. “He took care to mentor those less talented than he, in other words, all of us.”

Mears was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and grew up in Lexington, the son of an executive of a chemical company. He graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1956 and within a week joined the AP in Boston.

In those days, news was written on typewriters and transmitted on teletypes. “They were slow and they clattered,” Mears once wrote, “but the din was music to me.”

His first assignment was far from the din. He single-handedly covered the Vermont Legislature. “It was fun covering a citizen legislature with a representative from every hamlet in the state” — 276 of them, he recalled years later, including one elected by his townspeople to keep the fellow from being eligible for welfare.

Mears covered John F. Kennedy in 1960 whenever Kennedy campaigned in New England and covered Barry Goldwater’s hapless race against Lyndon Johnson four years later. He was back at it every presidential year, even after he retired in 2001.

On election night, 2008, he wrote an analysis of Barack Obama’s victory, and the challenge before him.

“Obama is the future,” he wrote, “and it begins now, in troubled times, for a president-elect with a costly agenda of promises that would be difficult to deliver in far better economic circumstances.”

No cheerleading from Mears there. He didn’t believe in reporters expressing political opinions and he kept his own to himself. Although he got to know the candidates he covered, sometimes shared after-hour drinks and played golf with them, he always addressed them by their titles.

He considered a distance between newsperson and newsmaker to be appropriate. He once explained: “I can’t really say I ever felt close to any of them, maybe because I always felt that there’s a line there, there’s sort of a reserve that I think needs to be maintained because you’re not covering a friend. You’re covering somebody who’s trying to convince the American people to give him the most important job they’ve got at their command.”

After retiring, Mears taught journalism for a time at the University of North Carolina and made his home there, in Chapel Hill.

His wife, Frances, died in January 2019. His first wife and their two children were killed in a house fire in 1962. Mears directed that a portion of his ashes be distributed with Frances’ remains and the rest in Massachusetts with those of his first wife and two children lost in the fire.
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International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, aims to focus global attention on the state of women when it comes to gender equality, bias, stereotypes and discrimination.  Its goal is to make the world more diverse, equitable and inclusive for them. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has that story.
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The arts may be a luxury many children of underprivileged families can’t afford, but at the Sitar Arts Center in Washington, D.C., it’s available to all who want to participate. VOA’s Virginia Gunawan reports. Camera – Laurentius Wahyudi.
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With the threat of financial sanctions looming, Chelsea’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich confirmed Wednesday he is trying to sell the Premier League club he turned into an elite trophy-winning machine with his lavish investment.

The speed of Abramovich’s pending exit from Chelsea is striking as he was trying to instigate a plan this past weekend to relinquish some control in order to keep the club under his ownership.

But as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered a seventh day, pressure was growing on the British government to include him among the wealthy Russians to be targeted in sanctions.

“In the current situation, I have therefore taken the decision to sell the club, as I believe this is in the best interest of the club, the fans, the employees, as well as the club’s sponsors and partners,” Abramovich said in a statement.

Abramovich said he will not be asking to be repaid 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) in loans he has granted the club during 19 years of injecting cash to elevate the team into one of the most successful in Europe. The Blues won the Club World Cup for the first time last month — in front of Abramovich in Abu Dhabi — after securing a second Champions League title last year.

“I have instructed my team to set up a charitable foundation where all net proceeds from the sale will be donated,” he said. “The foundation will be for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine.”
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Kenyan refugee aid group RefuSHE is hosting a virtual international fashion show in East Africa for female refugees. Organizers say the show’s proceeds will go toward helping female refugees fleeing conflict in East and Central Africa. Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi, Kenya.  Videographer and producer: Amos Wangwa 
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The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has ignited responses from arts and cultural institutions around the world, which are canceling performances by Russian artists, many of whom are supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The Cannes Film Festival, an invitation-only event that previews top-quality films from more than 80 countries, announced that no Russian delegations will be welcome this year, following the continued conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The festival is set to begin in May. 

“Unless the war of assault ends in conditions that will satisfy the Ukrainian people, it has been decided that we will not welcome official Russian delegations nor accept the presence of anyone linked to the Russian government,” festival organizers said in a statement released Tuesday. 

The festival may allow individual Russian filmmakers but has not stated whether their films will be permitted to compete. 

The European Broadcasting Union, producers of Eurovision, declared that Russia will no longer be allowed to enter acts for the popular Eurovision Song Contest. The decision came after recent recommendations by the contest’s governing body, the Reference Group, which underscored the values of the broadcasting union.   

Broadcasters from Iceland, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands had requested that Russia be barred from the contest.  

Valery Gergiev, chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and a Putin ally, was dismissed after refusing to condemn the Russian president’s actions in Ukraine.  

The internationally renowned conductor has had many of his concerts canceled and has been dropped by his management company. 

The Edinburgh International Festival, where Gergiev served as an honorary president, requested his resignation, saying, “Edinburgh is twinned with the city of Kyiv, and this action is being taken in sympathy with, and support of, its citizens.”  

Some artists oppose the global trend of cultural sanctions against Russia. 

French artist Ségolène Haehnsen Kan maintains a solo exhibition of her paintings in Moscow at the Surface Lab Art Gallery.  

“Art shouldn’t be prevented by war,” she told Artnet News. “It’s important for Ukrainian artists to know that artists in Russia support them.” 

 
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Major League Baseball has canceled opening day, with Commissioner Rob Manfred announcing Tuesday the sport will lose regular-season games over a labor dispute for the first time in 27 years after acrimonious lockout talks collapsed in the hours before management’s deadline. 

Manfred said he is canceling the first two series of the season that was set to begin March 31, dropping the schedule from 162 games to likely 156 games at most. Manfred said the league and union have not made plans for future negotiations. Players won’t be paid for missed games. 

“My deepest hope is we get an agreement quickly,” Manfred said. “I’m really disappointed we didn’t make an agreement.” 

After the sides made progress during 13 negotiating sessions over 16 1/2 hours Monday, the league sent the players’ association a “best and final offer” Tuesday on the ninth straight day of negotiations.  

Players rejected that offer, setting the stage for MLB to follow through on its threat to cancel opening day. 

“Not a particularly productive day today,” Manfred said.  

At 5:10 p.m., Manfred issued a statement that many fans had been dreading: Nothing to look forward to on opening day, normally a spring standard of renewal for fans throughout the nation and some in Canada, too. 

The ninth work stoppage in baseball history will be the fourth that causes regular season games to be canceled, leaving Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium as quiet in next month as Joker Marchant Stadium and Camelback Park have been during the third straight disrupted spring training. 

“The concerns of our fans are at the very top of our consideration list,” Manfred said. 

The lockout, in its 90th day, will plunge a sport staggered by the coronavirus pandemic and afflicted by numerous on-field issues into a self-inflicted hiatus over the inability of players and owners to divide a $10 billion industry. By losing regular-season games, scrutiny will fall even more intensely on Manfred, the commissioner since January 2015, and Tony Clark, the former All-Star first baseman who became union leader when Michael Weiner died in November 2013. 

“Manfred gotta go,” tweeted Chicago Cubs pitcher Marcus Stroman. 

Past stoppages were based on issues such as a salary cap, free-agent compensation and pensions. This one is pretty much solely over money. 

This fight was years in the making, with players angered that payrolls decreased by 4% from 2015 through last year, many teams jettisoned a portion of high-priced veteran journeymen in favor of lower-priced youth, and some clubs gave up on competing in the short term to better position themselves for future years. 

The sport will be upended by its second shortened season in three years. The 2020 schedule was cut from 162 games to 60 because of the pandemic, a decision players filed a grievance over and still are litigating. The disruption will create another issue if 15 days of the season are wiped out: Stars such as Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Jake Cronenworth and Jonathan India would be delayed an extra year from free agency. 

Players would lose $20.5 million in salary for each day of the season that is canceled, according to a study by The Associated Press, and the 30 teams would lose large sums that are harder to pin down. Members of the union’s executive subcommittee stand to lose the most, with Max Scherzer forfeited $232,975 for each regular-season day lost, and Gerrit Cole $193,548. 

Scherzer and free-agent reliever Andrew Miller were present for talks. Both stopped to sign autographs for fans as they left Roger Dean Stadium, the vacant spring training home of the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins where negotiations have been held since the start of last week. 

The first 86 games of the 1973 season were canceled by a strike over pension negotiations, the 1981 season was fractured by a 50-day midseason strike over free agency compensation rules that canceled 713 games, and a strike that started in August 1994 over management’s attempt to gain a salary cap canceled the final 669 games and led to a three-week delay of the 1995 season, when schedules were cut from 162 games to 144. 

Players and owners entered deadline day far apart on many key issues and unresolved on others. The most contentious proposals involve luxury tax thresholds and rates, the size of a new bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, minimum salaries, salary arbitration eligibility and the union’s desire to change the club revenue-sharing formula. 

While the differences had narrowed in recent days, the sides remained apart, with how far apart depending on the point of view. 

MLB proposed raising the luxury tax threshold from $210 million to $220 million in each of the next three seasons, $224 million in 2025 and $230 in 2026. Players asked for $238 million this year, $244 million in 2023, $250 million in 2024, $256 million in 2025 and $263 in 2026. 

MLB proposed $25 million annually for a new bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, and the union dropped from $115 million to $85 million for this year, with $5 million yearly increases. 

MLB proposed raising the minimum salary from $570,500 to $675,000 this year, with increases of $10,000 annually, and the union asked for $725,000 this year, $745,000 in 2023, $765,000 in 2024 and increases for 2025 and 2026 based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners. 

 
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Yellowstone, the first U.S. national park, draws 4 million visitors annually. Parkgoers marvel at fantastic geysers, colorful hot pools and amazing wildlife. Yellowstone National Park photos courtesy of Tom Murphy Photography
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While many people spent Valentine’s Day with the traditional flowers and chocolates, Brittney Johnson was making theater history.

The young Broadway veteran was gently lowered onto the Gershwin Theatre stage to become the first Black actor to assume the role of Glinda full-time in “Wicked,” shattering a racial barrier on the day of love.

“One of the most rewarding parts of this is that it’s not just for me. I think it’s the least amount about me,” she says. “It’s about what it means for other people, for people that are going to see me do it or for people that just know that I’m here.”

Johnson is part of a sisterhood of women who have recently broken boundaries on American stages, including Emilie Kouatchou, who became the first Black woman to play Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, and Morgan Bullock who has become Riverdance’s first Black female dancer.

“I do see things shifting, and I am very optimistic about the future,” Johnson says. “Because specific conversations are starting to happen now, people’s eyes are being opened in ways that they never had been before, either because they never needed to be, or because they just didn’t know what they didn’t know.”

“Wicked,” based on Gregory Maguire’s cult novel, tells the story of two young witches-to-be, one a green brooder who will be the Wicked Witch of the West and the other blond and bubbly, who will be Glinda the Good Witch.

Johnson has ended a 19-year run of white actors playing Glinda in any professional “Wicked” company, a milestone made even more powerful since Glinda is the very essence of goodliness.

“I think it’s something that, especially for little Black kids that come and feel the energy that’s being given to Glinda — somebody that looks like them — it might not be something that they experience from the world in their real life,” she says. “Seeing someone that looks like you being loved is so important to see.”

On the night the role was finally hers, Johnson’s life flashed in front of her — literally. As is the show’s delightful custom, the previous actor playing Glinda arranged for a note of encouragement and love — usually packed with photos of the new star — to be pinned to the inside curtain on her first night. Each new Glinda sees it as she makes her entrance.

“It was the first time that it was me. Usually, I’m seeing other people’s pictures and encouraging words, and it was the first time that note was left for me,” she says. “It’s really moving to have it be for you.”

Lindsay Pearce, her co-star as Elphaba, says Johnson is someone “obviously born for this” and says she’s never seen anyone work harder. She describes Johnson as gracious, fun and goofy.

Pearce was backstage watching on a monitor when Johnson on Valentine’s Day began singing the musical’s hit “Popular” when she spotted a little Black girl in the front row with her family, clapping her hands in glee.

“That’s why it’s important because theater belongs to everyone. It’s not something that only belongs to someone who looks a certain way, sounds a certain way,” she says. “Theater’s supposed to be the mirror of what the world looks like, and that’s what the world looks like.”

Johnson’s other Broadway credits include “Les Misérables,” “Motown the Musical,” “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” and opposite Glenn Close in “Sunset Boulevard” and as a guest in Kristin Chenoweth’s Broadway concert show, teaming up with the original Glinda. She has been connected to “Wicked” since 2018, moving up from ensemble to Glinda understudy, to Glinda standby. She was onstage as Glinda when the pandemic shut down theater in 2020, but only temporarily.

Johnson saw out her contract and had moved to Los Angeles during the lull to pursue TV and film projects when “Wicked” lured her back to Oz with the promise of Glinda full time.

“It did feel like unfinished business,” she says. “I definitely felt like I had more to do in this show in particular. So getting that call really felt like the answer to internally what I thought I needed.”

Johnson grew up in Maryland close to Washington. Her mom said she was singing before she was talking. “She said that I was a drama queen from when I was a child,” Johnson says, then laughing adds: “I don’t agree.”

She was bitten by the musical theater bug in high school. Performances in “Les Misérables” in 10th grade and “Sunday in the Park with George” in her senior year convinced her that musical theater was what she wanted to do.

“I was raised to believe and to know that I could do anything,” she says. “I am not a stranger to being the first of anything or the only Black person in a room or in a situation.”

What about being the first Black Glinda? Was it on her horizon? “It wasn’t out of my realm of possibilities for me that I could be if the world allowed it,” she answers. “But after five, 10 years of not seeing any movement in that direction, I think you do start to put aside that specific dream.”

Stepping out on Valentine’s Day was a full-circle moment since Johnson had seen “Wicked” at age 15 with her mom, catching it at the Kennedy Center on tour: “I just really enjoyed it. I just loved the story. I loved the music.”

Now, the role of Glinda is hers and she can’t wait to make it her own, giving the good witch her own spin. She says there’s lots of flexibility in “Wicked” for actors to add their personality.

“They really encourage us in the rehearsal process to kind of play and find how the character fits on you. It’s not a stencil that you have to fit into,” she says. “There are things that I do discover every day about her or about about the role. There are things you can only really find when you have the opportunity to do it more than once.” 
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A rare version of a book considered the first novel published in the U.S. by a Black woman has returned to her home state of New Hampshire. 

An original first edition of Harriet Wilson’s “Our Nig; or Sketches From the Life of a Free Black” was recently donated to Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, WMUR-TV reports.  

The book was hand-delivered to the organization by a retired librarian in California who found the novel in a family safe, according to the station.  

The organization plans to display the book at its headquarters in Portsmouth after it undergoes some minor restoration.  

JerriAnne Boggis, the organization’s executive director, said the largely autobiographical work, which Wilson wrote while living in Boston in 1859, represents an act of courage. 

The novel tells the story of Frado, a Black girl who is abused and overworked as the indentured servant to a New England family. 

“She sold them door to door, and all during that time when the Fugitive Slave Act was in place,” Boggis told WMUR-TV. “So, she’s knocking at people’s doors and not even sure if she would be captured and taken into slavery.” 

Wilson was born in Milford, New Hampshire in 1825 and a statue in the town’s Bicentennial Park honors her. She died in 1900 in a Massachusetts hospital. 
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Ebbing COVID-19 cases help propel the Crescent City back to life after last year’s cancellation of Fat Tuesday festivities
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The 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards will kick off with a “Hamilton” reunion, feature a lifetime achievement award for Helen Mirren and, maybe, supply a preview of the upcoming Academy Awards.

The SAG Awards, taking place at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, begin at 8 p.m. EST Sunday and air on both TNT and TBS. (The show will also be available to stream Monday on HBO Max.) After the January Golden Globes were a non-event, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are Hollywood’s first major, televised, in-person award show — complete with a red carpet and teary-eyed speeches — this year.

While the Academy Awards aren’t mandating vaccination for presenters (just attendees), it’s required for the SAG Awards, which are voted on by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA. One actor in the cast of the Paramount series “Yellowstone,” Forrie J. Smith, has said he wouldn’t attend because he isn’t vaccinated. 

The evening’s first awards, announced before the show began, honored a pair of blockbusters on both the big and small screens. Netflix’s “Squid Game” and the James Bond film “No Time to Die” each won for best stunt ensembles.  

“Hamilton” trio Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr. and Daveed Diggs were set to open the ceremony. Kate Winslet is presenting the actors’ lifetime achievement award to Mirren, a five-time SAG Award winner.  

A starry group of nominees  — including Will Smith, Lady Gaga, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck — will make sure the SAG Award don’t lack for glamour.  

Five films are nominated for the SAG Awards’ top honor, best ensemble: Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Sian Heder’s coming-of-age drama “CODA,” Adam McKay’s apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up,” Ridley Scott’s high-camp “House of Gucci” and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s family tennis drama “King Richard.”  

The leading Oscar nominee, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” failed to land a best ensemble nominations but three of its actors — Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee — are up for individual awards.  

Winning best ensemble doesn’t automatically make a movie the Oscar favorite, but actors hold the largest sway because they constitute the largest percentage of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Last year, the actors chose Aaron Sorkin’s 1960s courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” while best picture at the Oscars went to “Nomadland.” The year before, SAG’s pick of “Parasite” presaged the Oscar winner.  

In the television categories, Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” comes in with a leading five nominations, closely trailed by HBO’s “Succession,” Apple’s “The Morning Show” and “Squid Game” — all of which are up for four awards.
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With a flick of his brush, Ghanaian painter Daniel Anum Jasper armed actor Paul Newman with a pair of revolvers. Unfinished paintings of a bell-bottomed John Travolta and nunchuck-spinning Bruce Lee adorned the walls of his crammed Accra studio.

Jasper, a veteran movie poster designer, was finishing up one of the 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” commissioned by a foreign collector who had reached out over Instagram.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Ghana developed a tradition of advertising films with vibrant hand-painted posters. Local cinemas were flourishing in the West African country, and artists competed over who could entice the largest audience with their often gory, imaginative and eye-popping displays.

Jasper was a pioneer of the tradition and has been painting movie posters on repurposed flour sacks for the last 30 years. But the market for his work, which once had people clamoring for theater seats, has changed.

“People are no longer interested in going out to watch a movie when it can be watched from the comfort of their phones,” Jasper said.

“But there is a growing interest in owning these hand-painted posters internationally,” he added. “Now they hang them in private rooms or show them in exhibitions.”

With the rise of the internet, Ghana’s independent cinemas fell into obscurity. But Jasper’s work has gained appeal abroad, including in the United States, where the posters are valued as unique representations of a specific period in African art.

Western action flicks were mainstays of the tradition, as were Bollywood films and Chinese pictures. Many of the posters include paranormal elements and gratuitous violence even if the films had none, and physical features are wildly exaggerated.

Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, a professor in pop culture anthropology at Ghana’s Ashesi University, has several of Jasper’s paintings. He has collected the posters for years and has been known to buy up a closing video store’s entire supply.

He plans to display his posters at the Centre for African Popular Culture opening at the university later this year, and said he hopes people appreciate their historical significance.

“Of course there is an esthetic value to the posters, how crazy it is and all of that, but we use them to have a conversation with students,” he said.

“We tell them not to think about what they’re seeing now… [but] to think of these art forms as symbols of history that can tell their own stories.”
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After telling Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stop” on Saturday, Eintracht Frankfurt proceeded to frustrate Bayern Munich in their Bundesliga game until substitute Leroy Sané scored late for the league leaders.

Frankfurt prominently displayed the message “STOP IT, PUTIN!” all around its stadium before kickoff, just one of several pointed messages across the league against Russia’s ongoing invasion of its neighbor.

Sané’s 71st-minute goal was enough for a 1-0 win that stretched Bayern’s lead to nine points before second-place Borussia Dortmund visits Augsburg on Sunday.

Bayern controlled the match but found it difficult to break through against a well-organized Frankfurt team that also had good opportunities through Filip Kostic and Evan Ndicka.

Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann sent Sané on in the 67th, four minutes before Joshua Kimmich combined with Jamal Musiala and played a through ball for Sané to finally beat Kevin Trapp in the Frankfurt goal.

Trapp had done well to frustrate Bayern’s top goal-scorer Robert Lewandowski, who captained the team in place of the injured Manuel Neuer and wore a blue and yellow captain’s armband in support of Ukraine.

“We condemn the attack on Ukraine and on the lives and homes of innocent people,” the German soccer league said as it suggested clubs observe a minute’s silence before their games. “War is unacceptable in any form and incompatible with our values of sport.”

In Fürth, visiting Cologne and the home team lined up behind a banner in blue and yellow – the colors of the Ukrainian flag – with “STOP WAR” written in English and another message against war in German.

One fan at Union Berlin’s stadium held a sign showing a dove with the word “peace,” another at Leverkusen’s game painted blood on her face, and it seemed fans in all stadiums held Ukrainian flags or made some personal symbol against the war.

Earlier, second-division Schalke played its first game in 15 years without Russian energy giant Gazprom as main sponsor on the team jerseys. The Gelsenkirchen-based club had a 1-1 draw at Karlsruher SC.

Wolfsburg goalkeeper Koen Casteels produced a brilliant save in injury time to preserve his team’s 2-2 draw at Borussia Mönchengladbach. Gladbach also had a goal ruled out in injury time after VAR picked up on a foul before what would have been Matthias Ginter’s late winner.

The home team got off to a terrible start with Jonas Wind scoring in the sixth minute and Sebastiaan Bornauw making it 2-0 in the 33rd for Wolfsburg.

Marcus Thuram pulled one back before the break and was again involved when Wolfsburg defender Maxence Lacroix was sent off in the 70th for preventing the French forward’s clear goal chance with his hand.

Alassane Plea crossed for Breel Embolo to equalize in the 82nd and Casteels prevented worse for Wolfsburg.

Union Berlin bounced back from three games without a win or a goal since experienced forward Max Kruse left for Wolfsburg – with a 3-1 win at home over Mainz.

But the home fans’ patience was tested by a lengthy VAR check before Genki Haraguchi’s opener was allowed in the seventh minute. Sheraldo Becker scored a brilliant curling effort inside the right post in the 56th, then set up Taiwo Awoniyi to seal it in the 75th after Mainz had Dominik Kohr sent off on the hour-mark with his second yellow card in as many minutes. Delano Burgzorg scored a late consolation for the visitors.

City rival Hertha Berlin lost 3-0 at Freiburg to continue its dismal start to the year.

Bayer Leverkusen defeated Arminia Bielefeld 3-0 to consolidate third place, and last-place Fürth fought back to draw with Cologne 1-1.
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The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has suspended Zimbabwe’s and Kenya’s memberships over government interference in the countries’ football associations.

Zimbabwe authorities say they were acting against corruption, incompetence and sexual abuse. Zimbabwe’s football association denies the allegations, which FIFA says should be investigated without the government’s interference.

FIFA President Giovanni Infantino announced the suspensions at a press conference broadcast February 24 on the football governing body’s website.

“We had to suspend two of our members associations, Kenya and Zimbabwe, both for government interference in the activities of the football associations of these (countries). Associations are suspended from all football activities with immediate effect. They know what needs to be done for them to be readmitted or for the suspension to be lifted,” he said.

FIFA suspended the two countries’ associations after their governments pushed aside the associations’ leaders.

Kenya in November replaced the Football Kenya Federation with a caretaker committee while Zimbabwe’s Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) took control of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA).

FIFA has maintained that the allegations should be investigated internally rather than by governments taking over.

On Friday, Zimbabwe’s SRC chairperson Gerald Mlotshwa hit back at FIFA.

“It appears FIFA does not recognize the laws of Zimbabwe insofar as they relate to corruption and sexual harassment,” he said. “Its demands for reinstatement constitute an interference with statutory obligations of SRC as well as the judicial processes of the country.”

Officials in Zimbabwe suspended ZIFA in November on allegations of corruption, incompetence and sexual harassment.

Authorities accused ZIFA officials of diverting funds from FIFA and the government for personal use and of seeking sexual favors from female players and employees.

ZIFA’s suspended board deny all the allegations and in December called for a probe of the Sports and Recreation Commission, saying it was conducting a “witch hunt” under the guise of cleansing football.

A ZIFA lawyer declined to comment on FIFA’s suspension, saying they were still digesting the statements by the football governing body and the sports commission.

Zimbabwe sports journalist Hope Chizuzu said ZIFA’s suspended board was urging FIFA to suspend Zimbabwe.

“Now that that request has been granted, it is interesting to see what will become of the same because what this simply means is the suspended executive committee cannot operate,” Chizuzu said.

Zimbabwe sports commission’s Mlotshwa said the football association’s board will remain disbanded, and the SRC will continue to run it, despite FIFA’s suspension.

“We have a well-considered road map in Zimbabwe for the reform of football administration in Zimbabwe,” Mlotshwa said. “In the meantime, domestic football will continue as normal throughout the country with the support of the SRC. ZIFA executive committee and its general secretary will remain suspended. Football in country will be reformed for the benefit of all stakeholders, with or without the assistance of FIFA.”

While suspended, Kenya and Zimbabwe will not receive any funding from FIFA, and their football teams will not be allowed to play in any matches organized by FIFA or the Confederation of African Football.
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During February, a special ritual takes place backstage at The Lion King musical on Broadway.

On show days, the four young actors who play the lion cubs Simba and Nala seek out fellow actor Bonita J. Hamilton in the moments before the curtain goes up at the Minskoff Theatre.

The youngsters have learned their lines and choreography, of course, but during Black History Month, they also tell Hamilton what they’ve learned about a Black historical figure. It might include a birthdate, the figure’s biggest achievements and some facts about their lives.

“February is my favorite month because the children — the cubs — get to teach me about Black history,” said Hamilton, who plays the hyena leader Shenzi onstage and offstage looks after the cubs with warmth and respect. “Every day in the month of February, they bring me a Black history fact.”

Hamilton has led the voluntary ritual for 17 years and the children seem to enjoy the challenge. “Telling Miss Bonita my fact is just really fun to do,” said Sydney Elise Russell, 10, who plays young Nala.

This month, the kids have honored Aretha Franklin, Shirley Chisholm, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Michael Jordan, George Washington Carver, Angela Davis, Ethel Waters, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Height and Mabel Fairbanks, among others.

“They’re learning, I’m learning. Because I say, ‘You’re teaching me something,'” said Hamilton, a graduate of Alabama State University and Brandeis University. “You’ve got to know whose shoulders you’re standing on.”

Last Friday night, Vince Ermita, 12, who plays Simba for four performances a week, sought out Hamilton to recite what he’d lately learned online about music icon Louis Armstrong.

“Louis Armstrong was born on Aug. 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was a jazz trumpeter and vocalist, and one of the most iconic people he performed with was Ella Fitzgerald,” Vince said, without notes.

“His improvisation changed the landscape of jazz, and some of his most famous songs were What a Wonderful World, West End Blues and Hello, Dolly! And he passed away on July 6, 1971.”

Vince had clearly nailed the assignment, and Hamilton beamed. But she had a follow-up question: What was Armstrong’s nickname?

“Satchmo?” he answered.

“All right!” Hamilton exclaimed, giving him a hand slap.

The other young actors also offered their facts. Alayna Martus, 12, picked gymnast Dominique Dawes — nicknamed Awesome Dawesome — and Sydney picked writer and poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose most famous poem is On Being Brought from Africa to America.

Hamilton also had a question when Sydney was done: “Do you know the name of Peters’ first published book?” Sydney did not but promised to return with the answer.

“Circle back, good job. Good job, guys. Thank you. I learned something today,” said Hamilton.

The backstage February ceremonies have had a lasting impact on generations of actors who have cycled in and out of the show, under Hamilton’s charismatic leadership. This year, several former child alumni of The Lion King — led by Caleb McLaughlin of the Netflix series Stranger Things — got together to make a video for Hamilton — each submitting their Black History figures for February.

Hamilton, from Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement which her family aided, started the tradition after coming to The Lion King and asking her then-young co-stars about the meaning of February.

“One day, just so casually, I said, ‘It’s Black History Month, guys. Let’s talk about it. What do you know about Black History Month?’ And they said, ‘Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks,'” she recalls, shaking her head. “There’s so much more to our history.”

Hamilton mixed it up a bit this year, kicking off the month by picking the names of several Black heroes from South Africa and putting them into a cup for the cubs to pick: Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele and Tsietsi Mashinini, among them. The Lion King is set in South Africa, after all.

“They make me very proud. It’s like a game. It’s not anything that’s homework. Learning can be fun,” she said.

It’s a fitting ritual for a show in which Africa is celebrated and there are six Indigenous languages sung and spoken: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and Congolese.

“The Lion King is steeped in ritual tradition, tribal things. Even the fabrics that we wear in the show have tribal markings, the mask, the makeup — all of it is tribal,” said Hamilton.

The ceremony clearly honors a legacy of greatness — updated, naturally, as the inclusion of gymnast Simone Biles can attest — but also teaches the children to respect how they got here.

“They have to know that there was a time when we weren’t allowed to perform on stage or, if we were, we couldn’t walk into the front door of the theater,” said Hamilton.

“It is a privilege to be able to share your gifts on the world’s largest stage. And that’s what I try to instill in them because we weren’t always able to do it.”
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U.S. women soccer players reached a landmark agreement with the sport’s American governing body to end a six-year legal battle over equal pay, a deal in which they are promised $24 million plus bonuses that match those of the men.

The U.S. Soccer Federation and the women announced a deal Tuesday that will have players split $22 million, about one-third of what they had sought in damages. The USSF also agreed to establish a fund with $2 million to benefit the players in their post-soccer careers and charitable efforts aimed at growing the sport for women.

The USSF committed to providing an equal rate of pay for the women’s and men’s national teams — including World Cup bonuses — subject to collective bargaining agreements with the unions that separately represent the women and men.

“For our generation, knowing that we’re going to leave the game in an exponentially better place than when we found it is everything,” 36-year-old midfielder Megan Rapinoe said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “That’s what it’s all about because, to be honest, there is no justice in all of this if we don’t make sure it never happens again.”

The settlement was a victory for the players, who sparked fans to chant “Equal Pay!” when they won their second straight title in France in 2019. And it was a success for USSF President Cindy Parlow Cone, a former player who became head of the federation in March 2020.

Cone replaced Carlos Cordeiro, who quit after the federation made a legal filing that claimed women had less physical ability and responsibility than male counterparts.

“This is just one step towards rebuilding the relationship with the women’s team. I think this is a great accomplishment and I’m excited about the future and working together with them,” Cone said. “Now we can shift the focus to other things, most importantly, growing the game at all levels and increasing opportunities for girls and women.”

U.S. women have won four World Cups since the program’s start in 1985, while the men haven’t reached a semifinal since 1930.

Five American stars led by Morgan and Rapinoe began the challenge with a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2016. Women sued three years later, seeking damages under the federal Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The sides settled the working conditions portion in December 2020, dealing with issues such as charter flights, accommodations and playing surfaces. They were scheduled to argue on March 7 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an attempt to reinstate the equal pay portion thrown out by a U.S. District Court.

“The settlement announced today is an important step in righting the many wrongs of the past,” the union for the women’s team said in a statement.

While a labor contract remains to be reached and ratified to replace the deal that expires March 31, the settlement was an enormous step.

“It’s so gratifying to feel like we can start to mend a relationship with U.S. Soccer that has been severed for so many years because of the discrimination that we faced,” said Morgan, a 32-year-old forward. “To finally get to this moment feels like we can almost sigh a breath of relief.”

Players were able to put off the legal distractions to continue on-field success.

“The additional hours and stress and outside pressures and discriminations we face, I mean sometimes you think why the hell was I born a female?” Morgan posed. “And then sometimes you think how incredible is it to be able to fight for something that you actually believe in and stand alongside these women. … There was something more than stepping on the field and wanting to be a starter or wanting to score goals or wanting to win or wanting to have the glory.”

The $22 million will be split into individual amounts proposed by the players, subject to the District Court’s approval.

Cone said the federation’s method of equalizing World Cup bonuses is yet to be determined. The federation has until now based bonuses on payments from FIFA, which earmarked $400 million for the 2018 men’s tournament, including $38 million to champion France, and $30 million for the 2019 women’s tournament, including $4 million to the champion U.S.

American men have been playing under the terms of a CBA that expired in December 2018.

Rapinoe was critical of both Cordeiro and his predecessor, Sunil Gulati, who headed the USSF from 2006-18. Cordeiro is seeking to regain the job from Cone when the USSF National Council meets on March 5 to vote on a four-year term.

“The thing that Cindy did was acknowledge the wrongdoing and apologize for the wrongdoing,” Rapinoe said. “It was well within Sunil’s ability to not discriminate and to pay us fairly and equally. It was well within Carlos’ ability to do that, and they made choices not to. … I think Cindy has shown a lot of strength in that, and I think the other two, frankly, just showed a ton of weakness and showed really their true colors in allowing this to happen for so long.”
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