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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — USA Luge men’s doubles slider Zack DiGregorio is a New England Patriots fan. Makes sense: He’s from Massachusetts, his mother has worked for the Patriots for more than two decades and the Patriots are about to play in the Super Bowl for the 10th time since he was born. He doesn’t miss games. Especially not big games. And games get no bigger than the Super Bowl. Welcome to a Super-sized Olympic dilemma: What does one do when football’s biggest game collides with the Milan Cortina Games? In Italy, the game between the Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks kicks off Monday at 12:30 a.m., a time when Olympians like DiGregorio should be asleep and not exhausting themselves before taking part in their own Super Bowl of sliding. “If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom,” DiGregorio said, “I may be tuning in.” He won’t be the only one in Italy with a gaze locked on a TV, laptop or phone screen in the wee hours of Monday morning. There are 15 members of this U.S. Olympic team from Massachusetts, eight more from Washington and who knows how many else with reason to watch. Gold-medal pursuits may be forgotten, for a few hours anyway, to watch two teams play for a silver trophy. And yes, some Olympians with major rooting interests in this game say they’ll go without and make sure their sleep cycles aren’t interrupted. “I’m not going to be able to watch because that’s going to be real late here,” said curling Olympian Korey Dropkin, who was born in Massachusetts. “But as my form of support, I’m going to wear my Pats jersey to bed.” Then again, some athletes at the Olympics won’t have to stay up to watch. It seems a few already are somehow aware of the outcome. “It’ll be the middle of the night here so I think we will see the score afterwards,” said short track speed skater Corinne Stoddard, a Seattle native. “We don’t want to be up all night. But the Seahawks are going to win. I don’t have any doubt in my mind about that one. We’ve proved it all year. So, good luck, Patriots.” Women’s hockey player Alex Carpenter — a dual citizen of sorts for this Super Bowl, a Massachusetts native who plays for the PWHL’s Seattle Torrent — has a game on Monday, so she said she’ll just “check the score in the morning.” And Boston Bruins star Charlie McAvoy — part of the U.S. men’s hockey team in Milan — told NBC he might just go to bed really early Sunday night. “That could look like a 5 a.m. wake-up to catch the second half,” McAvoy said. The collision of a Super Bowl and an Olympics is a fun headache for some. For the Olympic movement, it represents a bigger issue. Sunday (or Monday in Italy, technically) will mark only the second time that the Super Bowl and the Winter Games will be happening on the same day. They collided in 2022 as well, and with NFL seasons now several weeks longer than they were a generation or two ago these conflicts are probably going to keep happening. “You’ve got big events all working and overlapping,” International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told the Olympic Information Service coming into the Milan Cortina Games. “So, the next part of the question is, when are we all going to sit down as one big sporting family and have these conversations around how we prioritize, how do we talk, how do we make space for each of us so that we’re also not competing against each other?” For now, those involved will just enjoy having two big things to root for at basically the same time. Mark Henderson’s daughter is U.S. Olympic freestyle skier Grace Henderson, who is scheduled to compete at 10:30 a.m. Monday. That’s a few hours after the Super Bowl ends. Prediction: Mark Henderson is going to be tired. He found a bar in Livigno, Italy that has agreed — with the help of some cash — to stay open until the end of the Super Bowl to ensure the Henderson clan of about 15 to 20 people have enough food and drink past the scheduled 2 a.m. closing time. “I said, ‘What would it take to stay open a few more hours?’” Mark Henderson said. “I named a price and they took it. Food and drink included.” Krista DiGregorio, Zack’s mom, is looking for a similar establishment. She probably would have been at the Super Bowl this year — she works in the suites at Gillette Stadium, and that part-time role basically funded her son’s costly luge career as he was becoming an Olympian. Her plan: Find a bar that’ll stay open in Cortina d’Ampezzo. “We’ll beg, if need be,” she said. “I am not above begging or perhaps sliding a few euros in their direction.” The main focus for the DiGregorio clan right now is, of course, the Olympics. Zack has his Drake Maye jersey with him. The family’s rental home has all the necessary fan touches: more Pats jerseys, signs, banners, even a towel with the team’s “We all we got, we all we need” theme. But the way Krista DiGregorio sees it, she already got her championship parade Friday night when her son was in the Olympic opening ceremony and got to march with teammates through the streets of Cortina. A Super Bowl win would be wonderful. Either way, it’s been a pretty good season for her. “Unreal. Unreal,” Krista DiGregorio said. “I didn’t anticipate being as emotional as I was at that parade. To be there and see how happy he is, how happy his teammates are, the people he’s grown up with and gotten close to, it’s been wonderful.” ___ AP Sports Writers Joseph Wilson and James Ellingsworth contributed to this story. ___ AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump received rare blowback from Republican lawmakers over a video posted to social media that included a racist image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, depicted as primates. Since Trump’s return to the White House, Republican lawmakers have treaded carefully when disagreeing with the president, often communicating their concerns in private for fear of suffering his wrath. But the swift calls to remove the post, which also echoed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, represented a rare moment of bipartisan backlash to Trump’s actions from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Multiple GOP members of the Senate and House joined their Democratic colleagues in voicing disgust and criticism at the post and urged the president to remove it. Trump declined to apologize, saying he did not see the racist portion of the video when he passed it on to staff. South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and chair of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, criticized the image and urged the president to remove it. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott wrote on social media. Other Republican senators echoed the sentiment. “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, wrote on social media. “The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the image “appalling.” Roger Wicker, the senior senator from Mississippi, denounced it as “totally unacceptable.” “The president should take it down and apologize,” Wicker wrote. Sen. John Curtis of Utah called Trump’s post “blatantly racist and inexcusable. It should never have been posted or left published for so long.” In the House, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York called Trump’s post “wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, quipped on social media about the White House’s shifting explanations for the video’s origin and deletion. More Republicans lodged their objections to the post after the video was taken down. “This content was rightfully removed, should have never been posted to begin with, and is not who we are as a nation,” wrote Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican. Rep. John James, a Michigan Republican running for governor, said he was “glad to see that trash has been taken down.” James, one of four Black Republicans in the House, said he was “shocked and appalled by that post” but defended Trump’s character. “I know the President. He is not racist,” said James, who campaigned for Trump in Black communities during the 2024 presidential campaign. Still, some of Trump’s closest allies defended him. Laura Loomer, a far right activist and media personality, called on her social media followers to highlight any Republican lawmakers “attacking Trump today with false accusations of racism.” “I am compiling a list of every single GOP Senator who attacked President Trump today, and I am printing it out and giving it to President Trump ahead of the @NRSC Winter Meeting in Palm Beach, Florida this weekend,” wrote Loomer, who has influenced administration policy and threatened retribution against GOP lawmakers in the past. Trump has been a longtime critic of the Obamas. Before entering politics, he earned fame among conservatives as a champion of the “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely claimed that President Obama was not born in the U.S. White House officials made multiple shifting statements about how the animated video, which has circulated among conservatives online for months, came to be posted by the president’s account. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at first said the post, which appears to be AI-generated, depicted Trump as “King of the Jungle” and the Obamas and other Democrats as characters from “The Lion King.” But the Disney animated classic does not include any characters depicted as apes, and is set in an African savanna not a jungle. White House officials later said that the video was erroneously posted by a staffer. “I liked the beginning. I saw it and just passed it on, and I guess probably nobody reviewed the end of it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. Asked if he condemned the racist parts of the video, Trump said, “Of course I do.” Supporters of the Obamas also took to social media not only to condemn the president’s post, but also to celebrate the former first couple. “We should ALL be outraged,” Pete Souza, the former chief White House photographer during the Obama White House, posted to social media. “I will not post a screenshot of the video here. Instead, I thought it best to respond with a few of my photographs of Barack and Michelle.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., posted images of the Obamas and praised their “brilliance, elegance, and beauty.” “I want Americans, particularly our young people, to know that the vast majority of our country supports and uplifts you despite the filth spewing from the Oval Office,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote to the Obamas on social media. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) – The Federal Communications Commission is opening an investigation into whether ABC’s “The View” daytime talk show violated equal time rules for interviews with political candidates after an appearance by a Democratic Texas Senate candidate this week, a source told Reuters on Saturday. The Republican-led FCC said last month that daytime and late-night TV talk shows are no longer considered “bona fide” news programs that are exempt from equal time rules that require them to give airtime to the views of opposing candidates. In September, FCC Chair Brendan Carr said the agency should consider reviewing whether “The View” runs afoul of equal time rules. (Reporting by David Shepardson) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Terrance Gore, who was part of World Series championship teams as a speedy bench weapon, passed away at the age of 34, the Kansas City Royals announced Saturday. Though the outfielder only logged 85 plate appearances across eight seasons, he made his time in the postseason count. He played in 11 postseason games as a pinch runner, stealing five bases in six attempts and scoring three runs. He was a part of a championship team with the Royals (2015), who drafted him with a 20th-round selection in 2011, the Los Angeles Dodgers (2020) and the Atlanta Braves (2021). Gore spent time at all three outfield positions over his career with the Royals (2014-2017, 2019), Chicago Cubs (2018), Dodgers (2020) and New York Mets (2022). He batted .216/.310/.270 with 43 stolen bases in 52 attempts. The Georgia native is survived by his wife, Britney, and three children. Britney shared on social media Saturday that Terrance died after “what was supposed to have been a simple procedure,” and asked for prayers for her family. “He loved his children with everything in him,” Britney posted. “He loved coaching the youth and those boys absolutely loved him.” The Royals’ Triple-A affiliate Omaha Storm Chasers posted a message in tribute to Gore. “We join the Gore family and the world of baseball in mourning the passing of Terrance Gore,” the Storm Chasers wrote. “Known for his great speed but even more so for his kindness and joyful smile, Terrance will be remembered as a tremendous teammate and a dedicated family man.” –Field Level Media Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

MILAN, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Avalanches on Saturday killed three people skiing off-piste in the mountains of Trentino Alto Adige and Lombardy, two regions that are home to some of the venues of the Milano Cortina Winter Games, the Alpine rescue service said. Two avalanches hit the Marmolada area in the Dolomites, not far from Cortina d’Ampezzo where the women’s Alpine skiing competitions are taking place. The Alpine rescue service said they recovered the body of a man who had gone off-piste with another three skiers at Punta Rocca, a 3,300-metre peak on the Marmolada massif, the highest mountain in the Dolomites. The service said the man died buried in the snow after causing the avalanche, despite his three companions having immediately started the search operation with help from other skiers, until rescuers arrived. Another two off-piste skiers died in Albosaggia, a village in the lower Valtellina valley, some 40 miles (65 km) east of Bormio, where all of the men’s Alpine skiing competitions are being held. The Alpine rescue service said it had no confirmation yet of a potential fourth victim in Trentino Alto Adige, where local media have reported that a man injured in an earlier avalanche died in hospital. Heavy snowfall in the Alps in recent days has caused several avalanches. Earlier this week, another avalanche in the Trentino Alto Adige region killed two Finnish skiers. AINEVA, Italy’s snow and avalanche risks association, which is part of the European Avalanche Warning Services, flagged a marked risk of avalanches for Sunday. The fresh snow and moderate winds have created slabs of wind-drifted snow that could be dislodged by the passage of just one winter sports enthusiast, AINEVA said on its website. (Reporting by Valentina Za;Editing by Alison Williams) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com