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SEATTLE (AP) — Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez gained some ground Tuesday night in his chase for a Triple Crown. He still has plenty of work to do this week. The AL MVP front-runner went 2 for 4 with his 41st home run and three RBIs in the Astros’ 7-0 win over the Seattle Mariners. Alvarez hit an RBI single in the first inning, was intentionally walked in the second and then belted a 386-foot homer in the eighth with a 109.5 mph exit velocity. “At this point, I keep wondering why guys are pitching to him,” Houston first baseman Christian Walker said. “He just seems to come through in every moment. He’s dangerous at the plate right now.” Alvarez, who is quiet and shows little emotion, orchestrated a team meeting after the Astros (78-79) were swept by Atlanta on Sunday, squandering their lead in the AL West. His performance on Tuesday was much-needed to put Houston in a tie with the Texas Rangers atop the division with five games left this season. “He’s been backing it up all year,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. Alvarez’s two-run shot to right field tied him with Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays for the American League lead with 41 homers. Alvarez is first in batting average at .314 — five points ahead of Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson — and he has 102 RBIs, six behind Baltimore Orioles slugger Pete Alonso for most in the AL. Alonso drove in three runs with two homers Monday against Toronto, but the teams were rained out Tuesday in Baltimore because of bad weather. They are scheduled to play a split doubleheader Wednesday. Alvarez has six homers since Aug. 1, and the 29-year-old designated hitter has eight RBIs over 17 games in September. He’ll need more to become baseball’s first Triple Crown winner since Miguel Cabrera in 2012. Alvarez leads the AL in slugging percentage (.601), OPS (1.032), total bases (329) and walks (106). Logan Gilbert intentionally walked Alvarez in the second inning Tuesday, which was the 33rd time for Alvarez this season, already a franchise record. It’s been a historic season for the four-time All-Star after he was limited to 48 games in 2025 because of a broken hand and an ankle injury. If he wins the AL MVP award, the Cuban slugger will join Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers as the only players to win an MVP award while primarily serving as a designated hitter. Othani was close to winning a Triple Crown in 2024 after leading the NL in homers (50) and RBIs (130), but his .310 average fell just short to Luis Arráez’s .314. ___ See AP’s full MLB coverage here Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

For years, artificial intelligence researchers have warned of ways the technology could wipe out humanity: AI bots could design an unstoppable disease, unleash a nuclear war, or transform all of Earth into paper clip factories, as one thought experiment goes. Debates inside the AI industry and beyond over the plausibility of these doomsday scenarios have heated up since several executives endorsed slowing the technology’s development for safety reasons. Despite warnings of the potential for humans to lose their grip on the technology, some suspect the worst-case scenarios described by the AI companies themselves have more to do with validating the importance of their work than reality. “These arguments just don’t really hold water. I think they’re sci-fi and they’re enticing to a certain childish style of thinking and it’s very tempting for the frontier labs because it helps them recruit certain types of folks,” said Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, a researcher at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne and a member of OpenAI’s Frontier Risk Council. Still, more people are beginning to worry about the risks of the technology that has dazzled the world with its astounding capabilities. Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher who resigned from the company over concerns that it and its competitors are not acting responsibly in AI development, said on X recently that he needs to “work on” communicating to people more effectively exactly how AI would end humanity. “Unfortunately it is very difficult to convey specific scenarios,” he wrote earlier this month. Here are some of the more widely discussed doomsday scenarios. Researchers have long speculated that AI systems could trigger a nuclear war by getting countries to fire warhead-tipped missiles at each other. The nuclear blasts, and ensuing lingering radioactive atmospheric fallout resulting in a “nuclear winter,” could devastate life on Earth. In a report last year, RAND Corp. researchers concluded that “at present” it wouldn’t be possible for AI to cause the use of nuclear weapons “because of strict safeguards built into the command and control systems.” However, the report said this could change if AI models are integrated into the nuclear weapon “decision chain” or gain unauthorized access to these systems. For many AI researchers, that’s where the danger lies — not in AI agents suddenly deciding to end humanity, but people, nations or groups using it to wipe out their adversaries. One of AI’s greatest promises is that it could help humans develop treatments and cures for diseases. The flip side of curing diseases is creating or advancing them to harm humanity. Earlier this month, Anthropic said it has blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI for a host of malicious activities such as cyberattacks, surveillance, and research that could have led to biological weapons. In one instance, Anthropic said its systems blocked a request for assistance from its Claude tool for a research proposal seeking to enhance mutations to make the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus progressively more harmful. While such research could be used to develop better vaccines and treatments, Anthropic said, “it could also be used to make the pathogen more dangerous.” Along the same lines, the RAND report noted recent progress in AI development “has the potential to transform the design of synthetic pathogens.” Outlining a bioweapon doomsday scenario, the report said novel pathogens could be created in a lab, delivered to target locations, and spread to infect large populations of people in multiple places. But it still envisioned humans — and not autonomous AI — as overseeing and carrying out such an attack. Some AI researchers fear a human extinction event could result from “misalignment” — that is, when AI models act without human authorization, coordinate with other models or evade oversight. It would develop not from malicious intent — AI is not human, nor is it good or evil, after all — but simply because humans might get in the way of the model accomplishing its goal. Take the decades-old “paper clip maximizer” thought experiment by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, which states that if advanced AI was told to produce as many paper clips as possible, it could eventually transform all of Earth, and then increasing portions of space, into paper clip factories. This is to illustrate how superintelligent AI — often referred to as artificial general intelligence, or AGI — could advance a goal humans may see as desirable but “which in fact turns out to be a false utopia, in which things essential to human flourishing have been irreversibly lost,” Bostrom wrote in 2003. “We need to be careful about what we wish for from a superintelligence, because we might get it,” he wrote. Given the rate of AI’s development, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned this month that within months a swarm of AI agents could be capable of “taking over” the internet with a botnet (a network of bots linked together with malware), potentially causing billions of dollars in damage. This could mean hacks into electrical grids, water or transportation systems and financial institutions — attacks that might not spell the end of humanity but could cause chaos and lives lost. Disruptions from software glitches in the past have highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a few providers for key computing services, and more powerful AI models have raised concerns about vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. But some experts say the notion of bots overtaking the entire extremely bifurcated internet is far-fetched. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

TAINAN, Taiwan (AP) — As China’s Xi Jinping arrives in Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, Taiwan expressed confidence that U.S. arms sales to the island that Beijing claims as its own will continue — despite China’s pressure. China has pressed Washington to halt the arms sales, most prominently during a summit in May between Trump and Xi in Beijing. After that meeting, the United States paused the sale of a record-breaking $14 billion package — and Trump described arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China. Still, the U.S. government and Congress have “repeatedly expressed support for Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities,” Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesperson Maj. Gen. Chiao Fu-chun told reporters in the southern city of Tainan. “We will continue to maintain close contact with the U.S. Department of War and continue to push forward the arms procurement deal between Taiwan and the U.S., ensuring it proceeds as planned,” he added. The U.S. is bound by its own laws to provide Taiwan — a self-ruled democracy that China sees as its own territory — with the means to defend itself. While not recognizing Taiwan as a country, the U.S. is the island’s strongest informal backer and arms provider. Washington approved another $11 billion package for Taiwan in December. Hours before Xi’s arrival for the three-day state visit to the U.S., Taiwan’s military on Wednesday conducted live fire drills featuring a domestically developed eight-wheeled armored vehicle, highlighting efforts to strengthen its own arms production. Called The Cheetah, the vehicle can be fitted with a 105-millimeter (4.1-inch) cannon and can reach a maximum speed of about 100 kph (62 mph) and an operational range of about 500 kilometers (311 miles). Taiwanese Maj. Gen. Chen Chien-chung said the vehicle can be used on various terrains and is suitable for urban warfare. Trump has in recent years pressed Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te to dramatically increase Taiwan’s defense budget. The budget will exceed 3% of Taiwan’s gross domestic product for the first time in 2027, and Lai has pledged to get to 5% by 2030. ___ Mistreanu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) — Moroccan voters are choosing a new parliament Wednesday in an election shaped by mounting frustration among young people, high unemployment despite a thriving economy, and demands for better schools, hospitals and housing. Voting centers across the North African kingdom will open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, allowing nearly 16 million registered voters to cast ballots for the 395-seat House of Representatives. The vote will determine the next prime minister and the makeup of the government, which will serve alongside a powerful monarchy that retains broad authority over strategic affairs. Results are expected Thursday. The next government will oversee billions of dollars in investment as Morocco prepares to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup, prompting some to describe it as the “World Cup government.” The new political leadership will also face pressure to address everyday concerns, including jobs, wages and the cost of living. For many young Moroccans, the election comes as doubts grow that political participation can improve their daily lives. Some have turned to street protests, while others have considered leaving the country or staying away from the ballot box. The Moroccan Constitution requires the king to appoint the head of government from the party that wins the most seats in legislative elections. Since no single party is expected to obtain an absolute majority, the winner will need to negotiate with others to form a governing coalition. Voters will choose among 7,288 candidates from 27 political parties. The election is the first since deadly youth-led protests nearly a year ago and a mass attempt by migrants to cross Morocco’s northern border into the Spanish territory of Ceuta. Some, including the far-left party, The Democratic Path, called to boycott the election saying that it “lacks the minimum conditions of democracy.” Banned but tolerated Islamist association Al-Adl Wal Ihsane issued similar claims. The constitution recognizes the right to vote for Moroccans living abroad, but there is no voting by mail or ballot boxes at Moroccan consulates. Instead, they must travel to Morocco to vote or authorize a registered family member or acquaintance to vote on their behalf. The number of registered voters has declined by 9.7% since the 2021 election, even as Morocco’s population has grown, and analysts expect turnout to be low. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

PARIS (AP) — A four-day visit by Pope Leo XIV beginning Friday that will feature large public gatherings, popemobile parades and an open-air Mass in Paris presents France with a balancing act under its strict approach to secularism, known as laïcité. “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic,” the country’s Constitution states. Secularism guarantees the freedom to believe or not to believe, as well as the freedom to practice a religion as long as it does not disturb public order. It also requires the state to remain neutral toward all religions. Here is a look at France’s distinctive model of secularism, known as laïcité (pronounced lah-ee-see-TAY). Key rules have been defined by a historic 1905 law, primarily intended to distance the state from the then-powerful influence of the Catholic Church. The law guarantees freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion while requiring the state to remain neutral. Churches built before 1905 are the property of municipalities or the state, which maintain the buildings while religious communities to use them for worship. Most places of worship built after 1905, including most mosques, are financed and maintained by religious organizations. A national survey carried out in 2019 and 2020 found that Catholicism was France’s largest religious affiliation, representing 29% of the population, followed by Islam at 10%. About half of respondents said they had no religious affiliation. During his time in France, Leo will visit Paris, Saint-Denis, Lourdes and Metz. He will be received by the French president in the pope’s capacity as head of Vatican City, making Friday’s meeting at the Élysée Palace an encounter between two heads of state. Laïcité does not require the government to reject contact with religious institutions. Macron met Leo at the Vatican in April to discuss relations with the Holy See, international affairs, peace, and interreligious dialogue, according to his office. During Pope Francis’ visit to Marseille in 2023, Macron attended the Mass but did not participate in worship. Responding to criticism that his attendance breached France’s secular principles, Macron said he would be present as president out of respect and courtesy, not as a practicing worshipper. The 1905 law explicitly mentions religious ceremonies, processions and other outdoor manifestations as subject to the ordinary rules governing public order. Security for such events, however, is provided and financed by the state. Other religions also regularly receive permission to use public spaces. Still, some observers argue that holding Saturday’s Mass at Place de la Concorde and along the Champs-Élysées, near the National Assembly and the presidential palace, could be seen as a continuation of Catholicism’s privileged cultural position. The area is usually used for the Bastille Day parade, state visits by foreign leaders and football fans’ celebrations. Transforming it into a venue for a religious event expected to attract hundreds of thousands of worshippers gives the Catholic Church exceptional visibility. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass before about 260,000 people at Les Invalides in central Paris. A 2004 law bars conspicuous religious symbols in French public schools. The ban covers Muslim headscarves, Jewish kippahs, oversized Christian crosses and other clothing that visibly signals a religious affiliation. Discreet symbols, such as small crosses, Stars of David or Hand of Fatima necklaces, are allowed. The law does not apply to private schools or university students. French officials and many educators say secularism in public schools and other institutions protects less observant and nonreligious people from pressure while leaving everyone free to worship in private. Critics, however, argue that the policy primarily targets Muslim girls who wear headscarves. In sports, the rules are complex and vary according to the athlete’s representative role and the governing federation. French authorities prohibit national-team athletes from displaying religious symbols while competing in an official capacity, including at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In 2023, France’s highest administrative court said the country’s soccer federation could impose a ban on headscarves in competitions even though the measure can limit freedom of expression. International federations may also permit clothing that the corresponding French federation prohibits domestically. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com