LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dustin May pitched five strong innings after missing nearly two years, Mookie Betts hit his third go-ahead homer of the season and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the winless Atlanta Braves 3-1 on Tuesday night.
With a 7-0 mark, the defending World Series champions are off to the club's best start since moving to Los Angeles. The only better starts in franchise history came in 1955 (10-0) and 1940 (9-0) when the team was located in Brooklyn.
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Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani hits a base hit against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May jumps in the air after striking out the side against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May is congratulated in the dugout after striking out the side against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Atlanta Braves' Chris Sale throws against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the second inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani hits a ground out against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May throws against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Mookie Betts celebrates after hitting a two-run home run against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Mookie Betts hits a two-run home run against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
The slumping Braves fell to 0-6 for the first time since opening 0-9 in 2016.
May allowed just one hit and an unearned run. He struck out six and walked three in his first start since May 17, 2023. The right-hander missed last season while rehabbing from a torn flexor tendon in his right arm. In 2023, his season ended with Tommy John revision surgery.
Anthony Banda (2-0) got the win with one inning of scoreless relief. Tanner Scott earned his second save.
Betts' throwing error at shortstop in the second led to Atlanta's lone run.
The center-field flags were blowing straight out on a windy night when Betts' two-run homer just cleared the left-field wall in the sixth. Also scoring was Shohei Ohtani, who singled leading off. The 2024 NL MVP has scored in each of the first seven games.
The Dodgers have homered in six straight.
They couldn't buy a baserunner for five innings against reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale. After Betts' homer made it 2-1, Tommy Edman singled to knock out Sale (0-1) and scored on Will Smith's single. The left-hander gave up four hits, struck out five and walked none.
The Braves designated 41-year-old reliever Jesse Chavez for assignment and added right-hander Zach Thompson to the roster.
Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández made a terrific catch of Drake Baldwin's drive leading off the seventh. He waited on the ball while security scattered, then leaned over the lower wall in right, snagging the ball in his glove. His momentum carried him over the wall, but he sprang to his feet holding his glove in the air as the crowd cheered.
The Dodgers tied the 1933 New York Yankees for the longest unbeaten streak by a reigning World Series winner to start a season.
Braves RHP Bryce Elder gets the ball for the first time this season in the series finale Wednesday. LHP Blake Snell (1-0, 3.60 ERA) makes his second start for the Dodgers.
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Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani hits a base hit against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May jumps in the air after striking out the side against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May is congratulated in the dugout after striking out the side against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Atlanta Braves' Chris Sale throws against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the second inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani hits a ground out against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Dustin May throws against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Mookie Betts celebrates after hitting a two-run home run against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Mookie Betts hits a two-run home run against the Atlanta Braves during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in, Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
BEIRUT (AP) — President Donald Trump acknowledged criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “crazy” in a phone call that involved expletives, saying he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon was holding back peace talks with Iran.
But even as the U.S. president conceded the tensions in an interview released Wednesday, he insisted that his relationship with Netanyahu was solid and that they connected, in part, because they are both “wartime” leaders.
“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”
In an interview on the American business-news channel CNBC, Netanyahu responded that he and Trump sometimes have “tactical disagreements” but have “common goals” and “agree on the main things.”
“He respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences,” the prime minister said.
The president's comments about the Monday call offered a sign of the growing pressure he faces to resolve the Iran war as higher energy prices and economic uncertainty threaten Republican prospects in the midterm elections and hamper global commerce.
Talks have dragged on for weeks as mediators seek to extend a fragile ceasefire into a more enduring truce. The negotiations are further strained by Israel’s broadening war with the Iranian-backed militia group in Lebanon. The conflicts have become increasingly intertwined as Iran insists that any potential truce in the war there must also quell the fighting in Lebanon.
Trump remained noncommittal about a timeline for settling the Iran conflict, saying the Strait of Hormuz might stay blocked through the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 7. He has insisted that Iran stop any efforts that could lead to a nuclear weapon and that the strait be reopened for shipments of oil and natural gas.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be (closed through Labor Day), but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” Trump said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father, is “involved” in peace talks, Trump added.
“They have a lot of respect for him,” the president said in the interview.
Trump said that Khamenei is not doing well due to wounds sustained in an airstrike, but “they say he’s giving approval because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time." Khamenei's father was killed in an airstrike when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February.
Meanwhile in the Persian Gulf region, Kuwait briefly shut its main airport Wednesday after Iranian drones hit a passenger terminal building, killing one person and wounding dozens. It was the latest in the back-and-forth attacks by Tehran and Washington that have tested the ceasefire.
The strike again brought home the risks to residents and travelers in Gulf countries that had considered themselves relative safe havens before the war, now in its fourth month.
The path toward a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remained unclear as hostilities continued in Lebanon.
An Israeli strike Wednesday hit a car on a busy highway just south of Beirut, hours before the second day of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington were set to take place.
The strike in Khaldeh came without warning, and it was not immediately clear if the person targeted was killed.
Israel and Lebanon on Monday reached a U.S.-brokered agreement in which Israel would not strike Beirut's southern suburbs and Hezbollah would end its attacks on northern Israel.
The agreement was made hours after Israel announced that it was going to launch strikes across the sprawling urban neighborhoods near the Lebanese capital in what would have been the most intense strikes since a nominal ceasefire went into effect on April 17.
The State Department said progress was made during the first day of talks on Tuesday. Lebanon hopes to widen the scope of the ceasefire so it becomes comprehensive across the country. Israel wants to disarm Hezbollah immediately before the Israeli military ends its operations in Lebanon and withdraws its troops from dozens of villages and towns.
Not long after the strike on Khaldeh, the Israeli military said it intercepted what it called a hostile aircraft coming from southern Lebanon, but it did not immediately blame Hezbollah. Hezbollah has not claimed a cross-border attack since the agreement.
Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continued, especially in and around the battered cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh. Two overnight strikes near Tyre, a coastal city, killed four Syrians and two Palestinians.
Israel warned the Christian neighborhoods in Tyre that Hezbollah members were among them. Many Lebanese Shiite Muslims fled to those areas in recent days because they were spared from the aerial bombardment along the Mediterranean coast.
After the warning, the Lebanese army deployed to the Christian district of Tyre in an effort to prevent Israeli attacks there and to show that Hezbollah has no armed presence in the area.
Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon days after the latest war was sparked on March 2, when Iran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets toward northern Israel in solidarity with Iran. Israeli troops have pushed deeper into Lebanon over the past week, as Hezbollah continues to claim rocket and drone attacks.
The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million people. According to Netanyahu’s office, at least 27 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.
Many residents of southern Lebanon remained in villages near the hostilities or returned to areas where strikes occurred after evacuation warnings.
The Al-Abdallah family returned to their home in Marwanieyh, which they left because they thought the village was unsafe following earlier strikes. A day later, two rockets hit the home, bringing down the three-story building and killing six family members, said the brother of Hassan Al-Abdallah, who was killed.
Ahmed Al-Abdallah, 13, was thrown away from the building by the force of the blasts and was the only member of his family to survive. His uncle, Eissa Al-Abdallah, said the boy has two broken legs and shrapnel wounds all over his body.
“What good is talking now? They are gone, and nothing will bring them back,” the uncle told The Associated Press in a phone call Tuesday. “This land costs blood.”
Boak reported from Washington.
This version has been updated to correct that the Iran war began at the end of February, not March.
United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, second from left, is joined by third from left: State Department Chief of Staff Dan Holler, Sr., State Department Counselor and Director, Office of Policy Planning Michael A. Needham and United States Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, as they meet with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador to the United States Nada Hamadeh, at the State Department, Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Israeli troops gather on the border with Lebanon in northern Israel, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
A nurse treats an injured man at the damaged Jabal Amel Hospital, following Monday's Israeli airstrike that was hit a nearby building, in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A man removes debris of a building that was hit Monday in an Israeli airstrike in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use an excavator, as they search for victims under the rubble of a building that was hit Monday in an Israeli airstrike in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, left, is joined by second from left: State Department Chief of Staff Dan Holler, Sr., State Department Counselor and Director, Office of Policy Planning Michael A. Needham and United States Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, as they meet with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador to the United States Nada Hamadeh, at the State Department, Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike that hit Burj al-Shamali village near the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
