Lakers look to play harder, be more organized in Game 2 vs. Timberwolves

• April 21, 2025

EL SEGUNDO — The rhythms and flows of the Lakers’ first-round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, in which they’re trailing 0-1, allowed for more reflecting time than teams usually get during the regular season – and most other playoff rounds – after Saturday night’s lopsided Game 1 loss at Crypto.com Arena.

With two days off between the series opener and Tuesday night’s Game 2, the Lakers had plenty of time to not only look at what went wrong, but also what they could do better to give themselves the best chance of pulling even in the best-of-seven series before Games 3 and 4 in Minneapolis.

“We just have to do a lot of things better,” Coach JJ Redick said after Tuesday’s practice. “And it starts with playing harder and being organized.”

The “playing harder” feedback was a talking point repeated by several Lakers, with the team having “our best practice … in months” on Tuesday, according to Redick, with the session featuring live play “for a very extended period.”

The effects of the practice were evident, with Austin Reaves and Dorian Finney-Smith both covered in sweat as they walked up to the microphone stand for their post-practice availabilities.

“Got a good lather,” Redick said.

But for the Lakers, “playing harder” isn’t just about how much a player sweats, how many miles they run or how quickly they move on the court.

“It’s how connected we are when everybody’s giving it everything they have on every possession,” Reaves said. “You’re more locked into every detail on both ends of the floor. And that’s what the playoffs are about – winning on small details. Unfortunately, we didn’t do it in the first game. But it’s first to win four games.”

And the Lakers didn’t succeed with those small details.

Whether it was boxing out to prevent the Timberwolves from grabbing offensive rebounds – they had 11, leading to 23 second-chance points.

Or getting back in transition, leading to Minnesota scoring 25 fast-break points – a figure that undersells how effective the Timberwolves were in the open court.

“We’re communicating, giving second and third efforts,” Finney-Smith responded when asked what it looks like when they’re playing hard. “Teams [are] getting one shot at the rim, not two.

“I wouldn’t say we [weren’t] playing hard because our first shot defense was good. We just [weren’t] getting those loose balls. They [were] first to the ball. They [were] just a little bit more into it. And we got to do the same.”

As for being more organized, Redick sees it as less of a play-calling issue but more of the team being more consistent with its on-court principles.

“It’s just all of the normal stuff that we try to do and when we do it, we’re really good,” he said. “Being organized is screening. Being organized is getting to the proper spacing. Being organized is getting the corners filled after makes and misses. That’s being organized.

“Our early offense stuff is like any team. It’s the same [expletive]. It’s remarkable how many possessions we had three to four guys at halfcourt with 15 [seconds] on the [shot] clock. Literally bunched up together at halfcourt.”

TIMBERWOLVES AT LAKERS

What: Western Conference playoffs, first round, Game 2

When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.

Where: Crypto.com Arena

TV/radio: TNT, Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Advanced cancers back at prepandemic levels, despite delay in screenings

• April 21, 2025

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

Many Americans were forced to postpone cancer screenings — colonoscopies, mammograms and lung scans — for several months in 2020 as COVID-19 overwhelmed doctors and hospitals.

But that delay in screening isn’t making a huge impact on cancer statistics, at least none that can be seen yet by experts who track the data.

Cancer death rates continue to decline, and there weren’t huge shifts in late diagnoses, according to a new report published Monday in the journal Cancer. It’s the broadest-yet analysis of the pandemic’s effect on U.S. cancer data.

In 2020, as the pandemic began, a greater share of U.S. cancers were caught at later stages, when they’re harder to treat. But in 2021, these worrisome diagnoses returned to prepandemic levels for most types of cancer.

“It is very reassuring,” said lead author Recinda Sherman of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. “So far, we haven’t seen an excess of late-stage diagnoses,” which makes it unlikely that there will be higher cancer death rates tied to the pandemic.

Similarly, the number of new cancer cases dropped in 2020, but then returned to prepandemic levels by 2021. The size of the 2020 decline in new cancers diagnosed was similar across states, despite variations in COVID-19 policy restrictions. The researchers note that human behavior and local hospital policies played more of a role than state policy restrictions.

Late-stage diagnoses of cervical cancer and prostate cancer did increase in 2021, but the shifts weren’t large. The data analysis goes only through 2021, so it’s not the final word.

“We didn’t see any notable shifts,” Sherman said. “So it’s really unlikely that people with aggressive disease were not diagnosed during that time period.”

The report was produced by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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NCAA passes new rules to allow direct payments to players

• April 21, 2025

By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer

The NCAA passed rules Monday that would upend decades of precedent by allowing colleges to pay their athletes per terms of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit settlement expected to go into effect this summer.

The nine proposals passed by the NCAA board were largely expected but still mark a defining day in the history of college sports. An athlete’s ability to be paid directly by his or her university is on track to be enshrined in a rulebook that has forbidden that kind of relationship for decades.

For the NCAA rules to officially go into effect, the changes prescribed by the House settlement still have to be granted final approval by a federal judge, whose hearing earlier this month led to questions about potential tweaks before the new guidelines are supposed to go into play on July 1.

The changes will eliminate around 150 rules and alter many others in the NCAA’s sprawling rulebook. They essentially codify measures set up by the settlement, including:

• Modifying bylaws to allow schools to pay the athletes directly.

• Eliminating scholarship limits for teams, while also setting roster limits that are designed to replace the scholarship caps. Some details of the roster limits, which were a key sticking point in the April 7 hearing, will be finalized later.

• Establishing annual reporting requirements for schools that pay athletes; a payment pool is set to be approximately $20.5 million for the biggest schools beginning next academic year. (Not all Division I schools will choose to operate in the new system enabled by the settlement, as the Ivy League has chosen to opt out and continue to operate under the current structure.)

• Setting up a clearinghouse for all name, image and likeness (NIL) deals that come from third parties and are worth $600 or more.

• Granting authority to an enforcement body being developed by the conferences named as defendants in the lawsuit to enforce the new rules passed to implement terms of the settlement. This includes compliance with roster limits, payment of direct benefits to players and meeting requirements for the third-party deals.

One change allows for the creation of technology platforms for schools to monitor payments to athletes and for the athletes to report their third-party NIL deals.

Players will still be allowed to hire agents for NIL purposes, but the NCAA will still use certain eligibility rules that have been used to “distinguish Division I athletics from professional sports,” according to a document that summarizes the legislative changes. For the athletes to receive these benefits, the NCAA will require them to be enrolled full-time, meet Division I progress-toward-degree requirements and earn the benefits during their five-year eligibility period.

The board received updates from a working group designed to propose ways to streamline NCAA governance – a topic that has come up as the bigger conferences have sought more decision-making power in some areas.

​ Orange County Register 

Pope Francis was a source of controversy and spiritual guidance in his Argentine homeland

• April 21, 2025

By ISABEL DEBRE

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The faithful in Pope Francis’ hometown lit candles in the church where he found God as a teenager, packed the cathedral where he spoke as archbishop and prayed Monday in the neighborhoods where he earned fame as the “slum bishop.”

For millions of Argentines, Francis — who died Monday at 88 — was a source of controversy and a spiritual north star whose remarkable life traced their country’s turbulent history.

Conservative detractors of the first Latin American pope criticized his support for social justice as an affinity for leftist leaders.

They pointed to his warm meetings with former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a divisive left-leaning populist figure whose unbridled state spending many Argentines blame for the nation’s economic decline. They compared their enthusiastic encounters to an unusually stern-faced Francis meeting center-right former President Mauricio Macri for a curt 22 minutes in 2016.

“Like every Argentine, I think he was a rebel,” said 23-year-old Catalina Favaro, who had come to pay her respects at the downtown cathedral. “He may have been contradictory, but that was nice, too.”

Kirchner on Monday paid tribute to her bond with Francis, saying he was “the face of a more humane church” and recalling their shared love of a prominent Argentine novelist who lionized the country’s populist left-leaning Peronist movement and its efforts to upend class structure in the 1940s and 50s.

Macri called Francis “a stern politician” but overall “a good pastor” whose name deserves “admiration and respect.”

Dedication to the needy

At his regular 8:30 a.m. Mass, Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva recalled Francis’ dedication to the less fortunate.

“The pope of the poor, of the marginalized, of those excluded, has passed away,” García Cuerva announced. Alluding to Francis’ contested legacy, he added: “He was the Pope the Argentines, whom we didn’t always understand, but whom we loved.”

Vatican observers have long described Francis’ decision never to visit his homeland after becoming pontiff as an aversion to his country’s polarizing politics.

Tensions reached a head under current libertarian President Milei, who insulted Francis as a “filthy leftist” and “the representative of the evil one on earth” before he took office in December 2023.

They appeared to reconcile during a meeting in Rome last year. But when Argentine police lashed out at retirees protesting for better pensions in Buenos Aires, Francis broke his customary silence to chide Milei on the impact of his government’s austerity program: “Instead of paying for social justice, they paid for pepper spray,” he said.

Milei couched his condolences with a nod to those tensions.

“Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honor for me,” he wrote on social media.

Never traveled home as pope

Francis traveled the world — and even to neighboring Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay — but never set foot in his homeland after his election in March 2013, much to the chagrin of his compatriots.

“That’s a political decision, there’s no doubt,” Alejandra Renaldo, 64, said from Francis’ childhood church in the scruffy, middle-class neighborhood of Flores, less than half a mile from his first home.

“Can you believe he never went to his own land? I much prefer John Paul II, he went to Poland, his country, right after becoming pope. He didn’t have any political ideas.”

At the cathedral where Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became archbishop in 1998, worshippers bowed their heads in silent prayer. Some wept, ashen. They left flowers and handwritten notes on the steps and affixed stickers for Francis’ favorite local soccer team, San Lorenzo, on the stone columns.

In Flores, where Bergoglio was born to an Italian immigrant father and a mother of Italian descent, Argentines stopped to gather around the confessional in the church where, at 16, Bergoglio had said he first heard the call to the priesthood.

“He was a father to us in Flores,” said Gabriela Lucero, 66, as she rose for morning Mass in the Basilica of San Jose de Flores. “His primary philosophy was that those church doors remain open to everyone, immigrants, the poor, the struggling, everyone.”

Grief in poor Argentine neighborhoods

With Milei declaring a week of mourning and lowering flags to half-staff, there was a strong sense of grief across the country. But nowhere was it more apparent than in the hardscrabble neighborhoods where Francis focused his outreach as archbishop.

His legacy can still be seen in the cadre of priests who have continued working, living and helping the poor in these districts long neglected by successive governments, where garbage spills onto sidewalks and the stench of sewage wafts over rutted dirt streets.

Residents of Villa 21-24, a neighborhood in southern Buenos Aires, grew emotional as they remembered Francis visiting regularly to share yerba maté, Argentina’s traditional herbal drink, with pious mothers and recovering cocaine addicts alike.

They said he led religious processions barefoot in the streets and helped grow their ramshackle church into a place of prayer and spiritual contemplation, a vibrant community center with a garden and a school.

‘Most humble person in Buenos Aires’

“He was the most humble person in all of Buenos Aires. We’ll never see a pope like him again,” said Sara Benitez Fernandez, 57, a devout member of the congregation in the district. She choked on her tears as she recalled how he always took the subway and walked, never arriving in a car.

“I have no words, it hurts so much, so much,” she said.

The leader of the church, the Rev. Lorenzo de Vedia, a charismatic, disheveled priest known to most simply as Padre Toto, said the death of his close friend and mentor on Monday left him with a swell of sorrow and whirlwind of other feelings.

“It’s a day of pain, but we’re not losing the spirit,” he said, as squealing children chased each other outside the rectory. “We carry on and we fulfill his legacy. We’re going ahead with the mission that he entrusted to us.”

Associated Press videojournalist Victor Caivano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Abortions are resuming at a Wyoming clinic after judge suspends laws

• April 21, 2025

By MEAD GRUVER

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming’s only abortion clinic is resuming abortions after a judge on Monday suspended two state laws.

One suspended law would require clinics providing surgical abortions to be licensed as outpatient surgical centers. The other would require women to get an ultrasound before a medication abortion.

Wyoming Health Access in Casper had stopped providing abortions Feb. 28, the day after Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed the licensing requirement into effect.

The result: At least some women seeking abortions had to travel out of state. Now, women will once again be able to get abortions in central Wyoming while the two laws continue to be contested in court, Wellspring Health Access founder and president Julie Burkhart said Monday.

“We are immediately shouting it from the rooftop to make sure our patients know,” Burkhart said following the ruling. “We are back to seeing patients the way we were on Feb. 27.”

An abortion opponent questioned the need to contest the laws if the clinic was safe.

“The abortion business here in Casper could prove that they are providing safe services by complying with laws. Would that not make their point?” Ross Schriftman, president of Natrona County Right to Life, said in an email statement Monday.

Abortion has remained legal in Wyoming despite bans passed since 2022. The bans include the nation’s first explicit ban on abortion pills.

A judge in Jackson blocked the bans then struck them down in November on the grounds that abortion is allowed by a 2012 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of competent adults to make their own health care decisions.

The Wyoming Supreme Court heard arguments in that case Wednesday and is unlikely to rule for at least several weeks.

Meanwhile, the same people challenging the bans — Wellspring Health Access, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund, and four women, including two obstetricians — have sued to block Wyoming’s most recent two abortion laws.

The surgical center licensing requirement would require costly renovations to make Wellspring Health Access compliant, the clinic said in its lawsuit.

Gordon vetoed the requirement for an ultrasound at least 48 hours before a pill abortion, calling it onerous in cases of abuse, rape, or when a woman’s health is at risk. State lawmakers voted to override the veto on March 5.

The ultrasound requirement did not significantly affect clinic operations but Wellspring Health Access also suspended offering pill abortions to avoid legal complications. The law stands to add to the cost and complications for women getting pill abortions.

Opponents call laws like Wyoming’s requirements “targeted restrictions on abortion providers” because they can regulate clinics and abortion access out of existence even if abortion remains legal.

In blocking the laws while the lawsuit proceeds, District Judge Thomas Campbell in Casper ruled that they too stand to violate the constitution.

Despite the new restrictions, Wellspring Health Access has remained open to consult with patients and provide hormone replacement therapy for transgender patients. The clinic opened in 2023, almost a year late after heavy damage from an arson attack.

​ Orange County Register 

Chipotle heads south of the border, opening 1st location in Mexico

• April 21, 2025

By Dee-Ann Durbin | The Associated Press

Chipotle Mexican Grill is coming to Mexico.

The Newport Beach-based chain said Monday it’s planning to open a restaurant in Mexico early next year, its first location south of the border in its 30-year history.

Chipotle is partnering with Alsea in Mexico City, a company that operates Domino’s, Starbucks, Burger King, Chili’s and other brands in South America and Europe. Alsea plans to explore additional expansion in Mexico and other locations in the region.

Nate Lawton, Chipotle’s chief business development officer, said the company is confident that its menu will resonate with Mexican diners.

“The country’s familiarity with our ingredients and affinity for fresh food make it an attractive growth market for our company,” Lawton said in a statement.

But at least one U.S.-based Mexican chain has struggled to make it in Mexico. Taco Bell opened a few outlets in Mexico City in 1992 but they closed within two years. The brand opened another store in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2007 which also didn’t last.

The expansion arrives as President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Mexican imports could increase costs for U.S. Chipotle locations.

Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department said it plans to withdraw from a 2019 agreement suspending an antidumping investigation into fresh tomato imports from Mexico. That termination, set to take effect July 14, means most tomatoes from Mexico will be subject to a 20.91% tariff.

Chipotle gets around half of its avocados from Mexico, but so far those are not subject to tariffs.

Chipotle, which was founded in Denver in 1993, has 3,700 restaurants and plans to open up to 345 new locations this year.

It has been focused on growing its international footprint. Last year, it partnered with Alshaya Group to open a restaurant in Kuwait, its first new market in a decade. It now has three restaurants in Kuwait and two in the United Arab Emirates.

​ Orange County Register 

Long road back has left Dodgers’ Dustin May changed as person – but not as pitcher

• April 21, 2025

ARLINGTON, Texas — Given all that he has been through over the past four years – two major elbow surgeries, a life-threatening experience and emergency surgery not to mention months and months off monotonous, solitary rehab – it isn’t surprising that Dustin May has changed as a person.

“Just being out of the game so long, I grew more of a respect for it, knowing it can be taken away at a moment’s notice,” the Dodgers right-hander said.

What is surprising is that May doesn’t appear to have changed as a pitcher.

Three starts into his comeback (he will make his fourth start of this season Tuesday at Wrigley Field), May has allowed just two earned runs in 17 innings while holding hitters to a .119 batting average (7 for 59) with 14 strikeouts.

“There’s always lightning coming out of that arm,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “That’s never been a question. During both of his rehabs, his first ’pens when most guys would be barely topping 80 (mph), low 80s, he’s sneezing out 90 without even trying.

“The arm talent has never been a question. So, no, I’m not surprised with him.”

If Tommy John surgery in 2021 and flexor repair plus a Tommy John revision in 2023 has changed May’s arsenal, Will Smith hasn’t noticed it from the receiving end.

“No. Still the same sort of stuff. Same slider, four-seam, cutter. Same mix. Still throwing hard. Still throwing nasty,” Smith recounted.

“No (change), honestly. He’s always had really good stuff. He still has really good stuff.”

As Tommy John surgery has become more and more routine among MLB pitchers, two-time Tommy John recoveries have also become more common with pitchers as accomplished as Jacob deGrom and Walker Buehler – and, soon, Shohei Ohtani – returning to the mound after second elbow-reconstruction procedures. Recovering from a second surgery is one thing, recovering prior form and success is another. Rangers right-hander Nathan Eovaldi leads a very short list that also includes, to varying degrees, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Daniel Hudson and Jameson Taillon.

May never thought he wouldn’t recover his previous pitching arsenal.

“I didn’t think that it wouldn’t come back,” he said. “I didn’t know that it was going to be as effective as it’s been because I hadn’t pitched in so long. So the thought process behind it all – was it going to play as well as it did before? But my stuff is pretty much the same, just a tick down – which is still pretty good.”

Those ticks are hard to identify in the statistical profile created by May’s first three starts in this chapter of his herky-jerky career.

The velocity is down on all of his pitches. He averaged approximately 98 mph on his fastball over his first four seasons – even his brief return from that first surgery in 2022 when May said he was never more than “75 percent” and “never felt right.” It has been 95.1 mph this season, a drop May dismisses as temporary.

“I think it’s just early in the year, getting into the swing of things,” he said. “I mean, I’m still only nine months out of my esophagus surgery. I’m still getting strength back. Just being able to put the jersey back on is an accomplishment in itself. Once more strength comes back and I get more back to normal, I think it’s going to tick back up.”

He is still throwing his slider/sweeper with roughly the same spin rate and movement profile. But somehow it has been even more effective. May has thrown 88 of them in his first three starts and hitters are 0 for 21 when putting it in play. According to Statcast, batters have yet to put the barrel of the bat on it.

There’s a simple explanation for that, May said, and it’s more of a mental adjustment than any physical change.

“Because I’m throwing it in the zone,” he said. “It’s not like, oh they see spin they know they can spit on it because if it’s in the zone they at least have to put a thought on it now. That’s why it’s more effective.”

Prior agreed and said that’s something the Dodgers’ pitching coaches have preached to May for years. May’s Statcast profile also shows he is throwing from a lower arm slot since his return, something that could be making his sweeper and cutter even more troublesome for hitters.

“Everybody sees that kind of movement. But it’s a unique slot. It’s a unique delivery,” Prior said. “(As a hitter) you’re protecting against, when it’s going well, 35-plus inches of spread (among his pitches).

“It’s about getting in the zone with it, making them understand you can pitch with this or you can pitch with your fastball. Then as soon as they’re geared up for fastball, that thing (sweeper) goes the other way.”

May’s stuff has always had the potential to overwhelm hitters – and did during those brief, intermittent bursts of good health. The biggest difference now, he said, is his ability to contain his emotions on the mound and pitch with more respect and understanding of “the flow and rhythm of the game … instead of getting more irritated when things don’t go my way.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts sees that maturity in May, still only 27 years old despite his checkered medical history.

“I do. I think that with Dustin there’s always been a confidence in himself,” Roberts said. “But I think that the efficiency of the pitches, the flooding the strike zone, the ability to strike the secondary pitches, get the swing-and-miss when he needs it – I think the confidence is really building. It’s sustainable. I think it’s real. He’s understanding how to get major league hitters out, left and right.

‘“I think he’s certainly been through a lot in the last couple years, or even you could say the last four years. There’s been a lot of maturity. I think that he understands that more is not always more as far as effort or trying to bully hitters. He knows how to pitch, and make pitches.”

​ Orange County Register 

FTC sues Uber, alleging it signed up Uber One subscribers without their permission

• April 21, 2025

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Uber on Monday, alleging that it enrolled consumers in its Uber One subscription program without their consent and made it too difficult for them to cancel the service.

Uber One members pay $9.99 per month or $96 per year for a range of services, including fee-free Uber Eats food deliveries and cash back when they take Uber rides.

In its lawsuit, the FTC said multiple customers complained that Uber signed them up for Uber One without their permission or charged them for the service before a free trial period was over. In at least one case, a person was charged $9.99 per month even though they didn’t have an Uber account, the lawsuit said.

The FTC said Uber also made it extremely difficult for subscribers to cancel Uber One. The agency said Uber requires customers to take at least 12 different actions on at least seven screens to cancel the service. Cancellation gets even harder for consumers within 48 hours of their billing date, the FTC said, requiring them to navigate as many as 23 screens and still contact customer service.

“Americans are tired of getting signed up for unwanted subscriptions that seem impossible to cancel,” said FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, who has led the FTC since January after he was tapped as chairman by President Donald Trump.

In a statement, Uber said it was disappointed that the FTC chose to move forward with the lawsuit. Uber said its sign-up and cancellation process is clear, simple and lawful.

“Uber does not sign up or charge consumers without their consent and cancellations can now be done anytime in-app and take most people 20 seconds or less,” Uber said.

Uber said at one point it did require customers to contact a service representative if they wanted to cancel within 48 hours of a billing period, but that is no longer the case.

​ Orange County Register