UR MAG

HOUSTON (AP) — The surprising loss by the United States to Italy in the World Baseball Classic Tuesday night means that the Americans need help to advance to the quarterfinals.

WBC Italy United States Baseball

The 8-6 defeatleft the team with a 3-1 record at the end of its pool schedule. Mexico and Italy wrap up Pool B play Wednesday night where a win by the Italians will give the U.S. second place and a spot in the next round.

If Mexico wins then all three teams will move to 3-1 and 1-1 against each other and send it to a tiebreaker.

The tiebreaker is the number of runs allowed in games between the tied teams. So, the U.S. could also advance even if Mexico wins if it scores at least five runs.

Aaron Judge, who struck out in the ninth to end it Tuesday night, is disappointed that the team failed to take care of business against Italy.

"It's the toughest thing," he said. "You always like having your destiny in your own hands and we had it right in front of us and Italy came out swinging."

The Italians hit three home runs in the first four innings to build a five-run lead and were up 8-0 before the U.S. got on the board.

After the game U.S. manager Mark DeRosa fielded questions about whether he thought his team had already secured a spot in the quarterfinals with Monday night's win over Mexico because of his comments on a television appearance Tuesday morning.

Advertisement

In that interview he said: "Ton of respect for Italy — it's weird — we want to win this game even though our ticket's punched to the quarterfinals because Mexico plays Italy actually tomorrow. So, the way the schedule lines up this is an important game for us."

In the interview room he said he "misspoke" in that segment and in a later interview outside the clubhouse he reiterated that he did not think they had already clinched a spot.

"One hundred percent… I misspoke," he said. "Bottom line."

Judge said the players didn't think that they had already secured a spot in the quarterfinals and that he didn't know about DeRosa's television interview.

Judge added that the team will probably gather at the hotel to watch Wednesday's game.

"It's out of our control now," he said. "We just need a little luck and we'll see what happens."

AP MLB:https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Kyle Teel, Sam Antonacci and Jac Caglianone all homered for Italy, which moved to the top of the World Baseball Classic Pool B standings by holding on to upset the United States 8-6 on Tuesday night in Houston.

Italy, which raced out to an 8-0 lead before Team USA rallied in the final four innings, is 3-0 in Pool B play and would clinch a spot in the quarterfinals with a win against Mexico in Wednesday's finale.

An Italy win Wednesday would secure the final Pool B spot for Team USA, which finished 3-1.

If Mexico (2-1) beats Italy, those teams along with the United States will finish Pool B at 3-1. The first tiebreaker is head-to-head record, which would be 1-1 for all three teams. The second tiebreaker is the fewest runs per out in head-to-head games.

Team USA allowed 11 runs against Italy and Mexico and recorded 54 outs (.2037 runs per out), while Mexico got 24 outs against Team USA and gave up five runs (.2083 runs per out). Italy yielded six runs against Team USA on Tuesday over 27 outs (.2222 runs per out).

As a result, Team USA needs Italy to win, which would eliminate Mexico, or Mexico to win while allowing at least five runs (assuming the game ends in nine innings). Mexico and Italy would advance, eliminating the United States, if Mexico wins and permits four or fewer runs in a nine-inning game.

Italy starter Michael Lorenzen earned the win, allowing two hits and one walk while striking out two over 4 2/3 scoreless innings.

Advertisement

Teel hit a solo blast and Antonacci added a two-run homer off Team USA starter Nolan McLean in the second. Caglianone hit a two-run shot in the fourth off Ryan Yarborough before Italy added three more runs in the sixth. J.J. D'Orazio scored on an error by Team USA pitcher Brad Keller and Dante Nori lofted a sacrifice fly before Antonacci scored on Keller's wild pitch.

Gunnar Henderson's solo shot began Team USA's comeback bid in the sixth before Pete Crow-Armstrong hit the first of his two homers, a three-run blast, in the seventh to make it 8-4. Roman Anthony had an RBI single in the eighth and Crow-Armstrong went deep with one out in the ninth off Ron Marinaccio to cut the deficit to 8-6.

Greg Weissert entered and gave up a single to Bobby Witt Jr. before striking out Henderson and Team USA captain Aaron Judge to earn the save.

Teel was 2-for-2 before exiting with a leg injury following a sixth-inning double. Caglianone also had two of Italy's six hits.

Witt and Will Smith had two hits apiece for Team USA, which posted 11 hits.

McLean gave up three runs on two hits and two walks while striking out four over three innings.

--Field Level Media

By Dave Graham and Olivia Le Poidevin

KERZERS, SWITZERLAND, March 11 (Reuters) - At least six people died and three others were injured in a bus fire on ‌Tuesday in a small town in western Switzerland, in what police said may have ‌been a deliberate act following reports that a person on board set fire to themselves.

Police said the bus became engulfed ​in flames on a road in Kerzers, a town in the canton of Fribourg, about 20 km (12 miles) from the Swiss capital Bern.

"At this stage, we have elements suggesting a deliberate act by a person who was inside the bus," Frederic Papaux, a spokesperson for Fribourg police, said.

Investigators were ‌looking into reports that a ⁠person had poured fuel on themselves, said Christa Bielmann, another local police spokesperson. It was too early to say whether the incident was terror-related, she ⁠told a news conference.

"We have no indication that suggests we might be dealing with a terrorist attack," Swiss politician Romain Collaud, a state councillor, told the Swiss-French broadcaster RTS on Wednesday morning, adding ​that ​investigations are ongoing.

Three injured people were taken to hospital, ​police said. Two other people caught ‌up in the blaze also received attention but did not need to be hospitalised.

Advertisement

On Tuesday evening passengers were seen escaping from the burning bus, panicked and injured, Papaux said, adding that no other vehicle was involved.

Swiss media outlet 20 Minutes said it had seen a video taken at the scene in which an injured person said: "A man set himself on fire. He ‌poured gasoline over himself and then lit himself."

Video after ​the flames were extinguished showed the charred remains of ​the vehicle, a yellow so-called Postauto.

Swiss President ​Guy Parmelin offered his condolences and said the incident was being investigated.

"It ‌shocks and saddens me that once again ​people have lost their ​lives in a serious fire in Switzerland," he said in a statement on X, noting investigations were under way.

In January, Switzerland was rocked by a fire in a bar ​in the Swiss ski resort ‌of Crans Montana that killed 41 people and injured 115.

(Reporting by Dave Graham ​in Kerzers, Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; additional reporting by Cecile Mantovani; Editing ​by Neil Fullick, Lincoln Feast and Michael Perry)

By Nellie Peyton and Tim Cocks

While Trump offers white South Africans asylum, thousands are returning home to a better life

JOHANNESBURG, March 11 (Reuters) - Andrew Veitch left South Africa after being held up at gunpoint in his car. But now he feels there are greater threats in the United States, he said, citing mass shootings in public places as well as violence by U.S. immigration officers.

"People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot ‌and killed," said the 53-year-old, who moved to California in 2003. "I don't want to live in a place like this."

President Donald Trump's officials have said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were justified in ‌firing the shots that killed two U.S. citizens in January, although video evidence has contradicted their accounts.

Veitch plans to return to South Africa this year, one of thousands of white South Africans coming back, despite Trump's statements that the white minority is being persecuted by the ​country's Black majority government.

Pretoria says there is no evidence of discrimination or persecution against whites. Many have left since the end of white minority rule in 1994, some citing crime and difficulty getting jobs, but many are also returning.

Veitch is among 12,000 people who have checked their citizenship status in an online portal launched by the government in November after the overturning of a 1995 law that stripped citizenship from some South Africans who left.

They represent a fraction of South Africans abroad. The latest official statistics on returnees, from 2022, show that almost 15,000 white South Africans returned that year.

EXPATS SAY SOUTH AFRICA MEANS LOWER COSTS, LESS TURMOIL

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said 1,000 people had reclaimed their citizenship, ‌a number he expected to grow significantly as the programme takes off.

"There ⁠is definitely a sense of optimism for South Africans abroad," said Schreiber, part of the white-led Democratic Alliance party that has ruled in coalition with the African National Congress since 2024. He is a returnee himself, having spent time in the U.S. and Germany before coming home in 2019.

Two recruitment agencies that help expats relocate said the number of ⁠inquiries had jumped, and Reuters spoke to 10 South Africans who had either returned or were planning to, seven of them from across Europe and three from the United States.

Their reasons, echoed in a 25,000-strong "Return to South Africa" Facebook group some belong to, included being closer to family, lower living costs and political turmoil abroad.

The Trump administration is ramping up its new refugee programme for white South Africans, focusing on Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers. About 3,500 South Africans have entered the ​United ​States as refugees since the programme started in May 2025.

Applicants interviewed by Reuters complained of being victims of racially motivated crime ​and employment equity laws that favour non-white candidates in order to redress decades of ‌white minority rule.

Other Afrikaners, like Naomi Saphire, take a different view.

Advertisement

She had been settled in the United States for two decades when she came back for a holiday and realized how much she missed home.

Last year, she left North Carolina for a seaside town in South Africa's Western Cape, where she said her three children spend more time outdoors, health insurance is affordable and she prefers the schools.

"My heart is just full of gratefulness to be here," the 46-year-old said from her home in Plettenberg Bay. "The U.S. has been really good to me (but) I just felt like I was depriving my kids of this life."

Saphire said she knows many people who are returning home.

RETURNEES USE REMOTE WORKING TO KEEP THEIR JOBS

Crime and joblessness are major issues in South Africa, but the unemployment rate is 35% for Black people compared with 8% for whites, according to the latest figures from the national ‌statistics agency Stats SA.

Police statistics released last year showed that even farm murders, which Trump has focused on, killed more Black ​people than whites. Reuters has found that photos and videos Trump has presented on the matter were taken out of context or ​misrepresented.

Still, Stats SA estimated a net outward flow of half a million whites since 2001, including 95,000 ​from 2021 to 2026. There is no regular data on returnees, but a Stats SA analysis showed that 28,000 South Africans returned in 2022, 52.9% - or some 14,800 - of whom ‌were white.

Anton van Heerden, CEO of employment agency DNA Employer of Record, said inquiries ​from white South Africans seeking to return had jumped ​70% in the past six months. Angel Jones, CEO of Johannesburg-based recruitment firm HomecomingEx, reported a roughly 30% rise in inquiries since 2024.

A boom in remote working since the COVID-19 pandemic has also helped; three of the returnees interviewed by Reuters kept their jobs abroad.

Many South African professionals have extensive private security at home which minimizes crime risks, Van Heerden said.

"If you can afford to live in a ​safe environment, you can have a much better life than I think in most ‌places in the northern hemisphere," he said.

Several returnees also said they felt life in South Africa had improved since they left. Power cuts, which used to be daily, for example, have ​largely stopped.

Thirty-eight-year-old engineer Eugene Jansen, who returned from the Netherlands in December with his wife and two children, said the returnees he knows feel things are getting better.

"The opinion is that ​the country is improving," he said.

(Reporting by Nellie Peyton and Tim Cocks; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Philippa Fletcher)

Dangerous storms with tornadoes and hail are tracking across the central US Tuesday evening. This threat of notably strong tornadoes has prompted the highest severe thunderstorm risk in months to be issued in parts of the Midwest.

It's all part of a more widespread potential outbreak of powerful storms across the Central US on Tuesday as a new storm system strengthens over the region.

Storms are ongoing in portions of Texas and Oklahoma as well as northward into Illinois. A tornado tracked through the Kankakee, Illinois, area Tuesday evening and hail greater than tennis-ball size was also reported with this supercell thunderstorm.

Early Tuesday evening, a tornado briefly touched down near Pontiac, Illinois, and hail up to 5 inches in diameter fell near Buckingham, Illinois, which could be a new state record.

Thunderstorms also impacted Chicago, where half-dollar size hail fell. The Kansas City metro area reported hail up to 3.5 inches in diameter.

Farther south, a tornado was observed near Dudley, Texas, and baseball-sized hail was reported in Buffalo Gap, Texas.

Five tornado watches are in effect as of 7 p.m. CT this evening. These include portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Tornado watches stretch from the Mexican border north to Michigan.

A Level 4 of 5 risk of severe thunderstorms is in place for more than 2 million people in northern Illinois and northwest Indiana, including Peoria and Bloomington, Illinois.

Althoughlast week's outbreakhad multiple deadly tornadoes, this is the first time a forecast for severe storms has been at this high of a level since July 28, 2025.

This Level 4 of 5 risk zone is where "multiple strong to intense tornadoes (EF2 to EF3)" could strike this evening, the Storm Prediction Center said.Tornadoes this strongcan destroy entire stories of well-constructed homes and do significant damage to large buildings.

Advertisement

Lime-sized or larger hail could also drop fromsupercell stormsthat flourish in this corridor — large enough to dent cars and damage roofs.

These severe thunderstorms will track east overnight and spread into more of the Great Lakes, but they will lose some of their punch by the morning.

Wind damage, destructive hail and tornadoes are all threats from Texas to Michigan, including areas outside of the highest risk zone.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis are some metros that could see these powerful storms.

Damaging wind gusts over 70 mph and hail bigger than baseballs are the main threats with any of these storms. Tornadoes are also possible and some could be strong — EF2 or stronger. Mobile homes are destroyed and roofs can be ripped from well-built homes in tornadoes of this strength.

Powerful storms could still be churning early Wednesday morning from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley but a renewed threat will come in the afternoon.

A widespread Level 2 of 5 risk of severe thunderstorms is in place Wednesday for over 55 million people from Texas and Louisiana to Pennsylvania.

Damaging winds are the main threat with any storm Wednesday. A few tornadoes are possible, especially in the Lower Mississippi Valley and parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

No widespread severe thunderstorms are expected on Thursday.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com