By Kyle Feldscher, CNN

(CNN) — Team USA is on the verge of one of the most embarrassing exits in World Baseball Classic history and, at this point, there’s nothing the Americans can do about it.

After a shocking 8-6 defeat to Italy on Tuesday, a game that saw the Americans fall behind 8-0 before trying to rally in the final innings, Team USA will be stuck watching Italy-Mexico on Wednesday night to determine whether a pre-tournament favorite can continue into the quarterfinals or if the squad is to make a shock tournament exit.

This American team was constructed with nothing less than winning in mind. Going out in pool play, for the first time in the tournament’s 20-year history, would be an incredible upset of a group that was thought to be baseball’s answer to the Dream Team.

Not only would it be shocking for the nation who called baseball “the national pastime” to be sent home before the knockout rounds, it would also mean arguably the tournament’s top team being eliminated and ending its attempt at avenging a loss to Japan in the 2023 final. The field would be wide open for teams like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and defending champion Japan.

Beyond the play on the field, there are real questions over whether manager Mark DeRosa understood his team’s qualification status and purposely picked a weaker lineup against the Italians and Team USA went from tournament favorite to the verge of being a laughingstock in the span of about four hours on Tuesday.

Here’s what you need to know about Team USA’s current predicament and how the team can still keep its World Baseball Classic bid going.

Wait, the USA got beat by Italy?

So, let’s start with the results on the field. Yes, Team USA and its roster of stars like Aaron Judge were defeated by the Italian national team. But it’s not like these are some random guys who grew up tossing around a baseball among the olive trees of Tuscany.

The World Baseball Classic has incredibly loose rules on what allows a player to qualify to play for one of the national teams. That means that the Italian team is full of American-born players who have some connection to Italy through one of their parents, and most of them are playing in the major leagues.

Still, that 8-6 loss could have been much, much worse – it was 8-0 after five-and-a-half innings – and there might be a reason for that.

Why is Team USA’s manager being criticized?

Part of how that may have happened could be explained in a pre-game interview on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” on Tuesday.

In the interview, DeRosa, Team USA’s manager, tells the hosts that he planned to give some of his players a rest in the game against Italy.

“I’m gonna get some guys off their feet, no question about it,” DeRosa said, before discussing his desire to start Paul Goldschmidt of the New York Yankees and Gunnar Henderson of the Baltimore Orioles in Tuesday’s game.

But then he continues with a quote that has since

The post Local High School Robotics Team Makes Top Ten at District Competition appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

Por Emile Nuh, CNN

El ministro de Deportes de Irán, Ahmad Donyamali, dice que el equipo no puede participar en el Mundial de la FIFA debido a la guerra en curso con el coanfitrión del torneo, Estados Unidos, e Israel.

Las dudas sobre la participación de Irán se han intensificado desde que EE.UU. e Israel lanzaron por primera vez ataques aéreos el 28 de febrero.

“Considerando que este régimen corrupto ha asesinado a nuestro líder, bajo ninguna circunstancia podemos participar en el Mundial”, dijo el miércoles Donyamali a la televisión estatal iraní”.

Esto ocurre pese a que el presidente de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino, afirmara en Instagram que recibió garantías del presidente de EE.UU., Donald Trump, durante una reunión el martes, de que Irán era “bienvenido a competir en el torneo”.

CNN Sports se ha puesto en contacto con la FIFA para solicitar comentarios.

Irán comparte el Grupo G con Nueva Zelandia, Bélgica y Egipto, y los tres partidos están programados para disputarse en EE.UU. Sin embargo, los comentarios de Donyamali ahora han sembrado serias dudas sobre si el país competirá en su cuarto Mundial consecutivo.

“Nuestros niños no están a salvo y, fundamentalmente, no existen tales condiciones para participar”, dijo Donyamali.

“Dadas las acciones maliciosas que han llevado a cabo contra Irán, nos han impuesto dos guerras durante ocho o nueve meses y han matado y martirizado a miles de nuestro pueblo. Por lo tanto, ciertamente no podemos tener tal presencia”.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post Irán “ciertamente no puede” competir en el Mundial, dice el ministro de Deportes appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accountant is answering questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the late convicted sex offender.

Richard Kahn is behind closed doors for a deposition as the Republican-led panel seeks answers on Epstein’s finances. The committee had been digging into those finances for months ahead of the interview through subpoenas to banks and visits to the Treasury Departmnet.

“We have a lot of questions. I think everyone in America has questions about how Epstein was able to accumulate so much wealth,” House Oversight Chair James Comer said ahead of the deposition. “We have specific financial questions we’re going to be asking today and hopefully we’ll be able to report some new information.”

Comer said a number of the expenditures his panel has found went toward college tuition for some of Epstein’s victims. The Kentucky Republican said he also wants to know if Kahn was involved in creating any settlements for victims and whether he helped Epstein set up video cameras on Epstein’s island, which was something mentioned in the Epstein files but hasn’t been proven.

“We’ve been getting bank records in for a long time, and we haven’t talked publicly about them because we were waiting to bring the accountant in once we got a feel on where the money we think was going and where it was coming from,” he said.

CNN has reached out to an attorney for Kahn for comment.

In November, Comer subpoenaed JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank for their records on Epstein and since then, his panel has reviewed approximately 44,000 financial documents and counting, a committee aide told CNN.

Epstein had at least 64 trusts and entities associated with him and there were large amounts of money being moved each day between Epstein’s entities and his associates, the aide added. Some of those activities included payments to women, tuition to various universities and routine large cash withdrawals for unknown purposes, according to the aide.

Committee staff have also gone to the Treasury Department to view the suspicious activity reports – a type of confidential report financial institutions file to flag potentially nefarious activity but that do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing — related to Epstein.

One month after Epstein died in a jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, JPMorgan Chase reported to US authorities more than $1 billion in transactions it viewed as suspicious from October 2003 until July 2019, according to court records. The transactions included Wall Street titans, numerous related companies, his former lawyer and others. Two accounts included in the report were linked to Russian banks Alfa Bank and Sberbank.

The panel will use this information in its questioning of Kahn today to probe more about how Epstein made his money, how he spent it, and whether it was used for any illegal activities.

Kahn is also a co-executor of Epstein’s estate.

Upon entering the deposition room, Kahn was asked by reporters Wednesday if he was on Capitol Hill to answer questions and Kahn’s counsel interjected, “Yes.”

Looking ahead, Comer said he hopes he can finish his investigation by the end of this Congress but mentioned that each time they interview a witness, new leads emerge.<

Por Ashley Strickland, CNN

Los mosquitos no siempre han sentido afinidad por la sangre humana, en parte porque estos diminutos pero peligrosos insectos han existido mucho antes que los humanos.

Según un nuevo estudio, determinar cuándo los mosquitos cambiaron su preferencia por la sangre humana podría brindar una nueva perspectiva sobre la propagación de los primeros ancestros humanos por el mundo.

El análisis genético reveló que ciertos mosquitos recolectados en el sudeste asiático, incluidos algunos capaces de transmitir la malaria, probablemente evolucionaron en respuesta a la presencia de nuestros primeros ancestros, u homínidos, en la región hace entre 2,9 y 1,6 millones de años, lo que podría respaldar algunas hipótesis sobre cuándo los humanos prehistóricos llegaron a la zona.

Los hallazgos, publicados el 26 de febrero en la revista Scientific Reports, sugieren que el Homo erectus podría haber estado presente en cantidades lo suficientemente abundantes como para desencadenar dicha adaptación en algunos mosquitos que habitan en los bosques, afirmó la coautora del estudio, Catherine Walton, profesora titular de Ciencias de la Tierra y Ambientales en la Universidad de Manchester, Reino Unido.

Tradicionalmente, los científicos se han basado en evidencia fósil y fuentes de ADN antiguo para trazar la cronología y la ubicación de los humanos prehistóricos durante su expansión fuera de África. Sin embargo, estos rastros físicos a menudo se pierden en el tiempo.

Métodos no arqueológicos, como la secuenciación de ADN y la modelización informática, podrían ayudar a rastrear la huella humana en entornos como los climas húmedos y tropicales del Sudeste Asiático, donde las condiciones aceleran la descomposición de los restos.

Diferentes grupos de investigadores han debatido durante décadas si los primeros ancestros humanos, como el Homo erectus, llegaron al sudeste asiático hace alrededor de 1,8 o 1,3 millones de años, debido a la escasez del registro fósil.

“Creo que es tan difícil y desafiante reconstruir esa historia que realmente tenemos que recurrir a diversas fuentes de información”, declaró Walton a CNN. “Lo que podemos obtener de mosquitos, fósiles o genomas humanos es, a su manera, limitado. Por lo tanto, intentar unirlos y ver cuándo coinciden es lo que puede hacer la diferencia”.

Se puede pensar que los mosquitos son principalmente plagas que buscan activamente a los humanos, pero la alimentación con sangre humana es poco común entre las más de 3.500 especies conocidas, según la autora principal del estudio, Upasana Shyamsunder Singh, investigadora postdoctoral de la Universidad de Vanderbilt en Nashville, Tennessee.

Algunos mosquitos del grupo Anopheles leucosphyrus del sudeste asiático son antropofílicos, lo que significa que prefieren la sangre humana a la de otros animales.

Descifrar la evolución de esta preferencia alimentaria permite comprender mejor cómo la malaria se propaga a partir de patógenos que portan estos mosquitos en la actualidad.

“Nos interesaba saber por qué algunos miembros del grupo Leucosphyrus se sienten tan atraídos por los humanos, mientras que otros se sienten atraídos por los monos que pican, y queríamos ver cómo y cuándo se produjo esta transición”, explicó Singh.

El equipo secuenció el ADN de 38 mosquitos diferentes pertenecientes a 11 especies del grupo Leucosphyrus, que se recolectaron con mucho esfuerzo durante el trabajo de campo realizado entre 1992 y 2020 en el sudeste asiático.

Un trabajo de campo en Borneo ofreció información innovadora sobre el comportamiento de los mosquitos que se alimentan de sangre humana en comparación con aquellos que prefieren alimentarse de monos, explicó Walton.

Los investigadores rastrearon cuándo y cómo los mosquitos, que vivían en pequeños charcos de agua en las selvas tropicales, se acercaban a los humanos intentando p