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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.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar launched his party's election campaign in Budapest on Sunday, vowing to restore Hungary's Western orientation just eight weeks before he faces Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a pivotal vote.

Magyar, a former insider in Orbán's nationalist Fidesz party,burst onto Hungary's political scenein 2024 after breaking with his political community and quickly forming the center-right Tisza party.

After taking around30% of the vote in European Parliament electionsin June 2024, he has grown Tisza into the most formidable political force Orbán has faced during his 16 years at Hungary's helm. Most independent polls show Tisza with a significant lead before the April 12 vote, an advantage which has held steady for more than a year.

"We're standing on the threshold of victory with 56 days left to go," he told supporters during his speech at an exposition center in Budapest on Sunday. "Tisza stands ready to govern."

Magyar hasvigorously campaignedacross Hungary's rural, conservative heartland — traditionally an Orbán stronghold — holding rallies and town hall events in scores of villages and towns. He has focused on bread and butter issues such as low wages and rapidly rising living costs that have made Hungary one of the poorest countries in the European Union.

Magyar accuses Orbán and his government of mismanaging Hungary's economy and social services, and overseeing unchecked corruption he says has led to the accumulation of extreme wealth within a small circle of well-connected insiders while leaving ordinary Hungarians behind.

He has also criticized Orbán for conducting a combative foreign policy with the EU while maintaining close ties to Russia despite its war in neighboring Ukraine.

On Sunday, Magyar pointed to meetings he held with numerous European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany over the weekend, and said he wouldput an end to Hungary "drifting out of the European Union"under Orbán.

"Hungary's place is in Europe, not only because Hungary needs Europe, but also because Europe needs Hungary," he said.

Magyar's comments contrasted starkly with statements Orbán made a day earlier at his own campaign launch, wherehe said the real threat facing Hungarywas not military aggression from Russia, but the European Union.

Tisza's program

In a 239-page program released last week, Tisza outlined its plans for how it would govern Hungary if it wins April's elections. Fidesz has not released a program, arguing that after governing for 16 years, its voters know what kinds of policies to expect.

On Sunday, Magyar reiterated that his party plans to retain a fence Orbán's government built along the country's southern border in 2015, and said he would maintain Fidesz's policies of opposing illegal immigration and any accelerated procedure for Ukraine to join the EU.

However, Magyar has vowed to bring home billions in funding the EU hassuspended to Hungaryover its concerns that Orbán has eroded democratic institutions, reduced judicial independence and failed to tackle corruption.

The program also pledges to fulfill conditions for adopting the euro currency by 2030, and to invest in Hungary's faltering state health care and public transportation sectors. Tisza also plans to crack down on corruption and recover public funds it argues have been funneled into the hands of government-connected oligarchs.

"It is time to call corruption what it is: theft," Magyar said Sunday.

Tisza's candidates

For its candidates in each of Hungary's 106 individual voting constituencies, Tisza has largely drawn on political neophytes locally active as entrepreneurs, doctors, economists, educators and other professionals.

Leading the ticket alongside Magyar are international energy expert Anita Orbán (no relation to the prime minister), whom the party tapped as its prospective foreign policy chief, and former Shell executive István Kapitány, who would fill a senior economy position in a future Tisza government.

Such candidates, Magyar has argued, will provide sectoral expertise he says is lacking under Orbán's government, and will help rebuild relations with Western partners and end Hungary's international isolation.

"I am proud that our experts are once again showing what it means to take the country's fundamental issues seriously and to plan our shared future," he said Sunday. "We don't plan to dominate this country, but to serve it."

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Sunday.

Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers tosmuggle crude into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressurethen-President Nicolás Madurobefore Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation.

Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The Defense Department said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting "a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding."

"The vessel tried to defy President Trump's quarantine — hoping to slip away," the Pentagon said. "We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down."

Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. troops boarding the tanker.

The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

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The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro's capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.

"Since 2023, she's been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil," the organization said.

Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine.

The Trump administration hasbeen seizing tankersas part of its broader effortsto take controlof the Venezuela's oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and later told the AP in an email that it had no additional information to provide beyond that post.

Last week, the U.S. militaryboarded a different tankerin the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II. The ship was being held while its ultimate fate was decided by the United States, according to a defense official who spoke last week on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing decision-making.

Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

TESERO, Italy -- Norway's Johannes Klaebo cemented his legacy on Sunday by winning a ninth Olympic cross-country gold to become the greatest Winter Olympian of all time.

Nine golds put him ahead of compatriots and fellow cross-country skiers Marit Bjoergen, Bjoern Daehlie and biathlete Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, who have eight Olympic titles each.

"It was good to share the top with them for a couple of days, but it feels even better to be on the top. It's a big achievement and will take some time to sink in," said Klaebo, who won the medal in the men's 4 x 7.5km relay.

Klaebo's ninth gold puts him level with six Olympic greats, including Finn Paavo Nurmi, a distance runner, and U.S. sprinter Carl Lewis. One more would lift him to second on the all-time list for any Olympics -- Winter or Summer -- but he would have some way to go to surpass American swimmer Michael Phelps, who towers above all with 23.

Klaebo could win his 10th in the coming days with a victory in either the men's team relay on Wednesday or the 50km classic race next Sunday.

"He (Klaebo) is the greatest of all time. We knew that, and now it is also in the numbers," Italian skier Elia Barp said.

The 29-year-old Klaebo, who lives in Trondheim, Norway, is competing in his second Olympics. His 83-year-old grandfather, who is also his coach, was sitting in the stands at the Tesero Ski Stadium when he won gold on Sunday.

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"This is something he has really worked hard for," Klaebo said. "He's been my coach since I was 15, and we have really worked hard for it."

Klaebo is No. 1 in the World Cup standings, and at the Olympics, he has beaten competitors with wide enough margins to casually cross the finish line and wave at the crowd.

The men's 10km interval freestyle race had been seen as the best chance to knock him off the top of the podium, but he still managed to win that competition by nearly five seconds.

"It makes our job that much harder. Nine more golds until we can get in front of him," joked U.S. skier Ben Ogden after Sunday's relay race.

"It is pretty cool, and I like that he's starting to get some really big recognition for how talented he is because it's well deserved."

Klaebo became a household name after a video of him running uphill in the men's classic sprint went viral, putting the spotlight on a sport that lacks the Olympic fanfare of figure skating or Alpine skiing.

"I think he'll go down as the greatest of all time. To be racing the same era as him -- it is crazy to witness that and to fight against that," said Canadian skier Remi Drolet.

--Reuters, Special to Field Level Media

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Two minutes before NBA commissioner Adam Silver was scheduled to address the media in an upstairs room at Intuit Dome, his deputy, Mark Tatum, cheerfully shook hands with reporters before taking his seat in the front row.

That the league's second-in-command was eagerly anticipating Silver's words, much like the other occupants in the room, was poignant. Given the most prominent talking points that have dominated league discourse lately — the tanking epidemic, sports betting issues and alleged cap circumvention — have become so prevalent, the build-up to Silver's news conference was seismic.

However, following the duration ofSilver's availability— he spoke for around 30 minutes — there were far more questions as a result of his answers (or lack thereof).

The first question posed to the commissioner, and the most detailed response Silver gave, was about the issue of tanking. This makes sense, given how quickly the league office acted in response to recent misbehavior from the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers. Both organizations were fined; $500,000 to the Jazz and $100,000 to the Pacers for actions detrimental to the core values of the NBA. Utah's modus operandi was far more egregious than Indiana's — sitting its two best players for entire fourth quarters in separate close games is worse than holding someone out under the guise of rest, but neither should be tolerated.

"Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we've seen in recent memory?" Silver asked Saturday. "Yes, it is my view. Which was what led to those fines, and not just those fines but to my statement that we're going to be looking more closely at the totality of all the circumstances this season in terms of teams' behavior, and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice."

Now, therealproblem with tanking, at least from the vantage point of one writer, is it's the lone arena where 29 other teams can't share in the winnings. At least not initially. (Lottery picks don't always pan out, and sometimes the late firsts and early seconds become the mainstays.) But don't worry, there's no proposal of a quick fix to what's going on, although I'm sure you'veread or heard a plethora of ideas this week alone. All I'm suggesting is Silverhadto do something. For what it's worth, he honestly didn't even want to dignify the mere word of "tanking," but it's reached a point of no return.

There's an answer that lies somewhere in the middle of the ongoing epidemic; not completely punishing teams for losing, but not rewarding the seemingly cunning ones that try to game the system. Sometimes, you're the Sacramento Kings, which goes hand in hand with parity and purgatory. How much better are the Chicago Bulls set up for their future than, say, the Brooklyn Nets? The Clippers and Hornets are both 26-29 heading into the All-Star break — would you consider them to be on equal footing?

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"Part of the problem is if you step back," Silver said, "the fundamental theory behind a draft is to help your worst-performing teams restock and be able to compete, and by the way, yes, we want parity, but parity of opportunity. … My sense is, talking to GMs and coaches around the league, that there's probably even more parity than is reflected in our records. That goes to the incentive issue. It's not clear to me, for example, that the 30th performing team is that much measurably worse than the 22nd performing team, particularly if you have incentive to perform poorly to get a better draft pick. It's a bit of a conundrum."

So where does it end? The Jazz aren't going to suddenly turn over a new leaf and be competitive the rest of the way. Half a million isn't enough to deter or prevent future behavior — Utah has clearly shown it's fine with throwing away money. Vince Williams Jr., who arrived at the deadline, played seven minutes in a 135-119 loss to Portland this week — he's owed $2.3 million. (The Jazz are only on the hook for a prorated amount, but you get the point.) How do you also govern the other teams that could potentially fall under the same umbrella? Silver needs to move quickly before tanking takes on a life of its own, especially considering the talent of incoming players in a few months.

On the topic of expansion, Silver essentially confirmed, then tried to reverse his words about the possibilities of Las Vegas and Seattle being the NBA's next destinations.

"My sense is at the March Board of Governors meetings, we'll be having further discussions around an expansion process," Silver said. "We won't be voting at the March meeting, but we will likely come out of those meetings ready, prepared to take a next step in terms of potentially talking to interested parties. No, it doesn't have to be a two-team expansion. Frankly, it doesn't have to be any number of teams."

Hmm, sure? There are a number of hoops to jump through before arriving at City X and/or Y as expansion teams, but kicking the can down the road by saying you'll make a decision on making a decision in a few months is not as clear as one may think.

In the case of Kawhi Leonard, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and alleged cap circumvention, Silver conceded judiciary control to the Wachtell Lipton firm, the NBA's go-to litigation arm. Ballmer and the Clippers are alleged to have orchestrated a $28 million endorsement deal — an absurd amount of money, enough to seriously threaten the integrity of the league. Maybe it's not as outlandish as former referee Tim Donaghy's scandal (Wachtell Lipton took around a year to finalize its investigation in that matter, according to The Athletic), but the league doesn't need this to drag on for nearly the same length of time. The backlash, not only from fans and media, but the other 29 owners could be seismic.

"I'm not involved day-to-day in the investigation," Silver said. "I think, as I've said before, it's enormously complex. You have a company in bankruptcy. You have thousands of documents, multiple witnesses that have been needed to be interviewed. Our charge to the Wachtell law firm is to do the work and then come back and make recommendations to the league office, and that's where things now stand."

All-Star Weekend, in its purest form, is supposed to be a celebration of the good parts of the NBA — the inclusivity, the opportunity and the excellence. An uplifting view of the state of the league. Instead, we're reminded of the economic and moral perils of basketball at the highest level, and head into the break with a slew of unsolved problems.

Put aside, just for a moment, the LIV Golf-PGA Tour's subtext of perpetual scuffling. Try not to think about the posturing and skepticism that accompanies virtually every LIV story. Focus, just for a second, on the simple facts:

Anthony Kim won a golf tournament. Against Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. In 2026.

Kim, one of sports' true prodigal sons, claimed LIV's Adelaide event in Australia on Sunday, riding a final-round, nine-birdie 63, turning a five-shot deficit into a three-shot victory. If nothing else — if Kim's story goes no further than this right here — it's a pretty incredible comeback for a guy who briefly ruled the golf world, then literally disappeared for more than a decade.

Every so often, golf produces one of these back-to-the-mountaintop stories, when a name from the past has a late-career week of their lives. Think Jack Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986, Tom Watson (almost) at the Open Championship in 2009, Tiger Woods at the Masters in 2019, Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship in 2021. Everything comes together for one weekend, past meeting present, and it's remarkable to see.

Obviously, Kim's victory doesn't have anywhere near that historical resonance; about the only thing Adelaide and Augusta National have in common is a starting letter. But Kim's first professional win in nearly 16 years is an impressive story of facing down the demons of addiction and injury.

"For anyone who's struggling, you can get through anything" -@AnthonyKim_GolfInspirational.#LIVGolfAdelaidepic.twitter.com/oRvavK7iPC

— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league)February 15, 2026

It's tough to remember now, but for a brief moment, Kim's popularity in golf was second only to Woods — and Woods' personal scandals erupted right as Kim was playing his best golf. Before Scottie Scheffler, before Brooks Koepka, before Jordan Spieth, before Rahm and DeChambeau, before Rory McIlroy had won a single tournament, there was Kim. He went toe-to-toe with Tiger, he hung with Michael Jordan, he was a SportsCenter darling back when SportsCenter was, well, the center of the sports universe.

Scanning leaderboards from Kim's prime 2009-10 era feels like looking at faded family pictures in a scrapbook. There's only one player from Kim's most recent win, the 2010 Shell Houston Open, still in the top 20: ageless wonder Justin Rose. The tee sheet at Kim's most recent Masters, 2011, included Ernie Els, Mark O'Meara, Craig Stadler and Watson.

But after suffering an Achilles injury in 2012, Kim stepped away from the game. And not in the "showing-up-on-NBA-sidelines-and-ESPN-red-carpets" kind of way. No, he flat-outvanishedfor more than a decade. Rumors of Kim surfaced here and there — he was playing golf with buddies in Oklahoma, he was keeping in shape in California, he hadn't touched a club in five years — but no one managed to get even a picture of Kim, much less his story.

"I was around some bad people," Kim said in 2024. "People that took advantage of me. Scam artists. When you're 24, 25, even 30 years old, you don't realize the snakes that are living under your roof."

That's why Greg Norman'sdramatic 2024 reveal of Kimas a new LIV addition caused such a ripple in certain segments of golf fandom. Kim was once the coolest dude possible, the heir to Woods, the herald of a new era of golf. What would he have left after so many years away from the game?

Not much, to start. He failed to earn even a single point in his first two seasons on the tour, and was relegated. That could have been the end of his story, but he managed to place third in LIV's Promotions Event, posted a T22 in the first tournament of the season … and now this. A win is a win, especially when two of the world's best are in your final grouping.

It'll be interesting to see how the golf establishment views this victory. LIV players, as expected, haveralliedaroundKim. European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald was one of the first non-LIV players to praise Kim's achievement, unsurprising given that it occurred in the middle of the night for America:

Way to go AK!Redemption stories always resonate. From being one of the most talented players in the world, to disappearing from the game, to putting in the work to get yourself back into the winner's circle - that takes something special.We all fail at times. Not everyone has…

— Luke Donald (@LukeDonald)February 15, 2026

For LIV, this is undoubtedly the most significant victory in the tour's history. This story will break wide in a way that, say, Rippers GC's latest team victory at Adelaide won't. The presence of Rahm and DeChambeau legitimizes the win, and LIV's challenge now is transforming this burst of fans' attention into longer-term connections.

For Kim, the takeaway is much more simple. Yes, he'll rise up to around 200th in the world rankings, but that's not the real story here. Kim picked himself up from life's floor, got his life back together, and returned to the top of the leaderboard. Right now, that's more than enough.

Russian opposition figure and outspoken Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, whodied two years ago, was killed while in prison by a lethal toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America, five European countries have saidin a statementSaturday.

Analyses of samples taken from Navalny's body have "conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine," the statement said. The substance is not found naturally in Russia, it added.

The five countries – UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands – said Moscow "had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison" to Navalny while he was held in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

Only "the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law" to contribute to Navalny's death, they added.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday the United States had no reason to dispute what he called a "troubling report."

"Sometimes countries go out and do their thing with based on the intelligence they've gathered. We obviously are aware of the report. It's a troubling report," Rubio said while in Slovakia.

"We're not disputing or getting into a fight with these countries over it, but it was their report, and they put that out there."

Russian officials have repeatedly denied being responsible for Navalny's death and on Saturday Russian news agency TASS quoted the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as dismissing the frog poison claim as "propaganda."

The Russian Embassy to the United Kingdom dismissed the findings as a "political pageant." "As with the Skripal case there are strident accusations, media hysteria, zero evidence, and a host of questions the accusers would rather ignore," a statement from the embassy said.

The embassy claimed that the intention was to "revive a waning anti-Russian fervour within Western societies. If there is no pretext, one is laboriously invented."

CNN has reached out to the Kremlin for comment.

The announcement came during theMunich Security Conferencein Germany, during which Navalny's death was announced in 2024.

At the event two years ago, Navalny's wife Yulia Navalnaya came on stage at the conference in tears and received a standing ovation.

Speaking at the same security conference on Saturday, Navalnaya said: "Two years ago, I was here in Munich. It was the most horrible day (of) my life. I came to the stage and I said that my husband, Alexey Navalny, was poisoned."

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In apost on Xearlier in the day, Navalnaya said that she "was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: (Russian President Vladimir) Putin killed (Alexey) with chemical weapon."

"I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth," she said, adding: "Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes."

When Navalny died, the Russian prison service said that he had "felt unwell after a walk" and "almost immediately" lost consciousness.

He had been imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony since returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after beingpoisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

Ajoint investigationby CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning. It found that the FSB had formed an elite team specializing in nerve agents that trailed Navalny for more than three years.

Russia denied involvement then, too, with Putin saying at the time that if the Russian security service had wanted to kill Navalny, it "would have finished" the job.

Navalny, who had organizedanti-government street protestsand used his blog and social media to expose alleged corruption in the Kremlin and in Russian business, was viewed as one of the most serious threats to Putin before his death.

In a2018 interview with CNN, he said that he had a "clear understanding" of the risks involved in taking on the government.

"But I'm not afraid and I'm not going to give up on what I'm going to do. I won't give up on my country. I won't give up on my civil rights. I won't give up on uniting those around me who believe in the same ideals as me. And there are quite a lot of people like that in Russia," he said.

In a statement released on Saturday, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that "Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this form of poison, the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was asked at the Munich Security Conference if he feared that Putin would use the same toxins against him. "I don't think about myself because we have already lost a large number of people. I am one of many Ukrainian citizens who continue to fight," Zelensky said. "I cannot think about Vladimir Putin, about his poisons or toxins that he has or had."

The five countries said in their joint statement that they have written to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about what they called a "Russian breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention."

CNN's Sebastian Shukla, Anna Chernova and Christian Edwards, Svitlana Vlasova and Moriah Thomas contributed to this reporting.

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