By ALYCE BROWN

NEW YORK (AP) — Ralph Lauren revealed Team USA’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics looks Thursday, complete with Americana knit sweaters and plenty of vintage call-backs.

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The formal opening ceremony look pairs a patterned red, white and blue knit sweater with tailored cream trousers and a matching wool coat. Moving sportier, the closing ceremony outfit features a graphic puffer coat inspired by vintage ski kits over a color-blocked sweater.

“We are creating something that we know has to become timeless and has to be something that people will wear forever and appreciate forever,” said David Lauren, the Chief Branding and Innovation Officer at Ralph Lauren. “So in creating jackets like this and creating things, we’re looking at the things that we most cherish. Things that are already enduring parts of the Ralph Lauren lexicon, and then we’ll build on that.”

Beyond the ceremony looks, a Team USA collection, which will also be given to athletes as Olympic village wear, became available to public Thursday.

The collection follows similar design themes as the opening and closing ceremony looks, with classic red, white and blue patterning on lots of knits, and includes Ralph Lauren’s versions of winter staples like bomber jackets and hockey jerseys.

The process of creating these looks is a long one. The Ralph Lauren team, which has been designing Team USA’s Olympic apparel since 2008, starts on each Olympics’ looks about 2 1/2 years out from the Games, meeting with athletes and brainstorming ideas for the kits. As Milan-Cortina’s looks are unveiled, Lauren said the looks for the 2028 Los Angeles games are already months in the making.

Ralph Lauren’s Team USA opening and closing ceremony uniforms for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are displayed at Ralph Lauren headquarters, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

He knows the cultural importance each Olympics’ outfits holds, and the attention they garner in the fashion world and among American consumers.

“The fact that we know people will want them and collect them and chase them down across eBay, is just an exciting part of the game,” he said.

Sometimes, even international Olympic athletes are on the lookout for them. Beyond being an addition to an American athlete’s Olympic wardrobe, the pieces are also sometimes used as bargaining tokens in the Olympic village.

Para snowboarder Brenna Huckaby and snowboarder Red Gerard explained to The Associated Press that there’s a tradition of swapping team sweaters and jackets with other nations at the Olympics, if there’s a certain country’s design that catches an athlete’s eye. That’s only if there’s a piece of their collection that they’re willing to let go of, that is.

Ralph Lauren’s Team USA opening and closing ceremony uniforms for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are displayed at Ralph Lauren headquarters, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

“I rarely trade, because I almost always love every single piece of Team USA stuff,” said Huckaby, modeling the color-blocked closing ceremony sweater that she said “is going to be on rotation after.”

“But every now and then there will be some random thing that another country has. And it’s so hard to sit with all my bags, all my stuff open, like, ‘OK, what am I willing to part with?’ That is probably, aside from competing, the hardest part of the Games,” she said.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By GARY FIELDS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is expected to submit plans for its new ballroom to a planning commission this month, the presidentially appointed head of the panel said Thursday.

“Once plans are submitted, that’s really when the role of this commission, and its professional staff, will begin,” Will Scharf, chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, said at its monthly meeting.

The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will dwarf the main White House itself, at nearly double the size, and President Donald Trump has said it will accommodate 999 people. It will have an estimated price tag of $300 million, a cost that has increased from initial projections.

Trump said on social media that the ballroom won’t cost taxpayers a dime because it is being privately funded by “many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”

FILE – A worker walks among debris from a largely demolished part of the East Wing of the White House, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington, before construction of a new ballroom. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Trump moved ahead with construction despite the lack of sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency that has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.

Scharf has made a distinction between demolition work and rebuilding, saying the commission only has jurisdiction over the latter. L. Preston Bryant Jr., a former chair of the commission under President Barack Obama, told The Associated Press that the approval process typically involved four stages, including an early consultation when the project was conceptual.

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By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A seal walked into a bar. Or to use a technical term, it galumphed.

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The creature was apparently lost, curious and well below New Zealand ’s legal drinking age. It lodged itself under the dishwasher and showed no interest in calling a cab.

It was a wet, lazy Sunday evening when the baby fur seal waddled into the Sprig + Fern The Meadows craft beer bar in Richmond, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. Accustomed to seeing animals in the pet-friendly bar, co-owner Bella Evans assumed the visitor was a dog before she took a closer look.

“Everyone was in shock,” Evans said. “Oh my gosh. What do we do? What’s going on?”

A patron grabbed a sweater and tried to usher the seal out of the back door. Evading its pursuers, the creature dashed into a restroom and then hid under the dishwasher, which was swiftly unplugged.

Another customer fetched a dog crate from home, and Evans made a plan to lure the unruly visitor out of its hiding place using a pizza topping the pub was offering as a special.

“I just went to my fiancé, I said, grab the salmon! Grab the salmon!”

Then it was a brief wait for conservation rangers to arrive. It turned out they were already tracking the wandering seal.

“It was their fourth call for the day,” Evans said. “They had been driving around this new-build subdivision trying to find this baby seal.”

This security footage provided by Sprig + Fern The Meadows, shows a seal walking inside bar in Richmond, New Zealand, on Nov. 30, 2025. (Sprig + Fern The Meadows via AP)

New Zealand’s conservation agency confirmed it received “numerous” reports from the public about a seal spotted in Richmond on Sunday before the fugitive turned up at the pub. Bar staff “did a great job keeping the seal safe” until rangers arrived, said Department of Conservation spokesperson Helen Otley.

The seal was released on nearby Rabbit Island, considered a safe location because of its dog-free status, Otley said. It’s not unusual for curious young seals to show up in unexpected places at this time of year, she added, as they follow rivers and streams up to 9 miles inland.

“They can turn up in unusual places, like this pub, but this is normal exploratory behavior,” Otley said.

Successful conservation programs in New Zealand have resulted in growing seal and sea lion populations, bringing them into closer contact with humans than before. Scientists refer to an annual “silly season” for both species, a period of months during which they regularly appear in strange places – houses, golf courses or busy roads.

Evans, who has owned the pub with her partner for just a few months, said the baby fur seal was the first unruly patron she’s had to evict. But she said the animal, named Fern by staff, was welcome back.

“There’s been the running joke that we’ve got the seal of approval,” she said.

Salmon will remain on the menu.

LONDON (AP) — Britain and Norway will mount joint naval patrols to protect undersea cables from Russia, the U.K. said Thursday, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Støre held talks on defense.

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The U.K. government says a combined fleet of at least 13 warships will “hunt Russian submarines and protect critical infrastructure in the North Atlantic.”

It follows a 10 billion pound ($13.4 billion) deal struck in August for Norway to buy at least five British-made frigates. Those Norwegian vessels and eight British ships will operate jointly in the seas along NATO’s northern flank.

As part of the agreement, formally signed Thursday in London by the two countries’ defense ministers, the U.K. has agreed to use Norwegian missiles for the Royal Navy’s surface fleet.

Starmer and Støre were scheduled to hold talks at the U.K. prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing St. before visiting British and Norwegian personnel at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, where they will meet aircraft crews that have been tracking Russian vessels. Britain says Russian naval activity around U.K. waters has increased by 30% in the past two years.