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A former Ukrainian energy minister has been detained in connection with a major corruption scandal while trying to leave the country, authorities said on Sunday.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau (NABU) said its detectives "detained the former minister of energy as part of the Midas case," referencing a wide-ranging investigation into corruption in Ukraine's energy sector that triggered a major political crisis last year.

"Initial investigative actions are ongoing, carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law," NABU added in a statement, without naming the former minister.

The scandal, which centers on alleged kickbacks from contractors including those working to protect critical energy infrastructure, led both the serving and a former energy minister to resign last year at President Volodymyr Zelensky's request. Both denied wrongdoing.

Chief of staff to the president, Andriy Yermak, alsoresignedamid the fallout.

Investigators said about $100 million had been siphoned off as state-owned businesses including Energoatom, which operates Ukraine's nuclear power plants, paid companies for work done to enhance security at key sites.

At the time, Ukraine's anti-corruption body announced it had carried out searches on dozens of properties as part of the investigation.

Corruption allegations are nothing new in Ukraine. Since 2023, NABU has opened investigations into a series of scandals.

In January 2024, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said it had discovered amass corruption schemein the purchase of weapons by the country's military amounting to nearly $40 million.

CNN's Andrew Carey contributed reporting.

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By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved further measures to tighten Israel's control over the occupied West Bank and make it easier ‌for settlers to buy land, a move Palestinians called a "de-facto annexation".

The West Bank is ‌among the territories that Palestinians seek for a future independent state. Much of it is under Israeli military control, ​with limited Palestinian self-rule in some areas run by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing an election later this year, deems the establishment of any Palestinian state a security threat.

His ruling coalition, which has a large voter base in the settlements, includes many ‌members who want Israel to ⁠annex the West Bank, land captured in the 1967 Middle East war to which Israel cites biblical and historical ties.

Ministers voted in favour of ⁠beginning a process of land registration for the first time since 1967, a week after approving another series of measures in the West Bank that drew international condemnation.

"We are continuing the revolution of ​settlement and ​strengthening our hold across all parts of our ​land," said far-right Finance Minister Bezalel ‌Smotrich.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said land registration was a vital security measure while the cabinet said in a statement it was an "appropriate response to illegal land registration processes promoted by the Palestinian Authority."

The foreign ministry said the measure would promote transparency and help resolve land disputes.

The Palestinian presidency condemned the step, saying it constitutes "a de-facto annexation of occupied Palestinian territory and a ‌declaration of the commencement of annexation plans aimed at ​entrenching the occupation through illegal settlement activity."

Israeli settlement watchdog ​Peace Now said the measure could lead ​to dispossession of Palestinians from up to half of the West Bank.

U.S. ‌President Donald Trump has ruled out Israeli ​annexation of the West ​Bank but his administration has not sought to curb Israel's accelerated settlement building.

The United Nations' highest court said in a non-binding advisory opinion in 2024 that Israel's occupation ​of Palestinian territories and settlements ‌there are illegal and should be ended as soon as possible. Israel disputes ​this view.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer, Maayan Lubell, Jaidaa Taha, Ahmed Elimam and Nidal ​al-Mughrabi; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Christina Fincher)

Credit - Ali Daniels

On Jan. 20, one of the coldest days of the year in Minneapolis, Ali Daniels received a text message warning that ICE agents were targeting school bus stops in Columbia Heights. Daniels, an office administrator working in the metro area, had recently completed legal observer training and was participating in rapid response work for the second time.

Grabbing a friend as her passenger seat sidekick, the two patrolled the neighborhood for signs of ICE activity. After about 10 minutes of turning down residential streets, they spotted a large SUV stopped in the middle of the road. She recalls seeing ICE agents in masks and tactical vests standing outside the vehicle.

That's when Daniels saw Liam Conejo Ramos—a small, wide-eyed child in a Spider Man backpack and blue bunny hat—being escorted to a slush-streaked car. Daniels recalls agents shouting "getitin the car," referring to Liam.

People at the scene pleaded with the agents to allow the five-year-old to go with authorized staff from Columbia Heights schools, where Liam attended pre-kindergarten classes. Daniels says the agents refused.

"I decided to start taking pictures," she said. "This wasn't part of the training; it was something I did out of impulse."

Daniels took out her Samsung to snap photos of the agents, the vehicle, and then bent down to Liam's eye-level. "He was silent, staring ahead, undoubtedly scared and in shock," she said. "That's when I got the photo of him."

Daniels posted the image to her private Facebook page, unaware of the journey this one photograph would take.

We all know this photo and the surrounding details intimately now. Liam was returning from school with his father when immigration agents pulled them from their car near their home,according to the school district. The boy's father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, was also detained, and the pair were transferred to an immigration detention center outside San Antonio.

A lawyer for the family said that Mr. Conejo Arias, who is from Ecuador, had entered the United States under existing asylum guidelines. The Department of Homeland Security, however, charged that he entered the country unlawfully in Dec. 2024. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that "ICE did NOT target a child," and that the operation was instead to arrest the child's father.

Against this backdrop, Daniels' image of Liam's seizure went mega-viral at a moment when public anger over immigration enforcement was already acute in Minnesota and elsewhere across the country—the incalculable, inescapable kind of viral in which images move faster than explanation.

X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and BlueSky were flooded with versions of the photo: cropped, captioned, subtitled, paired with legal explainers, donation links, and calls to action demanding Liam's release. The power of these posts came from their terrifying precision: that this child could be anyone's, that Minneapolis could be home.

By Jan. 31, Judge Fred Biery, a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Texas, ordered the release of both Liam and his father from immigration custody, condemning their removal from their suburban Minneapolis neighborhood as unconstitutional. At the bottom of his three-page ruling,Judge Biery included the viral photographof Liam with the caption: "Matthew 19:14" and "John 11:35."

Those New Testament verses quote Jesus saying "Let the little children come to me" and "Jesus wept." The image that had proliferated on social media was now part of the legal record.

Aftermore than a week in detention, Liam and his father were released from the Texas immigration facility and returned to Minneapolis, according to U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro. Castrodocumented the trip on social media, where he shared a photo of a handwritten note he gave Liam, in which he wrote that the boy had "moved the world."

"Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam," Castro, a San Antonio Democrat,wrote on X.

To be sure, this is not the first social movement in which social media has played a central role in global political resistance. During the Arab Spring, platforms like Facebook and Twitter functioned as organizing tools and distribution channels for footage that state-controlled media suppressed—most notably in Egypt in 2011, when live updates andimages from Tahrir Squaretransformed local protests into an international crisis within days.

A decade later, mass mobilization around Black Lives Matter was catalyzed bycellphone video made by then 17-year-old Darnella Frazierdocumenting the murder of George Floyd, turning a single Minneapolis street into the epicenter of a worldwide uprising.

Since the racial justice protests of 2020, however, political posting has existed under sustained suspicion as performative. During thesummer of 2020,criticsofallideologiesmockedsymbolicgesturesuntethered from action:blacksquaresonInstagram,TikTok videosof white influencers (hair done, makeup snatched)raising fists to trending audio, memeslampooning allyshipthat required no material risk.

That skepticism has lingered over the past several years, particularly when crises feel distant or abstract, where posting about Sudan or Gaza, for example, can resemble a stand-in for action. "Spreading awareness" remains notoriously difficult to measure.

What makes this moment distinct is that the debate no longer feels theoretical. As recently as last week, reposting Liam's photo wascriticized as performative on platforms such as TikTok.But the outcome complicates that charge. The circulation, and the demands it elicited, forced visibility, legal scrutiny, and response.

The spread of Daniels' photo of Liam shows how public pressure on social media can still bend the machinery of the state.

This is not to say that posting is enough. It is easy to criticize acelebrity wearingapolitical pinon the red carpet (or a Facebook infographic, or a hashtag in anInstagram bio) as virtue signaling. Talk can only take you so far.

Social media can also flatten nuance. As the photo was reshared and reposted on Facebook, Daniels began seeing comments questioning its authenticity, suggesting it was fake or AI-generated. She decided to identify herself as the photographer to establish the image's provenance.

"It's hard to be told you're changing hearts and minds with one photo, yet knowing that no amount of saying 'I saw this firsthand' will make people see how cruel and unjust the whole institution is," Daniels told me. "Nothing is that easy."

Liam is far from the only child impacted by the Trump administration's policies. According to aGuardiananalysis of recordsobtained by theDeportation Data Project, ICE booked about 3,800 minors into immigrant family detention from Jan. to Oct. 2025. The number of children currently in migrant detention centers remains unclear. Posting on social media will not free the thousands of children currently detained.

Minnesotans like Daniels with a cell phone camera are demonstrating in real time how social media can push beyond symbolism into tangible change. The photograph of Liam, videos of the killings ofRenee GoodandAlex Pretti, and other images have contributed to stepping up the pressure on the federal government, ultimately forcing a reversal of its tactics inMinnesota.

And social media is proving to be an indispensable tool for coordination. Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp, and Signal are being used to track ICE activity, mobilize protests, circulate witness requests, and distribute precise call and email templates for elected officials. On streets across the country, Americans are putting their own bodies on the line to impede the operations of a federal police force in their city.

"Like so many people in the Twin Cities, I got trained [as a legal observer and rapid responder] because I felt like I had to," Daniels said. "I couldn't just do nothing while our neighbors are being snatched up from their homes."

Instead, she turned to her phone's camera. Her image not only helped change the life of one child, it helped change policy.

Contact usatletters@time.com.

PHOENIX — One was a36-year-old career journeymaninfielder from Venezuela who hadn't produced a hit in more than a month.

The other a 26-year-old reliever with his fourth team in 11 months who wasn't even on the playoff roster the first three rounds.

Who would have imagined that in a clubhouse full of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, Miguel Rojas andWill Kleinwould be honest-to-goodnessLos Angeles DodgersWorld Series heroes, still basking three months later from the most glorious moments of their careers?

Rojas, who hit perhaps the most unlikely home run in World Series history, will not only forever be remembered in Dodgers lore for not that ninth-inning Game 7 homer, but also saving the game with a spectacular defensive play in the bottom of the frame.

"I've watched that moment over and over so many times, but it's still hard to believe it happened," Rojas tells USA TODAY Sports. "It's just overwhelming. I've always wanted to have a moment in my career where I feel valuable, especially on the offensive side. And then when you do something like that, you know it's going to be remembered for a long time.

"Probably forever."

Klein was working out in Arizona and wasn't even on the Dodgers' postseason roster untilAlex Vesia left the team before the World Seriesto be with his wife after the loss of their newborn daughter. He was summoned in the 15thinning of Game 3, and then pitched four shutout innings in the 6-5, 18-inning victory.

"It's still crazy to think about," Klein says. "I mean, I was hearing from people I went to high school with and old teams. There were people I went to middle school and high school with that didn't even know I was playing baseball. They saw me on TV, and started sending me random stuff."

'No one expected' Miguel Rojas home run

The Dodgers were down to their last two outs, trailing theToronto Blue Jays, 4-3, in the ninth inning of Game 7. Rojas, who hadn't had a hit in an entire month, stepped to the plate facing Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman. Rojas worked the count to 3-and-2 when Hoffman tried to fool him with a slider. Rojas belted it over the left field wall and the screaming crowd at the Rogers Centre went dead silent.

The only sound you heard was the Dodger bench and scattered fans screaming in euphoria with Rojas barely able to feel his feet trotting around the bases.

"No one expected Miguel Rojas to hit that home run," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts says. "No one."

Still, it looked like it might be all forgotten when the Blue Jays loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the ninth. The Dodgers pulled the infield in, and Daulton Varsho hit a bouncer to the right side of Rojas. He snared the ball, but then slipped, and had his momentum carrying him towards second base. Rojas set, and fired home just in the nick of time to nail Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate and prevent the winning run.

Two innings later – and after Yoshinobu Yamamto's 2 ⅔ shutout innings in relief on no days' rest – the Dodgers were back-to-back World Series champions with Yamamoto winning the World Series MVP.

With the Dodgers all gathering for the first time since their World Series parade, everyone still is talking about Rojas and Klein's heroics.

"(Rojas) is one of the best teammates I ever had, and just one of the best people in baseball," says third baseman Max Muncy, who delivered an eighth-inning homer in Game 7 then made his own big defensive play. "So, for something like that to happen to him, after all of the work he out in and the mentality he had about certain situations, it was so well deserved.

"It was like how the game was rewarding him for how he handled his role last year."

Rojas, who didn't even play the first five games of the World Series, and was informed only a text message from manager Dave Roberts that he was starting Game 6 in Toronto, never complained about his role. Sure, he wanted to play more, but once Mookie Betts shifted from right field to shortstop, he did everything possible to help Betts improve so dramatically defensively that Betts became a Gold Glove finalist.

And in one glorious moment, it was Rojas who went from an understudy to an Academy Award winning performance, getting congratulatory messages from the likes of Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, and the scout who signed him out of Venezuela.

"That's why I felt so great after it happened, not just because I hit a home run that tied the game," Rojas says, "but seeing the reaction of the people that I really care about. It was so cool. And everybody in the media had something good to say about me.

"The biggest compliment for me is that a guy like me, in front of the whole team, Doc [Roberts] told them that the game honors me because I did things the right way. I'll remember those words forever. That makes me feel like after the 20 years that I've been in professional baseball, I've been doing something good."

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Rojas, who plans to retire after the season and stay with the Dodgers in player development with hopes one day of being a manager, still has strangers stopping him and thanking him for his home run. He has had more autograph requests during the winter than he's had in his entire life.

Yet, the question no one asks is which play meant to  him, the game-tying home run or the game-saving play in the bottom of the ninth inning that forced the game into extra innings.

"The home run is going to be something that people will remember forever because you're two outs away from being done," Rojas says. "But the play, I mean that's the hardest play I ever made because it's do-or-die to not only win the game but lose your season. If I don't make the play, the home run and everything is kind of our of the window.

"So, it's really tough to put it into context because if I don't hit the home run, I don't make the play, and then if I don't make the play, the homer doesn't count. I'm just so proud I was able to come through when it counted."

MLB spring training 2026: Sunshine, good vibes in Arizona and Florida

Will Klein: 'No one knows who I am'

Klein was working out at the Dodgers' spring-training complex in Phoenix when he got the emergency call to join the team in Toronto. Klein, who had spent most of the season pitching in Triple-A, threw a grueling 72 pitches across four innings in Game 3, the most he had thrown since he was at Eastern Illinois, and became an overnight hero.

He was congratulated by legendary Dodger Sandy Koufax, who shook his hand after the game.

"I didn't think most people," Klein says, "even knew who I was."

So now that he's a World Series hero, do people recognize him now wherever he goes?

"I heard people say that everybody would know me now," Klein says, "but it hasn't really changed. My wife and I went to Disneyland and Universal Studios, and maybe like two people recognized me. We'll walk around Pasadena and LA, and no one knows who I am."

Besides, Klein says laughing, it's not like he's Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza of Indiana University. Klein, born and raised in Indiana, is a diehard Hoosiers fan and says he may have celebrated the school's football national championship harder than he did the Dodgers' World Series win.

"I mean, to be the losingest team ever in college football history before that, and then win it all," Klein says, "it's something I'll remember forever. I remember going to games when Wisconsin would beat us like82 to 20, and losing to teams like North Texas and Ball State, so it's been a long ride.

"I can't even imagine how many kids are going to be born in Indiana now named Fernando."

2025 World Series: All the best moments from Dodgers vs. Blue Jays Game 7

While Rojas will be retiring after the 2026 season, Klein is hoping his World Series performance will kick-start his career. Hey, if you can throw four shutout innings in a World Series game, you're sure not going to be fazed by a regular season relief appearance against the San Francisco Giants.

"It's easy to look at it like that," Klein says, "but that doesn't mean I'm going to automatically pitch well this year. I've still got to go out and put the work in each day, and use that confidence. But I can't get lazy and think, 'Oh, I'm going to be great just because I did that in one game of the World Series.'"

It's the same with the Dodgers, Roberts says. They had a bullseye on their back then, and they'll have it now.

The Dodgers can't simply throw $400 million worth of talent on the field each night and expect to automatically win. They have to move forward and focus on 2026 if they have a chance to make history, but still, no matter what transpires, those memories of that glorious 2025 World Series will live forever.

"Man, when I think about it," Roberts says, "it still blows my mind. Who would ever have thought that Miggy would hit that home run? Who could have ever thought that Will Klein was going to throw four scoreless innings in a World Series?

"But you have to have stuff like that go right for you."

No matter who steps up as the hero.

Follow Nightengale on X:@Bnightengale

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Dodgers' unlikely World Series heroes still have champions in awe

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — NBA commissioner Adam Silver wondered out loud Saturday if a moral code in pro sports has been decisively crossed as more and more teams are blatantly losing games — the hatedpractice of "tanking."

Silver conceded that the league is still struggling for solutions to punish teams that lose intentionally for long-term gain.

"I think there was a more classical view of that in the old days, where it was just sort of an understanding among partners about terms of behavior," Silver told reporters at theIntuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers and site of Sunday's NBA All-Star Game.

The NBA's annual draft allows the worst teams to have the first chance at picking the best young, amateur talent in hopes of boosting those clubs' sad fortunes. With losing equating to better draft position, teams have learned that if they're not in playoff contention, bottoming out could be the best path to restocking talent.

The 2026 NBA draft class is recognized as the best in recent years, with multiple names at the top of the board that could alter a team's future.

The practice of "tanking" is getting worse, Silver said.

"I think what we're seeing is a modern analytics, where it's so clear that the incentives are misaligned," he said.

The league this weekfined the Utah Jazz $500,000for "conduct detrimental to the league," in connection with the team sitting star players in the fourth quarters of consecutive games.

"The league is 80-years-old. It's time to take a fresh look at this and to see whether that's an antiquated way," Silver said. "We got to look at some fresh thinking here. We're doing, what we're seeing right now, is not working. There's no question about it."

"Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we've seen in recent memory?" Silver added. "Yes is my view."

Jazz ownerRyan Smith sarcasticallyresponded to the NBA in a statement: "agree to disagree."

Smith also pointed out that one of the games, in which the Jazz were accused of trying to lose, was won by Utah.

"We won the game in Miami and got fined?" Smith said. "That makes sense."

The NBA has tried disincentivize intentional losing by determining draft order via a weighted draft, so losing the most games doesn't automatically result in the first pick.

Silver said, though, that he's not entirely sure that teams with the worst records are necessarily the most needy.

"It's not clear to me, for example, that the 30th (best) performing team is that much measurably worse than the 22nd (best) performing team, particularly if you have incentive to perform poorly to get a better draft pick," he said. "So it's a bit of a conundrum."

The practice is so ingrained in NBA culture that even suggestions to fight it seem hard to come by. Populartalk show host Colin Cowherd, who is paid to have opinions, threw up his arms recently on the topic and said his only suggestion was for Silver to channel his more-confrontationalpredecessor David Sternand yell at losing teams.

"I don't know what you do with tanking, they've been doing it forever. But they did it a lot less with David Stern," Cowherd said last week. "People feared David Stern."

The University of North Carolina picked up former Western Carolina quarterback Taron Dickens out of the transfer portal, according toOn3's Pete Nakos.

Dickens spent three seasons at Western Carolina, where he threw for 3,508 yards, 38 touchdowns and 2 interceptions last season, with a 74.2% completion percentage. He also had 321 rushing yards and a touchdown.

Dickens threw for a total of 5,063 yards, 51 touchdowns, 5 interceptions and a 74% completion percentage in his three seasons at WVU.

Dickens is the third quarterback that the Tar Heels have added, following the signings of Billy Edwards Jr. from Wisconsin and Miles O'Neill from Texas A&M.

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Edwards played 34 snaps in two games at the University of Wisconsin after injuring his knee in the season opener. He spent his first three years at the University of Maryland, where he threw for 2,881 yards, 15 touchdowns and 9 interceptions in 2024. Edwards signed with Wake Forest and redshirted out of high school.

O'Neill saw limited action during his first two years behind Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed. The Tar Heels also signed freshman quarterback Travis Burgess.

In Bill Belichick's first year in Chapel Hill, the team went 4-8 overall and 2-6 in the ACC. North Carolina ranked second-to-last in the ACC in passing and receiving yards and ranked last in total yards and first downs converted.

Gio Lopez started most of the year at quarterback. Lopez threw for 1,747 yards, 10 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. After the season, Lopez transferred to Wake Forest. Former North Carolina quarterbacks Max Johnson (Georgia Southern) and Bryce Baker (Virginia Tech) also transferred to other schools.

ATLANTA (AP) — A storm system sweeping across the Southeast late Saturday and Sunday brought tornado warnings to Mississippi and Louisiana, and then took aim at parts of Georgia and Florida, as people in the Northeast were finally getting a reprieve from weeks ofbitterly cold temperatures.

Winter Weather New York

Some of the fiercest storms in the South were reported near Lake Charles, Louisiana, where high winds from a thunderstorm overturned a horse trailer and aMardi Grasfloat, damaged an airport jet bridge and flung the metal awning from a house into power lines. The damage was documented by National Weather Service employees who surveyed the area.

Power poles were snapped and toppled near the Louisiana towns of Jena, Cheneyville and Donaldsonville, the weather service reported.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported, but the damage reports came as the storm system continued its path into parts of south Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, which were under tornado watches on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Northeast was beginning to thaw after a weeks-long stretch ofuncommonly cold weather.

Boston was running nearly 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 14 Celsius) below average for February by midweek, and the city was on pace for its coldest winter in more than a decade. Boston remained cold on Sunday, but the week's forecast called for temperatures climbing into the high 30s and low 40s, which is closer to the seasonal average.

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Elsewhere in the U.S., parts of California were bracing for showers, thunderstorms and snow showers. Jacob Spender, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said a storm system was moving on shore in California throughout Sunday and through the week.

Heavy snow was forecast for elevated areas, Spender said.

"As we get up into the mountains and the foothills, we're going to be looking at some snowfall," Spender said. "So there will be snowfall all the way down into the foothills as well."

Spender said people should heed travel advisories in the coming days.

"So if they are traveling, packingwinter safety kits. Anything to be prepared. This is a bigger system, and a major system," Spender said.

Associated Press journalists Julie Walker in New York City; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed.