Jordan Fletcher

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Fans in the outfield turned their gaze toward left field as Oklahoma’s Kelly Maxwell jogged out of the bullpen. The Sooners were four outs away from a national championship, and Maxwell’s entrance was met with enthusiasm and a collective deep breath.The Sooners already felt in control of their fate, but coach Patty Gasso was putting in her ace to close this championship series against No. 1 Texas. Maxwell, later named the Women’s College World Series most outstanding player, did just that, clinching the Sooners’ 8-4 win to sweep the championship series and make Oklahoma the first…

Electricity providers in Santiago, Chile’s capital, raced to restore service early Thursday after an outage left hundreds of thousands of customers without power, officials said.Around midnight, a tree fell on a high-voltage transmission tower owned by Sociedad Transmisora Metropolitana, a private company, Chile’s National Disaster Prevention and Response Service said in a statement. Enel Distribución, the country’s electricity distributor, confirmed the outage as well. The damaged tower is in the southeastern part of the city.The outage resulted in a loss of power equivalent to about 10 percent of Santiago’s power demand, or 260 megawatts, the National Electrical Coordinator, the grid…

Hunter Biden, the president’s son, is being tried in federal court for falsely claiming on a gun purchase application that he did not use illicit drugs. Testimony from his ex-wife and former girlfriends describe his drug-fueled temper; his search for his dealer on the streets; his large cash withdrawals from the bank.Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau who dated him during the fall of 2018 when the gun purchase took place, spoke of his erratic behavior, his possession of rocks of crack cocaine “the size of Ping-Pong balls, or bigger, maybe” and how she frantically urged him to…

This article has been updated on Thursday June 6, to reflect confirmation of Novak Djkovic’s knee surgery following the French Open.Follow live coverage of the 2024 French Open todayThe news that Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the French Open with a torn meniscus was one of those moments at Roland Garros where the gasps were audible. It wasn’t a huge shock given Djokovic said he was unsure if he would play his quarterfinal after picking up the injury in a fourth-round win over Francisco Cerundolo. Still, to lose the world No. 1 and defending champion in this manner is huge.But…

President Biden raised hopes last week when he endorsed a plan that he said could lead to a “cessation of hostilities permanently.” He said Israel had put forward the plan, but neither Israel nor Hamas has said definitively that they would accept or reject the proposal, and they appear to still be locked in disagreement over fundamental issues.Here’s a look at what is known about the cease-fire deal, which key points still must be negotiated, and the hurdles still ahead:Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire in November that lasted for a week. But the proposal now on the table…

One of the nation’s premier medical advisory organizations has weighed in on long Covid with a 265-page report that recognizes the seriousness and persistence of the condition for millions of Americans.More than four years since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, long Covid continues to damage many people’s ability to function, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nongovernmental institution that advises federal agencies on science and medicine.“Long Covid can impact people across the life span, from children to older adults, as well as across sex, gender, racial, ethnic and other demographic groups,” it said, concluding…

A love story. Florentino Perez called it a love story. Speaking to reporters on his way out of Wembley Stadium after Saturday’s Champions League final, the Real Madrid president sounded like a man in thrall to the mystique, the allure and the romance of a relationship that has spanned seven decades and so many special times.“It’s a magnificent night, because this competition is the one we like the most,” Perez said after Madrid, 2-0 winners over Borussia Dortmund, were crowned European champions for the 15th time. “It was created by Santiago Bernabeu (the club’s president from 1943 to 1978) along…

The votes are still being counted, but this much is clear: Mexico’s leftist governing party dominated Sunday’s elections.Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman and first Jewish person to be elected president, beat her opponent on Sunday by a stunning 30 percentage points or more, early returns show. She and her Morena party were expected to win, but they outperformed pre-election polls: She won a larger share of the vote than any other presidential candidate in decades, and her party and its allies are within reach of claiming big enough majorities in Congress to enact constitutional changes that have alarmed the opposition.Preliminary…

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former government scientist both celebrated and despised for his work on Covid, on Monday forcefully denied Republican allegations that he had helped fund research that sparked the pandemic or had covered up the possibility it originated in a laboratory, calling the accusations “absolutely false and simply preposterous.”In an occasionally testy appearance before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Dr. Fauci read aloud an email from February 2020 in which he urged a prominent scientist who was then suspicious about a lab leak “to determine if his concerns are validated” and if so, “very…

There were streakers, kissers and wannabe prize fighters. There were arrests, threats and flying chairs. There were bruises, there was blood and there was beer. So, so much beer.There was plenty of blame to pass around: the fans, the umpires, the team officials, the managers, local broadcasters and radio hosts. Oh, and according to one Cleveland resident, the real instigator causing that evening’s mayhem? The moon. And that’s not a reference to the fans who yanked down their pants and showed Rangers players their backsides.Fifty years ago, chaos descended upon Municipal Stadium on 10-Cent Beer Night. Now, the infamous events…