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Rafael Devers homered for the fourth straight game and the streaking Boston Red Sox beat the Minnesota Twins 4-2 on a snowy afternoon in a series opener moved back following the fatal police shooting of a Black man in the Twin Cities area. Hunter Renfroe hit a solo homer and Bobby Dalbec added a pair of RBI doubles as Boston won its seventh in a row. Monday’s game was postponed due to safety and sensitivity concerns after the police shooting a day earlier of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. The Twins held a moment of silence for Wright prior to Tuesday’s game. Snow flurries fell for most of the day.

President Joe Biden’s difficult balancing act on policing was put on vivid display over the course of a few hours Tuesday as he tries to navigate criminal justice and civil rights. Biden mourned with the family of a fallen police officer at the Capitol. Later, he pledged at the White House to help end the epidemic of Black men being killed by police. The nation is awaiting the conclusion of the trial in Minnesota of the white police officer accused of killing George Floyd. Tensions have only been heightened by the shooting death this week of another Black man in Minnesota, Daunte Wright.

California is racing to spend more than a half-billion dollars before this year's wildfire season gets going in earnest. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday approved the early funding. State officials say they started soliciting project proposals even before the money was appropriated. They are planning to speed funding to thin forests, build buffers around vulnerable communities and make homes less likely to burn. Republicans supported the plan negotiated by Democratic leaders. But they say more money needs to go to manage overgrown forests.

Vanderbilt has hired Shea Ralph away from UConn to help revive the Commodores’ struggling women’s basketball program. Athletic director Candice Lee announced the hiring a week after firing Stephanie White. Ralph has been an assistant with the Huskies since 2008 and helped lead UConn to 13 consecutive Final Fours and six NCAA championships. She helped with recruiting and player development. She also spent five seasons as an assistant coach at Pittsburgh. Ralph takes over a program that last reached the NCAA Tournament in 2014, with its lone Final Four berth in 1993.

 President Joe Biden’s vaccination campaign hit a snag when federal regulators recommended a “pause” in administering Johnson & Johnson shots. But the White House is holding out the move as a validation of the president’s measured approach throughout the rollout. Biden administration officials pointed to the action by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as proof that they’re putting safety first. There's concern about the effect on those Americans who are already leery of all virus vaccines, but Biden said there is enough that's 100 percent safe for "every single solitary American.”  

The attorney for the former Minneapolis police officer on trial in George Floyd’s death has revisited the disputed concept of excited delirium. The issue resurfaced Tuesday as the defense takes on one of the biggest issues in the case — whether the force that Derek Chauvin used against Floyd was objectively reasonable given his resistance. One officer at the scene can be heard asking whether the struggling Floyd might be experiencing excited delirium. Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police officer who trains others, told the jury that new officers are taught how to recognize the signs. But Judge Peter Cahill cautioned jurors that there is no evidence that the veteran Chauvin had the training.  

San Diego Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove is set to make his first start since throwing the first no-hitter in franchise history. Musgrove will face the Pirates on Wednesday night in Pittsburgh. The Padres acquired Musgrove in a trade from Pittsburgh in January after he spent three seasons with the Pirates. Musgrove said sales have increased at his parents' coffee shop in the San Diego suburb of Alpine, California, since the no-hitter last week against the Texas Rangers. 

Former NBA player and Hall of Fame coach Bobby “Slick" Leonard has died. The Indiana Pacers announced his death Tuesday. He went 573-534 and won three ABA championships in 14 seasons as a coach, the last 12 with the Pacers. He also made the winning free throws in the 1953 NCAA Tournament to give the Indiana Hoosiers the second of five national titles. In 1985, he became the Pacers color commentator on television broadcasts and later moved into the radio booth where he coined his trademark phrase “Boom, Baby!” when Pacers players made 3-pointers. Bobby “Slick” Leonard was 88.

Health authorities are investigating highly unusual blood clots after use of two COVID-19 vaccines, and a rare immune response is the main suspect. The U.S. recommended a pause Tuesday in the use of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine while they examine six reports of the clots. That's out of nearly 7 million Americans who have been given the one-dose vaccination. Last week, European authorities said similar clots were possibly linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine. Scientists there first raised the possibility that some people were having an abnormal immune response. An FDA official said that's the theory as the U.S. now investigates clots in J&J recipients.

Stocks closed mixed on Wall Street Tuesday as gains from a handful of Big Tech companies were tempered by weakness elsewhere in the market. Treasury yields fell, which hurt banks but helped tech companies. The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, notching another record high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 1.1%. Among major tech stocks, Apple gained 2.4%. Johnson & Johnson fell 1.3% after U.S. regulators recommended a pause in using its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of possibly dangerous blood clots. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.62%. 

A white former police officer serving 20 years in prison for killing an unarmed Black man who ran from a South Carolina traffic stop said his lawyer never told him about an initial plea offer from prosecutors. He said that offer could have cut years off his sentence. Ex-North Charleston police officer Michael Slager is requesting a new sentence in federal court. But prosecutors say the error by Slager's former lawyer doesn't merit tossing out the 20-year sentence for the 2015 shooting. Slager pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge in 2017 for shooting Walter Scott in the back five times — a shooting captured on cellphone video. 

All divisional play during this shortened NHL season gives an added perk to most of the players traded at the deadline: They get to face different teams. After months of worrying only about the six other Canadian teams and not paying attention to the rest of the league, Sam Bennett will get to play against six Central Division opponents after a trade to Florida. Anthony Mantha gets to bang bodies with the Islanders, Penguins and Bruins now that he is with Washington..

Augusta National was behind the idea of the Asia-Pacific Amateur that was created in 2009. Former club chairman Billy Payne once said the idea was to create golfing heroes, not necessarily a Masters champion. Hideki Matsuyama is now both. Several Asian players from those early amateur events have gone on to get PGA Tour cards. It's an example of Augusta National joining with other organizations to create growth and inspiration in areas that are teeming with potential. According to those in the room when Matsuyama met with Augusta National members after his Masters win, Payne was close to tears.

Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida will permanently close the leaky Piney Point reservoir that poured millions of gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay while threatening to burst open and flood nearby homes and businesses. The Republican governor said at a news conference at the site that problems at the chronically troublesome reservoir must end. The facility holds polluted water from an old phosphate plant. DeSantis said he directed the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a closure plan. DeSantis said the agency will spend $15.4 million to treat the water to reduce the nutrients that can cause algae blooms and fish kills.

Engineer Gena Johnson is one of Nashville's premiere talents behind the mixing board, working with Chris Stapleton, Ashley Monroe, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile and many more. She's the first woman to be nominated for engineer of the year by the Academy of Country Music. Johnson works at the best recording studios in Nashville, but also has a cozy home studio where she puts the finishing touches on albums. She also got to help record songwriter John Prine's last song “I Remember Everything,” which won two Grammys. Johnson said being the first woman nominated as an engineer feels good, but also feels like “we have a lot more work to do.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The effects of the coronavirus pandemic are expected to contribute over the next year to “humanitarian and economic crises, political unrest, and geopolitical competition,” according to a new intelligence report that also warns about the threats from…

NEW YORK (AP) — Screenplay writing, usually a fairly solitary, uneventful process, is more of a full-contact sport for a movie like “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Work for the nine Oscar-nominated writers of the “Borat” sequel began conventionally enough. Brainstorming, a…