Connect with us

News

Australian Second Baseman Travis Bazzana Taken By Cleveland Guardians With Top MLB Draft Pick

Published

on

Bazzana
Travis Bazzana | AP News Image

FORT WORTH, Texas — Travis Bazzana believes he represents the entire country, not just a college.

On Sunday night, Cleveland selected the Australian second baseman with the first pick in Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, while three Wake Forest players were selected in the top ten.

The 21-year-old, who previously played cricket, rugby, and soccer, moved to the United States to play baseball for Oregon State. He has 407 hits, 28 home runs, and 66 RBIs this season. He was the first Australian and second baseman selected at No. 1.

Bazzana

Bazzana | AP News Image

Australian Second Baseman Travis Bazzana Taken By Cleveland Guardians With Top MLB Draft Pick

“An opportunity to make an impact on a lot of baseball players and a lot of people back home in Australia, and hopefully change the narrative for baseball there,” Bazzana told ESPN.

Bazzana hit 360 over his three seasons at Oregon State, with 45 home runs, 165 RBIs, 180 walks, and 66 steals.

Cleveland’s president of baseball operations, Chris Antonetti, said the team reached their choice on Sunday.

“He recognizes pitches exceedingly well,” Antonetti added. “He understands the strike zone, makes sound swing selections, and when he does swing, he makes top contact. And Travis’ ability to add impact and drive the ball has improved significantly over the last year or two.

Bazzana watched the draft from Oregon State in the rooms where he had been recruited, along with his parents, brothers, aunts, coaches, and mentors.

“There’s people that have flown all the way from Australia, which is not cheap, nor is it an easy flight,” he told me.

He was motivated by Ryan Rowland-Smith and Trent Oeltjen, two Australians who made it to Major League Baseball.

“They really helped me believe and see this path and get an opportunity at Oregon State, and kind of helped me set no limits on myself,” he laughed.

Once in college, there was no pressure to create.

“No one really expected anything from the Australian kid,” he told me.

Baseball’s top pick this year has a slot value of $10,570,600 under the bonus pools system, which began in 2012. Cleveland received the top pick for the first time since the draft began in 1965.

Only ten high school players were among the 30 first-round selections.

Wake Forest right-hander Chase Burns went second to Cincinnati, while Demon Deacons first baseman Nick Kurtz was selected fourth by Oakland and third baseman/outfielder Seaver King tenth by Washington. They became the eighth trio of teammates chosen in the first round and the first in the top ten since Rice right-handers Philip Humber, Jeff Niemann, and Wade Townsend in 2004.

Burns, 21, was 10-1 with a 2.70 ERA, 191 strikeouts, and 30 walks over 100 innings in 16 starts. Last year, the Reds selected Rhett Lowder, a right-hander from the Demon Deacons, eighth overall.

Kurtz had a hit. King batted 306 times, driving in 57 runs, drawing 78 walks, and hitting 22 home runs 308 with 16 home runs and 64 RBI.

Colorado used the third pick on Georgia third baseman Charlie Condon, who had begun college as a walk-on. Some predicted that the 6-foot-6 Condon would lead the NCAA this year with a.433 average and 37 home runs. From April 26 to May 9, the 21-year-old homered in eight consecutive games, one shy of the NCAA record, and received the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur baseball player.

The Chicago White Sox selected Arkansas left-hander Hagen Smith fifth overall. Smith underwent Tommy John surgery as a 16-year-old in 2019. He was 9-2 with a 2.04 ERA in 16 starts, striking out 161 in 84 innings.

Next, Kansas City selected Jac Caglianone, a two-way player from Florida. He batted while playing first base and pitching left-handed. This year, the Gators had 419 hits, 35 home runs, and 72 RBIs while going 5-2 with a 4.76 ERA in 16 starts, striking out 83 and walking 50 in 73 2/3 innings.

JJ Wetherholt, a West Virginia infielder, went eighth to St. Louis. The 21-year-old hit 331 in 36 games, with eight home runs and 30 RBIs, despite missing 24 games due to a hamstring injury from February 19 to April 5. He won the Division I batting title as a sophomore in 2023, hitting 449 with 16 home runs, 60 RBIs, and 36 stolen bases.

Wetherholt attended the draft in a black cowboy hat and bolo tie. He promptly donned a Cardinals outfit and cap. Christian Moore, Tennessee’s second baseman, was also on hand and was selected seventh by the Los Angeles Angels.

Pittsburgh selected Konnor Griffin, the first high school player, ninth overall. The 18-year-old is a shortstop and outfielder at Jackson Prep in Mississippi.

San Francisco selected Florida State outfielder James Tibbs III 13th, followed by Seminoles third baseman Cam Smith, who went to the Chicago Cubs.

Jurrangelo Cijntje, a Mississippi State switch pitcher, was taken 15th overall by Seattle. Cijntje was born in the Netherlands, raised in Curaçao, and competed in the 2016 Little League World Series. Milwaukee drafted him in the 18th round two years ago, but he chose to attend college instead.

Australian Second Baseman Travis Bazzana Taken By Cleveland Guardians With Top MLB Draft Pick

Cam Caminiti, the cousin of 1996 NL MVP Ken Caminiti, was selected 24th by Atlanta. The 17-year-old left-hander attended Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The first 74 picks were made by teams, and the next 20 rounds took place on Monday and Tuesday. Cleveland also chose the 36th and 48th.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred was booed by the approximately 2,000 fans at Cowtown Coliseum when he entered the stage through the set’s saloon doors, and each time he returned to announce a pick. Fans booed very loudly for the Houston Astros and New York Yankees.

Arizona selected outfielder Ryan Waldschmidt 31st with the prospect promotion picks earned when Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson were named Rookies of the Year, while Baltimore chose Virginia shortstop Griff O’Ferrall.

Wyatt Sanford, the son of former Pittsburgh and Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Chance Sanford, was selected 47th overall by the Pirates.

SOURCE | AP

Continue Reading

News

Pam Bondi Is Appointed US Attorney General Following Gaetz’s Resignation.

Published

on

Pam Bondi
Photo via Reuters

(VOR News) – President-elect Donald Trump selected Pam Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General and ally, to succeed Matt Gaetz on Thursday after the latter withdrew from consideration.

Gaetz’s drug use and sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl were the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. He denies any wrongdoing.

During Trump’s first administration, Pam Bondi, 59, served on the Opioids and Drug Abuse Commission. He served as police chief of the third-most populous state from 2011 to 2019.

She was also a member of Trump’s defense team at his first impeachment hearing, where he was charged with use military assistance to get Ukraine to look into the wrongdoing of his opponent, now President Joe Biden. The Senate cleared Trump on all charges.

The right-wing America First Policy Institute, which has collaborated with Trump’s campaign to create government concepts, most recently had Pam Bondi as its leader of the legal branch.

Unlike Pam Bondi, Gaetz lacks the experience necessary to serve as attorney general and is likely to encounter resistance from Senate Democrats and some Republicans.

According to Jones Walker defense attorney David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Florida, “She is unequivocally qualified for the position on paper.” Throughout her life, she battled in court. She stood out from the previous nominee because to her resume.

In a tweet announcing his intention to nominate Bondi, Trump praised her skills as a prosecutor and her firm stance against crime as Florida’s first female attorney general. Trump said that even though Bondi was elected on November 5th, while numerous state and federal criminal investigations were underway, he pledged to keep federal prosecutions from being politicized.

According to Trump, “The biased Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans for an excessive duration.” Not true anymore.

Discussion about Pam Bondi and Trump’s history before 2016.

In 2013, the Trump Foundation may have broken federal law by giving $25,000 to a political action committee that supported Pam Bondi. Bondi thought about looking into the for-profit Trump University.

Pam Bondi disputed that her decision to end her legal actions against Trump University following the 2016 disclosure of Trump’s $25,000 gift had anything to do with her decision to withdraw from those actions. According to her, all pertinent material was made public by her office.

The erroneous money disclosure was attributed by the Trump team to a “series of unfortunate coincidences and errors.” New York state fraud investigations resulted in the dissolution of both Trump University and the Trump Foundation.

After misleading Trump University students, he settled for $25 million and was fined $2 million for misusing charitable funds.

Following Special Counsel Jack Smith’s acquisition of two indictments against him for his interference in the 2020 election and his possession of secret materials after leaving office, Trump has voiced his displeasure with the present leadership of the Justice Department and pledged retaliation.

AFPI’s Pam Bondi remains loyal to Trump.

She and a number of other lawyers claimed that Smith’s appointment was illegal in an amicus brief they prepared in support of Trump in the secret information litigation. The Justice Department filed an appeal after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, rejected the case.

According to a long-standing rule against charging a sitting president, Smith and other top Justice Department officials are examining how both of the Trump criminal cases were resolved.

During his first administration, Trump was incensed with the Justice Department’s obstructionism. Bill Barr specifically refuted Trump’s baseless claims that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions permitted an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump’s overarching objectives for the Justice Department have been delineated through his public remarks, interviews with former department lawyers, and Mark Paoletta, a conservative lawyer who develops the department’s policy.

Federal prosecutors may give illegal immigration cases priority.

To obtain a portion of the department’s $291 million justice assistance award, cities might have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

It is probable that the Civil Rights Division will refocus its attention from legal challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the public and commercial sectors to police accountability to religious freedom.

SOURCE: EAT

SEE ALSO:

PayPal’s Technical Challenges Are Affecting Thousands Of Customers Globally.

Matt Gaetz Withdraws as Trump’s Pick for Attorney General

 

Continue Reading

News

PayPal’s Technical Challenges Are Affecting Thousands Of Customers Globally.

Published

on

PayPal

(VOR News) – PayPal is a software program that enables the sending and receiving of monetary orders and transactions.

According to the corporation, which has taken responsibility for the incident that was mentioned before, PayPal is apparently experiencing problems in every region of the world in which it conducts business. This information was provided by the company.

In addition, PayPal noted on its service status website that it was experiencing “a system issue” which may affect a variety of PayPal Products, such as the ability to withdraw money from an account and the ability to complete an express checkout. This issue may even hurt the ability to complete an express checkout.

This problem may also affect other PayPal products.

In light of the fact that this vulnerability is present, there are further PayPal products that have the potential to be affected by it.

One of the remarks that was made was that “Our technical teams are actively working towards resolving the issue,” which was stated in the email that was distributed. This was one of the comments that individuals made. A number of assertions were made, and this was one of them all.

Several customers from various regions of the world have stated that they are unable to access their accounts or that they are having difficulty when it comes to making payments. These customers have also mentioned that they are encountering difficulties making payments.

These clients have informed us that they are experiencing difficulties obtaining their orders by communicating their concerns. As an additional point of interest, a number of customers have reported that they are currently having trouble processing payments. This is something that should be taken into consideration.

Up to the moment that the clock struck twelve twelve Central European Time (GMT), the platform outage monitor known as Downdetector had already received more than seven thousand alerts from users. When the clock reached twelve o’clock, this was the situation that existed.

As indicated by a dashboard that provides an overview of the current state of the services that are being offered by the organization, the crisis started at roughly 10:53 UTC.

PayPal gathered this information via the dashboard.

Among the services that were impacted by the outage, the business asserts that its bitcoin services and the peer-to-peer payment platform Venmo were among those that were affected. Venmo is a form of cryptocurrency that enables users to send and receive payments from one another.

This information suggests that these services were among those that were impacted by the circumstances. This information has been provided.

There are consumers who have voiced their frustration on social media over the fact that they are unable to access their accounts, and some of these customers have expressed their frustration over this issue. A number of users have stated their frustration about this issue.

The discontentment that users are experiencing has been communicated through posts that have been published on various social media platforms as of late.

Users of X, which was once known as Twitter, have submitted screenshots of a notification that flashed when they attempted to log into the platform.

The notification appeared after logging in.

The message was flashed on the screen whenever they attempted to log in by entering their credentials. For those individuals who were fortunate enough to receive the notification, it was strongly recommended that they “please check your entries and try again.”

Since its beginning in 1998, PayPal has developed into a global financial institution that is associated with a significance level that is significant enough to be considered noteworthy. The occurrence of this evolution took place virtually immediately following the establishment of PayPal.

Investors were informed that the total number of active accounts across all of the company’s companies had increased to $432 million for the month that ended on September 30th.

This information was provided to investors. Following the conclusion of the month, this information was made available to the public.

During the course of the month of October, investors were provided with this information for the purpose of their consideration. For those individuals who were interested in investing, the material in question was made available to them.

SOURCE: BBC

SEE ALSO:

NVIDIA’s Earnings: The Leader In AI Chips Demonstrates Relentless Growth.

Thousands of Asylum Seekers in Canada Get Free Housing

Continue Reading

News

Thousands of Asylum Seekers in Canada Get Free Housing

Published

on

Asylum Seekers Canada

With a large increase in the number of asylum seekers in Canada, several communities have begun to create free accommodations for new immigrants, while many Canadians remain homeless.

The city of Ottawa is attempting to build a sprung building, which will function as both a temporary shelter and a center for settlement services such as language training and job placement.

These facilities are intended to host refugees in the city for the first few weeks before transitioning to more suitable housing in Ottawa’s settlement infrastructure.

The city has identified two possible sites for these centers, both in the city’s west end. Planning records refer to them as “modular tension fabric buildings.”

The proposed placements for these structures have caused concern in the local areas. The city’s first proposed location was canceled due to strong community opposition. Subsequently, it proposed two alternative options and rallies for and against constructing the structures, which took place last weekend in both locations.

Many people protested that they had not been fully consulted on the location, while others grumbled that nothing was being done to assist Canadian citizens.

Asylum Seekers Canada

Canadian authorities opened a temporary housing center for migrants with 1,050 beds in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

According to city data, one planned location is a federally owned tract of property near the Nepean Sportsplex, which serves around 1.5 million people annually. The other is near a public transport park-and-ride lot in Kanata’s western suburb.

City Councillor Sean Devine, whose constituency includes the Sportsplex site, stated that citizens have much to say about the problem.

“A lot of it is coming from the fact that it would have been preferable if the city of Ottawa had communicated the information sooner, perhaps in advance of the recommendations,” he told Global News during a telephone interview.

According to Devine, the number of migrants arriving in Ottawa has increased significantly in the last two years. This is consistent with national trends in refugee and asylum seeker rates.

Under Trudeua’s leadership, Canada had approximately 250,000 asylum petitions pending as of September 30, 2024, with more than 33,000 approved between January and the end of September.

International students in Canada filed nearly 14,000 asylum petitions in the first nine months of 2024, a roughly 14% increase over the same period last year. Compared to the present figures, approximately 12,000 asylum applications were lodged by international students in 2023—a tremendous surge from a mere 1,810 claims in 2018.

Devine stated that the city has been using two community center gymnasiums outfitted with bunk beds to temporarily lodge certain claimants before transitioning to other sorts of accommodation.

Asylum seekers get free housing in Quebec and Ontario

Asylum seekers get free housing in Quebec and Ontario.

According to a September release, the Ottawa Mission noticed a considerable increase in refugees filling its shelter beds in the summer of 2023. By October, asylum seekers were using 61% of the beds, a record high under Trudeau’s leadership.

The new structures will be funded under the federal interim housing aid program, which allows municipalities and provinces to reimburse the federal Government for expenditures incurred while temporarily hosting asylum seekers.

Since 2017, well over $1 billion has been distributed, largely in Ontario and Quebec, with the city of Ottawa getting $105 million to date.

Jenna Sudds, Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, who represents the Ottawa riding of Kanata-Nepean, expressed disappointment with how the plans were presented to people.

Louisa Taylor, executive director of Settlement Service Organization 613 Asylum Seekers, has collaborated with the city to coordinate resources for settlement assistance at future centers.

Taylor explained that many asylum seekers in an Ottawa homeless shelter prompted her and 613 refugees to organize a recent rally supporting the structure.

“For several years, hundreds of refugee claimants have been living and sleeping on bunk beds and cots in community centers and arenas throughout the city.”

Nobody has gone out protesting about it. “What they’re protesting is the concept of having a facility in their community that they don’t know much about,” she explained.

Homeless Canadians

Homelessness is not a problem that most people connect with within Canada, but it is becoming a growing one. The projected number of homeless persons in Canada fluctuates from 150,000 to 300,000, which is increasing.

According to the 2016 State of Homelessness study, Canada had at least 235,000 homeless people. According to the Homeless Hub, the number of homeless people in Canada varies each year, ranging from 150,000 to 300,000.

However, many more people may be without a permanent home in Canada. The actual number is impossible to determine because many homeless people live in concealed places.

They are so named because they temporarily reside in squats or with friends and relatives. An estimated 1.3 million Canadians have experienced insecure housing or homelessness.

Homelessness Statistics for Canadians

  • Between 25,000 and 35,000 people are homeless on any given night in Canada.
  • Toronto has the most homeless people in Canada.
  • 62% of homeless people in Canada are males.
  • 30% of Canadian homeless come from Indigenous communities.
  • 90% of homeless shelters in Canada are in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Alberta, and 44% of them are in Ontario alone.
  • 22% of shelters are aimed at young homeless in Canada, while 20% of people experiencing homelessness are 13-24 years old.
  • The annual cost of homelessness is over $7 billion.
  • The Canadian Government has invested $2.2 billion over ten years to expand funding for the homeless.

Related News:

Canada Sees Over13,000 Foreign Students Claim Asylum

Canada Sees Over13,000 Foreign Students Claim Asylum

 

Continue Reading

Trending