TITLE: Possible singularities of the base of a Mori fiber space
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: Suppose X is a normal projective complex variety, (X, $\Delta$) is a klt pair and f : X $\to$ Z is a Mori fiber space given by a contraction of an extremal ray for this pair. Here I mean that the relative dimension is at least 1. Do we know anything about the singularities of Z? Z is normal more or less by construction and we do know that if X was Q-factorial then so is Z. Can we say anything more? Eg: is there a $\Delta'$ on Z with (Z, $\Delta'$) klt? Does Z have rational singularities? What if $\Delta$ = 0, is Z terminal? Canonical?

REPLY [6 votes]: Under the assumption that $X$ is $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial, section 5 of the paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0606666 addressed this issue, which was also proved earlier in Ambro's paper. Basically, if you assume the pair $(X,\Delta)$ is klt, so is the base $(Z,\Delta_Z)$ for some $\Delta_Z$. As the example of Prokhorov shows,  this is optimal, namely, the base may not be terminal (canonical) even you assume the $(X,\Delta)$ is. For lc case, I think dlt modification+perturbation reduce the question to the klt case.