By NICOLE WINFIELD and ANDREW DAMPF

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has made peace with Jannik Sinner.

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The top-ranked tennis player visited the new pope on Wednesday, gave him a tennis racket and offered to play, during an off day for Sinner at the Italian Open.

Leo, the first American pope, is an avid tennis player and fan and had said earlier this week that he would be up for a charity match when it was suggested by a journalist.

But at the time, Leo joked “we can’t invite Sinner,” an apparent reference to the English meaning of Sinner’s last name.

By Wednesday, all seemed forgotten.

“It’s an honor,” Sinner said in Italian as he and his parents arrived in a reception room of the Vatican’s auditorium. Holding one of his rackets and giving Leo another and a ball, the three-time Grand Slam champion suggested a quick volley. But the pope looked around at the antiques and said, “Better not.”

Italy’s Jannik Sinner, left, shares a light moment with Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of their meeting at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Vatican Media via AP)

Leo, a 69-year-old from Chicago, then appeared to joke about his white cassock and its appropriateness for Wimbledon, perhaps a reference to the All England Club’s all-white clothing rule.

He asked how the Italian Open was going. “Now I’m in the game,” Sinner said. “At the beginning of the tournament, it was a bit difficult.”

Sinner has a quarterfinal match on Thursday in his first tournament back after a three-month ban for doping that was judged to be an accidental contamination.

He will next face freshly-crowned Madrid champion Casper Ruud. Sinner is attempting to become the first Italian man to win the Rome title since Adriano Panatta in 1976.

During the audience, Angelo Binaghi, the head of the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, gave Leo an honorary federation card.

“We all felt the passion that Leo XIV has for our sport and this filled us with pride,” Binaghi said in a statement. “We hope to embrace the Holy Father again soon, maybe on a tennis court.”

The pope and Sinner posed for photos in front of the Davis Cup trophy that Sinner helped Italy win for the second consecutive time last year. Also on display in the room was the Billie Jean King Cup trophy won by Italy in 2024, the biggest women’s team event in tennis.

Earlier in the week, after Leo’s first quip about not wanting to invite him, Sinner said it was “a good thing for us tennis players” that the new pope likes to play the sport.

In addition to tennis, Leo is an avid Chicago White Sox baseball fan.

His predecessor, Pope Francis, was a lifelong fan of Buenos Aires soccer club San Lorenzo.

Dampf reported from Rome.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Good news for golfers: PGA Tour Superstore, a sports equipment and apparel retailer, is launching a nearly 36,000-square-foot location in Woodbury this summer.

Minnesota’s second PGA Tour Superstore will open at 9 a.m. June 14 at 1555 Queens Drive in the Woodbury Village shopping center. Opening day will feature “thousands of dollars in merchandise giveaways” to those first in line, according to a release from the retailer.

“This is a booming golf market. With 95 golf courses in the area, the metro-Twin Cities are an obvious expansion market for us,” general manager Ron Gornick stated in the release.

PGA Tour Superstore’s Atlanta headquarters was the “first off-course specialty golf and tennis retailer in the country,” according to the company. The retailer has over 74 US locations, including its first Minnesota location at on 12380 Wayzata Blvd. in Minnetonka.

“People are excited about the store opening in June,” Megan Mahoney, PGA Tour Superstore communications leader, said.

Golfers often camp outside new stores for days ahead of opening for a chance to win golf equipment like iron sets, drivers, putters, range finders, apparel, footwear and more, Mahoney said. Items are given away on a first-come, first-served basis until there are none left to give away.

Along with selling retail equipment, the facility will have interactive features including six practice and play bays, 1,264 square feet of indoor putting greens, four simulators for club fitting and an interactive demonstration bay for in-home golf simulators.

“In-home golf simulators have gotten very popular and so we will have an in-home demonstration bank where you can test out the different monitors that are available,” Mahoney said.

The facility also includes a repair shop for club regripping, adjustments and repairs. Certified teaching professionals can provide lessons in-store, according to the release.

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“There is a lot of golf up in that area, so it was an area that we knew we would look to expand, so we’re excited about the Woodbury location,” Mahoney said.

Woodbury is home to several golf courses, clubs and event spaces.

Woodbury’s new Topgolf venue is set to open later this year on Bielenberg Drive near the southeast corner of Interstates 94 and 494, about 2 miles away from the new PGA Tour Superstore.

Topgolf hasn’t provided details on its Woodbury project but the Brooklyn Center location that opened in 2018 features golfing bays stacked three levels deep and more than 100 climate-controlled tee-off rooms.

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former FBI agent and Pentagon contractor has sued the founder of a conservative nonprofit known for its hidden camera stings over secretly recorded videos showing the contractor criticizing President Donald Trump to a woman he thought he had taken on a date.

Jamie Mannina says in his lawsuit that he was misled by a woman he met on a dating website who held herself out as a politically liberal nurse but who was actually working with the conservative activist James O’Keefe in a sting operation designed to induce Mannina into making “inflammatory and damaging” remarks that could be recorded, “manipulated” and posted online.

Clips from their January conversations were spliced together to make it appear that Mannina was “essentially attempting to launch an unlawful coup against President Trump,” and an article released online with the videos defamed Mannina by painting him as part of a “deep state” effort with senior military officials to undermine Trump’s presidency, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington.

Mannina does not deny in the lawsuit making the comments. He says his words were taken out of context and were misrepresented in a description of the video that was posted on YouTube.

O’Keefe founded Project Veritas in 2010 but was removed from the organization in 2023 amid allegations that he mistreated workers and misspent funds. He has continued to employ similar hidden camera stings as part of a new organization he established, O’Keefe Media Group, which also is named in the lawsuit.

O’Keefe told The Associated Press that Mannina “voluntarily” offered up the comments in the recording and that it was important for the public to hear Mannina’s remarks. O’Keefe pointed out that the District of Columbia only requires the consent of one party, not both, for a conversation to be recorded. O’Keefe said the lawsuit was an “attack on the First Amendment” and that he was prepared to fight it in an appeals court if necessary.

“He said what he said. We did not take him out of context. The words that we reported came out of his mouth,” O’Keefe said, adding, “We stand by our reporting.”

The lawsuit includes claims of defamation, false light, fraudulent misrepresentation and violations of the Wire Tap Act. Though the lawsuit acknowledges that the city’s consent law for recording conversations, the filing asserts that the law nonetheless prohibits “the interception and recording of a communication if it was for the purposes of committing a tortious act.”

A recording that O’Keefe released shows Mannina being asked at one point by the woman, whose name was not disclosed in the lawsuit, about his “overall assessment of Trump.”

“He’s a sociopathic narcissist who’s only interested in advancing his name, his wealth and his fame,” Mannina can be heard saying. Asked in the recording whether there was anything he could do to “protect the American people,” Mannina replied that he was in conversation with some retired generals to explore what could be done.

The lawsuit was filed by Mark Zaid, a prominent Washington lawyer who routinely represents government officials and whistleblowers. Zaid himself was sued Trump last week after the president revoked his security clearance.

“Lying or misleading someone on a dating app, which no doubt happens all the time, is not what this lawsuit seeks to address,” Zaid said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The creation of a fake profile for the specific purposes of targeting individuals for deliberately nefarious and harmful purposes is what crosses the line.”

The complaint arises from a pair of dates that Mannina had in January. During their first date, the lawsuit alleges, the woman expressed her distaste for Trump and repeatedly pressed Mannina on his political views and about his work with the government. Mannina told her that included working as a “spy catcher” several years earlier when he was an FBI counterintelligence agent.

The lawsuit says Mannina and the woman met for lunch the following day, and as they left the restaurant, a man with a microphone approached Mannina and said, “Jamie, you’re a spy hunter, you say. Well, I’m a spy hunter, too, but I’m evidentially a better spy hunter than you.” The man was O’Keefe, the lawsuit says.

The complaint says Mannina was swiftly fired from Booz Allen, where he worked as a contractor, after O’Keefe contacted the press office and presented at least parts of the videos.

O’Keefe then released a video on his organization’s YouTube channel titled, “Pentagon Advisor Reveals Conversation ‘to Explore What We Can Do’ to ‘Protect People from Trump.’”

The lawsuit says the O’Keefe Media Group painted Mannina in a false light by misconstruing his words and his title, including by referring to him as a “Top Pentagon Advisor” when he was actually just “one of a countless number of defense contractors.” It says that characterization was intended to support “fabricated claims that Mr. Mannina was essentially attempting to launch an unlawful coup against President Trump.”

The lawsuit does not directly say why Mannina was targeted, but it does note that in 2017, when he was working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, he published three articles in the Huffington Post and The Hill newspaper that were critical of Trump.

By ED WHITE

DETROIT (AP) — A 19-year-old man was arrested after spending months planning an attack against a U.S. Army site in suburban Detroit on behalf of the Islamic State group, authorities said Wednesday.

Ammar Said was planning to have another person commit a mass shooting at the Army’s Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command in Warren, but he didn’t know that two supposed allies were undercover FBI employees keeping track of every step, the government said.

Investigators recorded audio and video images of their meetings with Said, including handwritten diagrams of the site, which is known as TACOM and the Detroit Arsenal.

Said, a recent member of the Michigan Army National Guard, was arrested Tuesday shortly after launching a drone for a final look before an attack, the FBI said in a court filing.

“Helping ISIS or any other terrorist organization prepare or carry out acts of violence is not only a reprehensible crime — it is a threat to our entire nation and way of life,” U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. said.

The FBI said Said planned to send one of the undercover agents into TACOM with Molotov cocktails and assault-style weapons.

The other undercover operative told Said that he would “be on the first plane to Syria” after an attack.

“That makes two of us,” Said responded, according to the FBI.

Said, a Detroit-area resident, appeared in court Wednesday on charges of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and distributing information related to a destructive device. He agreed to remain in custody without bond.

Senad Ramovic, a lawyer who represented Said during the brief appearance, declined to comment.

TACOM employs thousands of people and manages the Army’s ground equipment supply chain. It says it is the only active-duty Army installation in Michigan.

Said was under investigation about a year ago when he told an undercover FBI employee about a “longstanding desire to engage in violent jihad,” or war, either overseas or in the U.S., the FBI said.

Authorities last July performed a secret search of his phone, which he had turned over to National Guard personnel before boarding a military aircraft. The FBI said it found references to jihad and images of Islamic State flags.