LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shohei Ohtani cracked a line drive to right field and sprinted past second base, confident he could leg out a triple that would thrill his new fans in his first home plate appearance for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The $700 million slugger didn’t realize Mookie Betts had been stopped in front of him at third until …

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Officials said they missed a foul call in the closing seconds of the Los Angeles Clippers’ 108-107 win over Philadelphia on Wednesday night, denying the 76ers a possible victory in their fight for better playoff positioning. Referee Kevin Scott said in a pool report sent to reporters by the NBA an hour after the game that the …

The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here. Florida Atlantic is hiring Baylor associate head coach John Jakus as its coach, a move that comes four days after Dusty May capped his six-year run with the …

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Security in Congo’s mineral-rich east has deteriorated since recent elections, with a rebel group allegedly linked to neighboring Rwanda making “significant advances and expanding its territory,” the U.N. special envoy for the conflict-wracked African nation said Wednesday. Bintou Keita told the U.N. Security Council this has created “an even more disastrous humanitarian situation, with internal displacement …

The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here. Missouri State hired Cuonzo Martin on Wednesday, bringing back the only coach to lead its basketball program to a Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title more than a decade …

Houston Rockets (36-35, 11th in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (50-21, second in the Western Conference) Oklahoma City; Wednesday, 8 p.m. EDT FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK NBA LINE: Thunder -6; over/under is 230 BOTTOM LINE: Houston will try to keep its five-game road win streak alive when the Rockets play Oklahoma City. The Thunder are 32-15 in Western Conference games. …

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarian customs officials confiscated about 170 kilograms (370 pounds) of cocaine from a ship transporting bananas from Ecuador, prosecutors said Tuesday. District prosecutor Georgi Chinev said the drugs were hidden in a fruit container on the cargo ship Madison 2, which also made a stopover in Malta. He valued the cocaine at 6.2 million euros ($6.8 …

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s government on Tuesday began handing over to relatives the bodies of 429 members of a doomsday cult at the center of a legal case that has shocked the country. Exhumed bodies from a vast rural area in coastal Kenya have shown signs of starvation and strangulation. Cult leader Paul Mackenzie is accused of asking his …

NEW YORK (AP) — A dispute between two men over smoking on a New York City subway train early Monday morning ended with one stabbing the other multiple times in the back, according to police. The pair were on a train in Brooklyn that was bound for Manhattan when they got into an argument about someone smoking aboard the subway, …

NACIONES UNIDAS (AP) — El Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas emitió el lunes su primera exigencia de un cese del fuego en la Franja de Gaza, lo que desató el enojo de Israel, ya que Estados Unidos se abstuvo de votar la resolución. En respuesta, Israel canceló la visita de una delegación de alto nivel a Washington, en lo …