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European football’s governing body has been, at best, clumsy in its handling of City’s FFP efforts and supporter issues, but the club will need to embrace the Champions League.

As far as Manchester City and its fans are concerned, UEFA’s rap sheet is a long one.

The 2014 announcement that the club had fallen foul of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations came as a shock, given it had worked closely with the governing body to avoid any breaches. When it was discovered UEFA had moved the goalposts and changed the all-important Annex XI, which City had expected would get it out of jail, it did not go down well at the Etihad Stadium.

The application of Annex XI, a clause that meant wages paid to players signed before 2010 (when FFP did not exist) would not count toward the 2012 financial year, was altered only once City already had submitted their accounts. Having previously been on course to stay under FFP’s maximum deficit, City was now around 80 million pounds over.

Rather than pursue legal action – despite standing on solid ground – the Blues accepted a number of sanctions that included, among other things, a reduction in their earnings from European competition for two years, a 60 million euro fine (later reduced to €20m) and restrictions on transfer and wage expenditure.

A burning sense of injustice endures, but that is not the only reason the Champions League anthem will be booed ahead of Wednesday’s game against Dynamo Kiev.

Just four months after being hit with those sanctions, City fans were shut out of a group stage clash with CSKA Moscow, despite many having already booked up their flights and accommodation. UEFA, three weeks before the match, closed the Arena Khimki for three matches as punishment for racist chanting. City fans who had made the trip were turned away at the gates, and even barred from an office block that overlooked the stadium, but a crowd of around 650 people – many of them vocal CSKA fans, drinking beer on the terraces (itself a UEFA rule breach) – were let into the ground and watched the match from the main stand. Worse, UEFA declined to take any action after City, again furious, wrote a letter of complaint.

“Why the hell do we not have any fans here? What have our fans done wrong? There’s no fairness in it,” Vincent Kompany fumed after the match, summing up the feeling around the club.

So there was little wonder City expected similar when it was pitted against Kiev in this season’s competition. The Ukrainian champion was halfway through a two-match stadium closure, again for racist abuse, when the last-16 draw was made back in December, meaning there was little point in City fans booking time off work for a February trip to Kiev.

UEFA eventually overturned the stadium ban, allowing both home and away supporters to attend, but City believes it is yet another botch job. With the announcement coming on Feb. 2, three weeks before the game, it was too late for many to make it and only around 700 fans are expected to travel.

It was the handling of the situation in Moscow that sparked a protest from the 1894 supporters group, one that urged fans to turn their backs on the iconic Champions League anthem but quickly evolved into the loud booing and whistling that continues to this day.

That farcical story in October, when UEFA was forced to investigate after a particularly tetchy delegate had noted booing ahead of the home game against Sevilla in his official report, was met with bemusement from both club and fan base. To the governing body’s credit, it did not lead to further sanctions.

But despite everything, it is surely time to bury the hatchet. Yes, ineptitude in Nyon has seemed to hit City harder than most – many would say too often to be a coincidence – but the Champions League will be integral to the plans this club has for the future.

Pep Guardiola has been brought in to make City a serious contender at the top level during the next three years, and big European nights, when the Blues will be expected to stand toe-to-toe with the very best teams, should become a regular event.

By now, City is no stranger to facing Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, clubs it would have only faced in preseason friendlies before Sheikh Mansour’s takeover. But the Blues always have been underdogs on the pitch, a situation not helped by the general apathy toward UEFA in the stands that has ensured the crowds have been relatively low and the atmosphere relatively flat. City is still the outsider.

Dramatic turnarounds against Sevilla and Borussia Monchengladbach this season have provided thrilling moments of late drama, but in terms of the big events that have captured the imagination, there have been few of those fabled European nights that have graced Old Trafford, Anfield and even Stamford Bridge over the years.

As City enters a new era, one with designs on domestic domination and success on the continent, the Champions League will play a major role in the club’s future. Despite everything, it’s time for fans to embrace it

Robert Litan is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and has directed economic research at the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation, and Bloomberg Government. His most recent book is “Trillion Dollar Economists.” He is on Twitter:@BobLitan.

So far, the principal narrative in the presidential race, in both parties, has been the insurgents vs. the establishment. If Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each can build on the momentum from their Saturday victories in South Carolina and Nevada – and there is a good chance each will – then the narrative eventually will switch to: which dealmaker do Americans want to be their president?

Mr. Trump makes a virtue out of his deal making, trumpeting (pun intended) his book “Art of the Deal” as guideline of how he’d lead the country. Mrs. Clinton’s main campaign theme, aside from her extensive resume, is that she “can get things done,” which is just another way of seeing that she’d try to make deals, too. (I count Gov. Kasich and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as dealmakers, too, but both their candidacies face uphill climbs).

I underscore the word “try” since it is likely that both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton would have problems with Congress. As a Republican, a President Trump would not only face partisan opposition from Democrats, especially if they take back the Senate, but on a number of issues from establishment Republicans in Congress. Given the high likelihood that the House will remain in Republican hands, Mrs. Clinton would have to try to find common ground with at least one, and possibly two, Congressional chambers. It is far from clear that even with the best of charm offensives with members of Congress a President Clinton would be any more successful at reaching deals on her spending and tax proposals – which Republicans strongly oppose — than President Obama has been.

Of course, there is still a slim chance that at least one of the parties will nominate a philosophical “purist” likely to be more resistant to compromise: Sens. Cruz and Sanders.

Mr. Cruz wears his “no compromise” status proudly. Mr. Sanders claims, implausibly in my view, that there would no need to compromise since his election would only be possible with a “political revolution.” That may well be true, but even with such a revolution, it is highly unlikely that the House will turn Democratic, and the Republicans there almost surely would be even more opposed to Mr. Sanders’s proposals than Mrs. Clinton’s. So far, Mr. Sanders has given little hint he would be prepared to accept much less ambitious versions of his ideas.

Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be more of a wild card. He was one of the “Gang of 8” Senators who drafted a compromise immigration proposal, but subsequently withdrew his support after opposition to the idea emerged within his own party. Mr. Rubio might be able to find common ground with some Democrats on his proposals to subsidize low wage workers, which he discussed in speeches before the campaign, but has not stressed during it. It is even conceivable he would seek middle ground on his tax proposal, which is not as sweeping as those of his now principal Republican rivals.

On the other hand, Mr. Rubio has taken a harder, no compromise line on social issues and on national defense. If he manages to gain the nomination, as now many in the Republican establishment appear to want, it is difficult to assess how much deal making he would attempt and on what issues. Perhaps that ambiguity could work in his favor: attracting the support of both the ideological purists within his party, and those who want the next president to show flexibility, at least some of the time.

After the traditional slow start, primary season is moving into top gear. Counting today’s Republican caucus in Nevada, where Donald Trump is expected to score a blowout victory, twenty-four elections will take place in eight days—twenty-five if you count the “Democrats abroad” contest, which opens on March 1st and lasts for a week. Following their victories in South Carolina and Nevada, respectively, Trump and Hillary Clinton are now the firm favorites to be their parties’ nominees. By next Tuesday night, if things go as their campaigns are hoping, the two of them could appear virtually unstoppable.

Such an impression wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. With most of the big primaries yet to be held, it would be perfectly possible for either or both of the front-runners to be defeated. But, for the other candidates, the delegate math would start to look very forbidding, and something very dramatic would be required for them to turn things around.

On Saturday, the South Carolina Democratic primary will take place, and a Clinton win looks nearly certain. Three days later, on Super Tuesday, elections will be held in twelve states, most of them in the South. In some of the states that will vote that day, such as Alaska and Arkansas, not much polling has been done. But in most of the bigger states, where recent surveys have been carried out, Trump and Clinton appear to be running well ahead of their opponents.

The margins predicted by some of the polls are huge. On Monday, for example, a survey from Georgia showed Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by fifty-two percentage points, seventy-two to twenty. On the G.O.P. side, a poll from Massachusetts, which also votes next Tuesday, showed Trump leading Rubio by thirty-four percentage points, fifty to sixteen.

A few weeks ago, in Iowa, we relearned the lesson that state polls aren’t always reliable. And, of course, with a week to go until Super Tuesday, something could still happen to change the dynamics underlying the races. On the Republican side, for example, Marco Rubio could capitalize on his second-place finish in South Carolina, exploiting Cruz’s stumbles and Jeb Bush’s departure from the race to mount a serious challenge to Trump. Or something dramatic could happen in the televised debate on Thursday. As we saw in Iowa and New Hampshire, big swings can take place in the last few days before a primary.

Right now, though, the two front-runners don’t just have favorable survey numbers; they have structural factors working for them. Trump has momentum on his side, and he is benefitting greatly from the fact that the vote among those who don’t support him is divided, and is likely to remain that way for a while. Clinton, after struggling in Iowa and New Hampshire, is now competing with Sanders in states where there are a lot of African-American voters—a voting group that, in Nevada, went in her favor by nearly four-to-one.

On the Republican side, come next Tuesday, Trump might well run the table in the northern half of the country, where four states will hold G.O.P. contests. In addition to the lopsided poll from Massachusetts, a new survey from neighboring Vermont shows him with a fifteen-point lead over Rubio. Elsewhere, the polling data is older. A survey taken in Alaska last month showed Trump ahead, and that was before he received the endorsement of Sarah Palin, the state’s former governor. In Minnesota, two surveys were carried out in January. In one of them, Trump had a seventeen-point lead; in the other, he was just behind Rubio and Cruz.

Although these races are important, most of the attention will be focussed on the South, where seven states will vote on the Republican candidate. Having easily carried South Carolina, where he demonstrated an ability to take white evangelical voters from Cruz, Trump seems well placed to win most of these contests and rack up a lot of delegates. (Until the winner-take-all contests start, on March 15th, the Republican delegates will all be allocated in proportion to the number of votes cast.) Texas, Cruz’s home state, is the biggest prize up for grabs on Super Tuesday, with a hundred and fifty-five delegates at stake. Then comes Georgia, with seventy-eight delegates; Tennessee, with fifty-eight; Alabama, with fifty; Virginia, with forty-nine; Oklahoma, with forty-three; and Arkansas, with forty. In five of these seven states, Trump has a clear lead in the latest polls. The exceptions are Arkansas, where there hasn’t been any polling in a while, and Texas, where Cruz is in front, with Trump running second.

In Georgia, a new survey carried out by Landmark/Rosetta Stone shows Trump leading Rubio by nine points. In Tennessee, no public polls have been carried out since December, when Trump appeared to be ahead. In Alabama, where Trump has held huge rallies, a survey carried out at the start of this month showed him leading Ted Cruz by sixteen per cent. In Oklahoma, a poll carried out two weeks ago put him ahead of Cruz by five points.

Numbers like that leave Texas as a must-win state for Cruz. In the most recent poll, which the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune published last week, Cruz was ahead of Trump by eight per cent. The lead was smaller than ones Cruz enjoyed very early in the race, and it didn’t reflect any possible fallout from his setback in South Carolina. Many experts on Texas politics believe that Cruz will hold on to win, but they also think that Trump could inflict some serious wounds on him with a strong showing. “Donald Trump is not going to win in Texas: that isn’t going to happen,” Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, told the Houston Chronicle. “But he could do well in Texas, and that would be very bad for Ted Cruz.”

Indeed, for Trump, victories in other states, combined with a good showing in Texas behind Cruz, could be the ideal result. Cruz winning Texas wouldn’t pose a real threat to the front-runner, and it would probably keep the Senator in the race, insuring further vote-splitting among the challengers.

In the Democratic race, Clinton appears to have an even bigger lock on the South than Trump does. I already mentioned the new poll from Georgia, showing her more than fifty points ahead of Sanders. In other Southern states, too, she appears to have commanding leads. According to a multi-state survey carried out last week by Public Policy Polling, she is ahead by twenty-eight points in Alabama, twenty-six points in Tennessee, twenty-five points in Arkansas, and twenty-two points in Virginia. “Clinton is benefiting in these states from overwhelming African American support,” P.P.P.’s Tom Jensen said in a statement. “She leads by anywhere from 40-62 points among black voters in the nine of these states that have more black voters than the national average.”

The only competitive Southern states appear to be Oklahoma, where Sanders came within two points of Clinton in the P.P.P. survey, and Texas, where the most recent poll, from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune, shows Sanders narrowing what had been a very wide Clinton lead, to ten points. Perhaps reflecting this development, the Clinton campaign has been deploying more staff to Texas. However, a co-director of the new poll, Jim Henson, who heads the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, still believes Clinton is safe. ”This race is narrowing, but not narrowing in a way for the lines to actually cross,” Henson told the Texas Tribune. “This will be a double-digit race, but I don’t think it’s going to be a twenty-point race.”

Evidently steeling itself for some big losses in the South, the Sanders campaign is making a big push in Oklahoma, which the candidate will visit on Wednesday. It is also concentrating on Northern states where Democrats will vote next Tuesday: Colorado and Minnesota, both of which are caucus states, and Massachusetts and Vermont.

Sanders looks like a shoo-in in his home state. According to one poll carried out last week, he is set to get 83.1 per cent of the vote. Across the state border, in Massachusetts, the race looks much closer: a survey that Emerson College, in Boston, carried out over the weekend showed Sanders and Clinton dead even. The two caucus contests are also tough to predict. Until not long ago, Clinton appeared to be well ahead in both states, but some recent polling, which isn’t necessarily reliable, suggests that in Colorado, at least, Sanders is closing the gap.

Between them, these four Northern states have more than three hundred delegates. But the eight Southern states, including South Carolina, boast more than seven hundred and fifty delegates. If Clinton racks up big victories in most of them, she could open up a substantial lead in the delegate count even if Sanders does well in the North.

As I said above, that wouldn’t necessarily be decisive. To win the nomination, a candidate needs to accumulate two thousand three hundred and eighty-three delegates. But it would put the onus on Sanders to rebound strongly in some of the large primaries that take place in the ensuing two weeks. Michigan votes on March 8th. Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio all vote on March 15th. The discouraging news for Sanders is that, as of today, he appears to be well behind in all of those states, too.

Of course, there’s the little matter of Zoom’s identity being revealed, but all in good time. With their foray to Earth-2 seemingly behind them at the outset of “King Shark,” Team Flash attempt to move on with their lives. Caitlin, after having lost Ronnie, can’t fathom losing Jay, too, and becomes distant, short, and cold — exactly the things Cisco is afraid could signal her turn into Killer Frost.

But she isn’t the only one affected by the Earth-2 jaunt. Jesse is learning to acclimate to life on an entirely new planet while Barry attempts to find a metahuman, any metahuman, to distract him from the events that have left him shaken from his time through the breach. Luckily, King Shark answers that call.

Diggle and Lyla arrive at S.T.A.R. Labs (this week’s example of the lab’s upgraded security doing absolutely nothing to prevent walk-ins) to warn the team of Shark’s return and his insatiable appetite for one meal: The Flash. Harry works on finding a way to track the literally big bad while Barry aids in A.R.G.U.S. in the search.

They notice the path he’s cut from the A.R.G.U.S. facility to Central City includes a few pit stops by bodies of water, so they assume he must be somewhere by the sea in Central. Unfortunately, their hunt for the vicious foe comes up fruitless…until he chomps down on two A.R.G.U.S. soldiers, that is.

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Lyla, the newly instated head of A.R.G.U.S., is worried that her first big task is turning into such a mess, but she’s not going to stop looking. Caitlin and Cisco, meanwhile, head out to find Tonya Landon, the wife of King Shark’s Earth-1 doppelganger, who happened to have died in the particle accelerator blast.

The widow eventually offers to give them a look into her research (she just so happens to be studying sharks) but only after Caitlin chases after the information with surprising force and a lack of her normally kind disposition. Cisco is thrown, but when Caitlin asks him why he, too, has been acting weird ever since the return from Earth-2, he clams up on the subject. (It’s a great idea on Cisco’s part because both The Flash and Arrow have proven time and again that NOTHING goes wrong when people keep secrets.)

Cisco later confronts Caitlin about how she’s been acting back at the lab, only to accidentally reveal that he met Killer Frost on Earth-2 (after Harry explicitly told him not to tell her a thing about her other version). She’s horrified, not at the idea that she might turn into an ice-wielding baddie, but that Cisco can’t understand why she’s been acting that way. She needs this time to cope, to process, and that requires some isolation, even if it makes her a bit frosty at times.

They’re not the only pair with an on-edge dynamic throughout “King Shark.” Wally, despite easing into his role with Joe and Iris, can’t seem to connect with Barry. It’s easy to see why (Barry’s been Joe’s surrogate son for years; they’re constantly putting him on a pedestal), but to Barry, it’s a complete mystery. Joe suggests the two find a way to connect, but he also suspects something happened on Earth-2 that has made Barry act just a little off since his return.

Joe tries having the two work together on Wally’s proposal project for an engineering program he’s applying to. The playdate starts off on a good note, with Barry trying to be as helpful as he can be. That’s the problem, though. He wants to help so much that he begins simply solving every issue he finds on his own, barely taking Wally’s input into consideration.

Fed up, Wally’s ready to leave, but he runs into a problem. King Shark has ripped the roof right off the living room, having tracked the Flash here. Joe distracts him with gunfire while Barry, Iris, and Wally flee, and more importantly so Barry can switch into speedster mode.

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Tuesday night’s episode of The Flash.

Still reeling from their adventures in Earth-2, Barry and Team Flash have little time to recover before they’re confronted with a new (but kind of old) metahuman threat: King Shark.

In a crossover episode with Arrow featuring  Diggle and Lyla, Barry fights off King Shark — the mutated man-shark who briefly attacked Patty and Barry at the beginning of the season before being shot unceremoniously by a newly-arrived Harry. King Shark makes a big splash in his return to Central City, tearing through the A.R.G.U.S. soldiers trying to recapture him, as well as the poor West family house. But he’s not the only one wreaking havoc on Barry’s life — he’s doing a fine job of it himself (with the help of a bitter Wally). That’s right, angsty Barry is back, guys.

A whale of a tale

Directly after Zoom impaled Jay’s body and dragged it back through the breach, Caitlin is unable to process the tragic event that just happened. She breaks down sobbing, and Barry orders Harry to open up the breach, but they’re all closed permanently. Later, as Caitlin rests, Harry tells Barry and Cisco they shouldn’t mention her and Ronnie’s doppelgangers on Earth-2 so as to not influence their current lives.

A gloomy mood falls around Team Flash, as Harry and a resentful Jessie move into a spare room in S.T.A.R. Labs, Barry runs away from his feelings, Caitlin shuts down her feelings, and Cisco becomes more paranoid about the alternative lives of their evil doppelgangers becoming a reality.

Over at A.R.G.U.S, Diggle and Lyla are appraising it after Amanda Waller has left, but Lyla’s brief term as head of the agency is thrown for a loop when King Shark escapes from their aquarium and heads to Central City after Barry. She and Diggle quickly find Barry at S.T.A.R. Labs, where they brief him on A.R.G.U.S.’s activities regarding metahumans, and its capture and research into using King Shark as a weapon. Harry gives some backstory about Shay Lamden, the marine biologist who turned into King Shark, but can offer no more information other than what he used to follow King Shark to this Earth.

Caitlin and Cisco find the Shay Lamden on this Earth was killed in the particle accelerator explosion, but his wife is alive and studying sharks at Nautilus. They meet up with Dr. Lamden at Nautilus and request to see her findings on sharks, but Cisco is frightened by Caitlin’s brusque manner with Lamden, and Caitlin becomes suspicious of his new paranoid attitude towards her.

Giving the cold shoulder

Barry broods as the West family bonds over board games. After some awkwardness between Wally and Barry kills the mood, Joe and Iris encourage Barry to give Wally a chance, and he concedes, later agreeing to help Wally with his engineering project in addition to trying to catch the psychotic man-shark.

Freaking out about Caitlin’s cold change in attitude, Cisco lets slip about her Earth-2 doppelganger. She drills him and he spills about her alternate identity as Killer Frost. Caitlin explains that she’s not letting her emotions in or she would completely shut down, and with that, she rallies them to get them back to work. Over on the other side of the lab, Harry is struggling on creating an algorithm to track King Shark, but getting frustrated when Jessie spitballs some science ideas with him. She implores him to let her help since they’ll both be stuck on this Earth for some time, and he gives in.

Barry combs the docks for King Shark and finds nothing. As he asks Diggle about Felicityand despondently comments on their situation, Diggle notices that Barry is starting to take on Oliver’s glum view of the world. But as they confide in each other, King Shark emerges and bites off the heads of two A.R.G.U.S. soldiers before he disappears once again.

It could be greased lightning!

Wally shows Barry his college application project on turbine supercars but Barry gets a bit too blunt with his assessment and their bonding time is off to a rocky start. Impatient, Barry takes over the project, and Wally, bitter about Barry’s “perfect son” status, starts to leave in a huff. However, Wally interrupted by King Shark wrecking the West house and looking for the Flash and his “scent.”

Joe and Iris come downstairs and Joe shoots at King Shark while the others escape. Barry faces King Shark as the Flash, telling Shark that the breaches are all closed and his chances to get home are gone. They tussle for a bit, but King Shark leaves for the water, and A.R.G.U.S. arrives just in time to see King Shark flee the scene.

Wally is stunned by Joe and Iris’ blase reaction to King Shark attacking the house, but not too stunned to taunt Barry for disappearing. Wally calls him a coward and leaves, but Barry, angst-ridden as he is today, accepts Wally’s insults. Fed up with Barry’s attitude, Joe asks Barry to spill and Barry confesses about his Earth-2 adventures and his guilt over Joe-2’s death and the continued reign of terror of Zoom.

As Team Flash brainstorms at S.T.A.R. Labs about how to defeat King Shark, Caitlin digs out the concept of sharks’ “passive electrolocation” tracking from Dr. Lamden’s research. She theorizes that they reverse that process to find King Shark, spurring Harry and Jessie to go off to create the tracking algorithm, Diggle and Lyla to assemble A.R.G.U.S. for the mission, and Cisco to create a fake Flash to lure King Shark out. Flash, Diggle, Lyla and Caitlin lie in wait for King Shark’s attack. After several hours, King Shark finally takes the bait, but he disappears and jumps out of the water to attack the group directly. A.R.G.U.S.’s guns prove to be useless, so Barry runs out onto the water and King Shark gives chase. Building up speed, Barry runs in a circle around him, electrifying the water and zapping King Shark into unconsciousness.

The weight of the world

A.R.G.U.S. takes King Shark into custody, with Lyla deciding that under her leadership, the agency will move toward a better mission: to research King Shark and cure him. Caitlin suggests they talk to Dr. Lamden on that front. Diggle pulls Barry aside and gives him soldier’s advice on handling his guilt — by using it to guide him rather than letting it weigh him down.

At the coffee shop, Joe is happily reading up on Wally’s supercar project. Wally is pleased with Joe’s praise but still bitter about Barry, so Joe tells him about Barry’s tragic past, and that he praises Barry so because Barry has come so far. Joe assures Wally that Barry is “my son just like you are,” and further proves that he is the father of the year.

Caitlin pranks Cisco by impersonating Killer Frost, but reassures him, telling Cisco that she won’t ever become evil. They go up to the lab hub, where Barry is reverse interventioning the group, confessing to them about his guilt from Ronnie, his mom and Jay’s death, and finally rallying them to defeat Zoom together.

Back at Zoom’s lair in Earth-2, Zoom carries in Jay’s limp body while the man in the iron mask cowers in fear. Zoom unmasks and reveals himself to be…Jay.

Flash Faves

Johnson & Johnson was ordered by a Missouri state jury to pay $72 million of damages to the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer was linked to her use of the company’s talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for several decades.

In a verdict announced late Monday night, jurors in the circuit court of St. Louis awarded the family of Jacqueline Fox $10 million of actual damages and $62 million of punitive damages, according to the family’s lawyers and court records.

The verdict is the first by a U.S. jury to award damages over the claims, the lawyers said.

Johnson & Johnson JNJ -0.64% faces claims that it, in an effort to boost sales, failed for decades to warn consumers that its talc-based products could cause cancer. About 1,000 cases have been filed in Missouri state court, and another 200 in New Jersey.

Fox, who lived in Birmingham, Alabama, claimed she used Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for feminine hygiene for more than 35 years before being diagnosed three years ago with ovarian cancer. She died in October at age 62.

Jurors found Johnson & Johnson liable for fraud, negligence and conspiracy, the family’s lawyers said. Deliberations lasted four hours, following a three-week trial.

Jere Beasley, a lawyer for Fox’s family, said Johnson & Johnson “knew as far back as the 1980s of the risk,” and yet resorted to “lying to the public, lying to the regulatory agencies.” He spoke on a conference call with journalists.

Carol Goodrich, a Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, said: “We have no higher responsibility than the health and safety of consumers, and we are disappointed with the outcome of the trial. We sympathize with the plaintiff’s family but firmly believe the safety of cosmetic talc is supported by decades of scientific evidence.”

Trials in several other talc lawsuits have been set for later this year, according to Danielle Mason, who also represented Fox’s family at trial.

In October 2013, a federal jury in Sioux Falls, South Dakota found that plaintiff Deane Berg’s use of Johnson & Johnson’s body powder products was a factor in her developing ovarian cancer. Nevertheless, it awarded no damages, court records show.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International VRX 4.41% now owns the Shower to Shower brand but was not a defendant in the Fox case.

The case is Hogans et al v. Johnson & Johnson et al, Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, No. 1422-CC09012.

Michigan State’s Bryn Forbes (5) passes the ball asOhio State’s Trevor Thompson (32) defends during the first half of Tuesday’s game at Value City Arena. (Paul Vernon, Associated Press)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Someone on Ohio State probably should have guarded Bryn Forbes.

The Michigan State guard stroked seven 3-pointers on Tuesday night, spear-heading a game in which the No. 6 Spartans made 14 from deep and handed Ohio State a 81-62 loss at Value City Arena.

Frankly, it was surprising it was that close at any point with the way the Spartans shot the ball.

That the Buckeyes had the deficit to six points midway through the second half was a minor triumph. Of course that didn’t last long, as the Buckeyes allowed open 3s from Forbes and Denzel Valentine, went back down by double-digits and the Spartans never looked back.

The loss snapped a four-game winning streak for Ohio State (18-11, 10-6 Big Ten). Ohio State is now 1-5 vs. ranked opponents this year.

Forbes led the Spartans with 27 points, Valentine added 17 points and eight assists.

Ohio State was already in a hole when it found out sophomore forward Jae’Sean Tate would miss Tuesday’s game and the rest of the season with a shoulder injury. He was the Buckeyes leading scorer in Big Ten play, and that’s a big player to miss on a team short on scoring options.

Mickey Mitchell started in place of Tate and finished 0 for 3 from the floor.

Marc loving led Ohio State with 19 points, while JaQuan Lyle added 16. The Buckeyes offense was again stagnant, and they finished with just four assists on 18 makes.

The Buckeyes cut it to 50-44 with 15:02 left in the second half on a bucket from Keita Bates-Diop, then Michigan State went on a 7-2 run to get the cushion back. The Spartans led by as many as 17 with just over five minutes to play.

Ohio State led briefly, 25-24, late in the first half, but Michigan State led 36-31 at the break.

Michigan State shot 54 percent for the game, and 64 percent (14 for 22) from 3-point range for the game. That’s the most 3s Ohio State has allowed this season.

When it was over

When a Matt Costello dunk put Michigan State up 75-58 with 5:15 left. That took the air out of the building, and piled on the bevy of 3s Michigan State was making.

Tate out for the season

Ohio State forward Jae’Sean Tate will miss the remainder of the season with a shoulder injury, it was announced before Tuesday’s game. Tate was Ohio State’s leading scorer in Big Ten play, and will have surgery on the injured shoulder on Friday.

What it means

That’s likely it for whatever NCAA Tournament hopes the Buckeyes had. Ohio State likely needed at least two wins in the last three games, then at least two more in the Big Ten Tournament. The Buckeyes have No. 8 Iowa at home on Sunday, then play at Michigan State next weekend.

What’s next

The Buckeyes play their final home game next Sunday against No. 8 Iowa. Tip-off from Value City Arena is at 4 p.m.

The winds of change started swirling early Tuesday for UFC 196.

First, UFC lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos was forced out his fight with featherweight champion Conor McGregor due to a broken foot.

The final decision on a replacement was eventually announced late Tuesday with Nate Diaz stepping in, allowing the UFC to keep McGregor on the card, March 5. Interesting to note that this fight will be at 170 pounds, marking the first time McGregor has fought at welterweight.

UFC President Dana White made the announcement live on ESPN SportsCenter.

Diaz and McGregor brings together two of the company’s best trash talkers.

Diaz had a profanity-laced tirade directed at McGregor after Diaz defeated Michael Johnson in December.

“We figured this would be the most exciting fight, this is the fight that Conor really wanted,” White said. “A lot of people wanted to fight Conor McGregor, but Diaz really wanted it

“We called Jose Aldo, Jose Aldo turned the fight down. We called Frankie Edgar, Frankie Edgar turned the fight down. Those are two guys everybody was talking about. BJ Penn, Anthony Pettis, a lot of guys wanted this fight. We ended up with Nate Diaz because we felt it is a fight the fans wanted to see.”

The co-main event stays the same with UFC bantamweight champion Holly Holm facing challenger Miesha Tate.

As for Dos Anjos, he’s looking at a 6-8 month recovery period.