Athletics bat boy Stewart Thalblum takes down drone in left field

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Athletics bat boy Stewart Thalblum takes down drone in left field

2025-04-01 15:07 Last Updated At：15:20

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — When a drone suddenly appeared near the left-field wall at Sutter Health Park on Monday night, veteran Athletics bat boy Stewart Thalblum decided to help thwart it.

The drone tried to lift him off the grass but Thalblum used a bat and brought it down, careful not to cut himself with the spinning blades.

Once the device had been corralled, Thalblum handed it off to a security guard.

The drone appeared with Seth Brown batting for the Athletics in the seventh inning of the Chicago Cubs' 18-3 rout and it delayed the game for a few minutes.

“I think for me I didn't want to cut my fingers off. I always see that on the news, people hurt themselves when it's hovering or whatever and their hand gets caught in it,” said the 22-year-old Thalblum, a sixth-year bat boy. "I tried to catch it by the bottom and it was there for me so I just grabbed it and then I just started whacking the wings of it basically with the bat just to snap them off so it wouldn't fly away from me because I was going to take it behind the wall. We couldn't figure out what to do with it and it was trying to fly away from me."

Thalblum is the son of longtime A’s visiting clubhouse manager Mikey Thalblum.

Cubs manager Craig Counsell was impressed. When the drone was spotted by some Chicago players, Counsell alerted plate umpire Adrian Johnson, who hadn't seen it.

“I guess that's the world we're in right now,” Counsell said. “But it was funny because it looked like the drone was trying to fly away, it was trying to fly Mikey's son away, too. It's life in 2025.”

Stewart Thalblum had noticed the drone the previous at-bat, a first for him, and then saw Johnson stop play — so he went to work.

“Everybody was just looking at it for a little while and I've never had something like that happen,” Thalblum said. “I was asking around, everybody's looking and nobody from security or anything had gone out there so I was like, I don’t know whose responsibility it is, so I was like, OK, maybe it’s mine.”

Dad was plenty proud of his son — again.

“I'm proud of him for a lot of other reasons more so than getting a drone, just for being a good kid,” the father said, chuckling and not surprised at the fast thinking. “He's a good clubbie.”

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UK's top court says definition of a woman is based on biological sex and excludes transgender people

2025-04-16 19:38 Last Updated At：19:40

LONDON (AP) — The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between a feminist group and the Scottish government.

Several women's groups that supported the appeal celebrated outside court and hailed it as a major victory in their effort to protect spaces designated for women.

“Everyone knows what sex is and you can’t change it,” said Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, which brought the case. “It’s common sense, basic common sense and the fact that we have been down a rabbit hole where people have tried to deny science and to deny reality and hopefully this will now see us back to, back to reality.”

The ruling brings some clarity in the U.K. to a controversial issue that has roiled politics as women, parents, LGBTQ+ groups, lawmakers and athletes have debated gender identity rights.

Five judges ruled unanimously that the U.K. Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some single-sex spaces and groups, such as changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas and medical or counseling services provided only to women.

The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.

But Justice Patrick Hodge said its ruling “does not remove protection from trans people,” who are “protected from discrimination on the ground of gender reassignment.”

The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating there should be a 50% female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. Transgender women with gender recognition certificates were to be included in meeting the quota.

“Interpreting ‘sex’ as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ ... and, thus, the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way,” Hodge said. “It would create heterogeneous groupings.”

Hannah Ford, an employment lawyer, said that while the judgment will provide clarity, it would be a setback for transgender rights and there would be “an uphill battle” to ensure workplaces are welcoming places for trans people.

“This will be really wounding for the trans community,” Ford told Sky News.

Groups that had challenged the Scottish government popped the cork on a bottle of champagne outside the court and sang, “women’s rights are human rights.”

“The court has given us the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex — male and female — refers to reality, not to paperwork," said Maya Forstater of the group Sex Matters. In 2022, an employment tribunal ruled that she had been the victim of discrimination when she lost out on a job after posting gender-critical views online.

The British government welcomed the ruling, saying it would provide clarity and confidence for women.

“Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government,” it said.

For Women Scotland had argued that the Scottish officials' redefinition of woman went beyond Parliament’s powers. But Scottish officials then issued new guidance stating that the definition of woman included someone with a gender recognition certificate.

FWS successfully sought to overturn that.

“Not tying the definition of sex to its ordinary meaning means that public boards could conceivably comprise of 50% men, and 50% men with certificates, yet still lawfully meet the targets for female representation,” the group’s director Trina Budge said previously.

The challenge was rejected by a court in 2022, but the group was granted permission last year to take its case to the Supreme Court.

Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer for FWS, told the Supreme Court judges — three men and two women — that under the Equality Act “sex” should refer to biological sex and as understood “in ordinary, everyday language.”

“Our position is your sex, whether you are a man or a woman or a girl or a boy is determined from conception in utero, even before one’s birth, by one’s body,” he said. “It is an expression of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biological state.”

The women’s right group counted among its supporters author J.K. Rowling, who reportedly donated tens of thousands of pounds to back its work. The “Harry Potter” writer has been vocal in arguing that the rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.

Opponents, including Amnesty International, said excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections conflicted with human rights laws.

Amnesty submitted a brief in court saying it was concerned about the deterioration of the rights for trans people in the U.K. and abroad.

“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim,” the human rights group said.