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Little League World Series: Dominant Lin Chin-Tse leads Chinese Taipei past Nevada for first International championship win since 2017

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Lin Chin-Tse wasn’t quite perfect.

But he was more than good enough with a dominant one-hit performance on the mound Sunday to lead Chinese Taipei to a 7-0 win over Nevada in the Little League World Series championship game.

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The LLWS title is the first for an International team since Japan won in 2017. The title is a record 18th for a team from Chinese Taipei, but its first since 1996.

Chinese Taipei advanced to Sunday’s final via dominant pitching in South Williamsport, paced by Lin’s effort on the mound. The trend continued on Sunday against a previously hard-hitting Nevada team that advanced to the final with an 8-2 win over Connecticut Saturday for the U.S. championship.

Lin was perfect through four innings

But Nevada’s bats were no match for Lin on Sunday. Lin was perfect through four innings before Nevada secured its first baserunner via a groundball through the infield that allowed Garrett Gallegos to reach first in the fifth. But it made no difference on the scoreboard.

By then, Chinese Taipei had secured a 2-0 lead. And a double-play ended the inning without a Nevada run. Chinese Taipei’s bats then exploded to blow the game open in a five-run bottom of the fifth inning.

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Chen Qi-Sheng took over to pitch a scoreless top of the sixth to secure the Chinese Taipei victory. Lin pitched five scoreless innings in the victory with four strikeouts while allowing just a single baserunner on Gallegos’ fourth-inning single. He didn’t issue a walk.

Dominance throughout LLWS from Lin

The performance capped an overwhelming LLWS run for Lin, who pitched 11 scoreless innings across four appearances in South Williamsport. In those 11 innings, Lin struck out 20 batters while allowing just two hits.

Lin, who’s 12 years old, previously reached 82 mph with his fastball in LLWS play. Per ESPN, that’s the equivalent for batters of facing a 107 mph pitch from an MLB mound. Lin didn’t need to throw that hard on Sunday to repeatedly baffle Nevada batters and secure’s Chinese Taipei’s first LLWS title in 29 years.

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“I’m very happy,” Lin told ESPN through an interpreter after the game. “It’s been 29 years of drought. And finally, we’ve got a championship.”

The shutout victory in Sunday’s final marked the fourth in five LLWS games for Chinese Taipei, tying a tournament record.

Busy day for Chinese Taipei bats

After a scoreless first inning, Chinese Taipei broke through on the scoreboard Sunday on a wild pitch from Nevada starter Luke D’Ambrosio that allowed Jian Zih-De to score from third base.

That turned out to be the only run that Chinese Taipei needed, but it added plenty of insurance before the game was over. In the end, Chinese Taipei reached base 14 times via seven hits and seven walks in six innings.

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Lin was also his team’s most productive hitter as he secured three RBI on a 1-for-3 day at the plate as the leadoff hitter.



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UAE warns Israeli move to annex occupied West Bank is a red line

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday warned that any Israeli move to annex the occupied West Bank would be a “red line,” without specifying its possible impact on the landmark normalization accord between the two countries.

The warning came as Israel pressed ahead with the initial stages of its latest major offensive, in famine-stricken Gaza City. Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday killed at least 31 people, according to local hospitals.

Israelis took part in nationwide demonstrations to protest the call-up of 60,000 reserves for the expanded operation, which has sparked global condemnation and left the country increasingly isolated.

The demonstrators accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the fighting for political purposes instead of reaching a ceasefire deal with Hamas that would free hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.

A rare warning from the UAE

The UAE was the driving force behind the 2020 Abraham Accords brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, in which it and three other Arab countries forged ties with Israel. Trump has said he hopes to expand the accords in his second term, potentially to include regional power Saudi Arabia.

Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati diplomat, wrote on the social platform X that “annexation is a red line.”

He linked to a Times of Israel story that quoted another Emirati diplomat, Lana Nusseibeh, as saying annexation would “severely undermine the vision and spirit of (Abraham) Accords, end the pursuit of regional integration and would alter the widely shared consensus on what the trajectory of this conflict should be — two states living side by side in peace, prosperity and security.”

It was unclear what action, if any, the UAE might take, and the Emirati Foreign Ministry did not respond to questions seeking clarification.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state. Israel’s current government is staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood and supports eventual annexation of much of the West Bank.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich held a news conference Wednesday in which he unveiled a map showing annexation of most of the West Bank, with six Palestinian cities left with limited autonomy, according to local media. It’s unclear if his plan has Netanyahu’s backing.

The Palestinians and much of the international community say annexation would all but end any remaining possibility of a two-state solution, which is widely seen internationally as the only way to resolve the decades-old conflict.

Palestinians face more displacement as strikes continue

Israeli strikes on Gaza City killed at least 15 people, including two children and four women, according to Shifa Hospital and Al-Quds Hospital, where the bodies were taken. An additional 16 people were killed in southern Gaza, including 10 who were seeking humanitarian aid, according to Nasser Hospital.

Israel says it only targets militants and takes measures to spare civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas.

Israel says that Gaza City — the largest Palestinian city in either the besieged strip or the occupied West Bank — remains a Hamas stronghold, even after several major raids earlier in the war.

Israel has intensified air and ground assaults on the outskirts of Gaza City, according to humanitarian groups that coordinate assistance for the displaced.

Site Management Cluster, one such group, said Wednesday that families were trapped by the prohibitively high cost of moving, logistical hurdles and a lack of places to go.

“Palestinians are also reluctant to move due to the fear of not being able to return or exhaustion from repeated displacement,” it said.

Death toll mounts from war and hunger

The twin threats of combat and famine, Palestinians and aid workers say, are only growing more acute for families in Gaza City, many of whom have been displaced multiple times during the nearly two-year war.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that five adults and one child died from malnutrition over the past day, bringing the total toll to 367, including 131 children throughout the war. Experts blame Israel’s ongoing offensive and its blockade for the starvation crisis. Netanyahu has denied there is starvation in Gaza, despite testimonies, data and findings from leading experts suggesting otherwise.

The ministry reported on Tuesday that a total of 63,633 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including more than 2,300 seeking aid, since the start of the war. Part of the Hamas-run government but staffed by medical professionals, the ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up around half the dead.

U.N. agencies and many independent experts consider the ministry’s figures to be the most reliable estimate of war casualties. Israel disputes them, but hasn’t provided its own toll.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and took 251 people hostage. Forty-eight are still being held in Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefires or other deals.

Israel raids another Palestinian bookshop in Jerusalem

Israeli police arrested the owner of a popular Palestinian cafe and bookshop in east Jerusalem, his attorney said.

Tony Sabella, owner of The Gateway cafe in the Old City, was taken to a nearby police station and was still detained hours later, said Nasser Odeh, his lawyer, adding that the police did not have an arrest warrant. They confiscated five books, according to Odeh, who said the arrest was part of a “clear effort to crush intellectual production in the city.”

Gateway is the third Palestinian-owned bookstore to be raided by Israeli forces this year. The police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The day before, Israeli police and plainclothes officers spent over an hour in the shop, photographing books about the conflict. They told the owner he could not sell the books in Israel and ordered him to the police station on Thursday. An Associated Press reporter witnessed the encounter.

The cafe is a mainstay for diplomats, journalists and writers in Jerusalem.

Israel says Hamas plotted to assassinate far-right Cabinet minister

In a separate development, Israel’s internal security agency said it recently arrested a Hamas cell in the West Bank suspected of plotting to assassinate Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The Shin Bet agency said the suspects were found with drones that they had planned to rig with explosives. It did not specify how many people were arrested, and it was unclear how far the alleged plot had advanced.

___

Metz reported from Jerusalem and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war





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US military to continue targeting vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels, Rubio warns – live | Trump administration

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Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse funding cuts

A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.

The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.

Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.

Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:

This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.

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Federal agents reportedly practicing crowd control in Chicago

Hundreds of federal agents are arriving to the Chicago area for Donald Trump’s deployment, with some already “practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades”, according to a new report in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Roughly 230 agents, some who work for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are arriving from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported, with at least 30 of them training at a naval station near north Chicago.

JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, has strongly condemned the deployment, which the president has claimed is meant to address crime. “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” the governor said on Sunday. “I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”

More than 100 unmarked vehicles have been sent to the Navy training station, the Sun-Times reported.

The deployment of troops and other federal agents in LA caused widespread outrage and protests. Some demonstrations were met with teargas and other munitions. Border patrol agents with CBP were also accused of injuring protesters in LA and were found to have made false statements about demonstrators they arrested.





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Harvard funding freeze by Trump administration reversed by judge

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Cambridge, MA – May 29: Law school graduates raise gavels during Harvard University’s 374th Commencement on May 29, 2025.

Craig F. Walker | Boston Globe | Getty Images

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grant funds for Harvard University over concerns about antisemitism on campus and other issues was illegal.

Judge Allison Burroughs agreed with Harvard’s arguments that the administration imposed the funding freeze in retaliation for the Ivy League university’s refusal to capitulate to demands for reforms that violated First Amendment protections under the Constitution.

Burroughs’ ruling in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts vacates freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars anyone in the Trump administration from enforcing those orders.

The administration froze the grants to Harvard on April 14, hours after the university flatly rejected demands that it end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and screen international students for ideological biases, including antisemitism.

“The fact that Defendants’ swift and sudden decision to terminate funding, ostensibly motivated by antisemitism, was made before they learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response, leads the Court to conclude that the sudden focus on antisemitism was, at best … arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual,” Burroughs wrote in her ruling.

She also noted that the administration, in a letter in Apri,l “specifically conditioned funding on agreeing to its ten terms, only one of which related to antisemitism, while six related to ideological and pedagogical concerns, including who may lead and teach at Harvard, who may be admitted, and what may be taught.”

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Harvard President Alan Garber at the time of the funding freeze said in a note to the university community, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

CNBC has requested comment on the ruling from Harvard and the White House.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.



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