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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shohei Ohtani got the day off Thursday after appearing physically uncomfortable while striking out four times during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 10-inning loss to the St. Louis Cardinals a night earlier. Manager Dave Roberts texted Ohtani after the 8-6 defeat Wednesday to let him know he would not be starting in the series finale. The two-way superstar responded with an emoji salute. “He knows that it was the right decision,” Roberts said. Ohtani told the training staff that his right biceps and neck were bothering him. “That’s why I think you saw some grimacing and some kind of shaking of the arm, just trying to get it to fire, and he couldn’t do that,” Roberts said. Ohtani’s symptoms haven’t improved in recent weeks, and a potential stint on the injured list isn’t off the table. “Unlikely, but not impossible,” Roberts said. The manager said he would talk to Ohtani and team trainers later Thursday to see how he responded before deciding his status for Friday’s series opener against Washington. “He wants to be in there, but I’m not going to just put him in there because of the name on the back of his jersey,” Roberts said, describing Ohtani’s health as day to day. Center fielder Tommy Edman was in Ohtani’s leadoff spot against the Cardinals, while Alex Call took over as the designated hitter, batting eighth. Ohtani hasn’t pitched in a game since July 3 because of lingering pain in his left knee and the right biceps. At the plate, he’s hitting .279 after striking out four consecutive times for the first time this season. Before being shut down, Ohtani was 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA in 14 mound starts. He threw a 20-pitch bullpen session last Friday but was scratched from a potential start at Detroit two days later. Roberts said that until he sees Ohtani throw another bullpen, he won’t know the next step in his pitching progression. The Dodgers want a healthy Ohtani in October as they chase a third consecutive World Series championship. “It’s up to us to kind of figure out how we navigate these next three-and-a-half, four weeks,” Roberts said, “but I’m very confident that we’ll see the guy we all expect to see.” ___ See AP’s full MLB coverage here Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Authorities released police bodycam footage Thursday showing the discovery of a Pennsylvania college student’s body that led to the arrest of her boyfriend, who said in court documents that a “demon” told him to stab her. The boyfriend’s mother, meanwhile, is accused of helping him cover up the crime, according to state police. Royce Moser, 18, of North Strabane Township, faces a homicide charge in the death of Karoline Heintz, a student at PennWest California University whose body was found Aug. 20 after she failed to return to the southwestern Pennsylvania college, according to a criminal complaint. Moser said he became angry with Heintz during a conversation in her vehicle in Moser’s driveway and that he had a “demon take over” and tell him to stab her, according to the police affidavit. A preliminary hearing was held Tuesday for Moser and his mother, Rachel Moser, in Heintz’s death. An attorney for Royce Moser declined to comment on the charges against him, and a message left for a public defender representing Rachel Moser was not immediately returned. The 37-minute video released Thursday is from an officer’s body-worn camera. It shows the California, Pennsylvania, police officer walking up to Karoline Heintz’s Jeep in the dark. The officer points a flashlight inside the back window, yells toward another officer nearby, then gets on his radio. “Control, I need EMS here right now,” the officer said. “I’ve got an unconscious female in the back of this car right now. Any additional units, any in the available area, please.” An operator radios back, “Is she breathing?” “Negative,” the officer responds as sirens are heard in the background. “I’ve got blood everywhere.” The officer then breaks two windows to gain access inside the vehicle. “Get someone here now,” he said. According to the affidavit, Moser said he told Heintz, “wait, I have something for you” before retrieving a knife from his home. The victim fell out of her vehicle after being stabbed and Moser put her in the back hatch before getting into the driver’s seat. Moser then asked his mother to follow him to PennWest California University in southwestern Pennsylvania to drop off the vehicle, the affidavit said. Heintz’s father had asked police to look for his daughter’s vehicle after she failed to return to campus, and indicated an AirTag in the vehicle showed she was in a parking lot, according to a criminal complaint. Police found Karoline Heintz’s body in the vehicle. The AirTag also indicated Heintz had been at Moser’s home earlier. Royce and Rachel Moser were later located at Rachel Moser’s residence in Beallsville. According to the affidavit, Rachel Moser told her son to bathe and change his clothes, which she placed in a washing machine. She then took the knife and put it in a garbage bag to dispose of in the trash outside her home, according to the affidavit. The knife was retrieved after investigators obtained a search warrant. Royce and Rachel Moser both were charged with tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and obstruction of justice. Rachel Moser, 56, also was charged with hindering the apprehension of a fugitive and criminal use of a communication device. Their next court appearance is a formal arraignment scheduled for Oct. 13. Mother and son are being held without bail in the Washington County jail. Heintz’s family issued a statement asking the public to respect their wishes for privacy. “This is a parent’s worst nightmare,” the statement said. “It has been devastating for family, friends, and the whole community. Karoline was loved by all. She was a kind, smart, beautiful girl. We want justice for our “sweet” Karoline.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

A supervisor overseeing background checks warned last year that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was hiring many new officers who had not undergone basic vetting, violating federal rules and putting the agency at risk of misconduct, a newly released whistleblower complaint shows. The official was a unit chief in ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, where background checks were backlogged as ICE added thousands of new officers to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. ICE’s human resources division was making final job offers before preliminary vetting steps had been completed, including fingerprints, identity verification and credit checks, the official’s complaint warned. “This unprecedented lowering of standards sacrifices proper risk mitigation for expediency, placing DHS at risk of infiltration and insider compromise,” the official wrote in a memo to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General dated August 2025. The New York Times first reported on the whistleblower complaint Thursday. The Associated Press obtained the complaint and a related memo from the now-retired ICE official’s lawyer, Kevin Owen. The official’s identity was redacted from the complaint. The Times said the official was a 17-year-agency employee and longtime Republican who had voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024. ICE announced in January that it had hired 12,000 new officers in less than one year, a spree financed by a $75 billion infusion from Congress to increase the agency’s arrests and deportations. The rapid pace of the hiring, fueled by a $50,000 signing bonus, raised concerns about the quality of the new employees. An investigation by The Associated Press found that some of the new hires had serious financial problems in their backgrounds, had been accused of misconduct in prior jobs, and had checkered employment histories. In July, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said ICE would investigate apparent shortcomings in the vetting of an officer who shot and killed a 25-year-old motorist in Maine. The whistleblower complaint said that “systemic breakdowns in vetting” violated several federal rules and standards designed to ensure candidates are suitable for sensitive law enforcement and national security positions. The complaint said the lack of vetting created “increased vulnerability to insider threats, infiltration and foreign influence,” undermined ICE’s law enforcement operations and eroded public confidence in the agency. It asked the inspector general to investigate the personnel vetting failures and for the agency to immediately suspend the improper practices, hold accountable those responsible for the violations and to review all recent hires to identify potential “insider threats.” The Office of Inspector General has previously announced that it is investigating ICE’s hiring and training process, as well as security clearances granted to contractors and political appointees. In a statement, ICE said Thursday the whistleblower was no longer with the agency. “The ICE Office of Professional Responsibility diligently applies the proper personnel vetting regulations, including guidelines for national security, and evaluates all available information for every applicant based on these factors,” the statement said. As the AP previously reported, ICE acknowledged that some applicants received “tentative selection letters” after their initial applications and interviews. Some were allowed to begin training before their background investigations were completed. The whistleblower is the second insider to call out ICE’s rush to put more officers on the streets as reckless. A former agency lawyer and instructor at the ICE academy, Ryan Schwank, said the agency cut training on the use of force, firearms safety, and the rights of protesters last year. The Department of Homeland Security has since increased the amount of training for new officers. ___ This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Kevin Owen, not Owens. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Washington (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the U.S. fighting with Iran as he steered clear of predicting that the six-month-old conflict would be over by November’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress.. “I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said after being asked during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could be wrapped up before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 congressional elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.” Vance’s assertion came even as Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday as it continued to retaliate for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week. The vice president said the U.S. had a “responsibility” to carry out this week’s strikes because Iran continues the targeting of commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Vance’s attempt to minimize the intensity of the fighting illuminates the difficult task at hand for Trump and his administration as he tries to persuade American voters to keep Republicans in control of Congress, even as the unpopular conflict — one the White House said at its outset would last a matter of weeks — has driven up gas prices and left consumers grappling with higher inflation. Vance said he didn’t want to set “artificial timelines.” “But when you ask, ‘When will this end?’ You’re asking me a question like, ‘When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?’” Vance said. “I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians.” The administration in July faced scrutiny after it reclassifiedfour fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops in its Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict. Those killed or wounded in fighting after a brief ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran fell apart were classified in a new category called “Overseas Operations” after initially being tallied in the totals from the war. Brent crude prices hovered above $95 per barrel on Thursday. The international benchmark was around $72 per barrel the day before the conflict began. Still, Trump and his aides have sought to push that the U.S. Navy is in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which accounted for about 20% of the flow of the world’s oil prior to the start of the war. They insist a near pre-war level of Gulf oil is now making its way out of the critical waterway. Vance at Thursday’s press briefing said the U.S. escorted about 15 million barrels of oil on Wednesday. This is after Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Wednesday that 17 million barrels were carried through the strait on Monday with assistance from the U.S. Navy. About 20 million barrels of Gulf oil flowed through the strait prior to the start of the war. But ship traffic through the strait remains well below pre-war levels, according to independent firms that track marine traffic. There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war. Over the past 28 days, 5 million barrels a day have exited the strait on average, according to TankerTrackers.com. Other recent estimates have varied from 2 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels per day. Over the course of the war, Trump has repeatedly reported progress in negotiations or called off threats of military action at the last moment when global markets have become jittery. And markets have reacted swiftly to his public signals of peace or hints of progress. “The administration is still jawboning oil markets,” said Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East director at Defense Priorities, of the administration’s claims of dramatically increased flowsof oil. “And they appear to be doing it again to keep prices from going too high, so that they can extend the timeline before there’s a worse price spike.” With Iran’s refusal to back down in the face of the U.S. military campaign, Trump has settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with threats of an escalation in force, if necessary. Trump has consistently emphasized that the campaign launched by the U.S. and Israel has been devastating for Iran’s navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government’s leadership structure, including its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Still, Iran has found leverage through its own strikes on the strait and Gulf allies of the United States. But the administration has sought to make the case that the waterway will become less important by the day, even as it asserts that more oil is getting through. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox Business interview this week that the Strait of Hormuz will become a “worthless piece of water” within two years as new land pipelines planned for the region bypass the energy chokepoint. Trump himself took to social media on Thursday to highlight a news report about Syria’s effort to transform the port of Baniyas on the Mediterranean coast into a westward route to international markets for Gulf exporters. Meanwhile, Iran and Oman have recently held talks to discuss a phased approach to jointly managing ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The administration maintains it’s making progress economically choking off Iranian hardliners, including the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the moment, it would be a leap for Trump to agree to any plan that puts Iran in position to claim control of the strait, analysts say. “I find it hard to believe the president would agree to anything that hands back any modicum of IRGC control over the strait that has been wrested away,” said Richard Goldberg, who served as a senior adviser on Iran policy in Trump’s first administration. Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Iran does not appear ready to “let Trump out of the box” despite the massive pain being inflicted on its economy. At the same time, Miller said, Trump seems to have settled into a holding pattern ahead of the midterms — one in which he avoids both a return to the full-throttle bombardment of Iran and making any accommodations to Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz. “The White House doesn’t want a massive war, and they don’t want to be seen as offering massive concessions,” Miller said. “The tack they are taking avoids both of those things.” —- AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Josh Boak in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed reporting. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BUENOS AIRES, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Argentine President Javier Milei said on Thursday he would tighten sanctions on companies involved in oil projects around the Falkland Islands, boost defense resources in the country’s south and send Congress a bill aimed at strengthening Argentina’s response to what he called violations of its sovereignty. In a televised address, Milei said he would sign a decree to speed sanctions under Argentine law against companies participating in oil and gas extraction in territory Argentina considers its own but that remains under British control. • He said Argentina would boost efforts to levy penalties not only against the companies involved, but also against their shareholders, directors and suppliers. • “We will continue to bar from operating in Argentine territory companies involved, directly or indirectly, in projects in the (islands) without Argentine authorization,” Milei said. • He also said the government would issue an emergency decree to expand defense resources to build a naval base in the nearby Tierra del Fuego province and strengthen telecommunications capabilities. • Milei added that he would send Congress an urgent “national sovereignty defense” bill to toughen penalties for unauthorized operations around the islands, extend sanctions to suppliers and broaden the legal framework to cover other activities affecting Argentina’s natural resources. • Milei said Argentina had determined that the Sea Lion offshore project, operated by Navitas Petroleum and Rockhopper Exploration, could begin oil development in the coming months, creating what he described as an urgent threat to Argentine interests. The two firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. • The remarks signal a tougher tone from Milei, who had previously called for pursuing the Falklands dispute through diplomacy even as he sought warmer ties with Britain. • The Falklands, a British overseas territory about 500 km (300 miles) east of the Argentine mainland, have long been claimed by Argentina. Britain has controlled the islands since 1833, and the two countries fought a brief war over them in 1982. (Reporting by Nicolas Misculin and Kylie Madry; Editing by Jacqueline Wong) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com