SnS MAG

NORTH PORT, Fla. (AP) — The Atlanta Braves added catching depth while awaiting the return of Sean Murphy by signing former Texas Rangers All-Star Jonah Heim to a $1.25 million, one-year deal on Tuesday.

Heim was with the team for the first workout with pitchers and catchers.

The Braves announced the signing of Heim and placed right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach on the 60-day injured list. Schwellenbach, whose 2025 season was cut short by abroken right elbow, has inflammation in the elbow.

Braves first-year manager Walt Weiss told reporters Schwellenbach has "bone spur type stuff" in addition to the inflammation. "It's going to be significant time he's going to miss," Weiss said.

"I always say before a season even starts your pitching depth is going to get tested. It's inevitable. You'd rather it not be right away in February."

Heim, 30, was an All-Star and Gold Glove winner in 2023, when he hit .258 with 18 homers and 95 RBIs with Texas. He hit .220 in 2024 and .213 last season.

Advertisement

Murphy hadseason-ending surgeryin September to repair a labral tear in his right hip. He began running on Tuesday and said he had no timetable on when he expects to be ready to play.

The Braves are expected to rely on 2025 NL Rookie of the YearDrake Baldwinto handle most starts at catcher to open the season. Heim will serve as depth, possibly allowing Baldwin to remain in the lineup as the designated hitter when he's not catching.

Murphy told reporters: "I feel good. I think we're making good progress on the hip and now we're checking boxes as we go. So far no setbacks and everything is going well."

Infielder Nacho Alvarez also worked with the catchers during the first workout.

Brian Snitker, whoretired after last seasonas manager to assume an advisory role, sat in a golf cart as he chatted with new manager Walt Weiss for the first day of workouts. Snitker will be inducted into the team's hall of fame this year after 49 years in the organization. He led the Braves to the 2021 World Series championship.

AP MLB:https://apnews.com/MLB

Since starting the season 15-4, in part thanks to a seven-game win streak down the stretch of November, the Los Angeles Lakers have yet to stack more than three wins in a row. They had another chance to accomplish that feat for the first time in the New Year on Monday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

With injuries sidelining reigning NBA MVPShai Gilgeous-Alexanderand 2025-26 NBA scoring leaderLuka Dončić, Crypto.com Arena featured a physical contest that included a combined 52 free throws.

A scrappy Thunder bunch, which leads the league in defensive rating for the second straight season,outlasted the Lakers 119-110, pulling away in the final minute.

Although Oklahoma City (41-13) had dropped its previous two games in the absence of Gilgeous-Alexander, who will be out through at least the All-Star break, and has looked increasingly vulnerable this season, the Thunder are still the defending NBA champions and the Western Conference's top team.

Plus, they're 2-0 against the Lakers (32-20), currently the fifth-place team in the West. More than just eight games separate the Thunder and the Lakers in the conference standings, according to LeBron James.

"That's a championship team right there,"James told reporters postgame. "We're not."

LeBron: "We can't sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes and they can. That's why they won a championship."pic.twitter.com/CBMK3s3P8Q

— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN)February 10, 2026

The 41-year-old James was then asked what's keeping the Lakers from joining the Thunder in that echelon.

"We can't sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can," he said bluntly. "That's why they won a championship."

James scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half of the loss. He also logged 10 assists and six rebounds. Austin Reaves, in his fourth game backfrom a calf injury, pitched in 16 points off the bench. Marcus Smart finished with 19 points and went 4 of 7 from deep.

But James, Reaves and Smart each missed a 3-point attempt in the final 40-some seconds, as the Thunder held on to win, bolstered by a clutch-time, midrange jumper by Jalen Williams that made it a 115-110 game with 51.9 seconds remaining. Williams had a game-high 23 points, most notably 10 in the final five minutes.

In James' eyes, shotmaking and 50-50 balls made the difference.

While the Lakers' defense has been criticized during the JJ Redick era, including by Redick himself, and they rank 22nd in the NBA in defensive rating this season, James maintained that defense wasn't the problem on Monday against the Thunder.

James conceded that the Lakers let Isaiah Joe get way too many 3-point looks in the first half and weren't executing their switches to a high enough level. Joe hit four 3s and scored 19 points.

"But I mean, listen, for the majority of the second half, I thought we was really good defensively," James said. "We didn't have that many lapses."

Redick was even pleased with his group's effort overall.

"I think when you play the best teams — and Oklahoma City is clearly — you know, you have to have a really high level of effort and you have to have a really high level of execution," Redick said,per ESPN.

"It's got to be both, and I thought for the most part our effort was fantastic. In key stretches of the game, our execution wasn't great."

Regardless if it's execution, effort or energy, these Lakers are too often missing a key ingredient for championship-level success. James called them out after a setback against the defending champs.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Six former players on the women's basketball team at the University of Pittsburgh have sued coach Tory Verdi and the school over what they call abusive coaching methods and say their efforts to seek help were ignored.

"These players aren't soft. We aren't talking about sensitive personality types," lawyer Keenan D. Holmes told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Obviously, there are expectations placed on players. But this went beyond basketball. It went beyond the bounds of common decency."

Verdi, according to the lawsuit filed Friday, also tried to force players into the transfer portal, putting their scholarships at risk and threatening their academic and athletic futures.

The university denied the allegations in a brief statement issued Tuesday on behalf of both the coach and the school.

"The university is aware of these lawsuits and their allegations, which are without merit and will be vigorously defended," the statement said.

Verdi has struggled over three seasons at Pitt after notching a winning record in seven seasons at the University of Massachusetts. According to the lawsuits, he once told his Pitt players: "Every night I lay in bed I want to kill myself because of you."

He told one athlete, according to the legal complaint, "I don't like you as a player, but I'd let my son date you."

And he once divided the players by race and had them face off at practice, it said. Some of the women are now in counseling or therapy, and others have sought a red-shirt year of NCAA eligibility based on mental health problems, Holmes said.

The former players include Favor Ayodele of Spain, now at Grand Canyon University; Raeven Boswell, who left the team but stayed at Pitt to finish her degree; Isabella Perkins, now a student at Boston College; Jasmine Timmerson, now playing for Davidson College; and MaKayla Elmore and Brooklynn Miles, who had transferred to Pitt for their senior years.

Some of the players reached out repeatedly to Verdi's supervisors in the athletic department for help, to no avail, the lawsuits said.

The women seek an acknowledgment that the school violated their civil rights underTitle IX, which prohibits gender-based discrimination in education, along with the restoration of their school records and reputations, and compensatory and punitive damages.

LONDON and TEL AVIV -- The Israeli government adopted a series of significant, bureaucratically complex measures that would allow Israelis and Jews abroad to more easily purchase and build on land in the West Bank, consolidating Israeli control in the area that would potentially serve as the heartland for a future Palestinian state.

The measures, which were approved over the weekend, are likely to be challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. But they represent the most far-reaching attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government to advance a de-facto annexation of the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority, the governing body for Palestinians that already has only limited powers in the West Bank, described the moves as an "unprecedented escalation" and "illegal," views echoed by regional Arab states.

U.S. President Donald Trump has previously said the U.S. opposes attempts by Israel to annex the West Bank, a long-held dream of some settler groups and far-right ministers who now hold powerful positions in Netanyahu's government.

The newly adopted measures are expected to deepen Israeli civil -- as opposed to military -- control of new areas within the West Bank, including key religious sites in Hebron, and are designed to make it easier for Israelis to buy land in the territory.

Israel's Security Cabinet, headed by Netanyahu, approved on Sunday a series of new measures that would lift a ban on the sale of land to private Israeli Jews, transfer construction authority at religious and sensitive sites in the city of Hebron to the Israeli government, and declassify land registry records.

The United Nations condemned the measures, with a spokesperson for the secretary-general saying ina statementthat "all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and their associated regime and infrastructure, have no legal validity and are in flagrant violation of international law, including relevant United Nations resolutions."

The measures would allow the Israeli government to operate under the guise of civilian issues in Palestinian areas A and B for the first time, which contravenes the Oslo Accords. Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is the sole authority responsible for civilian matters in Area A and B. Israel, in contrast, has full Israeli civil and security control over Area C, which represents about 60% of the West Bank.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right, pro-settlement finance minister, hailed the move as an "historic day for settlement for Judea and Samaria," as parts of the West Bank are known in Hebrew.

He said the changes would "fundamentally change the legal and civil reality." He boasted that it would end the prospects for a potential Palestinian State.

Netanyahu has vowed that a Palestinian state "will not be established," even as Western countries, including France, Canada and the United Kingdom, have moved to recognize a Palestinian state.

The office of the Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, issued a statement condemning the measures as "dangerous decisions" designed to "deepen attempts to annex the occupied West Bank."

The president's office said the move was a "blatant violation" of the Oslo Accords, which divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C, adding that the move represents an "unprecedented escalation targeting the Palestinian presence and its national and historical rights throughout the Palestinian territory."

Abbas' office described the move as illegal and called for the U.S. and the European Union to intervene.

​A joint statement by the foreign ministers of eight Muslim countries condemned the new measures.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates said ina statementposted on social media that they collectively "condemned in the strongest terms the illegal Israeli decisions and measures aimed at imposing unlawful Israeli sovereignty, entrenching settlement activity, and enforcing a new legal and administrative reality in the occupied West Bank, thereby accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people."

"They reaffirmed that Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories," the statement added.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli settlement watchdog and activist nongovernmental organization, the measures adopted over the weekend would effectively mean that Israeli authorities can now carry out legal demolitions of Palestinian property in Areas A and B, which comprise around 40% of the West Bank and which under the Oslo accords have been governed by the Palestinian Authority.

While the Israeli military could operate in those areas as the occupying power, the "government is now seeking to ignore its international commitments and begin administrative operations inside areas of the Palestinian Authority. Under the Oslo Accords, Israel has operated militarily in PA areas since the early 2000s," the watchdog said.

Governors of two Russian regions bordering Ukraine said Tuesday that residents are facing sustained power outages as a result of Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure, as both sides continue long-range strikes in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia's western Belgorod region said in posts to Telegram that power and heating outages had forced hundreds of people to rely on "heating points."

"Unfortunately, rolling blackouts are inevitable," Gladkov said, noting that Belgorod city will be among the areas subject to unpredictable outages.

Gov. Alexander Khinshtein of the neighboring Kursk region said that 28,000 customers were without power as a result of "another series of cowardly attacks on our territory."

Both regions have been subject to regular Ukrainian drone, missile and artillery attacks. Both have also seen Ukrainian ground incursions during the nearly 4-year-old war.

'Normal life has disappeared': Russia's energy offensive plunges Ukraine into dark and bitter cold

Recent months have seen both Russia and Ukraine focus attacks on energy infrastructure targets. In Ukraine, millions have facedrolling outagesas a result of months of Russian missile and drone strikes on energy targets all across the country. Moscow, Kyiv has said, is trying to freeze Ukrainians into submission.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, has framed long-range Ukrainian strikes as "terrorist attacks."

Zelenskyy on Sunday defended Ukraine's retaliatory attacks inside Russia, describing the Russian energy sector as "a legitimate target."

"We do not have to choose whether we strike a military target or energy," Zelenskyy said while addressing students at the National Aviation University in Kyiv. "He sells this energy. He sells oil. So is it energy, or is it a military target? Honestly, it's the same thing. He sells oil, takes the money, invests it in weapons. And with those weapons, he kills Ukrainians."

Zelenskyy said that left Ukraine with two options: "We either build weapons and strike their weapons. Or we strike the source where their money is generated and multiplied. And that source is their energy sector. That is what is happening. All of this is a legitimate target for us."

Russian strikes kill 3 in Ukraine as Zelenskyy calls for Western air defense aid

The nightly exchange of drones continued on Monday night.

Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 125 drones into the country overnight, of which 110 were shot down or suppressed. Thirteen drones impacted across six locations, the air force said in a post to Telegram.

Vadym Filashkin, the governor of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, said in a post to social media that two people were killed and seven people injured by a Russian strike in the city of Slovyansk, close to the front line.

At least four people were injured by a drone strike on a house in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said. Among the injured was a 1-year-old child, the ministry said.

Oleh Kiper, the governor of the southern Odesa region, said in a post to Telegram that Russian drones attacked energy infrastructure overnight, leaving at least three communities partially without power.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down at least six Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.

Ukraine war must become 'untenable' for Russia, Zelenskyy says after latest strikes

Russia's federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, said that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at airports in the Black Sea city of Gelendzhik and in the western city of Kaluga.

Peace maneuvers are ongoing against the backdrop of long-range strikes and Russia's attritional offensive operations in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said in a post to social media on Monday night that proposed post-war Western security guarantees intended to protect Ukraine from repeated Russian aggression are "ready."

"There is no alternative to security. There is no alternative to peace. There is no alternative to rebuilding our country," Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian president also said there will be "significant international events this week -- on defense and security."

Russia launches more than 440 drones, missiles at Ukraine overnight, Zelenskyy says

"Our negotiating team is working every single day on the documents and proposals that could deliver results at the upcoming meetings," Zelenskyy said.

"Most importantly, our partners must be aligned the same way we are in Ukraine: peace is needed, and reliable security guarantees are the only real foundation for peace and for preventing the Russians from breaking agreements through strikes or hybrid operation of some kind," he added.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime MinisterKeir Starmerhas faced the biggest crisis of his leadership because of his decision to appoint a close ally of the late convicted sex offenderJeffrey Epsteinto the plum job of U.K. ambassador to the United States.

Many warned him not to appointPeter Mandelson, a 72-year-old grandee of the Labour Party, to the job. Starmer, who never met Epstein, accepts that Mandelson's appointment was a mistake, and has apologized to Epstein's victims as well as to Labour and the country as a whole.

Starmer remains in office, butquestions remainas to how long he can do so.

How one appointment nearly brought the demise of the prime minister:

July 2024

Under Starmer,Labour returns to powerafter 14 years in opposition with a landslide victory on a promise to dial down the politics, following the turmoil of the preceding Conservative years.

December 2024

Starmer appoints Mandelson the U.K. ambassador to the U.S., despite knowing of his previous relationship with Epstein, whodied in prison in 2019, and of his two previous resignations from Tony Blair's government in 1998 and 2001. Mandelson, it was hoped, would be able to use his undoubted charm and networking skills to help the U.K. be spared from tariffs that the incoming Trump administration was planning.

February 2025

Mandelson plays a central role inStarmer's visit to the White House, during which U.S. President Donald Trump is invited to the U.K. for an unprecedented second state visit.

September 2025

On the eve of Trump's visit,Starmer fires Mandelsonafter email exchanges between him and Epstein are published, which indicate that he maintained a friendship with the disgraced financier after his 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor. Starmer's judgment in appointing Mandelson is openly questioned, and Mandelson warns there may be more embarrassing disclosures to come.

Jan. 30, 2026

The U.S. Justice Department publishesmore than 3 million pages of documents related to Epstein.

Feb. 1, 2026

Mandelson quits his membership in the Labour Party to avoid causing "further embarrassment" as a result of his links to Epstein. A few days later, he resigned his place in the U.K.'s revising chamber, the House of Lords.

Feb. 2, 2026

Epstein files indicate that Mandelson shared market-sensitive information to the disgraced financier in 2009 when he was a member of then Prime MinisterGordon Brown's governmentduring the global financial crisis. The files also indicate that a year later, he tipped off Epstein about an imminent 500 billion-euro deal to prop up the European single currency. Payments reportedly totaling $75,000 from Epstein to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner Reinaldo Avia da Silva are also revealed.

Feb. 3, 2026

British police open a criminal investigationinto Mandelson over alleged misconduct in public office.

Feb. 4, 2026

Starmer agrees to release documentscasting light on the decision to appoint Mandelson, and promises to introduce legislation to strip Mandelson of his honorific title of Lord Mandelson. A visibly shaken Starmer tells Parliament that Mandelson had "lied repeatedly" about his ties to Epstein. Starmer faced angry questions about his judgment, with some Labour lawmakers suggesting that he should resign.

Feb. 5, 2026

Starmer apologizesto Epstein's victims, saying Mandelson had portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew. "I am sorry, sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you," Starmer said. "Sorry for having believed Mandelson's lies and appointed him."

Feb. 6, 2026

Police search two propertieslinked to Mandelson.

Feb. 8, 2026

Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, quits, saying he takes full responsibility for advising the prime minister to appoint Mandelson. Critics say advisers advise, but leaders decide.

Feb. 9, 2026

Anas Sarwar, leader of Scottish Labour, urges Starmer to stand down, saying "there have been too many mistakes." Cabinet ministers rally behind the prime minister and Starmer wins thesupport of Labour lawmakersat a crucial behind-closed-doors meeting. "I'm not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country," he said.

David Njoku is taking his talents elsewhere.

The longtime Browns tight end is not returning to Cleveland after spending the first nine years of his career with the organization, he revealed in an Instagram post Monday night.

"Cleveland, first off I love you. These 9 years have been a beautiful journey,"he wrote in the post."I'm am so grateful for all the memories we shared together. Thank you to The Haslams, Andrew Berry and the whole browns organization for everything!! All my teammates I shared the battle with I'm so grateful for you guys. The time for me to find a new home has come and all I can think of is just the gratefulness in my heart. The city of Cleveland will forever be home."

He ended the message with a heart emoji and the hashtag, "ChiefOut.

Njoku was taken with the No. 29 overall pick by the Browns in 2017 and has gone on to make significant contributions to the franchise since his arrival.

Advertisement

He will depart Cleveland ranked second among tight ends in franchise history in touchdown catches with 34 and receptions with 384.

Rumors had started to swirl about Njoku before the NFL trade deadline in November, but he did not end up getting moved.

The Browns are expected to look very different next season withnew head coach Todd Monkenat the helm, which is something general manager Andrew Berry implied, saying the offense will see "significant turnover."

Njoku dealt with injury issues during his final two seasons in Cleveland, missing a combined 11 games over that time.

He finished last season with only 33 catches for 293 yards and four touchdowns, which were the fewest catches and receiving yards he's had since the 2020 season.

In his nine years with the Browns, Njoku earned Pro Bowl honors in 2023.