NEW YORK (AP) — Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have clinched the sixth seed in the WNBA playoffs.
They won't know where they're headed for the opening round until at least Tuesday as six of the other seven postseason spots are still undecided. Diana Taurasi and Phoenix are locked into the seventh seed.
The WNBA regular season comes down to the final four days this week with all 12 teams playing Thursday to close it out. The postseason begins Sunday.
The Fever most likely will be headed to Connecticut, which right now sits as the No. 3 seed. Clark's WNBA career got started against Connecticut back in May. Clark had an incredible season, setting both the WNBA single-season assist record as well as the league's rookie scoring record. She broke the scoring mark on Sunday when she had a season-high 35 points, passing Seimone Augustus' 744 set in 2006. Clark has 761 points on the season.
The Sun trail the Minnesota Lynx for the No. 2 seed by two games with two left. The two teams play each other on Tuesday in Connecticut. The Sun do own the tiebreaker between the two teams.
Minnesota could still earn the top overall seed after Sunday's win over New York. The Lynx trail the Liberty by two games and own the tiebreaker. New York would have to lose at Washington on Tuesday and at home to Atlanta on Thursday as well as Minnesota win its final two games for that to happen.
Who the eventual No. 1 team plays is also still up in the air. Chicago, Washington and Atlanta all sit tied in eighth right now for the final playoff spot. The Dream stayed alive by beating the Mystics in overtime Sunday. Chicago had a chance to go a leg up on the other two teams, but lost at home to Phoenix.
Chicago plays at Atlanta on Tuesday with the winner having the upper hand for the final playoff spot. Washington hosts league-leading New York on Tuesday and Clark and the Fever on Thursday. Chicago visits Connecticut that same night.
Las Vegas is currently the four seed. The two-time defending champions could move up to third with two wins and also two losses by Connecticut. Assuming that doesn't happen, they'll face Seattle. The Aces have a one-game lead on the Storm and the two teams play each other on Tuesday in Seattle.
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) celebrates after a three-point basket against the Dallas Wings in the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Indianapolis, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson (22) poses after an WNBA basketball game against the Connecticut Sun, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Las Vegas.(Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson (22) celebrates during the second half of a WNBA basketball game against the Connecticut Sun, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) makes a behind the back pass in front of Dallas Wings guard Sevgi Uzun (1) in the second half of a WNBA basketball game in Indianapolis, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Some Brazilian users regained access to X on Wednesday despite a nationwide ban put in place by the country's Supreme Court, a reunion apparently resulting from the social network changing the way its servers are accessed.
But the renewed access may be short-lived.
Late last month, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked nationwide after months of tension with the site's billionaire owner Elon Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. De Moraes also set fines for anyone using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access the platform.
That rendered X effectively inaccessible in the country until Wednesday, when an Associated Press journalist was among those who regained access. The number of X posts made in Brazil rose from 939,000 Tuesday to more than 2 million by late afternoon Wednesday, data analysis company Bites said.
Experts examining X's IP addresses — numeric designations that identifies sites' location on the internet — said there are indications the company has begun routing users through the servers of Cloudflare, a content delivery network, en route to its own.
“The service that Elon Musk’s social network has started using works like a ‘digital shield’ that protects the company’s servers,” Pedro Diogenes, Latin America’s technical director for CLM, a distributor that focuses on cybersecurity. It acts as a proxy between users and X's servers, filtering traffic and preventing the original IP address from being recognized, Diogenes told the AP.
Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel said it is looking into the situation and will report its findings to the Supreme Court, noting that there has been no change to de Moraes' ruling. A panel of fellow justices later upheld his decision, though it hasn’t yet gone before the court’s full bench. His fine for VPN users in particular has faced blowback, including from the nation’s bar association.
The Supreme Court declined to comment on possible actions it could take. Musk, who often uses his platform to disparage de Moraes, hadn't commented on X by late afternoon.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro celebrated the return of the social network. He has sided with Musk in the feud with de Moraes and sought to portray the ban as censorship from an overzealous judge.
“I congratulate you all for the pressure that makes the wheels turn in defense of democracy in Brazil,” Bolsonaro posted Wednesday on X.
Some Brazilian X users trumpeted the platform's return — with several addressing de Moraes directly, vowing that they weren't using a VPN. There have been no reports of fines being levied against people using VPNs.
Cloudflare, a security company that prides itself on providing services to websites regardless of their content, has a history of protecting sites other companies won’t touch. But only to a point. In 2017, for instance, it dropped the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer as a customer following a deadly clash at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And in 2022, it dropped the notorious stalking and harassment site Kiwi Farms citing an “immediate threat to human life.”
But X is a mainstream social media platform — even if it may be home to some extremist content — and it is not yet clear whether Brazil’s ban would be enough for San Francisco-based Cloudflare to abandon it.
Cloudflare has a reputation for cooperating with governments, however, and so may comply with an order from the Supreme Court to cease serving as X's proxy, David Nemer, who specializes in the anthropology of technology at the University of Virginia, told the AP.
Ordering internet service providers to block Cloudflare would be impossible, since thousands of Brazilian companies depend on it, Nemer previously wrote on Bluesky, another social media platform.
A person close to Cloudflare, who was not authorized to speak publicly about a business relationship, said the network services provider did not do anything specifically to help X get around Brazil’s ban. Rather, X recently switched to Cloudflare from another provider, which could be a reason the block is not working. This person added that the workaround likely won't last long.
De Moraes could also attempt to force Musk’s hand by going after his satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, as he has done since the ban, said Rafael Mafei, a law professor at the University of Sao Paulo.
On Friday, de Moraes seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to X and Starlink to collect what X owed in fines.
Legal analysts have questioned de Moraes’ prior decision to freeze Starlink’s bank account until it paid for X's fines. While Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities. But de Moraes has shown that he considers the two companies to belong to the same economic group, Mafei said.
“Under normal circumstances, anyone else who openly took active steps to obstruct judicial measures and investigations, as Musk is doing, would possibly have already had their arrest decreed in Brazil,” Mafei said.
Ortutay reported from San Francisco.
FILE - A view of a laptop shows the Twitter sign-in page with their logo, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)
