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A’s Kaprielian has strong spring debut as Oakland beats Padres

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

A’s pitcher James Kaprielian took another positive step toward beginning the season in Oakland’s starting rotation with a solid spring training debut Sunday.Kaprielian, who had off-season AC shoulder joint surgery, started the A’s 8-6 split-squad win over the San Diego Padres and threw 1.2 scoreless innings, with all five of his outs coming on strikeouts. The 29-year-old right-hander gave up one hit and walked three while throwing 43 pitches during his one time through a Padres lineup full of backups at Hohokam Park in Mesa, Ariz.Kaprielian showed good velocity – his fastball was 94-96 mph and touched 97 – but his command was a bit off. His encouraging start came four days after a simulated game and showed he’s well on his way back to reclaiming a rotation spot he held for most of last season, when he went 5-9 with a 4.23 ERA in 26 starts. “I’m expecting to be ready to go for the start of the season,” Kaprielian told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matt Kawahara Sund...

49ers welcome back safety Tashaun Gipson after one-year fun

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

SANTA CLARA – Tashaun Gipson Sr. waited until August for the 49ers to sign him last summer. On the eve of another trip into free agency, Gipson re-signed with the 49ers on Sunday night.After he started every game last season at free safety, the 49ers welcomed him back on a one-year deal worth up to $2.9 million, with $2.1 million guaranteed, according to multiple reports.“If there’s anywhere I want to be, it’s San Francisco,” Gipson said as the 49ers cleaned out their locker room Jan. 31. “You get to the age where you don’t want to be the new kid at school. You start laying your roots.”Gipson, 32, made for a stellar complement to fellow safety Talanoa Hufanga, who made All-Pro and the Pro Bowl in his second season. Ward and Tarvarius Moore remain slated for free agency, with contract negotiations opening at 1 p.m. Monday and signings elsewhere starting on Wednesday.Gipson’s return further decreases the likelihood of Jimmie Ward coming back for a 10th season. Ward’s hamstring injury ...

‘Complete panic’: Pajaro residents seek shelter as the next atmospheric river is on its way

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

The waters will be rising again, and the worries are mounting.Dozens of Monterey County residents who packed up their lives after fleeing Pajaro River floodwaters spent Sunday sheltering at evacuation centers, thumbing through piles of hand-me-down clothing, filling up with plates of warm food — and fretting about the future.Pajaro residents Lucia Mendoza and her husband, Francisco Curiel, had been jolted awake at 1 a.m. Saturday by wailing police sirens and voices over loudspeakers warning of a coming flood and urging evacuation. As quickly as they could, the two rushed to grab their three daughters and snatch any valuables they could.“I was in complete panic,” Mendoza said through tears in the middle of the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, where evacuated families are sheltering after a 100-foot breach opened up on the 74-year-old levee along the Pajaro River. “We got our kids’ documents and our immigration documents and that’s it. We didn’t bring anything else, and I’m worrie...

Columbia, Kansas, UMass, Oregon headline WNIT field

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

Columbia, Kansas, UMass and Oregon just missed playing in the women’s NCAA Tournament as the first four teams out of the field. All four will be part of the 64-team WNIT field that was announced Sunday night.Other top teams in the field include Bowling Green and Green Bay, which each won 27 games this season. Stephen F. Austin had 26 victories and Ball State 25.Thirty-five of the teams in the bracket won at least 20 games and 17 of them either won or tied for first in their conference’s regular season.This season’s field features 32 automatic qualifiers, which are the next-highest finishers in the conference’s regular season that weren’t selected for the NCAA Tournament. The 32 at-large teams were chosen by WNIT officials.The first round will be played from Wednesday to Friday this week. The championship game is on April 1.The NCAA is in discussions to host a second women’s basketball tournament of its own in the future to create an equitable situ...

Picking the Bracket: Houston wins, 40 years after ’83 loss

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

If you’re like most of the country, you probably didn’t count on a No. 8 seed reaching the national title game last year — or a No. 15 seed making it to the Elite Eight.Thank you North Carolina and Saint Peter’s, who made sure there’s nowhere for our brackets to go but up in 2023.This season, of course, picking the March Madness bracket comes with its own set of potential pitfalls. How do you account for injuries at Houston and UCLA? Can defending champ Kansas make another run after losing handily in the Big 12 Tournament final? Is this the year you can trust the Big Ten?Here’s one way to go with the bracket:SOUTH REGIONFirst Four: Texas A&M Corpus Christi over Southeast Missouri State.First round winners: Alabama, West Virginia, San Diego State, Virginia, Creighton, Baylor, Utah State and Arizona.Maryland was terrific at home this season and not very good on the road. At a neutral site, the Terrapins get a tough first-round matchup against a West Virgini...

Williams lifts Thunder past Spurs and into West’s 10th seed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Jalen Williams scored 21 points and had 10 assists, and Oklahoma City used a balanced effort on offense without Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to beat the San Antonio Spurs 102-90 on Sunday night as they compete for a berth in the Western Conference play-in tournament.“It’s good to win when Shai doesn’t play as well,” Williams said. “Just kind of lets us know that we are doing the right things and playing hard in that way. I think we’re doing a good job kind of staying together. I think that’s been our biggest thing through the ups and downs.”Ousmane Dieng had a career-high 17 points and Josh Giddey added 15 for the Thunder, who won their second in a row and fifth in six games. Oklahoma City tied Utah and New Orleans for 10th place in the West at 33-35.Coming off a 110-96 victory in New Orleans on Saturday, Oklahoma City rested Gilgeous-Alexander for injury management. Gilgeous-Alexander, an All-Star who has missed 11 games this season, recently returned from an abdomina...

Las mujeres ahora pueden nadar en topless en las piscinas de Berlín, un reflejo de la tradición alemana de la desnudez

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

(CNN) — Las mujeres en Berlín ahora pueden nadar en topless en las piscinas públicas de la ciudad si así lo desean, al igual que los hombres.Además de ser aclamada como un paso adelante para la igualdad de género en la capital alemana, la medida presentada esta semana es sintomática del amor de Alemania por Freikoerperkultur — literalmente traducido como “cultura del cuerpo libre” — que tiene sus raíces a fines del siglo XIX.Las autoridades de Berlín tomaron medidas después de que una nadadora dijera que se le impidió asistir a una de las piscinas de la ciudad sin cubrirse el pecho en diciembre de 2022. La mujer presentó una denuncia ante la oficina del defensor del pueblo de la ciudad en el Departamento de Justicia, Diversidad y Antidiscriminación del Senado.Por qué amo ir a las playas nudistasLas autoridades acordaron que la mujer había sido víctima de discriminación y esta semana dijeron que todos los visitantes de las piscinas de Berlín, incluidas l...

State to crack down on late car registrations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) -- Time is up for Colorado drivers who are on the road without proper car registrations.A new law, the Colorado Registration Fairness Act, was passed in 2022 and took effect on Jan. 1. Drivers who are new to Colorado have 90 days to register. All drivers, including those with temporary tags, must renew their registration by the specified date or pay back taxes and fees.George Hersman is excited to be living in Colorado after moving from California. He said he was unaware of the new law but will make sure to register his car before the deadline. 3 men shot in Aurora after alleged dispute over possibly stolen car “No one really wants to be spending that money but if you have to do it you have to do it,” he said.Not everyone is heeding the law though. The Problem Solvers found one plate that hadn’t been renewed since 2021 and two cars that didn’t even have a plate, all in the same parking lot.FOX31 also discovered cars with expired plates from Missouri, Wisconsin and Ca...

GOP leader’s LGBTQ social media activity called hypocrisy

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s Republican lieutenant governor has apologized after revelations that he interacted on social media to nearly nude photos of a young gay model as well as other posts by the man and other LGBTQ personalities, even as the lawmaker has led a Senate that has passed bills targeting the LGBTQ community.With Lt. Gov. Randy McNally as its speaker, Tennessee’s Senate has advanced and passed bans this year on gender-affirming care for transgender youth and restrictions on where certain drag shows can take place.The 79-year-old told WTVF-TV on Thursday that he’s “really, really sorry if I’ve embarrassed my family, embarrassed my friends, embarrassed any of the members of the legislature with the posts.”“It was not my intent to (embarrass them), and not my intent to hurt them,” said McNally, who added that he befriended the man on Facebook, then on Instagram, but that they have not met in person.The Tennessee Holler, a progressive w...

Macron’s Africa reset struggles to persuade

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:31:20 GMT

Paul Taylor is a contributing editor at POLITICO.PARIS — The bigger the humiliation, the more grandiloquent the relaunch. After a year that saw French forces conducting counterinsurgency operations against jihadist rebels hounded out of Mali and Burkina Faso by military coups, anti-colonialist street protests, and Russian disinformation and mercenaries, President Emmanuel Macron announced a fundamental overhaul of France’s Africa strategy. “Humility,” “partnership” and “investment” are now the keywords in a reset that Macron outlined in a speech he delivered before embarking on his 18th trip to Africa in just eight years. Many Africans were understandably skeptical as the French president took his new doctrine on a tour of Gabon, Angola, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — an eclectic mix of former French, Belgian and Portuguese colonies that have big economic potential, and are being heavily courted by Russia and China as well as Eu...