Japan beat the United States 3-2 to win the 2023 World Baseball Classic in Miami Tuesday.   

Japan’s Shohei Ohtani, a star hitter and pitcher in U.S. Major League Baseball, sealed the win for his home country when he took the pitcher’s mound at the top of the ninth inning. He walked Jeff McNeil to start the inning, then got Mookie Betts to hit into a double play before striking out Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout to give Japan its third WBC title since the event began in 2006. Japan won the first WBC and again in 2009.   

Ohtani was named the tournament’s most valuable player, hitting .435 with one homer, four doubles, eight runs batted-in and 10 walks to lead Japan to a 7-0 record during the WBC.   

Trea Turner homered in the second inning and teammate Kyle Schwarber hit a home run in the eighth to score the only runs for the United States, which won the last WBC in 2017. Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto homered for Japan, while Lars Noobaar, an American-born member of the St. Louis Cardinals whose mother is Japanese, drove home a run in the second inning.   

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Grand juries play a central role in the American justice system. They are tasked with listening to evidence presented by prosecutors and witnesses and then deciding, by a secret vote, whether there’s enough evidence to charge a person with a felony, which is any criminal offense punishable by at least one year in prison.  

Grand juries are required in federal felony prosecutions, and many U.S. states have adopted a similar system. However, in some states, prosecutors can also present their evidence to a judge, who then decides whether someone can be charged with a crime.    

Federal grand juries are made up of 16 to 23 members. At least 12 jurors must agree before an indictment — a formal charge — can be brought against someone. Grand jurors are selected from the same pool of ordinary citizens who serve as trial jurors. They are identified from public records such as driver’s licenses and voting registries. Grand jurors serve from 18 to 36 months, usually meeting a few times a month, and have the power to question witnesses and issue subpoenas.  

“The grand jury system is important in terms of deciding who’s going to face criminal charges, but it’s also important for involving citizens in the criminal justice system,” said Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “The origins of the grand jury system are based on, in a sense, a certain degree of trying to keep the government honest.”   

Grand juries were originally conceived as a safeguard against government power, which is why the Founding Fathers wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. But former federal prosecutor Green isn’t convinced the so-called “people’s panel” fulfills that function in a meaningful way.  

“If the original idea of the Founding Fathers was, as I believe it was, to be a restraint on government power … it’s probably not a very effective tool to protect people from prosecution overreaching,” Green says. “And there’s a pretty significant risk that, if the prosecutor gets it in their head that somebody’s guilty, they can achieve an indictment whether the person is guilty or not.”  

Grand juries rarely decline to indict. In 2010, government statistics showed that federal grand juries brought charges more than 99% of the time.  

High stakes  

While the grand jury might be a rubber stamp in most cases, the panel is more likely to play a meaningful role in cases that draw widespread public attention, Joy says.    

“I think it’s very likely that prosecutors in presenting the evidence to the grand jury most likely tried to present more evidence than they might in a typical type of case and presented in a way that would be balanced,” he says.  

Some states require prosecutors to show evidence that the accused might be innocent. However, federal prosecutors are not required to do so.  

“The higher the profile the accused has, the greater the likelihood is that the prosecutor really wants to feel that he or she has a solid case, and they’re going to want to test out the evidence in a way that would give them increasing confidence in the case that they have,” Joy says.  

“Because the stakes are high, a smart prosecutor — if there is some contrary evidence that might put into question guilt or innocence — they’re likely to use the grand jury as a vetting [testing] process for that.” 
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About 30,000 education workers backed by the teachers’ union began a three-day strike in Los Angeles on Tuesday, canceling school for nearly half a million students at the second-largest school district in the United States.

The Service Employees International Union Local 99 seeks to increase what it calls poverty wages that average $25,000 per year for many of their members, including school bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and classroom assistants.

Thousands of protesters gathered for a rally in the rain outside the Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters, vowing to continue picketing for the next two days.

“We love our students, and we’re here for the students. But if we can’t properly take care of our kids, how can we properly come here and work as well?” Lynneier Boyd-Peterson, a striking bus driver, told KTLA 5 television news.

She was one of the striking workers who marched in pouring rain under umbrellas early on Tuesday carrying signs reading “Respect Us!” at a school bus yard.

The service workers are backed by the 35,000 members of the teachers’ union United Teachers Los Angeles, which refused to cross their picket line.

The work stoppage is the latest in a series of job actions by educators across the U.S. who have complained of burnout and low wages, leading to a teacher shortage in many parts of the country.

The Los Angeles strike follows a six-day teachers’ strike in 2019 and the coronavirus pandemic that closed in-classroom instruction for more than a year in 2020 and 2021.

Los Angeles schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho has acknowledged workers have been underpaid for years and said he was committed to reaching a deal.

The strike has disrupted classes for 420,000 students, many of whom also depend on schools for meals, counseling and other social services. The city opened dozens of meal and safe-place sites on Tuesday for students.

“I will make sure the well-being of L.A. students always comes first as I continue to work with all parties to reach an agreement to reopen the schools and guarantee fair treatment of all LAUSD workers,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

The union, which said 96% of its membership had authorized the strike, is demanding a 30% salary increase plus an additional $2 per hour for the lowest-paid workers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Carvalho told reporters on Monday the district was offering a 23% raise plus a 3% bonus and that “there are still additional resources to put on the table.”

Education experts have been warning of staff burnout for years. Those concerns grew when the coronavirus pandemic put additional stress on teachers, many of whom left the profession for better pay in the private sector, where their skills and education were valued.

“What’s happening in L.A. is going to happen in all the major cities if we don’t start doing something collectively as a nation,” said Jamie Sears, a former third-grade teacher who now teaches a master class for educators.
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U.S. officials are reacting to the joint statement by China and Russia on the Russian war on Ukraine. A statement was issued Tuesday in Moscow, where Chinese President Xi Jinping held two days of talks with his host, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, at the White House press room lectern on Tuesday, said there is nothing from the talks and agreement between the Chinese and Russian leaders that gives hope the war in Ukraine is going to end any time soon.

“If China wants to play a constructive role here in this conflict, then they ought to press Russia to pull its troops out of Ukraine and Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Kirby said. “They should urge President Putin to cease bombing cities, hospitals and schools, to stop the war crimes and the atrocities and end the war today.”

Kirby added that while China should not be considered a neutral party, the United States has seen no indication the Chinese are poised to provide the Russians with lethal weapons.
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The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to lower any possible animosity from China over an upcoming visit to the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.  

President Tsai will stopover in California and New York later this month before embarking on an official mission to Central America.  An unnamed administration official says the Biden administration has told Beijing that past Taiwanese presidents have routinely made stopover visits in the U.S. on their way to other nations, including Tsai, who has made six stopover visits between 2016 and 2019.

The official says China should not use Tsai’s stopover in the U.S. as a reason to take any aggressive action towards Taiwan.

China responded to a visit to Taiwan last August by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by launching several days of massive military drills over the Taiwan Strait, including firing ballistic missiles in the waterway that separates the island from mainland China.

Beijing considers the democratically-ruled island part of its territory, even though Taiwan has been self-governing since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists. China has vowed to bring the island under its control by any means necessary, including a military takeover.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition of China from Taiwan to Beijing in 1979, but it provides Taiwan military equipment for self-defense under the Taiwan Relations Act.   

News outlets said last month that Tsai will give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Center near Los Angeles ahead of her scheduled trip to Central America. It was also reported that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with President Tsai during her stopover in the U.S.  The Republican leader, who represents a district in California, has previously expressed an interest in visiting Taiwan himself.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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The United States has welcomed an agreement between Yemen’s warring sides to free nearly 900 detainees. 

“This important step builds on the positive environment created by a truce in Yemen that has effectively stopped the fighting for the past 11 months,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.  “We thank UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg and the International Committee of the Red Cross for their hard work finalizing the agreement.” 

Monday’s agreement came after 10 days of negotiations in Switzerland. 

It includes the Iran-backed Houthi rebels releasing 180 prisoners in exchange for Yemen’s internationally recognized government freeing more than 700 Houthi prisoners, according to Abdul-Qader el-Murtaza, the head of the Houthi delegation. 

U.N. special envoy Hans Grundberg said the two sides agreed to meet again in mid-May to discuss more releases but added that there is much more work to be done to resolve the conflict that began in late 2014. 

“A comprehensive and sustainable end to the conflict is necessary if Yemen is to recover from the devastating toll the eight-year conflict has had on its men and women,” Grundberg said. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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