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After taking his normal round of infield grounders during the Dodgers’ off-day workout Sunday, Kiké Hernández jogged to center field and spent a noticeable amount of time fielding fly balls there.

On the eve of Game 3 of the World Series, it might not have been a coincidence.

After using the same nine players in their starting lineup in six straight games since the start of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers have been considering a change for Monday — one that could drop struggling second-year slugger Andy Pages to the bench.

While the Dodgers’ overall offense has been inconsistent this postseason, Pages has endured the most glaring slump. He has collected just four hits in 43 at-bats, registering a .093 average. He has 11 strikeouts, no walks, and only one extra-base knock, providing little pop or spark from the No. 9 spot.

Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged before Game 2 that he was mulling whether to keep Pages in the lineup. And though the 24-year-old outfielder, who had 27 home runs and 86 RBIs in the regular season, had a hit and run scored on Saturday, Roberts reiterated Sunday that making a move with Pages was “still on the table” and “front of mind.”

“Just trying to figure out where he’s at mentally, physically,” Roberts said. “The performance hasn’t been there. So thinking of other options, yeah.”

One reason the Dodgers have stuck with Pages is because of their limited defensive alternatives — including, first and foremost, utilityman Tommy Edman being restricted to only second base this October because of a lingering ankle injury.

Edman, who split time last postseason between center field and shortstop, did say this weekend that his ankle was feeling better (even though he didn’t close the door on potentially needing surgery this offseason). But Roberts noted that Edman “hasn’t taken a fly ball out there in a month,” casting continued doubt over his ability to play anywhere else.

Without Edman, Hernández is the only other true center-field option for the Dodgers to use in their starting lineup, having also played there during the team’s World Series run last year. This postseason, Hernández has been a fixture in left (while also mixing in at third base). But if he were to slide to center field for Game 3, it could open left field for someone like Alex Call.

Call, a trade deadline acquisition who was a part-time player down the stretch in the regular season, does not represent as much of a power threat as Pages, but is a better contact hitter with more on-base ability.

Of course, the Dodgers’ offensive inconsistencies have gone beyond Pages.

They have not topped five runs in a game since the wild-card round. They have hit just .216 as a team since the start of the division series. Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman are still batting under .225 in the playoffs. Mookie Betts is batting .136 since the start of the NLCS.

During their Game 2 win, Roberts felt the club missed a lot of hittable pitches against Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, before Will Smith and Max Muncy finally broke through with home runs in the seventh.

That, Roberts felt, was a sign his lineup was “a little bit in between” in its approach, squandering opportunities to do damage against fastballs over the plate while also trying to protect against breaking stuff out of the zone.

“They have made good pitches, but we have missed pitches as well,” Roberts said. “I do think that coming home, I feel that we’re back into a little bit of a rhythm offensively.”

Perhaps shaking up the lineup will help, as well.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — The federal shutdown will last at least a few more days as the Senate expects to hold no votes until Monday. Meanwhile, lawmakers are questioning the legality of how the Trump administration plans to pay the military.

Senate Republican leader John Thune of South Dakota sent senators home for the weekend, so the government will stay closed. The Senate will return at 3 p.m. Monday.

Three Democrats have voted for the Republican bills to reopen the government, but five more are needed to reach the 60 votes needed to pass the stopgap funding bill.

Meanwhile, some Republican senators are questioning the legality of President Donald Trump‘s move to shift Defense Department funds to pay for military paychecks during the shutdown.

They say they’re glad the service members are getting paid, but aren’t sure where the funds are coming from and whether the money shift is legal.

Normally, the White House would need to ask Congress to reappropriate federal funding, then the Appropriations Committee must approve it before moving funds around.

Senators interviewed by The Hill say they aren’t aware of any requests. Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to use “all available funds” to ensure troops got their paychecks.

“That’s a concern of not just appropriators, it seems broader than that,” an unnamed Republican senator told The Hill.

The lawmaker said Republican colleagues have asked the administration for more information about exactly which funds are getting shifted and what legal authority the White House is using to justify its action.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she wants more information from the White House.

“We’ve been given two different explanations. One, is that it’s unobligated balances. One, is that it’s taken from certain research and technology programs. But we don’t have the specifics. We have asked for the specifics,” Collins said.

Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said: “I get that they say for the military pay for this pay period it comes out of … research and development technology [fund] but where? Is that taking it from projects that we have already identified? Maybe something’s really important to me. Where’s it coming from? We haven’t seen that,” she said.

On Wednesday, Trump signed a memo expanding his administration’s authority to repurpose unspent funds to pay service members during the shutdown.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said Trump’s reallocation of funds was, “probably not legal.” On Face the Nation on Sunday, he said the “White House’s understanding of United States law” was “pretty tentative to say the best.”

AARHUS, Denmark — In the windswept gardens of a Danish chateau, President Volodymyr Zelensky and some of Ukraine’s main European backers weighed options Thursday for filling the gap after the Trump administration paused weapons shipments to his country.

The U.S. move affects high-demand munitions, including Patriot missiles, the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile and shorter-range Stinger missiles. They are needed to counter incoming missiles, bring down Russian aircraft or counter drone attacks.

But they are in short supply, none are cheap, and some simply can’t be sourced elsewhere.

“We count on the continuation of American support because there are some items which Europe … doesn’t have for today,” Zelensky told reporters in Aarhus, Denmark, as a military helicopter hovered above and security personnel watched nearby woods.

Chief among them: Patriot missile systems and interceptors. “This is crucial,” he said.

Russia’s new push to capture more territory has put Ukraine’s defenses under severe strain, with the war now in its fourth year. Russian missiles and drones are battering Ukrainian cities. U.S.-led efforts to find a peace settlement have stalled.

It’s still unclear even to Zelensky what the White House intends for the weapons shipments. “I hope that maybe tomorrow, or close days, these days, I will speak about it with President Trump,” he said.

Europe’s reason to act

Many in the European Union are keen to step up. They see Russia’s invasion as a threat to their own security. Officials have warned that President Vladimir Putin could try to test Europe’s defenses in three to five years.

“All of us hope that the U.S. will continue the support for Ukraine,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said, flanking Zelensky. “But if there are any gaps, then I personally believe that we should be willing to fill in.”

Denmark — a key Ukraine backer — has just taken over the EU presidency for six months.

“The war in Ukraine has never only been about Ukraine. This is a war about the future of Europe,” she said. Most EU countries are members of NATO, which has just agreed that allies should invest 5% of the gross domestic product in defense.

Russia is the chief threat that warrants such spending, although Trump did cajole the Europeans and Canada into agreeing on the figure, which will require them to spend tens of billions of dollars more over the next decade.

Sourcing defense funds

Since the Trump administration warned that its security priorities lie elsewhere and that Europe must fend for itself, the European Commission’s priority has been to find extra money.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched the EU’s big funding gun with $176 billion that countries, including Ukraine, can use to make joint purchases of priority weapons.

The EU’s executive branch also has loosened the rules on countries running up debt if they use the money for defense purposes. It hopes that hundreds of billions of extra euros could be made available, if members use the opportunity to spend more.

Then there are sanctions against Russia. EU nations are working on yet another raft of measures, but they are getting harder to agree on. It now falls to Denmark to try to chaperone the latest sanctions through.

“Russia is on the brink of recession,” noted von der Leyen, standing next to Zelensky. “Russia’s overheated war economy is coming to its limits. So for us, it is important to increase the pressure so that [Putin] comes to the negotiation table.”

Investing in Ukraine, the Danish way

Frederiksen’s government has led the way in investing in Ukraine’s defense industry, which can produce arms and ammunition more quickly and cheaply than elsewhere in Europe. She believes it’s the most effective way to help.

She also recently invited Ukrainian companies to set up shop on safer ground in Denmark, and the first companies could start production there in September. Danish officials are urging their European partners to follow suit.

Ukraine estimates that about 40% of its defense industrial capacity could be capitalized on if more European money were spent there.

Security and EU membership

Frederiksen said that helping Ukraine to join the EU is a security priority, but Hungary stands in the way. Prime Minister Viktor Orban insists that Ukraine should remain a buffer zone between Russia and NATO countries.

EU membership is meant to be a merit-based process, and Denmark has said that “all political and practical means” will be used to persuade Hungary — a small EU country and the only one standing in Ukraine’s way — to lift its veto.

Zelensky said Thursday that Ukraine has made significant progress in aligning with the EU’s rules despite the war, and called for the first phase of membership negotiations to begin as soon as possible.

“Sometimes it’s just difficult to be together in one building, all the government [and] the parliamentarians because of the attacks,” he explained.

Less palatable options

Calls are mounting for the Europeans to use Russian assets that they froze after the full-scale invasion in 2022 to help Ukraine. At the end of March, about $320 billion worth — the bulk of the assets — was being held by Belgian clearing house Euroclear.

The interest earned on those assets is being used to fund a $50-billion scheme set up by the Group of Seven powers to keep Ukraine’s economy afloat.

Some European leaders worry that confiscating Russia’s assets would deprive Ukraine of those profits — estimated at more than $3.5 billion a year. They fear it would also be fraught with legal obstacles and could harm the reputation of the euro single currency on international markets.

Another possibility might be for the Europeans to buy weapons directly from the United States but asked Thursday about that possibility — as well as the confiscation of Russian assets — neither Frederiksen nor von der Leyen would comment.

Cook writes for the Associated Press.

As the war between Israel and Iran continues, Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they are coordinating with Tehran.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, have since 2023 launched attacks on Israel and shipping in the Red Sea in what they say is support for Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis are also a close ally of Iran, and now they say that their latest attacks are on behalf of the “Palestinian and Iranian peoples”, according to the Telegram account of Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree, who added that the Yemeni group were coordinating with “the operations carried out by the Iranian army against the criminal Israeli enemy”.

On Sunday, two days after Israel first attacked Iran in the early hours of June 13, the Houthis announced that they had targeted Israel.

In a televised address, Saree said the group fired several ballistic missiles at Jaffa.

The Houthis are timing their attacks with the Iranians, according to Hussain Albukhaiti, a pro-Houthi political commentator.

The Houthis are launching missiles “after Iran launched its missiles”, Albukhaiti told Al Jazeera. “This way the Zionist settlers [Israelis] keep going back and forth to their shelters so they can live a small fraction of the fear they caused the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The Houthi attacks are essentially a continuation of their previous periodic missile and drone attacks on Israel. The Israelis have mostly been able to intercept the attacks but some have gotten through, most notably an attack in early May on Ben Gurion airport that injured six people and led to a suspension of flights.

But the Houthi attacks have also had another consequence for Israeli defences, according to Yemen expert Nicholas Brumfield.

“The constant threat of Houthi attacks coming from the south requires Israel to spread out its air defences rather than positioning them all to more effectively [defend] counterattacks coming from Iran,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shipping routes

In November 2023, the Houthis began attacking ships they say were linked to Israel in the Red Sea. International ships that travel to the Red Sea are forced to pass Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

The attacks have ceased in recent months, particularly after the Houthis and the United States came to an agreement to stop attacking each other in early May, following a US bombing campaign that is reported to have killed more than 200 people in Yemen.

But the attacks could still resume, and the Houthis never agreed to stop targeting Israel, which itself has also continued to bomb Yemen.

“We had an agreement with the US to stop attacking each other, but Yemen will not obey this agreement if the US joins the Zionists in their attacks against Iran,” Albukhaiti said.

“We remember that Trump cancelled the nuclear deal between Iran and the US,” he said, referring to the US president’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal between Iran and several Western countries in 2018. Albukhaiti accused Trump of cancelling the deal because it was not in Israel’s interest.

“Yemen will do the same, and will cancel the agreement with the US, because it’s not in the interest of Iran, which is an important ally of Yemen,” he said, referring to the Houthi rebel group as “Yemen”, although the group’s government is not recognised internationally.

Iran has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between it and Oman. About 20 million barrels per day (BPD), or the equivalent of about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumed, pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Analysts said the Houthis could potentially do the same in the Red Sea.

Sea mines are “very low-tech, easy-to-make mines that would nevertheless introduce considerable uncertainty for global shippers,” Brumfield said.

“I don’t think that Iran or Yemen will hesitate to use sea mines if necessary to block the entire shipping lines in our region,” Albukhaiti added.

Risks to Gulf states

There are also fears that the conflict could drag in other countries in the region. The US has bases in a number of countries in the Middle East, and the Houthis have previously been involved in fighting with many of them, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

If the current conflict spirals, Gulf countries may find themselves threatened by Houthi attacks.

“The Houthis are trying to recover from the US strikes we saw between mid-March and May, and probably aren’t begging to restart those more intensive strikes if they don’t have to,” Brumfield said. “But I also think they’d be amenable to restarting them if they saw themselves as participating in a grand regional war between the US-Israel and the Axis of Resistance, especially if a lot of US military resources are diverted to Iran.”

Albukhaiti said Houthi forces “could also target US bases in the region”, specifically those involved in the coalition against Yemen, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because “we are still at war with these countries”, he said.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened militarily in the war in Yemen between the Houthis and the country’s internationally recognised government in 2015, unleashing a years-long campaign of air strikes. Saudi Arabia ceased hostilities in Yemen in 2022, but has yet to officially reach a deal with the Houthis.

And before that, it had come under Houthi attack. In 2019, Saudi oil production was cut by around 50 percent after Houthi drone strikes on oil plants. Since then, analysts say the Saudis have worked hard to keep more stable relations with the Houthis in order to avoid further attacks.

But despite these efforts, the detente could be forgotten if the Houthis see fit to resume hitting their northern neighbour.

“I don’t think [attacks on Saudi Arabia are] off the table,” Brumfield said. “If elements in Houthi leadership in favour of a military-first approach win out, it’s plausible they would attack the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] as part of a general escalation in both the regional and Yemen conflict.”

Brumfield added that the Houthis would, however, have to also keep in mind that Saudi Arabia has provided “diplomatic cover” for the Houthis in the past few years, as it seeks to find a final deal to end the conflict in Yemen. Any attacks from the Houthis would likely make Saudi Arabia abandon that strategy.

Internal strife

Anti-Houthi groups in Yemen have been watching events carefully over the past few months, as they sense an opportunity with the initial US campaign against the Houthis, and now the weakening of the Houthis’ principal ally, Iran.

“The most [the Houthis are] capable of doing is continuing symbolic attacks on Israel or potentially restarting activity in the Red Sea,” Raiman Al-Hamdani, an independent Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera. “But doing so could provoke a renewed military response from the US, Israel, and the UK, which might weaken their position domestically and open space for anti-Houthi groups to exploit any resulting instability.”

However, analysts say that few of the groups that oppose the Houthis, including the Yemeni government, are in a position to take and effectively govern territory from the Houthis.

And, should those groups mobilise, the Houthis would likely respond, Albukhaiti said.

Houthi forces could target any domestic opponents through “oil and gas fields and platforms” as well as the “airports and water distillation plants” of the countries he said backed the groups, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.