MILAN — A partial knee replacement in her right leg wasn’t enough to stop Lindsey Vonn from pursuing her Olympic comeback. Neither will a recent left torn anterior cruciate ligament.
Vonn revealed Tuesday she suffered a completely ruptured ACL in a crash last week but remains focused on racing in the Milan-Cortina Olympics.
“If my knee is not stable, I can’t compete and at the moment, it is stable and it is strong,” Vonn said during a virtual news conference from Cortina d’Ampezzo. “… So far so good but we have to take it day by day. But if it remains the way it is now, I think I’m pretty solid.”
The 41-year-old Vonn said she skied Tuesday to test her knee. She is not in any pain and the swelling has gone down, but with bone bruising and additional meniscus damage, she still has to tackle full-speed downhill training runs beginning on Thursday before the downhill competition starts Sunday.
Vonn, who also has hopes to race in the super-G and the team event, said her “intention is to race everything.”
“I am not letting this slip through my fingers,” she said. “I’m going to do it, end of story. I’m not letting myself go down that path. I’m not crying. My head is high, I’m standing tall and I’m going to do my best, whatever the result is.”
Vonn is no stranger to knee injuries. She retired from the sport in 2019 and underwent a partial knee replacement in April 2024. Since announcing her comeback in November 2024, Vonn has already defied expectations by becoming the oldest skier to win a World Cup race when she won at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December and by making the Olympic team seven years after her retirement.
“I think if anyone can do it, it’s Lindsey,” U.S. teammate Bella Wright said of competing with a torn ACL. “I think we all know how strong of a skier she is, but I think that her mental game is what makes Lindsey Lindsey.”
Vonn was racing at a World Cup event Jan. 30 at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, when she lost control while attempting to land a jump. She slid into the safety netting and was later airlifted to a hospital. While a torn ACL typically sends athletes straight to the operating room, Vonn said surgery was not a discussion.
“The Olympics are the only thing that I’m thinking about,” Vonn said.
Despite the crash occurring so close to the Games, Vonn said her knee feels better now than when she has battled other injuries, including in 2019 when she competed at the world championships without a lateral collateral ligament and three tibial plateau fractures. She still won the bronze medal.
“I know what my chances [at the Olympics] were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same as it stands today,” Vonn said, “but I know there’s still a chance and as long as there’s a chance, I will try.”
Though we’re solidly into 2026, a trend has emerged on social media: Reminiscing on the year 2016.
Through throwback posts, people have been traveling back to the year when dog and flower crown Snapchat filters, Instagram eyebrows, the mannequin challenge and the Chainsmokers were everywhere.
But why, you may ask? On social media, 2016 is remembered as the last carefree era, a time when people posted whatever they wanted without overthinking it, when folks actually danced at parties instead of pointing their phones at the DJ booth to “capture content.”
2016 also brought many cultural milestones to L.A., from Kobe’s final game to the rise of selfie culture to all things Issa Rae. In the spirit of nostalgia, we’ve rounded up 16 moments that bring us back to that time. So let’s crank up Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” album and take a ride down memory lane, shall we?
Team owner Robert Kraft also failed to receive enough votes to be included in the Class of 2026, according to multiple media outlets. The inductees will be announced Thursday night at the NFL Honors ceremony in San Francisco.
Kraft was among the many people who expressed disbelief last week when the news surfaced that Belichick, who coached the Patriots to six Super Bowl victories and nine appearances in the NFL’s championship game, would not be entering the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
“Whatever perceptions may exist about any personal differences between Bill and me, I strongly believe Bill Belichick’s record and body of work speak for themselves,” Kraft said in a statement.
“He is the greatest coach of all time,” he added, “and he unequivocally deserves to be a unanimous first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer.”
Belichick and Kraft were part of a pool of candidates separate from that of the modern-era players. Belichick was this year’s finalist in the coaches category, while Kraft was the finalist in the contributors category. Three former players — Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood — were selected as finalists in the seniors category.
The 50 members of the Hall’s selection committee were allowed to vote for up to three of those five finalists. A maximum of three of those finalists can make it into the Hall by receiving at least 80% of the votes. If none of them gets 80%, then the person receiving the most votes makes the cut.
Kraft was first nominated for the Hall of Fame in 2013 and was a finalist for the first time this year. He has made it to the Super Bowl 11 times since buying the Patriots in 1994, more than any team owner in NFL history.
While Kraft may not have his name announced as a Hall of Famer this week, he could be getting a pretty decent consolation prize days later — if coach Mike Vrabel, quarterback Drake Maye and the rest of the current Patriots bring home the Lombardi Trophy by beating the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX.
Jordan Stolz will be trying to win multiple gold medals in speedskating the Milan Cortina Olympic Games.
(Morry Gash / Associated Press)
Since making his Olympic debut at 17, Stolz has become a star in international speedskating. He was the first man to win three world championships in one year in 2023 and repeated in the 500, 1,000 and 1,500 meters in 2024. He also competes in the team pursuit. U.S. speedskating has several medal contenders, including two-time Olympic bronze medalist Brittany Bowe and gold medalist Erin Jackson, who became the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at the Winter Olympics in 2022.
In the old days, during the 1980s and 1990s, when the Notre Dame-Crespi basketball rivalry was in peak form, it would get so hot in Notre Dame’s sold-out gym that they’d have to open windows from high above or sweat would be everywhere. Then came the invention of air conditioning, but Friday’s Mission League tournament semifinals were also super hot in terms of intensity and top performances.
Notre Dame (20-6) was able to pull out an 82-78 victory over Crespi on the strength of four consecutive pressure free throws made by standout junior guard NaVorro Bowman Jr. in the final 14 seconds to earn the Knights a championship game appearance against host Sierra Canyon on Wednesday night.
Crespi (19-11), which went on the road to upset Harvard-Westlake on Saturday, gave the Knights plenty to sweat about. The Celts held a 70-67 lead with 4:46 left until a Josiah Nance three tied the score and started a 10-0 Notre Dame run. A three by sophomore Zion Lanier off an assist from Bowman with 1:10 left put the Knights on top 77-70. The Celts were forced to foul and never got closer than two points.
Notre Dame has produced some outstanding high school guards in the past five years, from Dusty Stromer to Mercy Miller to Angelino Mark, who’s a freshman at Rutgers and showed up Monday night to root for his former teammates. But Bowman is headed to rarefied air. From making threes to powering his way through defenders to converting layups to making a seemingly impossible off-balance shot Monday, he has been in a class by himself.
He’s averaging 23 points and finished with 32 points, eight rebounds and six assists.
“He’s a special player,” Notre Dame coach Matt Sargeant said. “He shows up in big moments. He’s super mentally tough.”
His father was an NFL player, and Bowman has the family genes to perform at his best when the team needs him the most. Crespi was trying to cover him closely in the first half. Notre Dame players kept setting him screens, but Bowman was a little bit off, missing six shots. In the second half, he couldn’t be stopped.
“I had to lock in,” Bowman said.
The game was briefly halted early in the second quarter when the officials gave a warning to Sargeant and Crespi coach Derek Fisher to stay in their coaching boxes. Adding to the drama, Fisher’s wife was asked to leave the gym by Notre Dame officials. Both teams plowed through the distractions to put on a terrific second half that went back and forth.
Isaiah Barnes finished with 24 points and Cayman Martin had 20 points. Ilan Nikolov helped out Notre Dame with 19 points.
“This has been a rivalry for years,” Bowman said. “It feels good to win twice.”
Wednesday’s Mission League tournament final will also decide league MVP honors. The league champion gets to pick who the MVP is, so if Notre Dame wins, it surely will be Bowman.
Sierra Canyon 103, Loyola 74: The Trailblazers (22-1) received 30 points from Brandon McCoy and 23 points from Maxi Adams, both of whom were selected for the McDonald’s All-American Game in an announcement on Monday.
Mater Dei 92, Orange Lutheran 65: Luke Barnett scored 31 points to lead Mater Dei in an opening game of the Trinity League tournament.
JSerra 78, Servite 53: Ryan Doane had 16 points for the Lions.
Cleveland 61, Chatsworth 56: Harout Posheyan had 14 points and Charlie Adams 13 for Cleveland, which clinched the West Valley League championship. Aaron Krueger had 13 points for Chatsworth.
Brentwood 71, Viewpoint 56: Ethan Hill had 24 points and 20 rebounds for Brentwood.
Los Alamitos 68, Edison 61: Tyler Lopez led the way with 17 points.
Controversial director Brett Ratner, whose documentary “Melania,” about the first lady, premiered last week, found himself in the headlines once again over his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
A photograph, part of the trove of files released Friday in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Epstein, shows Ratner sitting on a couch with his arms wrapped around a woman, whose identity is concealed. She is sitting next to Epstein and a second woman, who is also redacted in the photo and is sitting at the far end of the couch next to the disgraced financier. It is unclear where the photo was taken or when.
The filmmaker is among several prominent individuals from the worlds of entertainment, technology, politics and business — including L.A. Olympics boss Casey Wasserman — who have turned up among the millions of files that the Justice Department has released.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in Manhattan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Ratner’s name also surfaces in a number of emails contained in the released files in which Epstein discusses his attempts to connect with the director and descriptions in which their social circles overlap.
It is not the first time Ratner turned up in Epstein’s orbit. In December, his photo appeared in an earlier batch of files the department released.
In the undated photograph, Ratner is seen seated, hugging a shirtless Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent and an Epstein associate.
Brunel died of an apparent suicide in 2022 in a French prison while awaiting trial on charges that he had raped a minor.
Ratner has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
A spokesperson for the director did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During a Monday appearance on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Ratner said that the recently released photograph was taken about 20 years ago. He said that the woman he is hugging was his then-fiancée, whom he declined to name, and that she had invited him to an event where the picture was taken.
“I’ve never been in contact with Jeffrey Epstein before that photo and never in contact with him after,” he said on the show.
Among the emails in which Ratner is mentioned, in December 2010, Epstein discusses a dinner he is having at “7:30” in which he says that he has invited Ratner but has not yet heard back.
In December 2010, it was widely reported that Epstein hosted a dinner at his Manhattan townhouse just months after he finished serving a prison sentence and house arrest for soliciting a minor for prostitution. The dinner was attended by a number of boldfaced names including Woody Allen and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.
A year later, Epstein’s assistant appears to email Ratner saying, “Jeffrey would like to speak with you regarding [redacted] could you please give us a call.” It is unclear whether Ratner followed up.
In another heavily redacted email from 2018, Epstein writes to someone saying: “Hi I’m Jeffrey. brett Ratner thought we should meet.” He follows up with a second email asking whether Ratner had spoken to this person yet.
During the Cannes film festival in 2012, celebrity superpublicist and ubiquitous presence on the awards circuit Peggy Siegal emailed Epstein that she was sitting with Ratner about to watch a Roman Polanski documentary, adding that “Brett says ‘hi’ and he loves you!”
In other gossipy emails Siegal sent to Epstein, she cites Ratner in her listing of which power brokers and celebrities are in attendance at various parties and who is staying on whose yacht in St. Barts (Ratner, she wrote, was staying with his business partner, the Australian billionaire James Packer).
Siegal’s relationship with the convicted pedophile came under renewed scrutiny in 2019 after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, particularly as she helped facilitate his return to society following his prison sentence.
“Had I known that he had been accused of abusing underage girls, I would not have maintained a friendship with him,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
Siegal could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Nov. 1, 2017 — the day The Times published its investigation in which six women accused Ratner of sexual misconduct — Epstein emailed lawyer Reid Weingarten: “brett ratner now oy.”
Ratner’s career was derailed nine years ago after The Times published detailed allegations against the director made by multiple women who accused him of harassment, groping and forced oral sex. Actor Olivia Munn claimed that Ratner masturbated in front of her when she delivered a meal to his trailer on the set of the 2004 film “After the Sunset.”
At the time, the director’s attorney Martin Singer rejected the women’s claims, saying that his client “vehemently denies the outrageous derogatory allegations that have been reported about him.”
Ratner’s agents at WME dropped him, as did his publicist, and projects were put on hold. Ratner parted ways with Warner Bros.
“I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved,” he said in a statement.
In 2020, Ratner became embroiled in another Hollywood sex scandal, involving British actor Charlotte Kirk.
In a sworn court declaration, Kirk said she was victimized by then-Warner Bros. Chief Executive Kevin Tsujihara, Ratner, Packer and Millennium Films CEO Avi Lerner, stating that the men “coerced me into engaging in ‘commercial sex’ for them and their business associates.”
Singer, who represented the men, “categorically and vehemently” denied any wrongdoing on the part of his clients.
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the federal government should “nationalize” elections, repeating — without evidence — his long-running claim that U.S. elections are beset by widespread fraud.
Speaking on a podcast hosted by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Trump said Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting the GOP.
“The Republican ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said.
The proposal would clash with the Constitution’s long-standing framework that grants states primary authority over election administration, and underscored Trump’s continued efforts to upend voting rules ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Trump, for example, lamented that Republicans have not been “tougher” on the issue, again asserting without evidence that he lost the 2020 election because undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Democrats.
“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election,” Trump said. “These people were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally, and it is amazing that the Republicans are not tougher on it.”
In his remarks, the president suggested that “some interesting things” may come out of Georgia in the near future. Trump did not divulge more details, but was probably teasing what may come after the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Ga.
Days after FBI agents descended on the election center, the New York Times reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was with agents at the scene when she called Trump on her cellphone. Trump thanked them for their work, according to the report, an unusual interaction between the president and investigators tied to a politically sensitive inquiry.
In the days leading up to the Georgia search, Trump suggested in a speech during the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, that criminal charges were imminent in connection to what he called a “rigged” 2020 election.
Georgia has been central to Trump’s 2020 claims. That’s where Trump called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2021, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the state’s results. Raffensperger refused, affirming that a series of reviews confirmed that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state.
Since returning to office a year ago, Trump has continued to aggressively pushed changes to election rules.
“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in October.
In Congress, several Republican lawmakers have backed legislation to require people provide proof of citizenship before they register to vote.
Some conservatives are using the elections bill as bargaining chip amid negotiations over a spending package that would end a partial government shutdown that began early Saturday.
“ONLY AMERICAN CITIZENS SHOULD BE VOTING IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS. This is common sense not rocket science,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X on Monday as negotiations were continuing.
Writer Neil Gaiman denied sexual misconduct allegations first brought forth against him over a year and a half ago in a statement released Monday.
Gaiman, the bestselling fantasy author behind “The Sandman” comic books, and novels and shows “American Gods” and “Good Omens,” called the allegations, which emerged in the summer of 2024, a “smear campaign” that are “simply and completely untrue.”
“These allegations, especially the really salacious ones, have been spread and amplified by people who seemed a lot more interested in outrage and getting clicks on headlines rather than whether things had actually happened or not,” Gaiman wrote.
Five women first accused the 65-year-old British author of sexual misconduct in the summer of 2024, appearing in the Tortoise Media podcast “Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman.” The women claimed Gaiman had them call him “master” during their alleged sexual encounters.
Eight women then accused the author of assault, abuse and coercion in an article published by New York magazine just over a year ago.
Scarlett Pavlovich, Gaiman’s former nanny, filed a lawsuit against the author and his estranged wife Amanda Palmer, almost exactly a year ago, accusing the couple of human trafficking. She alleged that she was brutally and repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by Gaiman while working for the couple without pay.
“Gaiman repeatedly physically and emotionally abused Scarlett, raping her vaginally and anally, humiliating her, forcing her into sexual conduct in front of Gaiman’s child, and forcing her to touch and lick feces and urine,” the complaint states. Gaiman called Pavlovich “slave” and ordered her to call him “master,” the complaint states.
The abuse took place while Pavlovich was providing babysitting services for the couple in New Zealand in 2022, according to the suit.
All other allegations against the author stemmed from the 1990s to 2022, when he was living in the United States, Britain and New Zealand.
The author has sold more than 50 million copies of his books worldwide, and many have received film and television adaptations over the years. His work drew a large female readership, typically uncommon for comic-book writers. The allegations clashed with the self-proclaimed feminist writer’s public persona.
Gaiman has spent the last year out of the spotlight, after publishing company Dark Horse Comics cut ties with him shortly after the New York magazine article was published. Gaiman was also dropped from various film and TV adaptations of his work, including the final season of Amazon’s “Good Omens” and the streamer’s new “Anansi Boys” TV series.
He was also left out of press for the final season of Netflix’s “The Sandman” last year and Disney halted development of “The Graveyard Book” months after the initial allegations.
The author last publicly addressed the allegations a day after the New York magazine article was released, and wrote he had stayed quiet “both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation.”
At the time, Gaiman wrote that he “could have and should have done so much better,” admitting that he “was obviously careless with people’s hearts and feelings, and that’s something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people’s.”
Gaiman’s most recent statement comes just days after an unidentified Substack user who goes by TechnoPathology posted the latest in a series of articles over the last year defending the fantasy author.
Gaiman claimed he hasn’t been in contact with the anonymous poster but would “like to thank them personally for actually looking at the evidence and reporting what they found, which is not what anyone else had done.”
He said “the actual evidence was dismissed or ignored” by most reporting, including “mountains” of “emails, text messages and video evidence that flatly contradict” the claims.
The author also announced in the statement that he’s been working on a book throughout the “strange, turbulent and occasionally nightmarish year and a half.” The project is his longest since the 450-plus-page “American Gods,” he said.
“It’s a rough time for the world,” Gaiman wrote. “I look at what’s happening on the home front and internationally, and I worry; and I am still convinced there are more good people out there than the other kind.”
History was made in more than one way at Sunday night’s 68th Grammy Awards.
Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” won album of the year — the first Spanish-language LP to take the Recording Academy’s highest honor. Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” was named record of the year, making Lamar the winningest rapper in Grammy history (and just the fourth artist to go back-to-back for the record prize). Then there were Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, who took song of the year with “Wildflower”; they’re now the only songwriters with three wins in that prestigious category.
To go by demographics, the ceremony clearly embodied the diversity gains the academy has been saying proudly are happening among its 15,000 voting members. But if new kinds of faces are becoming Grammy darlings, the music they’re being recognized for still upholds many of the academy’s old values. A night for making history was also a night for reveling in it.
Take “Luther,” a soulful hip-hop slow jam built on a prominent sample of Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s 1982 rendition of a love song Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell recorded in the late 1960s — an intricate piece of lineage-making meant to bridge multiple generations.
Olivia Dean performs.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“First and foremost, let’s give a shout-out to the late, great Luther Vandross,” the producer Sounwave said as he, Lamar, SZA and the song’s other creators accepted their award at Crypto.com Arena. (Before they made it onstage, Cher misread the card identifying “Luther” as record of the year and said that Vandross himself had won.) Lamar added, “This is what music is about,” and expressed his gratitude for being allowed “the privilege” to use Vandross’ music as long as he and SZA promised the singer’s estate not to curse on their record.
You can hear a similar reverence for those who came before in Olivia Dean, the 26-year-old British singer named best new artist on the strength of her hit “The Art of Loving” LP, which looks back to the gleaming pop-soul of Diana Ross and Whitney Houston.
Even Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper and singer who became a superstar at the bleeding edge of reggaeton and Latin trap, achieved his Grammy breakthrough with something of a throwback move: “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is an exactingly arranged tribute to his native island, with elements of Puerto Rican folk styles such as bomba and plena and more hand-played instrumentation than he utilized for 2022’s sleek “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which scored a Grammy nomination for album of the year but lost to “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles (who, as it happens, presented the album prize Sunday).
Part of Bad Bunny’s success this year can be attributed to the fact that he’s a far bigger celebrity than he was three years ago; indeed, his Grammy triumph impressively sets up the halftime performance he’ll give this coming weekend at Super Bowl LX. But not unlike Beyoncé’s rootsy “Cowboy Carter,” which finally brought her a win for album of the year in 2025 after a number of outrage-inducing defeats, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is also primo Grammy bait: a work steeped in tradition from a natural innovator.
SZA backstage.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
For years, the Grammys’ rearview gaze used to bum me out — and, to be honest, as lovely as Eilish’s “Wildflower” is, her song of the year win with the tender acoustic ballad felt like a failure of imagination among voters I wish had recognized the hurtling exuberance of “Golden,” from Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters.” (“Golden” did take the prize for song written for visual media, which made it the first K-pop tune to win a Grammy.)
Yet something about Sunday’s ceremony made it hard to get too worked up about all the historicizing. Perhaps it was how plainly yet passionately many artists used their time onstage to speak about the issues pressing on us right now. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say: ICE out,” Bad Bunny told the crowd as he accepted an award for música urbana album. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
Lady Gaga on the red carpet.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Eilish said, “No one is illegal on stolen land.” Dean pointed out that she’s the granddaughter of an immigrant and that “those people deserve to be celebrated.”
I was also moved by how personal so much of the music felt — a cry of imperfection like Lola Young’s “Messy,” for instance, which she performed by herself on piano and which won pop solo performance in an upset over the likes of Lady Gaga and Sabrina Carpenter. “I don’t know what I’m gonna say because I don’t have any speech prepared,” she yelled into the microphone as she received her trophy. “Obviously, I don’t — it’s messy, do you know what I mean?”
Weirdly for a show with yesterday so heavily on its mind, a tribute to the late R&B trailblazers Roberta Flack and D’Angelo was a disappointment, with Lauryn Hill as bandleader moving way too quickly (in way too short an allotted time) through songs that require real space to unfurl.
That’s what Justin Bieber had for the evening’s most striking performance: a slow and radically stripped-down rendition of his song “Yukon” that he sang wearing only boxer shorts and socks, accompanying himself with a scratchy electric guitar riff he fed through a looping station.
“Yukon” is from Bieber’s impressive “Swag” album, which he released last year after a lengthy stretch in the pop-star wilderness; it’s an LP, kind of like “Messy,” about learning to forgive yourself for your flaws, and here he sang “Yukon” like a guy who’d figured out — maybe a guy figuring out — how to build a life outside the punishing expectations of celebrity. The music had the past in it, of course, but didn’t feel constrained by it.
BOGOTA, Colombia — President Trump is scheduled to host one of his most vocal regional critics, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, at the White House in a high-stakes meeting analysts suggest could redefine the immediate future of bilateral relations.
Petro has called Trump an “accomplice to genocide” in the Gaza Strip, while the U.S. president called him a “drug lord,” an exchange of insults that escalated with U.S. sanctions against Petro, threats of reciprocal tariffs, the withdrawal of financial aid to Colombia and even the suggestion of a military attack.
Tensions eased in early January when Trump accepted a call from Petro, saying it was a “great honor to speak with the president of Colombia,” who called him to “explain the drug situation and other disagreements.”
The two leaders are expected to meet Tuesday to address strategies for curbing drug trafficking and boosting bilateral trade, while potentially discussing joint operations against Colombian rebel groups fueled by the cocaine trade.
“There’s a lot of space here for mutual cooperation and shared success,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia expert at the International Crisis Group.
Combating drug trafficking
Decades of security cooperation once made Colombia the primary U.S. ally in the region, but that relationship has recently faced unprecedented strain.
The two countries have opposing views on how to address the problem of illicit drugs. While the U.S. remains anchored in aggressive eradication and supply-side control, Petro advocates for interdiction, demand reduction and providing economic alternatives for small-scale coca farmers.
In 2025, the U.S. signaled its dissatisfaction with Petro’s anti-drug policy by adding Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in three decades.
Since then, Petro has focused on highlighting the record seizures and claiming that his government has managed to halt the growth of coca leaf crops. However, Colombia’s coca crop has reached historic highs, as the government shifts away from eradication. According to United Nations research, potential cocaine production has surged by at least 65% during the Petro administration, to more than 3,000 tons per year.
The Venezuela factor
The sudden detente between Petro and Trump followed a period of extreme volatility.
Tensions peaked after the Jan. 3 U.S. raid in Caracas that captured then-President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Petro denounced the operation as an act of “aggression” and a “kidnapping,” blasting the U.S. for what he called an “abhorrent” violation of Latin American sovereignty and a “spectacle of death” comparable to Nazi Germany’s 1937 carpet bombing of Guernica, Spain.
Despite recently calling for Maduro’s return to face Venezuelan justice, Petro’s tone softened significantly during a subsequent hourlong call with Trump, paving the way for their upcoming summit.
Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes region at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank, believes that Trump accepted Petro’s call partly to quell questions about the operation in Venezuela and the growing concern over warnings issued to countries like Colombia.
She also said she considers it likely that both presidents will agree on actions against drug trafficking and a joint fight against the National Liberation Army guerrilla group, which is most active on the border with Venezuela.
‘A quiet, effective cooperation’
Signaling a thaw in relations just days before the White House summit, the Colombian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that repatriation flights for deportees from the U.S. have officially resumed.
Images released by the ministry showed citizens arriving at El Dorado airport — a stark contrast to the diplomatic crisis a year ago. At that time, Petro triggered a near trade war by refusing U.S. military deportation flights over “dignity” concerns, only relenting after Trump threatened 50% tariffs and visa cancellations.
“A good outcome [of the meeting] would be that the relationship is cordial, pragmatic, and that the two countries can get back to what they have been doing for years, which is a quiet, effective cooperation on shared security threats,” Dickinson said.
“The less noise there is around the relationship the better.”
After five seasons as football coach at Orange Lutheran, Rod Sherman is leaving. The school announced Monday that “effective today, Rod Sherman has concluded his tenure as head football coach.”
Last week, there was speculation of Sherman’s future after a social media post indicated he was out as coach. In response to a text, Sherman said he was still head coach.
Sherman, who also helped his wife, Kristen, coach flag football at Orange Lutheran, went 3-9 last season, including two forfeit losses. During the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs, the Lancers upset No. 1-seeded St. John Bosco.
His team won a Southern Section Division 2 championship in 2021 and went 33-29 overall in five seasons. It was his second stint at Orange Lutheran. He had been an assistant coach and athletic director starting in the 1990s when Jim Kunau was head coach, then left to be a head coach in Colorado. The school indicated it will launch a search for Sherman’s replacement.
His wife is still listed as Orange Lutheran’s flag football coach but that is expected to change, too.
The team’s general manager, Kyla Laulhere, and offensive line coach Chris Ward will run the program until a new head coach is finalized. Ward, a graduate of Mater Dei and UCLA, has no interest in being head coach. Offensive coordinator Austin Pettis, an Orange Lutheran graduate, could be a top candidate.
Coaching in the Trinity League has become similar to a college or NFL team. The expectations are so high that not winning at a top level can result in a coaching change within three to five years. JSerra also made a change this past season. Santa Margarita had a first-year coach this past year, alumnus Carson Palmer, who won a Division 1 and state title.
SACRAMENTO — The year opened with President Trump declaring that “the fraud investigation of California has begun,” a move that quickly set off a barrage of allegations from his administration and Republican allies questioning the integrity of state programs and the leadership of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The accusations, amplified across social media and conservative outlets, have pushed California and its Democratic leadership to the center of a broader national political fight over waste, fraud and abuse.
Newsom has dismissed the claims as politically driven, arguing that the administration is singling out Democratic-led states while ignoring similar problems elsewhere. The governor also responded by highlighting fraud cases in Republican-led states and by criticizing Trump’s own record and business dealings.
Against that backdrop, it has become increasingly difficult to separate substantiated fraud from fabricated or recycled claims, to distinguish old findings from newly raised allegations and to determine who can credibly claim credit for uncovering wrongdoing — all amid a toxic and deeply polarized political climate.
Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC and UC Berkeley, said allegations of malfeasance in California is a particularly ripe target for Republicans because Democrats have controlled the state Legislature and governor’s office for years.
Democrats hold a supermajority in both the Assembly and the Senate, meaning they hold at least two-thirds of seats in both houses, and not a single Republican has been elected to statewide office in California since 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner were reelected.
“There is no shared responsibility here for Republicans,” Schnur said. “If you had a state in which Republicans were actually competitive, they would bear some responsibility for these problems.”
Audits and prosecutions show that California has experienced its share of fraud, particularly in complex programs involving emergency aid, healthcare and unemployment insurance. The state paid out billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the California State Auditor has issued repeated warnings about state agencies that are “at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement.”
Along with recycling a barrage of years-old allegations of financial malfeasance in California and other Democratic states, the Trump administration elevated claims of child-care fraud in Minnesota last month, prompting Gov. Tim Walz to drop his reelection plans to focus on the growing political crisis in his state.
Fraud allegations are increasingly being deployed as a political weapon against Newsom, a leading Trump critic and a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender. Politicians have always railed against government waste, fraud and abuse, but now those issues are being “weaponized into a partisan issue,” Schnur said.
For the public, it can be hard to discern the truth. Here is a look at three of the central fraud allegations — and what the evidence shows.
Child-care funding
President Trump used his social media platform, Truth Social, to accuse California of widespread fraud last month, drawing a link between his administration’s investigation into child-care spending in Minnesota and programs in the Golden State, and announcing a major federal “fraud investigation” into the state’s actions.
“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible???” wrote Trump, using a disparaging nickname for the governor.
The Trump administration then moved to freeze $10 billion in federal funding for child care in five Democrat-led states — California, New York, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota — over “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.
The letters did not detail evidence to support the claims. The governor’s office dismissed the accusation as “deranged.”
A federal judge subsequently blocked the Trump administration temporarily from freezing those funds. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick said he didn’t understand why the government was making it harder for states to access child-care money before any wrongdoing had been discovered.
“It just seems like the cart before the horse,” he said.
Hospice funding
Days after Trump’s social media post about alleged corruption under Newsom’s watch, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, held a joint news conference on public benefits fraud, but offered few details about the scope of their investigation.
The officials accused “foreign actors” of draining billions from public healthcare programs in California, referencing bogus hospice providers first exposed by The Times in 2020 and later investigated by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.
Essayli placed the blame for bad actors squarely on Newsom, calling him “the fraud king.”
Weeks later, Oz released a video of himself walking in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Van Nuys as he questioned why dozens of alleged hospices were operating along four blocks. He blamed the “Russian Armenian Mafia” and made his remarks while pointing to an Armenian bakery, prompting accusations of racism from the Armenian community.
Newsom’s office last week hit back by highlighting state efforts to fight fraud, while pointing to a 2025 Axios story on the Trump administration’s decision to pause a federal program to crack down on bad hospice operators.
Bonta’s office said it has filed criminal charges against 109 individuals over hospice fraud-related offenses and launched dozens of civil investigations.
Newsom, speaking at a Bloomberg event Thursday in San Francisco, said the allegations have been recycled and misrepresented. Later that day, he filed a civil rights complaint against “baseless and racist allegations against Armenian Americans in California” made by Oz.
“Hospice, we’ve been after that for years and years before Oz was even on the scene,” Newsom said. “In 2021, we did a moratorium on new hospice programs, 280 we shuttered.”
The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services said earlier this year that — in addition to California — Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Ohio and Georgia are being monitored following allegations of fraud and waste.
EDD fraud
The state’s Employment Development Department, known as EDD, reported in 2021 that approximately $20 billion was lost due to fraud, largely in the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.
While unemployment fraud was rampant across country during the pandemic as governments rushed to provide support, California’s problems stood out.
The state itself admitted in 2021 that it failed to take precautions that had been implemented in other states, including using software to identify suspicious applications and cross-checking benefit claims against personal data on state prison inmates.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) said department mismanagement and fraud often overlap and cited EDD as a prime example.
“When there is a lack of internal controls, a lack of diligence of how funds are used, that makes it easier for those who want to take advantage of the system to profit,” Kiley said.
EDD’s own tracker said the state has recovered more than $6 billion in stolen funds and opened more than 2,300 unemployment fraud investigations since the pandemic began, leading to nearly 1,000 arrests and more than 670 convictions.
The department said it has expanded fraud enforcement through partnerships with law enforcement, new identity-verification technology and a dedicated fraud task force.
But, reports of mismanagement at EDD have continued. A recent audit also found EDD wasted $4.6 million by paying monthly service fees for more than 6,200 cellphones that went unused for at least four consecutive months between November 2020 and April 2025 — including some devices that were inactive for more than four years.
At the same time, “EDD continues to have high rates of improper [unemployed insured] payments, including fraudulent payments, and it needs to improve the customer service it provides to UI claimants,” another report found.
What’s next?
Newsom said there is a reason the Trump administration is not pointing to fraud in Republican-led states.
“This is about polarization, politicalization, weaponization,” Newsom said Thursday.
Asked what the Trump administration will discover in probing California for fraud, Newsom said investigators will find a state “taking that issue very, very seriously.”
“We absolutely are here to be a partner, to go after waste, fraud and abuse,” Newsom said.
State audits show vulnerabilities persist. The California State Auditor has repeatedly flagged Medi-Cal eligibility discrepancies that have exposed the state to billions of dollars in questionable payments, while also warning that weaknesses in information security across state agencies remain a high-risk issue.
Curtailing waste could be particularly important during the upcoming year as California and its state-funded programs head into a period of volatile fiscal uncertainty, driven largely by events in Washington and on Wall Street. Newsom’s own optimistic budget proposal projects a $3-billion state deficit for the next fiscal year despite no major new spending initiatives.
It will also be a key issue in upcoming elections. A group of Republicans running for statewide offices, including California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, pegged that the state’s annual estimate of fraud, waste and abuse across state programs at $250 billion, an estimate that includes unverified public tips submitted to a campaign-run website.
The group cited the estimate as justification for creating their own “California Department of Government Efficiency,” or CAL DOGE, a nod to a similarly named federal initiative promoted by Elon Musk that generated headlines but has not produced documented savings or formal audit findings. CAL DOGE is not currently a state department, despite its name.
Who deserves credit when fraud is prosecuted has also become a point of contention. After a man was arrested last month for fleecing L.A.’s homeless services program for $23 million, critics of Newsom were quick to blame the governor. Newsom responded by saying the case was uncovered by local investigators working with law enforcement, which he added is “exactly the kind of accountability and oversight the state has pushed for.” (The Los Angeles district attorney’s office ran a parallel, independent investigation.)
Essayli responded on social media by saying no one made an arrest until Trump and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi “appointed me to investigate and charge fraud offenses in California.”
Kiley, the California Republican congressman, said despite the partisan fighting over fraud, the issue should rally both parties.
The “easiest” way to solve the state’s budget problems and improve government services for taxpayers is to “minimize and eventually eliminate fraud,” said Kiley.
DO YOU love theme parks? Well, you could visit numerous across the UK for the price of just one ticket.
Merlin attractions has introduced an offer where guests can stay at one of their resorts and will receive an Essential Merlin Annual Pass (MAP).
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If you stayed at Alton Towers for one night for example, you would get a year pass to visit the other Merlin attractionsCredit: AlamyOr you could stay at Legoland Windsor Resort where there is a knight-themed roomCredit: Legoland Windsor Resort
Guests need to book between February 3 and March 1, for a stay at one of Merlin’s onsite hotels for anytime between now and June 26 and in return will be given a pass to visit Merlin attractions for free, for a year.
For example, you could stay onsite at Legoland Windsor Resort, Alton Towers Resort, Chessington World of Adventures, Thorpe Park or Warwick Castle.
Known as the ‘Stay For A Night, Play For A Year’ offer, each guest will get a year-long pass to over 20 attractions.
Stays at many of the resorts are themed and often include breakfast as well.
If you wanted somewhere unique to stay, you could head to Alton Towers’ Stargazing Pods, which are set around a village green and have telescopes to see the night sky.
A one-night stay in one of these pods for a family of four costs from £160 and includes free parking.
Alternatively, if you want to visit Legoland Windsor Resort, there is the Woodland Village, Resort Hotel and Castle Hotel.
Inside the Castle Hotel guests can experience a world of magic, with rooms themed around knights, wizards and kingdoms far far away.
Some attraction accommodation sites also have exclusive perks such as nine-hole golf at Alton Towers Resort or events such as Legoland Windsor Resort’s 30th birthday bash.
When looking for a place to stay, make sure to book through the direct resort booking portal only as the offer is not available on third-party websites or with non-Merlin owned hotels.
Legoland Windsor Resort also has a Woodland Village which opened a couple of years agoCredit: Alamy
For example, Chessington World of Adventures’ portal shows Hilton hotels nearby, but the offer will not apply to stays at these hotels.
Instead you should stay at the Azteca and Safari Resort Hotels onsite, which are especially ideal for fans of Julia Donaldson as there is a Gruffalo themed room.
You could also see breathtaking views of the capital on the London Eye or venture into the past at The London Dungeon.
Alternatively, head to Cadbury World in Birmingham, where visitors can head on a self-guided tour, learning about chocolate-making and the brand’s history.
In total, the experience has 14 interactive zones.
Passholders will also get 10 per cent off of Fastrack products, as well as food and drink.
What’s it like to stay at Legoland Windsor Resort?
SUN REPORTER Owen Anslow stayed at Legoland Windsor Resort and here’s what he thought…
Tucked away in the trees of Legoland Windsor Resort is the wonderful new Woodland Village, home to 130 lodges set in cute cul-de-sacs, all with their own mini playgrounds.
This charming cabin retreat, amid lush greenery, was our home for the weekend (my wife, myself and our very own woodland critter, aged eight).
Set against the backdrop of theme park craziness, the Woodland Village is a calm oasis where parents can recharge batteries – and refill wine glasses.
The £35million development is Legoland’s first carbon-neutral accommodation – a fact emphasised by the wooden keycards you collect at check-in.
And in true Legoland fashion, our cabin is gloriously childish and bright in its design – like a giant version of something my son would craft from the avalanche of bricks strewn throughout the house.
The standard lodges sleep five people, with a double bed in the main room and the kids’ area next door – complete with your standard Lego-making pit, TV and bunk beds.
Premium lodges are slightly bigger and sleep seven, with a mezzanine area overlooking a lounge section, and around the back of the village are 20 trendy glamping barrels.
The clever Woodland Village AR Experience kept our boy busy for a while, bringing to life plants and animals on the cabin walls, while Mum and Dad snuck in some downtime on the decking outside.
Everything in the Woodland Village is so enchanting that you’d be forgiven for wanting to stay there all weekend instead of heading to the theme park.
One night’s B&B at Legoland Woodland Village is from £69pp, based on four people sharing a Woodland Barrel and including entry to the Legoland Windsor theme park and a round of Legoland Adventure golf.
The seventh in an occasional seriesof profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.
Tai Babilonia’s life changed forever when she was asked to hold a boy’s hand.
At first she resisted.
“I didn’t want to,” she remembered. “He’s a yucky boy.”
But Mabel Fairbanks, Babilonia’s skating coach, wouldn’t take no for an answer, bribing the 8-year-old with stickers and a Barbie doll if she would just reach out and grab the hand of 10-year-old Randy Gardner.
It would be another 40 years before she let go.
By then Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner had become one of the most decorated pairs in U.S. figure skating history, their individual names eventually melding into one.
“My last name is ‘and Randy,’” Babilonia said. “And I embrace it.”
U.S. pairs figure skating duo of Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979.
(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)
As a pair “Tai and Randy” won five U.S. championships, medaled in three world championships and qualified for the Olympics twice, all before Babilonia’s 21st birthday. Their success also pushed open doors that had long been closed since Babilonia, Black on her mother’s side and part Filipino and Native American on her dad’s side, was the first U.S. skater from any of those ethnic groups to compete in the Olympics or win a world title.
Among those to follow her were Debi Thomas, a two-time U.S. champion and a bronze medalist at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and Elizabeth Punsalan, a two-time Olympian and five-time national champion in ice dancing.
At about the same time Babilonia and Gardner were moving from competitive skating and the Olympics to the Ice Capades, another young girl was just starting to pursue her own Olympic dreams. Tiffany Chin would go on to win a national championship, two Skate America titles and just miss a medal in the 1984 Winter Games, retiring before she was old enough to legally drink.
In that brief but brilliant career, Chin changed U.S. figure skating forever. She was the country’s first Asian American national champion and first Chinese American Winter Olympian, paving the way for Olympic medalists Kristi Yamaguchi, Nathan Chen, Michelle Kwan and siblings Alex and Maia Shibutani.
After retiring from skating, Babilonia, now 66, dabbled in coaching and sportswear design, became a motivational speaker, an activist and, most importantly, a grandmother. But the legacy Babilonia and Chin created will be on display in Italy this month when the U.S. fields one of the most eclectic Olympic figure skating teams ever, with 12 of the 16 athletes having immigrant parents.
Five of the six singles skaters — Alysa Liu, Isabeau Levito, Ilia Malinin, Maxim Naumov and Andrew Torgashev — are first-generation Americans while the other, women’s national champion Amber Glenn, identifies as pansexual. Pairs skaters Emily Chan, Spencer Howe and Ellie Kam and ice dancers Anthony Ponomarenko, Christina Carreira, Vadym Kolesnik and Emilea Zingas are also immigrants or first-generation Americans while Madison Chock, the reigning Olympic champion in ice dancing, has Hawaiian, Chinese, German, English, Irish, French and Dutch ancestry.
At a time when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being dismantled, immigrants are being attacked and diversity is labeled a weakness, America’s Olympic figure skaters have come to mirror the country at large.
“It’s wonderful and so important,” said Babilonia. “Especially now.”
Nearly 60 years after Babilonia and Gardner skated together for the first time, the decision to pair them seems inspired, even providential.
It was neither. Fairbanks, Babilonia learned later, simply needed a couple to skate in a club show at the Culver City Ice Arena.
“We just happened to be similar in height. And I guess we were cute,” Babilonia said last month during a lengthy interview at the Colonial Revival-style mansion in the West Adams District that houses the LA84 Foundation.
Gardner was already an excellent skater, as strong and athletic as he was outgoing and friendly; Babilonia was shy and far less steady on the ice. But that wasn’t the only thing that made their pairing unusual.
Gardner was white and Babilonia was Black. And in 1968, asking them to hold hands in public was scandalous, even in Culver City. However, Fairbanks, a legendary coach who had spent much of her life pushing back against convention, didn’t see color. She focused only on talent.
Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia roller skating together in May 1979.
(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)
“Mabel was the coach who taught all races, Hispanic, Black, mixed, Jewish,” Babilonia said. “Mabel broke down that wall.”
Fairbanks, who was Black and Seminole, was born in the Deep South at a time when ice rinks were segregated. Even after moving to New York, where she bought a pair of skates for $1 at a pawn shop, then taught herself how to use them, she skated mostly in nightclub shows, where she was limited to jumps and moves that wouldn’t show up the white skaters.
She soon moved to Los Angeles, touring internationally with the Ice Capades and Ice Follies, before becoming a coach and mentoring hundreds of young skaters, including Olympic medalists Scott Hamilton, Yamaguchi and Thomas.
“If it weren’t for Mabel Fairbanks, you wouldn’t have any color in the predominantly white skating world,” said Babilonia, who is shopping a biopic of Fairbanks, who died in 2001.
“People don’t really know her. She’s like a hidden figure.”
Yet three years after Fairbanks made Tai and Randy a pair, they left her for John Nicks, who was coaching at the Paramount Iceland.
“He took our skating to a whole different level. And it happened really quick,” said Babilonia, who still calls her former coach Mr. Nicks. “That’s when we started winning and improving and just really became a great pair of skaters.”
Two years later Babilonia and Gardner won the U.S. junior nationals and three years after that they won the first of five national championships, qualifying for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Austria, where they finished fifth. Gardner wasn’t old enough to vote and Babilonia didn’t have a driver’s license. But together they were holding their own against the best pairs skaters in the world.
“Such an incredible year,” Babilonia said. “We won our first U.S. title, became Olympians, I got my learner’s permit and had a crush on Peter Frampton.”
But they were just getting started. Gardner and Babilonia wouldn’t lose in the U.S. championships for the rest of the decade. And 11 months before the next Olympics, they won their first world championship, then celebrated by skating for the queen of England at Wembley Stadium.
Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner compete at the World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo in March 1977.
(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)
With the Winter Games coming back to the U.S. at Lake Placid, the Americans were favored to keep the Soviet Union off the top step of the medal platform for the first time since 1960, the last time the Olympics were held in the U.S.
Only they never made it to the ice.
Nicks had moved his skaters from Paramount to the Ice Capades Chalet, a buff-colored concrete-block building in Santa Monica, five blocks from the Pacific Ocean. During a training session there, Gardner inflamed a groin injury that had plagued him for months.
It got worse when they got to Lake Placid and Gardner had a Xylocaine injection, but the anesthetic was too strong and it only made things worse; the pain was gone, but now Gardner couldn’t feel his leg at all. They pulled out of the competition moments before it was supposed to begin.
The next morning, with the skaters, their parents and their coach perched on the stage at a high school auditorium for a hastily arranged news conference, hundreds of reporters tried to get a shattered Babilonia to turn on her partner. She didn’t take the bait.
“She totally had my back,” Gardner said. “There was so much camaraderie and trust and love between the two of us. She understood that it was a major injury and it was devastating. It changed the path of our career.”
“I’m not going to say it ruined it,” he added. “It just changed the path.”
Two months after leaving Lake Placid in sorrow, Gardner and Babilonia, who had gone from “Tai and Randy” to the “Heartbreak Kids,” turned pro, signing a three-year contract with the Ice Capades that included endorsement deals.
They never skated in the Olympics again. And while the money was good, the pace was punishing, with eight shows a week on a 30-week tour.
“You’re performing every night, weekends two shows a day,” Babilonia said. “If you don’t pace yourself, which I didn’t, it will rock your world in a negative way.
“You can’t do all the tricks you did as a teenager every night.”
Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner skating in 1979, the same year they won the pairs world championship.
(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)
Babilonia had never truly dealt with the emotional pain of the Olympic withdrawal. Now she was also dealing with the strain and fatigue of the ice show schedule as well as an identity crisis.
“Randy figured out how to put Tai and Randy in a box and leave them there and go on with his life,” Babilonia said. “I didn’t know how to separate them from me.”
So she sought answers in amphetamines, heavy drinking and a number of brief but high-profile romances before hitting rock bottom just before her 29th birthday, when she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her recovery started seven months later with an emotional first-person account of her fall in People magazine.
“I did it because I knew I had to,” Babilonia, still fit and youthful, said of a confession in which she blamed no one but herself. “I had to stop what I was doing and this was part of my recovery process. I couldn’t say yes quick enough.
“Something inside of me said, ‘This is your moment. Get it out. It may help some people,’” she continued. “And it did.”
The magazine cover story was followed 19 months later by the prime-time NBC movie “On Thin Ice,” which went over much of the same territory, with Babilonia and Gardner playing themselves in many of the skating scenes.
“It took me a while to watch the whole thing. Some scenes were hard,” said Babilonia, who speaks in a confident, careful cadence. “It was just part of my recovery process.”
She’s been sober 17 years and her relationship with Gardner, who came out as gay in 2006 — also in People magazine — has lasted longer than her marriage. Along the way, Babilonia matured from the shy withdrawn child who refused to hold a boy’s hand into a bold, strong and confident woman.
“She’s totally mature. She is worldly. And she’s an advocate for equality in sports, people of color and all that,” said Gardner, 68, whose home in Manhattan Beach is about 10 miles from the Culver City ice rink where he and Babilonia learned to skate once stood.
The former teammates still meet at least once a month and talk on the phone frequently, although they haven’t been on the ice together since Gardner underwent surgery on his back a year ago.
Flames from a olympic torch passes in front of Tai Babilonia at LA84 Foundation in January.
(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)
When she stopped skating Babilonia tried coaching, but that didn’t work because she didn’t know how to teach the moves she had so easily mastered. Instead, she launched a clothing line, became a motivational speaker, volunteered with various groups promoting diversity on and off the ice, co-hosted a TV interview show taped in Santa Barbara and, for the last nine years, has co-hosted a holiday skate party for kids from the Union Rescue Mission. She also continues to skate in charity events.
All that in addition to her work with Atoy Wilson, a former U.S. novice champion, on the Mabel Fairbanks biopic, tentatively titled “Black Ice: The Mabel Fairbanks Story.”
“I want to try everything,” she said. “I want to experience everything.”
But her real job, she quickly adds, is being a grandmother to Ryett, her son’s 2-year-old boy in Arizona.
“I love being a grandmother,” she said. “Absolutely love it.”
She is also a prolific presence on social media, where most of her posts are either trenchant comments on the politics of today or black-and-white photos from back in the day, when she and Gardner — Tai and Randy — were winning medals and opening doors, helping to change U.S. figure skating forever.
“I appreciate what we did more as I get older,” Babilonia said. “We were pretty good and we made our mark. We worked hard. We became two-time Olympians. We met the queen of England.
At this year’s Grammy ceremony, the Recording Academy called on artists Post Malone, Lauryn Hill and Reba McEntire to honor the musicians who died last year.
The annual In Memoriam segment paid tribute to artists including Roberta Flack, D’Angelo and Ozzy Osbourne. From heavy punk numbers to jazzy R&B ballads and solemn country-infused performances, the academy celebrated those who have shaped music, whether the artistry or the business.
It started off with a candlelit tribute from McEntire, Brandy Clark and Lukas Nelson. The trio performed McEntire’s “Trailblazer.” McEntire lost her late stepson, talent manager Brandon Blackstock, last year. As the performance continued, images of people like Connie Francis, Roy Ayers, Joe Ely and Ace Frehley appeared on the screen behind.
Then Post Malone, backed by Andrew Watt, Slash, Duff McKagan and Chad Smith — all artists who worked with Osbourne over the past few years — covered Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” complete with bursts of fire and endless guitar riffs. The camera continued to pan over to teary-eyed Kelly and Sharon Osbourne, daughter and wife of the Black Sabbath frontman, who attended the ceremony.
Then, it was Hill’s turn to pay tribute to late R&B pioneer D’Angelo. Behind dark shades and covered in diamonds, the singer started off by saying, “Make time for the people you love while you can.”
The singer was backed by a massive band and started to sing her own track “Nothing Even Matters.” She was soon joined by musicians Lucky Daye, Leon Thomas and Jon Batiste. As they continued to blend the sounds of “Brown Sugar” and “Devil’s Pie,” the giant ensemble shifted gears to pay tribute to Flack.
Throughout the remainder of the segment, Hill acted as a conductor, calling on each musician to sing their parts. They were soon joined by Chaka Khan and John Legend, who sang “Where Is the Love?” By the end of the performance, the setlist came back to the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” The entire stadium erupted in applause, got on their feet and started to dance along with everyone on stage.
In between the live performance, the academy also showed video tributes for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and Sly Stone.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Carlos Alcaraz is 22, he’s the youngest man ever to win all four of the major titles in tennis, and he had to achieve what no man previously has done to complete the career Grand Slam in Australia.
The top-ranked Alcaraz dropped the first set of the Australian Open final in 33 minutes Sunday as Novak Djokovic went out hard in pursuit of an unprecedented 25th major title, but the young Spaniard dug deep to win 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-5.
“Means the world to me,” Alcaraz said. “It is a dream come true for me.”
Djokovic had won all 10 of his previous finals at Melbourne Park and, despite being 38, gave himself every chance of extending that streak to 11 when he needed only two sets to win.
Carlos Alcaraz celebrates after defeating Novak Djokovic to win the Australian Open on Sunday.
(Asanka Brendon Ratnayake / Associated Press)
Alcaraz rose to the challenge.
“Tennis can change on just one point. One point, one feeling, one shot can change the whole match completely,” he said. “I played well the first set, but you know, in front of me I had a great and inspired Novak, who was playing great, great shots.”
A couple of unforced errors from Djokovic early in the second set gave Alcaraz the confidence.
He scrambled to retrieve shots that usually would be winners for Djokovic, and he kept up intense pressure on the most decorated player in men’s tennis history. There were extended rallies where each player hit enough brilliant shots to usually win a game.
Djokovic has made an art form of rallying from precarious positions. Despite trailing two sets to one, he went within the width of a ball in the fourth set’s ninth game of turning this final around.
After fending off six break points in the set, he exhorted the crowd when he got to 30-30. The crowd responded with chants of “Nole, Nole, Nole!”
When Djokovic earned a breakpoint chance — his first since the second set — he whipped up his supporters again. But when Djokovic sent a forehand long on the next point, Alcaraz took it as a reprieve.
A short forehand winner, a mis-hit from Alcaraz, clipped the net and landed inside the line to give him game point. Then Djokovic hit another forehand long.
Alcaraz responded with a roar, and sealed victory by taking two of the next three games.
As he was leaving the court, Alcaraz signed the lens of the TV camera with a recognition: “Job finished. 4/4 Complete.”
Beirut, Lebanon – Before Israel’s war on Lebanon, Ali (full name withheld for safety reasons) lived in Haddatha, a village in the Bint Jbeil district in the south, about 12km (7.5 miles) from the border with Israel, surrounded by nature where agriculture was intrinsic to life.
Then came Israel’s “hellfire”.
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At least nine people were killed and some 3,000 injured, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, when thousands of pagers exploded, nearly simultaneously, overwhelming hospitals on September 17, 2024.
Six days later, Israel escalated its attacks across the south, killing nearly 600 people, in what was the country’s deadliest day since the country’s ruinous civil war ended in 1990, and displacing more than one million people.
“Our house was destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera. Ali took refuge in a town about 20km (12.5 miles) north of Haddatha, called Burj Qalaway.
But more than a year later, he is yet to return home despite a ceasefire. He is one of tens of thousands who are still displaced from their homes around Lebanon and who say that what little they have received in support from the Lebanese state or Hezbollah is not enough to rebuild their lives or homes destroyed during the war.
South ‘not safe’
On November 27, 2024, a ceasefire came into effect between Hezbollah and Israel. The agreement brought to an end more than a year of cross-border attacks and a two-month-long Israeli intensification that killed thousands in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and devastated civilian infrastructure.
Under the ceasefire, cross-border attacks were supposed to stop, Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, which runs across south Lebanon, and Israel was to withdraw troops that had invaded south Lebanon in October.
Israel, however, never stopped attacking. Its army still occupies five points in southern Lebanon, and during the ceasefire, it razed several villages to the ground.
An estimated 1.2 million people, more than a quarter of the Lebanese population, had been displaced during the war. On the morning of November 27, hundreds of thousands of people streamed south to their villages to return home. But tens of thousands more have been left behind and are still unable to go home.
“The south is not safe,” Ali said. “I am afraid that I might be walking somewhere and a raid will attack a car next to me.”
Israeli attacks continue across the south and the Bekaa Valley in the east on a near-daily basis, with the Lebanese government counting more than 2,000 Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire deal in the last three months of 2025.
Ali is not alone. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 64,000 people are still internally displaced in Lebanon, according to figures compiled in October 2025.
Entire villages ‘razed’
Some of the 64,000 cannot return to their homes along the border region with Israel. Israeli soldiers still hold five points on Lebanese territory, managing large swaths of south Lebanon through violence and technology: using drones, air raids, shelling or gunfire. Since the ceasefire, Israel has killed more than 330 people in Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians.
Melina*, from Odaisseh, a village on the southern border, lived most of her life in Nabatieh. During the war, she was displaced to Sidon, a southern city about 44km (27 miles) south of Beirut.
“I haven’t been able to visit my village,” she told Al Jazeera. “Psychologically, I can’t bear to see our house, which was completely destroyed, and the entire village was razed to the ground.”
“The security situation remains extremely dangerous,” she said. “You could be shot at by the Israeli side at any moment, and it’s unsafe to travel without a Lebanese army escort.”
Ali runs a market in Burj Qalaway, but he says the income is not enough to rebuild his home. There are also other concerns. Israel has attacked reconstruction equipment in southern Lebanon, drawing criticism from human rights groups.
“Amid the ceasefire, Israeli forces have carried out attacks that unlawfully target reconstruction-related equipment and facilities,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a December 2025 report. “After reducing many of Lebanon’s southern border towns to rubble, the Israeli military is now making it much more difficult for tens of thousands of residents to rebuild their destroyed homes and return to their towns.”
Some Lebanese also fear a renewed Israeli offensive similar to the one in 2024.
‘Couldn’t see 2cm in front of me’
On July 30, 2024, at about 7:40pm, Ramez* was sitting in his bedroom at home in Haret Hreik, a neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs referred to locally as Dahiyeh, an area often targeted in the past by Israel for the Hezbollah presence there.
His cats were roaming around the room, and he was busy on his phone when he heard loud explosions.
The war had been raging in the south, but attacks on Beirut and its suburbs were not yet as common. “I heard more than nine bangs,” Ramez said. He ran out of his bedroom to help his family evacuate. He left his door open, he said, so his cats could escape. While telling his mother to grab her things, he heard the loudest bang.
“The whole neighbouring building just collapsed and fell on us,” he said. Israel had just levelled the building next to his, killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander.
“I couldn’t see 2cm in front of me because of the fog and the dust.”
Left: The building next to RK’s home was destroyed, causing it to fall onto his building, damaging the apartment. Right: Ramez’s sister’s car was destroyed in the attack on his home in July 2024 [Courtesy of Ramez*]
Ramez’s family escaped unscathed, though their house was badly damaged and his sister’s car was destroyed. His cats also survived. He found them the next day.
“I always wondered how people just go through something like this and just move on, saying, OK, Alhamdulillah, everyone is alive,” he says, though, “at that point I kind of understood it”.
Since the end of the war, he has been able to return to his family home in Haret Hreik. But his family had to pay for most of the reconstruction themselves, with little help from the government or any group.
They registered with the government for assistance but said they received only a one-time payment of 30 million Lebanese pounds (a little more than $330).
Hezbollah also sent engineers to assess the damage. In December 2024, the Reuters news agency reported that Hezbollah would pay about $77m and rent to families affected by war. Some locals said payments from the group helped a bit, but others said it had stopped paying nonmembers or tried to undervalue their losses.
“They were very stingy with payments,” Ramez said. “They tried to make us accept low payments, but my mom stood her ground and said it is enough.”
Other people who were displaced by the war told Al Jazeera that the aid provided by the state and Hezbollah was very limited.
War is ‘most terrible’
Reports are mixed over Hezbollah’s financial capability, and it is difficult to determine how badly they have been hit financially after the group’s political and military leadership was devastated by 2024’s war and suffered several Israeli assassinations, including their longtime charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria also dealt Hezbollah a serious blow, disrupting the land route to its main benefactor, Iran – itself now reeling from deadly protests and bracing for a possible US attack. The group is under immense pressure from the Lebanese government to disarm, with the United States and Israel applying pressure.
Further compounding the crisis is the fact that Lebanon is now almost seven years into one of the worst economic crises in more than 150 years, according to the World Bank. This has hit locals hard, with many having their bank accounts frozen and the currency devaluing by more than 90 percent.
This has left many of the displaced feeling abandoned and unsure of how to continue.
There were violent Israeli air raids in the south on Saturday, which continued on Sunday. In the meantime, people like Ali have to continue figuring out ways to survive as their displacement carries on well past the one-year mark.
“We love life, but the situation is not good. Wars break your back,” Ali said. “War is the most terrible thing in the world.”
Bad Bunny’s “Débi Tirar Más Fotos” was named album of the year at Sunday night’s 68th Grammy Awards — the first time a Spanish-language LP has won the Recording Academy’s most prestigious prize.
Bunny delivered the speech primarily in Spanish.
“I want to dedicate this award to all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams,” he said as the audience rose to its feet.
“Puerto Rico, believe me when I say that we are so much bigger than 100 by 35 and there is nothing that exists that we can’t accomplish,” he said in Spanish. “Thank God, thank you to the academy, thank you to all the people who have believed in me throughout my whole career. To all the people who worked on this album. Thank you, mami, for giving birth to me in Puerto Rico. I love you.”
“For all the people who have lost a loved one and even then have had to continue moving forward and continue with so much strength, this award is for you all.”
Intricately arranged with the sounds of the singer and rapper’s native Puerto Rico, “Débi Tirar Más Fotos” was released to rave reviews in January 2025 and quickly reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Last summer, Bad Bunny supported the project with a 30-date concert residency at San Juan’s José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum; he followed that with the announcement of a world tour that avoided the United States, in part, he told I-D magazine, because of his concern that immigration agents might turn up at shows.
Prior to Sunday’s win, “Débi Tirar Más Fotos” — the title translates in English to “I Should Have Taken More Photos” — was named album of the year at November’s Latin Grammy Awards. Next weekend, Bad Bunny (whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) will headline the halftime show at Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara.
He won earlier in the night for música urbana album and global music performance.
The other LPs nominated for album of the year were Justin Bieber’s “Swag,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend,” Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out,” Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem,” Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX,” Leon Thomas’ “Mutt” and Tyler, the Creator’s “Chromakopia.”
In 2025, Beyoncé took the prize with “Cowboy Carter.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years starting in July for construction, his latest proposal to upend the storied venue since returning to the White House.
Trump’s announcement on social media follows a wave of cancellations by leading performers, musicians and groups since the president ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building. Trump made no mention in his post of the recent cancellations.
His proposal, announced days after the premiere of “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady, was shown at the center, is subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which has been stocked with his handpicked allies. Trump chairs the center’s board of trustees.
“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in his post.
Neither Trump nor Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell, a Trump ally, have provided evidence to back up their claims about the building being in disrepair, and in October, Trump had pledged the center would remain open during renovations. In Sunday’s announcement, he said the center will close July 4, when he said the construction would begin.
“Our goal has always been to not only save and permanently preserve the Center, but to make it the finest Arts Institution in the world,” Grenell said in a post, citing funds Congress approved for repairs.
“This will be a brief closure,” Grenell said. “It desperately needs this renovation and temporarily closing the Center just makes sense — it will enable us to better invest our resources, think bigger and make the historic renovations more comprehensive. It also means we will be finished faster.”
The sudden decision to close and reconstruct the Kennedy Center is certain to spark blowback as Trump revamps the popular venue. The building began as a national cultural center and Congress renamed it as a “living memorial” to President Kennedy — a champion of the arts during his administration — in 1964, in the aftermath of his assassination.
Opened in 1971, it serves as a public showcase year-round for the arts, including the National Symphony Orchestra.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the Kennedy Center is one of many Washington landmarks that he has sought to overhaul in his second term. He demolished the East Wing of the White House and launched a massive $400-million ballroom project, is actively pursuing building a triumphal arch on the other side the Arlington Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial, and has plans for Washington Dulles International Airport.
Leading performing arts groups have pulled out of appearances at the Kennedy Center, most recently composer Philip Glass, who announced his decision to withdraw his Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” because he said the values of the center today are in “direct conflict” with the message of the piece.
Last month, the Washington National Opera announced that it will move performances away from the Kennedy Center in another high-profile departure after Trump’s takeover of the U.S. capital’s leading performing arts venue.
The head of artistic programming for the center abruptly left his post last week, less than two weeks after being named to the job.
A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center could not immediately be reached and did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Late last year, as Trump announced his plan to rename the building — adding his name to the building’s main front ahead of that of Kennedy — he drew sharp opposition from members of Congress, and some Kennedy family members.
Kerry Kennedy, a niece of John F. Kennedy, said in a social post on X at the time that she will remove Trump’s name herself with a pickax when his term ends.
Another family member, Maria Shriver, said at the time that it is “beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy,” her uncle. “It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not.”
Late Sunday evening, Shriver posted a new comment mimicking Trump’s own voice and style, and suggesting the closure of the venue was meant to deflect from the cancellations.
She said that “entertainers are canceling left and right” and the president has determined that “since the name change no one wants to perform there any longer.”
Trump has decided, she said, it’s best “to close this center down and rebuild a new center” that will bear his name. She asked, “Right?”
One lawmaker, Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex-officio trustee of the center’s board, sued in December, arguing that “only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center.”
Price and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” was named record of the year at Sunday night’s 68th Grammy Awards, giving Lamar his second straight win in the category after he took it in 2025 with his smash-hit Drake diss, “Not Like Us.”
The Compton-born rapper is one of only four acts in Grammy history who’ve gone back to back in record of the year, along with Billie Eilish, U2 and Roberta Flack.
Built on a prominent sample of Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s 1982 duet “If This World Were Mine” (itself a cover of the song Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell introduced in 1967), “Luther” is from Lamar’s sixth studio album, “GNX,” which came out in November 2024.
“Luther forever,” Lamar said while accepting the speech. Cher announced the winner after accepting the Lifetime achievement award, at first just reading off Vandross’ name.
The song — which was produced by Jack Antonoff, Bridgeway, M-Tech, Roselilah, Sounwave and Kamasi Washington — spent 13 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100, longer than any other single in 2025. On Spotify, “Luther” has been streamed more than 1.3 billion times.
The other songs nominated for record of the year were Bad Bunny’s “DTMF,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” Doechii’s “Anxiety,” Billie Eilish’s “Wildflower,” Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra,” Chappell Roan’s “The Subway” and “Apt.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars.
The latest victim succumbing to injuries was an 18-year-old Swiss national.
Published On 1 Feb 20261 Feb 2026
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A teenager injured in the fire that engulfed a Swiss Alpine bar during New Year celebrations has died in hospital, according to Swiss authorities, increasing the death toll of one of the worst disasters in the country’s modern history to 41.
Saturday’s death was announced a month after the inferno at the ski resort of Crans-Montana. Another 115 were injured, most of whom remain in various hospitals.
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“An 18-year-old Swiss national died at a hospital in Zurich on January 31,” the Wallis canton’s public prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said in a brief statement.
“The death toll from the fire at Le Constellation bar on January 1, 2026 has now risen to 41.”
Pilloud said no further information would be released at this stage by her office, which is investigating the incident.
Those killed in the disaster were aged 14 to 39, but the majority were teenagers. Only four were aged over 24.
Among the dead are 23 Swiss nationals, including one French-Swiss dual national, and 18 foreigners.
Public prosecutors believe the fire started when revellers raised champagne bottles with sparklers attached too close to sound insulation foam on the ceiling of the bar’s basement.
Authorities are looking into whether the foam conformed to regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. They say fire safety inspections had not been carried out since 2019.
Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the owners – French couple Jacques and Jessica Moretti – on suspicion of negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and causing a fire by negligence.
The court of compulsory measures in the southwestern Valais region on January 12 ordered three months of pretrial detention for Jacques Moretti, but on January 23 ordered his release on bail.
The Crans-Montana municipality’s current head of public safety and a former Crans-Montana fire safety officer are also under criminal investigation.
Following the fire, seriously wounded patients were airlifted to various hospitals and specialist burns units throughout Switzerland and four other European countries.
Switzerland’s Federal Office for Civil Protection told the AFP news agency on Friday that at its last count, as of Monday, 44 patients were being treated abroad.
The Wallis health ministry told AFP that 37 patients were still in Swiss hospitals, as of Monday.
The picture is constantly changing, with patients moving between hospitals for different stages of their treatment, and some patients being readmitted. Some remain in intensive care.
The fire has tested relations with neighbouring Italy, which lost nationals in the blaze and has protested the release on bail of the bar’s owner.
Swiss authorities earlier this week said they would grant the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office access to evidence gathered.
MILAN, Italy — Two years before the Los Angeles Olympics, the United States is already dominating the narrative in the run-up to the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Winter Games.
International Olympic Committee officials, including President Kirsty Coventry, couldn’t avoid questions relating to ICE and the Jeffrey Epstein files at a news conference in Milan, Italy, on Sunday.
Coventry tried to fend them off by saying it was not the IOC’s place to comment on the issues, but when pressed remarked it was “sad” that such stories were deflecting attention away from the upcoming Olympics.
“I think anything that is distracting from these Games is sad, right? But we’ve learned over the many years … there’s always been something that has taken the lead, leading up to the Games,” Coventry said. “Whether it has been Zika, COVID, there has always been something.
“But what is keeping my faith alive is that when that opening ceremony happens and those athletes start competing, suddenly the world remembers the magic and the spirit that the Games have and they get to suddenly remember what’s actually important and they get to be inspired, and so we’re really looking forward to that.”
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Milan to protest the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the upcoming Winter Olympics, although agents would be stationed in a control room and not operating on the streets.
Meanwhile, the latest collection of government files released on Epstein includes emails from 2003 between Casey Wasserman, the head of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, and Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“From all the information that we have and I believe that the U.S. authorities, as the other authorities, have made all the clarifications needed, so from our side that’s not for us to further comment on that part of the security. But we’re really looking forward to the Games,” Coventry said when asked about the presence of ICE agents in Milan.
She was even less responsive when asked about Wasserman.
“We didn’t discuss it yesterday and I believe Mr. Wasserman has put out his statement and we now have nothing further to add,” said Coventry, who was elected just over 10 months ago as the first female IOC president.
The upcoming Olympics run from Friday through Feb. 22. U.S. Vice President JD Vance will lead an American delegation to the Milan-Cortina Games and attend the opening ceremony.
