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Trevor Bauer, shunned by MLB, makes Japanese baseball debut

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — Shunned by major league clubs, Trevor Bauer is trying to find his way in Japan where fans are drawn by his near celebrity status and seem unconcerned by domestic violence allegations against him.The 2020 Cy Young Award winner pitched his first competitive game in almost two years on Sunday and said he’s almost ready to debut in Japanese baseball after being shunned by major league teams.Pitching for the Yokohama BayStars minor league team in nearby Yokosuka, Japan — best known as the home of the United States Seventh Fleet — he allowed four hits, no runs and struck out six in four innings before 2,600 fans.The minor-league park usually draws a few hundred spectators. The team said live streaming views reached 77,000 — 15 times the usual 5,000.“I thought the day went really well,” Bauer said. “The stuff was good, the command was good. The health was good. I feel like I’m ready to compete now, but I have to build my pitch count.”Bauer said he was not sure when h...

DC Emancipation Day celebrates a step toward freedom in 1862

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

Celebrations are underway this weekend to mark the signing of the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862, which was the beginning of the end of slavery in America.The District’s annual celebration that featured a parade and live music took place on Pennsylvania Avenue Saturday, with other programming continuing into Sunday and Monday.“Today we celebrate life, the goodness of life and the ability to be free,” Francis Curtis Johnson of the D.C. Seniors Cameo Club told WTOP Saturday.Venay Lagon says D.C. Emancipation Day is a day of pride for those whose roots run deep in the District.“I am a third generation Washingtonian, born and raised here. I’m not leaving D.C.,” Lagon said.Giant balloons bearing images of former President Barack Obama and civil rights leader Rosa Parks floated above the marchers in the parade.From the sidewalks, people waved and cheered as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser led the parade up Pennsylvania Avenue to Freedom Pl...

Rüdiger racially abused after Real Madrid’s game in Cadiz

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Real Madrid defender Antonio Rüdiger was racially abused by fans after the team’s game at Cadiz in the Spanish league on Saturday.Video posted by Spanish media on Sunday showed Cadiz fans yelling insults at Rüdiger after he went to the stands to give away his shirt to someone who appeared to be a Madrid supporter. Objects were also thrown at the German defender, who is Black.Rüdiger exchanged a few words with some of the fans yelling at him before giving his shirt away and saluting some of the supporters. Two people who appeared to be members of Madrid’s staff came over to lead the player away from the fans. The incident happened after Madrid’s 2-0 win against relegation-threatened Cadiz.Spanish soccer has been marred by racism this season, with Rüdiger’s teammate Vinícius Júnior having been targeted during several matches. Earlier this month, the Brazilian forward testified against a Mallorca fan who was accused of calling him a monkey during a...

Biden and US Congress want to ban TikTok. At this point it may be impossible

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

As the federal government escalates its efforts against TikTok, it’s coming up against a stark reality: Even a politically united Washington may not have the regulatory and legal powers to wipe TikTok off American phones.A few weeks ago it looked like the company’s days in America were numbered. President Joe Biden’s administration had just demanded that the Chinese-owned video app be sold or face an outright ban in the United States. That effort quickly drew support from Capitol Hill, and gained momentum after the remarkably bipartisan grilling of the company’s CEO last month — with lawmakers accusing TikTok of serving as a Trojan horse for Beijing to “manipulate America” and suck up reams of sensitive data on U.S. citizens.But now, interviews with lawmakers, legal and national security experts and former officials in two administrations — including some directly involved in the TikTok effort — suggest that a ban may simply face too many hurdles to ever work.Some in...

Virginia Tech shooting victim from Mass. remembered 16 years later

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

(WHDH) — The April 16, 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech claimed 32 lives, and at the time, was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. Twenty-seven students and five staff members were killed in their classrooms, including the only Massachusetts victim of the shooting, 20-year-old Ross Alameddine of Saugus. He also attended Saint Mary’s Grammar School in Melrose.

As a return visit to Wrigley Field nears, former Chicago Cubs OF Jason Heyward embraces a new opportunity with the LA Dodgers

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

Seven months ago, Jason Heyward was unsure of the next step.He openly wondered if his impending offseason release from the Chicago Cubs might mean the end of his playing career. The Los Angeles Dodgers provided the ideal environment, however, and most importantly a clear path to making a big-league roster.Heyward’s fresh start in LA has been accompanied by a powerful first impression. While the contact issues still exist, three of the 33-year-old’s four hits have been home runs. It already exceeds his home-run total last season with the Cubs when he recorded one in 151 plate appearances. Heyward hasn’t produced a double-digit home-run season since 2019.Heyward nearly slugged his fourth of the season Saturday night against his old team, but Cody Bellinger, in the comfort of his old home, tracked the ball perfectly to snag it on a leaping catch at the center-field wall to rob him of a two-run home run in the second inning.“I thought it was a homer off the bat t...

Fishermen at Japan PM attack acted fast to swarm suspect

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

WAKAYAMA, Japan (AP) — As soon as Tsutomu Konishi noticed an object that flew over his head and landed near Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a campaign event at this fishing port, he and a group of other fishermen swarmed the man who officials later identified as a suspect in the attack. As a security officer covered the object with a bullet proof briefcase, one of the fishermen grabbed the man’s neck from behind, another pushed his head down, and Konishi latched onto his leg. They were holding the man as police officers pulled him to the ground. A few moments later Saturday there was an explosion, the crowd fleeing in panic as officers dragged away the suspect, a man wearing a silver backpack. The team effort by the fishermen in this close-knit community has created a buzz on Japan’s social media, prompting many to wonder if they were plainclothes police officers. Senior members of the fishing community say they and police had fully prepared to welcome the prime minister...

In Tennessee, expulsions echo a decades-old protest movement

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Squint a little as you take in the scene, or just close your eyes and listen to the voice, and 2023 stumbles back into another era. Another Memphis.“You can’t expel hope!” the young man cries in his powerful voice, his message aimed at the Tennessee state legislators who had expelled him and another Black lawmaker a week earlier. “You can’t expel justice! You can’t expel our voice.”Justin Pearson wears a dark suit in the county meeting room, a carefully knotted blue tie and glasses that bring Malcolm X to mind. He speaks in the rolling cadence of generations of Black preachers.He ends by quoting a Bible verse beloved by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., vowing to fight “until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”Then he turns to his cheering supporters and thrusts his fist into the air.The two Black Democratic legislators ousted by the overwhelmingly white, Republican-controlled state Legislature — then reinstated by local...

Inmate stuck on US death row despite vacated death sentence

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — When the U.S. prisons director visited the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, this past week, she stopped by the federal death row where Bruce Webster is in a solitary, 12-by-7 foot cell, 23 hours a day. Webster’s not supposed to be there. A federal judge in Indiana ruled in 2019 that the 49-year-old has an IQ in the range of severe intellectual disability and so cannot be put to death. But four years on, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons haven’t moved him to a less restrictive unit or different prison.Why? His own lawyer, who secured a rare legal win in persuading a court to vacate Webster’s 1996 death sentence in the kidnapping, rape and killing of a 16-year-old Texas girl, says she’s baffled.“How can I not get this guy off death row?,” an exasperated Monica Foster said in a recent interview. “Well, I did get him off death row. But why can’t I physically get him off death row?”Asked about Webster’s continued placement on death r...

Pope slams ‘insinuations’ against John Paul II as baseless

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:50 GMT

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday publicly defended St. John Paul II, condemning as “offensive and baseless” insinuations that recently surfaced about the late pontiff.In remarks to tourists and pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said he was aiming to interpret the feelings of the faithful worldwide by expressing gratitude to the Polish pontiff’s memory. Days earlier, the Vatican’s media apparatus had described as “slanderous” an audiotape from a purported Roman mobster who insinuated that John Paul would go out looking for underage girls to molest. The tape was played on an Italian TV program by Pietro Orlandi, brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee who lived at the Vatican. The disappearance of the 15-year-old in 1983 is an enduring mystery that has spawned countless theories and so far fruitless investigations in the decades since.Francis noted that in Sunday’s crowd in the square were pilgrims and other faithful in town to pray ...