NEW YORK (AP) — Free agent pitchers Luis Gabriel Moreno and Alejandro Crisostomo were suspended for 80 games each by Major League Baseball on Friday following positive tests for performance-enhancing substances under the minor league drug program. Moreno tested positive for Nandrolone, and Crisostomo tested positive for Boldenone and Nandrolone, the commissioner’s office said. A 26-year-old right-hander, Moreno was released by the New York Mets’ Class A Brooklyn Cyclones on Tuesday. He was 5-1 with a 5.33 ERA in 12 relief appearances this season for Brooklyn after spending 2016-23 in the San Francisco Giants organization. Crisostomo, a 24-year-old right-hander, was released by Minnesota on Aug. 24 after going 0-1 with a 7.13 ERA this year with the Florida Complex League Twins. He signed with Boston in 2017, spent 2018 in the Dominican Summer League with the Red Sox, then signed with Minnesota and spent 2023 with the Twins DSL team. Nineteen players have been suspended this year for positive drug tests, including eight under the minor league program and nine under the new program for minor league players assigned outside the United States and Canada. Two players have been suspended this year under the major league drug program. Noelvi Marté , a 22-year-old infielder who is the Cincinnati Reds’ top prospect, missed the first 80 games following a positive test for boldenone. Toronto Blue Jays infielder Orelvis Martínez was suspended for 80 games on June 23 following a positive test for the performance-enhancing drug clomiphene, an announcement made two days after his major league debut . AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlbColumn: The Chicago Bulls could advance to the NBA Cup semifinals with an unlikely win Friday. Who does that help?

Trump's picks for key positions in his second administration

Trump's picks for key positions in his second administration

Freiburg survives late onslaught to beat Wolfsburg in Bundesliga thriller

First it was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump again wants Greenland. The president-elect is renewing unsuccessful calls he made during his first term for the U.S. to buy Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he's picking fights even before taking office on Jan. 20. In a Sunday announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Trump wrote that, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity." Mr. Trump again having designs on Greenland comes after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the U.S. could retake control of the Panama Canal if something isn't done to ease rising shipping costs required for using the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He's also been suggesting that Canada become the 51st U.S. state and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.” Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said Mr. Trump tweaking friendly countries harks back to an aggressive style he used during his days in business. “You ask something unreasonable and it’s more likely you can get something less unreasonable,” said Mr. Farnsworth, who is also author of the book “Presidential Communication and Character.” Greenland, the world’s largest island, sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is 80% covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large U.S. military base. It gained home rule from Denmark in 1979 and its head of government, Múte Bourup Egede, suggested that Mr. Trump’s latest calls for U.S. control would be as meaningless as those made in his first term. “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale,” he said in a statement. “We must not lose our years-long fight for freedom.” The Danish Prime Minister’s Office said in its own statement that the government is “looking forward to welcoming the new American ambassador. And the Government is looking forward to working with the new administration.” “In a complex security political situation as the one we currently experience, transatlantic cooperation is crucial,” the statement said. It noted that it had no comment on Greenland except for it “not being for sale, but open for cooperation.” Mr. Trump canceled a 2019 visit to Denmark after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen, and ultimately came to nothing. He also suggested Sunday that the U.S. is getting “ripped off” at the Panama Canal. “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question,” he said. Panama President José Raúl Mulino responded in a video that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to,” but Mr. Trump fired back on his social media site, “We’ll see about that!” The president-elect also posted a picture of a U.S. flag planted in the canal zone under the phrase, “Welcome to the United States Canal!” The United States built the canal in the early 1900s but relinquished control to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The canal depends on reservoirs that were hit by 2023 droughts that forced it to substantially reduce the number of daily slots for crossing ships. With fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees that shippers are charged to reserve slots to use the canal. The Greenland and Panama flareups followed Mr. Trump recently posting that “Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State" and offering an image of himself superimposed on a mountaintop surveying surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag. Mr. Trudeau suggested that Mr. Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the pair met recently at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump's threats to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods. “Canada is not going to become part of the United States, but Trump’s comments are more about leveraging what he says to get concessions from Canada by putting Canada off balance, particularly given the precarious current political environment in Canada,” Mr. Farnsworth said. “Maybe claim a win on trade concessions, a tighter border, or other things.” He said the situation is similar with Greenland. “What Trump wants is a win," Mr. Farnsworth said. "And even if the American flag doesn’t raise over Greenland, Europeans may be more willing to say yes to something else because of the pressure.” This story is by The Associated Press. AP writers Gary Fields in Washington and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Article content Is daylight saving time coming to an end? Recommended Videos If Donald Trump and the Republican Party have their way when the president-elect returns to office in January, switching the time by one hour twice a year will become a thing of the past. On Friday, Trump posted to his Truth Social account that the Republican Party will use its “best efforts” to “eliminate” daylight saving time, “which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — named by Trump to assess U.S. government efficiency — mused on social media recently that daylight saving time should be abolished. “Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” Musk wrote in response to an X user’s poll asking people’s opinion on daylight saving time. Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes! https://t.co/5ePhgzYLsF “It’s inefficient & easy to change,” Ramaswamy wrote in a reply to Musk . Daylight saving time began in 1918 as an effort to save energy by having more hours of daylight in the evening during the warmer months. In 2022, the U.S. Senate advanced a plan to make daylight saving time permanent. RECOMMENDED VIDEO As of now, in most Canadian provinces and U.S. states, the clock moves ahead one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall. Only Yukon, most of Saskatchewan, some areas of Quebec and parts of British Columbia in Canada and Arizona and Hawaii in the U.S. don’t adjust the time. In Ontario, legislation was passed by the Doug Ford government in 2020 to make daylight saving time permanent, but only when Quebec and New York state decide to scrap the time change.

Social media users are misrepresenting a report released Thursday by the Justice Department inspector general's office, falsely claiming that it's proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report's finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events. Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so. Here's a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: A December 2024 report released by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General is proof that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a setup by the FBI. THE FACTS: That's false. The report found that no undercover FBI employees were at the riot on Jan. 6 and that none of the bureau's informants were authorized to participate. Informants, also known as confidential human sources, work with the FBI to provide information, but are not on the bureau’s payroll. Undercover agents are employed by the FBI. According to the report, 26 informants were in Washington on Jan. 6 in connection with the day's events. FBI field offices only informed the Washington Field Office or FBI headquarters of five informants that were to be in the field on Jan. 6. Of the total 26 informants, four entered the Capitol during the riot and an additional 13 entered a restricted area around the Capitol. But none were authorized to do so by the FBI, nor were they given permission to break other laws or encourage others to do the same. The remaining nine informants did not engage in any illegal activities. None of the 17 informants who entered the Capitol or surrounding restricted area have been prosecuted, the report says. A footnote states that after reviewing a draft of the report, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington said that it “generally has not charged those individuals whose only crime on January 6, 2021 was to enter restricted grounds surrounding the Capitol, which has resulted in the Office declining to charge hundreds of individuals; and we have treated the CHSs consistent with this approach.” The assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office's counterterrorism division told the inspector general's office that he “denied a request from an FBI office to have an undercover employee engage in investigative activity on January 6.” He, along with then-Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D'Antuono, said that FBI policy prohibits undercover employees at First Amendment-protected events without investigative authority. Many social media users drew false conclusions from the report's findings. “JANUARY 6th WAS A SETUP!" reads one X post that had received more than 11,400 likes and shares as of Friday. “New inspector general report shows that 26 FBI/DOJ confidential sources were in the crowd on January 6th, and some of them went into the Capitol and restricted areas. Is it a coincidence that Wray put in his resignation notice yesterday? TREASON!” The mention of Wray's resignation refers to FBI Director Christopher Wray's announcement Wednesday that he plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden's term in January. Other users highlighted the fact that there were 26 FBI informants in Washington on Jan. 6, but omitted key information about the findings of the report. These claims echo a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in instigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters determined to overturn Republican Donald Trump's 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden stormed the Capitol in a violent clash with police. The report knocks that theory down. Wray called such theories “ludicrous” at a congressional hearing last year. Asked for comment on the false claims spreading online, Stephanie Logan, a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, pointed The Associated Press to a press release about the report. In addition to its findings about the the FBI's involvement on Jan. 6, the report said that the FBI, in an action its now-deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” failed to canvass informants across all 56 of its field offices for any relevant intelligence ahead of time. That was a step, the report concluded, “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6.” However, it did credit the bureau for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who planned to come to Washington that day. The FBI said in a letter responding to the report that it accepts the inspection general’s recommendation “regarding potential process improvements for future events.” — Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck .

In the fast-evolving world of gaming technology, the notion of harnessing volcanic energy as a resource opens a new chapter in sustainable power. Intriguingly dubbed “Vulcan Energy Resources,” this innovative concept revolves around utilizing geothermal power derived from volcanic activity to fuel gaming systems and platforms. Why the Shift to Vulcan Energy? The gaming industry’s rapid growth demands substantial energy, prompting a critical exploration of sustainable alternatives. The release of new gaming consoles and increasingly complex virtual realms has highlighted the industry’s environmental footprint. Vulcan Energy Resources present a compelling solution, offering considerable potential to mitigate this impact by providing an almost inexhaustible and environmentally friendly power source. How Does It Work? Geothermal energy from volcanoes taps into the Earth’s natural heat, utilizing the steam and hot water reservoirs beneath the crust. This process effectively captures energy that can be converted into electricity, making it an attractive alternative to fossil fuels. Implementing such a source within gaming technology requires significant infrastructure but opens an exciting frontier for green innovation. A Vision for the Future Envisaging a gaming world powered by Vulcan Energy Resources is no longer science fiction. Developers are beginning to explore this unique energy resource, compelling players and industry giants alike to consider its viability. Imagine game servers, consoles, and even VR headsets operating on the raw power of volcanic energy—this could be a revolutionary leap towards a more sustainable and thrilling gaming environment. Through this innovative lens, Vulcan Energy Resources could redefine the relationship between gaming and the environment, promising a future full of action-adventure gaming without compromising ecological integrity. Discovering the Volcanic Advantage: A Gaming Revolution Fueled by Geothermal Energy Revolutionizing Gaming with Geothermal Innovations The introduction of volcanic geothermal energy into the gaming industry presents an exciting era not only for gamers but also for environmental advocates. The demand for sustainable practices has permeated the industry at a crucial time when digital consumption is skyrocketing, leading developers and companies to explore greener initiatives. Specifications of Vulcan Energy Integration Harnessing geothermal energy specifically for gaming involves a sophisticated infrastructure. The process uses volcanic steam and water reservoirs to generate electricity. This approach requires: – Advanced Heat Exchange Systems: To extract geothermal heat efficiently. – Robust Power Grids: Capable of distributing sustainably generated electricity to various gaming platforms. – Customized Cooling Mechanisms: Ensuring that gaming systems remain unaffected by heat variations. Sustainability Pros and Cons Maintaining ecological balance in gaming involves evaluating the benefits and challenges of Vulcan Energy Resources. Pros: – Environmental Impact Reduction: Drastically decreases reliance on fossil fuels. – Infinite Resource: Geothermal energy provides a virtually limitless power supply. – Operational Consistency: Unlike solar or wind, volcanic energy is not weather-dependent, offering a stable energy source. Cons: – Initial Infrastructure Costs: Building and maintaining the facilities to harness this energy can be expensive. – Geographical Limitations: Effective only in regions with notable volcanic activity. Market Predictions and Trends The gaming industry’s pivot toward geothermal energy indicates significant future trends: – Global Adoption: Countries with active volcanoes are expected to lead in experimenting and implementing this energy resource for digital technology. – Investment Increases: Potential for high investments in renewable infrastructure from major gaming and tech conglomerates aiming to reduce carbon footprints. Real-World Use Cases and Security Aspects Already, certain companies are piloting projects to demonstrate the potential of Vulcan Energy Resources. Security also plays a role, with energy systems fortified to prevent breaches and ensure continuous, safe power distribution. This New Energy Wave Vulcan Energy Resources represent the future of sustainable gaming. As developers and technology leaders continue to explore and refine this concept, the promise of engaging in eco-conscious gaming without sacrificing performance becomes an achievable reality. For further insights into similar sustainable initiatives in technology, visit Vulcan Energy Resources .