MON SEVEN

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NEED TO KNOW

• Lindsey Vonn slammed "ageism" critiques for skiing with a torn ACL, just one day before she crashed during the women's downhill event at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 8

• "This ageism stuff is getting really old," the Olympian, 41, said, replying to an opinion piece penned by a sports medicine educator

• Vonn "completely" ruptured her ACL at a World Cup race in Switzerland on Feb. 3, but completed her first downhill training run days later, ahead of the Milan Cortina Games

Lindsey Vonncalled out "ageism" critiques amid her run to become the oldest Alpine skier in Olympic history at the age of 41, one day before she crashed during the women's downhill event at the2026 Winter Olympics.

On Feb. 3, the skier announced she"completely" ruptured her ACLat a World Cup race in Switzerland, though she said she was still determined to compete in the Milan Cortina Games.

Less than a week later, Vonn completed her first downhill training run, and soon after, Greg Graber, a sports medicine educator,published an opinion pieceforUSA Todayabout Vonn's injury, titled, "Lindsey Vonn is skiing with a torn ACL. The pain may be the point."

In the article, Graber wrote, "It is astonishing enough that the 41-year-old is still performing on this elite level, much less with a serious injury that would end many alpine skiing careers," and hours later, Vonn replied to asince-deleted X postabout the story, calling out the "ageism" in the piece.

François-Xavier MARIT / AFP via Getty

"I'm sorry Greg but this is a very odd opinion piece," Vonn wrote. "The pain and suffering is the point? I'm searching for meaning? Why am I taking risk 'at my age?' This ageism stuff is getting really old."

"My life does not revolve around ski racing. I am a woman that loves to ski," she continued. "I don't have an identity issue, I know exactly who I am. I was retired for 6 years and I have an amazing life. I don't need to ski, but I love to ski. I came all this way for one final Olympics and I'm going to go and do my best, ACL or no. It's as simple as that."

The following day, Vonn went on to make her comeback during the 2026 Winter Olympics.

But, just as she passed a marker 13 seconds into her run in the women's downhill event, shecrashed into the snow and spun in the air several timesbefore finally landing.

"Oh my god," the athlete yelled as a medical team rushed to her side. After being attended to for approximately 15 minutes, the five-time Olympian was put on a stability board and airlifted by helicopter out of the mountains to a hospital in Innsbruck.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

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While there has not yet been an update surrounding the severity of Vonn's injury, Breezy Johnson, who went on towin the Olympic women's downhill gold medal, shared a few words of support for her teammate.

"I hope it's not as bad as it looked," she said, perNBC News.

Johnson, whomissed the 2022 Olympics herself after crashing on the same courseand injuring her knee, added, "I know how difficult it is to ski this course and how sometimes, because you love this course so much, when you crash on it and it hurts you like that, it hurts that much worse."

Vonn previously responded to criticism about her age,telling PEOPLE, "I want to show people that it's not a disadvantage to be old."

"I love challenging people's perspectives, and this is an amazing opportunity to do that. Also, my age is an advantage here," she continued. "I've had a lot of experience as a veteran athlete. I've skied these tracks four times more than anyone else. Plus, I like breaking records. So if I'm the oldest woman? So be it."

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come topeople.comto check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. Watch the Milan Cortina Olympics and Paralympics, beginning Feb. 6, on NBC and Peacock.

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North Carolina basketball stunnedDukein an upset so nice,it stormed the court twice.

On what looked to be the final possession of a 68-68 game, North Carolina guard Derek Dixon drove to the basket and kicked it out to Seth Trimble in the corner. Trimble hit what appeared to be a buzzer-beating 3 to give the Tar Heels a 71-68 win to hand Duke its second loss of the season,kicking off a party in Chapel Hillthat started with storming the court.

REQUIRED READING:Duke vs UNC basketball highlights: Tar Heels win on last-second shot

The problem is, that party kicked off a bit early. After review, officials found that there were still 0.4 seconds on the clock, sending UNC fans shambling back to their seats or the sidelines and kicking off a clean-up on the court. Luckily, the court clearing was handled expeditiously, and they were able to finish the game.

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No. 4 Duke fell to 21-2 on the year, whereas No. 18 North Carolina advanced to 19-4. North Carolina only led for the final 0.4 seconds of the game, and staved off its fourth straight loss to the Blue Devils.

While Trimble will go down as the hero, it was the efforts of Caleb Wilson that had the Tar Heels in a position to win. He had 23 points and played the full 40 for UNC, going toe-to-toe with Blue Devils star Cameron Boozer, who put up 24 points in 38 minutes despite some early foul trouble.

Duke and North Carolina will play again on March 7, undoubtedly with some more vitriol than usual coming in. The only emotion stronger than the love these teams have of beating each other is the hatred of losing to each other. Duke has a month to reckon with that feeling, which came in heartbreaking fashion.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:UNC basketball stuns Duke on late 3-pointer, court stormed early

No. 14 North Carolina came back from 13 points down, and Seth Trimbledrilled the 3-pointer of his life to defeat No. 4 Duke 71-68 on Saturday night in the Dean Smith Center.

What followed was mayhem: two court storms, one when Tar Heels fans thought the game was over, and the second after the final 0.4 seconds ticked off the clock.

For UNC, it was joyous.

For Duke, it was painful — emotionally and, according to Jon Scheyer, physically, too.

The Blue Devils' head coachtold reportersafter the loss that Duke staff members were punched in the face during the game-ending frenzy.

"It's hard to talk about the game when I was most concerned just for the safety of our players after the game,"Scheyer said in his postgame news conference, via The Field of 68. "I don't want to make it about that because Carolina, they played a great game to win, and that's a heartbreaking loss for our team.

"[But] I got staff members that got punched in the face. My family pushing people away, trying to not get trampled. That's not what this game is about. You give them all the credit in the world. It's not about the game, but obviously that was a scary ending — and this rivalry is not about that."

Here's Part II, with UNC hanging on for the win and fans storming the court for a second time.pic.twitter.com/bMi66wc1OP

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing)February 8, 2026

UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham publicly apologized and said that he personally apologized to Scheyer after the game.

"When they rushed the court, a number of people got knocked over," Cunningham said,per The Fayetteville Observer's Rodd Baxley. "But then we had to clear the court again. So when we normally have something like just rushing the court and the game is over, we do have a line by the benches to get people off safely.

"... Obviously, if somebody got injured, that's just really, really disappointing. We'll do the best we can to make sure that doesn't happen, but, again, my apologies to Duke for that."

Here's what UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said about the court-storming situation after the Tar Heels' win against Dukepic.twitter.com/vayPYK42wj

— Rodd Baxley (@RoddBaxley)February 8, 2026

This isn't the first time the 38-year-old Scheyer has been outspoken about a court storming.

In fact,he called for the celebration's ban just about two years ago.

At the time, Scheyer was in the second season of his now-four-season tenure as the head coach of his alma mater, which he helped win a national title for as a guard in 2010.

Duke had just been upset by Wake Forest, and star forward Kyle Filipowski injured his knee amid the court storming chaos.

"When are we going to ban court stormings?" Scheyersaid postgameon Feb. 24, 2024.

"When I played, at least it was 10 seconds and then they would run on the floor," headded. "Now, the buzzer doesn't even go off and they're running on the floor. This has happened to us a bunch this year."

Scheyer was asked Saturday night if he still feels like court storming should be banned.

"I think court storming is fine, I don't have any issue with court storming," he said,per The Associated Press. "Just shouldn't have people getting punched in the face. Shouldn't put our players in position where they're face-to-face with people who can do anything at that time. It just takes one reaction. Even today, I had to push people away just to try to protect our players."

Scheyer added, according to the AP: "They won, they should celebrate. "They want to court storm, court storm. But just let's get our guys off safely, that's it. That's where I'm at with that."

While Saturday's double court storm caught the public's eye, given the grand stage Duke-UNC provides, it's happened before.

Actually, just last week,UCF's court storm took tries. The first time, fans were herded back to their seats after officials determined that then-No. 11 Texas Tech was due two free throws because of a last-second foul.

After those attempts, the buzzer sounded once more, and the pandemonium resumed.

An 18-month-old baby held with her parents ata South Texas immigration detention centerbecame so ill last month that she was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening respiratory failure — then sent back to detention days later, where she was denied daily medication doctors prescribed, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

The toddler, Amalia, remained in detention for another nine days and was released only after lawyers filed an emergency habeas corpus petition in federal court challenging her continued confinement. She was freed Friday after the filing.

Amalia had been healthy before immigration officers arrested her family in El Paso in December and transferred them to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a remote, prisonlike facility where hundreds of immigrant children are held with their parents. Advocates and pediatric experts have warned that conditions at the center are unsafe for young children.

Amalia's health quickly deteriorated, the lawsuit says. On Jan. 18, she was rushed to a children's hospital in San Antonio, where doctors treated her for pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV and severe respiratory distress.

"She was at the brink of dying," said Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor and the director of the school's Immigrants' Rights Clinic, who filed the petition seeking the family's release.

Yet after Amalia's return to Dilley on Jan. 28, federal officials "denied her access to the medication that doctors prescribed for her at the hospital" the lawsuit says, forcing her parents to "wait in long lines for hours outside daily" to request the medicine, only to be turned away.

After days of intensive treatment on oxygen, Amalia began to recover. But her discharge from the hospital was not the end of her ordeal.

Despite warnings from medical experts that the toddler remained medically vulnerable and at high risk of reinfection, immigration officers returned Amalia and her mother to the detention center, the lawsuit says.

"After baby Amalia had been hospitalized for 10 days, ICE thought this baby should be returned to Dilley, where she was denied access to the medicines that the hospital doctors told her she needed," Mukherjee said. "It is so outrageous."

The Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. It has defended its use of family detention, saying in statements and legal filings that detainees are provided basic necessities and that officials work to ensure children and adults are safe.

CoreCivic, the company that runs Dilley under a federal contract, deferred questions about the facility to DHS and said in a statement that "the health and safety of those entrusted to our care" is the company's top priority.

Amalia's case comes amid heightened scrutiny of conditions at Dilley, which was thrust into the national spotlight last month after immigration authoritiesdetained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy taken into custody with his father — an episode that drew widespread outrage after a photograph showed the child in a blue bunny hat as he was led away by officers.

Accounts fromdetained families, their lawyers and court filingsportray Dilley as a place where hundreds of children languish while being served contaminated food, receiving little education and struggling to obtain basic medical care. Sworn declarationsfrom dozens of parentssay prolonged confinement takes a heavy physical and psychological toll on children — including regression, weight loss, recurring illness and nightmares — as the federal government expands the use of family detention.

Like many other families held at Dilley, lawyers for Amalia's parents say the family should never have been detained.

Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto entered the United States in 2024 after fleeing Venezuela, where they say they faced persecution for their political opposition to President Nicolás Maduro, according to the lawsuit. During their journey north, Valero Marcano gave birth to Amalia in Mexico.

They applied for asylum through the government-run appointment system CBP One, and immigration authorities allowed the family to live in El Paso while their case moved forward. According to the lawsuit, they checked in regularly with immigration officials and complied with all requirements, including participation in an alternative-to-detention monitoring program.

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That changed on Dec. 11, when the family reported together for a check-in and was taken into custody, according to the lawsuit. Two days later, they were transferred to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a sprawling complex an hour south of San Antonio, more than 500 miles from the community where they had been living.

Once inside Dilley, the parents say their daughter's health deteriorated quickly. In early January, Amalia developed a high fever that would not break. She began vomiting, had diarrhea and struggled to breathe.

As she grew weaker, her parents said they repeatedly took her to the facility's medical clinic — eight or nine times, according to the lawsuit — seeking help. Each visit ended the same way, according to the lawsuit: basic fever medication.

By mid-January, Amalia was barely getting enough oxygen. On Jan. 18, the lawsuit said, her blood oxygen levels plunged into the 50s — ​a life-threatening emergency — and she was taken out of the facility with her mother to a hospital. Her father remained behind at Dilley, unable to communicate with his wife or see his daughter as doctors worked to save her.

She spent 10 days at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio, much of that time on oxygen, as her lungs struggled to recover. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers maintained constant supervision over Amalia and her mother throughout the hospitalization, according to the lawsuit.

Mukherjee said the girl's mother spent the days praying at her daughter's bedside, terrified she would die — and was later devastated to learn that, once discharged, they would be sent back to detention.

When Amalia was released from the hospital on Jan. 28, doctors gave clear instructions, medical records cited in the lawsuit show: She needed breathing treatments delivered by nebulizer and nutritional supplements to help her regain strength and weight.

Instead of allowing them to return to El Paso, immigration officers drove Amalia and her mother back to Dilley, the lawsuit says.

Once there, detention medical staff confiscated Amalia's nebulizer, albuterol and nutritional supplements. The parents were required to wait daily for hours in what detainees have described in interviews and sworn declarations as the "pill line" — an outdoor queue families must stand in to obtain medicine and other necessities.

Amalia shivered in her mother's arms as they waited in the cold, Mukherjee said, only to be given PediaSure and denied the breathing medication doctors had prescribed.

As Amalia remained in detention, Mukherjee and other immigration lawyers repeatedly urged federal officials to release the family, warning that the child's condition could rapidly worsen.

Medical experts who reviewed Amalia's records submitted affidavits cautioning that returning a medically fragile toddler to detention — particularly without reliable access to prescribed medication — put her at extreme danger. One physician warned that the child faced a "high risk for medical decompensation and death."

Mukherjee's efforts intensified after health officialsconfirmed two measles casesamong people held at Dilley.

When those appeals failed, Mukherjee filed the emergency challenge in federal court seeking the family's release.

Hours later, on Friday evening, the family was freed. Mukherjee said ICE failed to turn over Amalia's prescriptions as well as her birth certificate. The parents weren't immediately available for an interview.

The reprieve brought them relief, Mukherjee said, but she expects the experience will have lasting consequences.

"I imagine they're going to carry the trauma of this experience for the rest of their lives," she said.

CAIRO (AP) — A limited number of Palestinians traveled betweenGazaand Egypt on Sunday as the Rafah crossing reopened after a two-day closure, Egyptian state media reported.

Israel Palestinians Gaza

The vital border pointopened last week for the first timesince mid-2024, one of the main requirements for theU.S.-backed ceasefirebetween Israel and Hamas. The crossing was closed Friday and Saturday because of confusion around operations.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 17 medical evacuees and 27 companions had begun the crossing into Egypt. The same number was expected to head into Gaza. Israel didn't immediately confirm it.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday, though the major subject of discussion will beIran, his office said.

Delays and mistreatment accusations

Over thefirst four daysof the crossing's opening, just 36 Palestinians requiring medical care were allowed to leave for Egypt, plus 62 companions, according to U.N. data. Rafah's reopening came after Israel retrieved the remains of the last hostage in Gaza and U.S. officials visited Israel to apply pressure.

Palestinian officials say nearly 20,000 people in Gaza seek to leave for medical care that isn't available in the war-shattered territory.

A group of Palestinian patients gathered Sunday in the courtyard of a Red Crescent hospital in Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis before making their way to the crossing for treatment abroad, family members told The Associated Press.

Amjad Abu Jedian, injured in the war, had been scheduled to leave for medical treatment on the first day of the crossing's reopening, but only five patients were allowed to travel, said his mother, Raja Abu Jedian. He was shot by an Israeli sniper while doing building work in the central Bureij refugee camp in July 2024, she said.

On Saturday, his family received a call from the World Health Organization about traveling on Sunday, she said.

"We want them to take care of the patients (during their evacuation)," she said. "We want the Israeli military not to burden them."

Returning to Gaza

A group of Palestinians arrived Sunday at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing to return to Gaza, Egypt's state-run Al-Qahera News satellite television reported.

Palestinians who returned to Gaza in the first few days of the crossing's operation described hours of delays and invasive searches by Israeli authorities and an Israeli-backed Palestinian armed group, Abu Shabab. Israel has denied mistreatment.

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A European Union mission and Palestinian officials run the border crossing, and Israel has its screening facility some distance away.

The Rafah crossing, a lifeline for Gaza, was the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. Israel seized the Palestinian side in May 2024, though traffic through the crossing was heavily restricted even before that.

Restrictions negotiated by Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian and international officials mean that only 50 people will be allowed to return to Gaza each day and 50 medical patients — with two companions for each — will be allowed to leave, but far fewer people have crossed so far.

Hamas negotiations

A senior Hamas official, Khaled Mashaal, said the militant group is open to discuss the future of its weapons as part of a "balanced approach" that includes the reconstruction of Gaza and protecting the Palestinian enclave from Israel. Such issues are central in the ceasefire's second phase.

Mashaal said the group has offered multiple options, including a long-term truce, as part of ongoing negotiations with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators.

Hamas plans to agree to a number of "guarantees," including a 10-year period of disarmament and an international peacekeeping force on Gaza's borders, "to maintain peace and prevent any clashes" between the militants and Israel, Mashaal said at a forum in Qatar.

Israel has repeatedly demanded the complete disarmament and dismantling of Hamas and its infrastructure, both military and civil.

Mashaal accused Israel of financing and arming militias, like the Abu Shabab group which operates in Israeli military-controlled areas in Gaza, "to create chaos."

Mashaal was asked about Hamas' position on the new Board of Peace, a Trump-led group of world leaders that isexpected to meetfor the first time Feb. 19 to raise money for Gaza's reconstruction. He didn't offer a specific answer but said the group won't accept "foreign intervention" in Palestinian affairs.

"Gaza is for the people of Gaza. Palestinians are for the people of Palestine," he said. "We will not accept foreign rule."

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Find more of AP's coverage athttps://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war