By DAVE SKRETTA

MILAN (AP) — American figure skating sensation Ilia Malinin fell twice in a disastrous free skate that sent him tumbling all the way off the podium at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Friday night, allowing Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan to claim a stunning gold medal.

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The self-styled “Quad God,” who led by a comfortable margin after the short program, merely had to deliver a mediocre performance to add individual gold to his team gold medal. Instead, the 21-year-old Malinin was trying to fight back tears after one of the worst nights of his career, one that left a star-packed crowd inside Milano Ice Arena sitting in stunned silence.

“I blew it,” Malinin said. “That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind.”

Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.

Then there was Malinin, who fell all the way to eighth place. He finished with 264.49 points, ending a two-plus year unbeaten streak that covered 14 full competitions, including two consecutive world championships that he won with ease.

“Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,” he said. “I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”

Much of Malinin’s journey in Milan had felt a little bit off.

He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging that the pressure of competing in the Olympics had started to get to him. And he still wasn’t quite his dominant self despite a head-to-head win against Sato in the team free skate, which clinched the second consecutive gold medal for the Americans in the event.

But by the time of his individual short program Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unrivaled spunk was back. He took a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France that seemed insurmountable going into Friday night.

Malinin decided to practice early in the day at U.S. Figure Skating’s alternate training base in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, allowing him to escape the Olympic bubble and avoid having to sit in the arena all night. And he was the picture of calm throughout his warmup, never once falling in all of his practice jumps while wearing his glittering black and gold ensemble.

Then came a performance that might well haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.

He opened with a quad flip, one of a record-tying seven in his planned program, then appeared to be going after the quad axel only he has ever landed in competition, but had to bail out. He recovered to land a quad lutz — and then the problems really began.

Malinin only doubled a planned quad loop, throwing his timing off. He fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second half of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination that would have earned him big points. And in his final jumping pass, which was supposed to be a high-scoring quad salchow-triple axel, Malinin only could muster a double salchow — and he fell on that.

By the time the music stopped, Malinin was left trying to mask the sorrow for a crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion; seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles; actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.

Shaidorov was just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.

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

FORT MYERS, Fla. —  Liam Hendriks’ reasoning for signing with the Twins was multilayered.

First, and most importantly, there are spots in the bullpen up for grabs. The veteran reliever has an opportunity to pitch himself into an important role on the Twins’ roster if he can remain healthy and resemble the player who was once one of the best relievers in baseball.

Second, he began his career in Minnesota, meaning he has a certain comfort level with the organization. Though his former teammates have since moved on or retired, Hendricks still has familiarity with many staff members.

And third, he has a place in Fort Myers, Fla., which meant he didn’t have to pay “an arm and a leg” for rent during spring training.

Oh, and there was one other benefit.

“I was finally able to get No. 31 with the Twins, which has eluded me for many years,” he said.

That number has special significance to Hendriks, who first signed with the Twins as a teenager in 2007 and made his debut in 2011 as the 31st Australian to play in the big leagues.

The reliever, now 37, signed another deal with the Twins this week — a minor-league contract — after an offseason spent rehabbing from an elbow surgery and training at Cressey Sports Performance. Hendriks, now a 14-year veteran, is trying to make a comeback after throwing fewer than 19 major league innings combined over the past three seasons.

A number of health issues have kept him off the mound, starting with a stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis after the 2022 season. He made an emotional return in 2023 after his cancer went into remission, but that season was cut short by an elbow injury that necessitated Tommy John surgery.

Hendriks missed all of the 2024 season while rehabbing, then last year dealt with hip and elbow injuries — again requiring surgery on the elbow. This time Hendriks had a nerve issue and lost feeling in three of the fingers on his right hand. He underwent an ulnar nerve transposition with posterior interosseous nerve release in late September.

It took three to four months, he said, for feeling to return to all of his fingers, but now, he’s feeling good and looking to return to form. Hendriks was among the best closers in the game as recently as 2022, a year in which he recorded 37 saves and returned to the All-Star Game for the third time.

“I still look at it from the point of view (of) I haven’t really come back since cancer,” he said. “Since that, yeah, I came back a little bit last year, but I still wasn’t in a good spot.”

Spending the offseason worked at Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.,, he said, helped him train not just his body but his mind, as well.

“This offseason I really took an onus to take better care of myself,” he said. “After I had the Tommy John surgery in 2023, I was kind of stubborn and kept on my old workout program, which was nothing.”

Hendriks has now thrown six bullpens. His fourth was a showcase in late January, where the Twins watched him pitch. Because he is coming back from a surgery, he has decided to forgo pitching for Australia in the World Baseball Classic, at least initially.

Australia begins tournament play in Tokyo and should it advance, it would then play in Miami. Hendriks, who is part of the country’s designated pitchers pool, could potentially join the team then. And while he said it was a tough decision to make, with an arm that “hasn’t been tested,” he had to prioritize his opportunity with the Twins and winning a job at camp.

“There’s something kind of cyclical about it, starting my career here, coming back now and hoping to restart my career after three kind of lost years,” Hendriks said.

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A man under a civil commitment as being mentally ill and dangerous was sentenced to 33 years in prison Friday for breaking into a woman’s St. Paul apartment and fatally stabbing her, a 2022 killing he said was triggered by his belief that she was his mother.

In November, Maurice Angelo McClinton Smith, 42, appeared in court by Zoom from St. Peter Regional Treatment Center and pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder in the killing of 47-year-old Tina M. McCombs, a mother of six, in St. Paul’s North End on Jan. 9, 2022.

Smith and McCombs were Facebook friends, and Smith told police in an interview they met about a month earlier, according to the criminal complaint.

Smith was in a Ramsey County courtroom for his sentencing by Judge Joy Bartsher, who gave him about the middle of the range allowed under state guidelines.

Because of his civil commitment, the state’s Department of Corrections and Direct Care and Treatment will determine where he will serve his time, whether in prison, at St. Peter or elsewhere.

The civil commitment was originally put in place about seven months after the killing. In August 2023, he was found to be competent to face the charges against him.

Stab wounds to chest

Officers were sent to the apartment at 180 W. Larpenteur Ave. about 2:30 p.m. after a report of a man kicking in doors while holding a knife. As officers were on the way, they received updated information that a woman had been stabbed.

Police found McCombs unresponsive on the bedroom floor, and parts of the door and lock to the apartment scattered in the entryway. She was pronounced dead, and an autopsy showed she’d been stabbed twice in her chest.

Her boyfriend told police he was dozing in the living room when a man broke in. He heard McCombs yell, “What … is wrong with you?” before the man stabbed her. He said he’d seen the man around and thought he was homeless.

Maurice Angelo McClinton Smith (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

About 90 minutes after the killing, police received a report of a man lying on a back stoop of a residence three miles away and found Smith. He was unable to respond to officers, had dried blood on him and matched the stabbing suspect’s description. McCombs’ boyfriend identified him from a photo lineup as the man who killed her.

An investigator asked Smith why he was at McCombs’ apartment and he said “to get some tea and crumpets,” the complaint read. “When asked why he went to see (McCombs), Smith said, ‘To kill her.’ Smith said he was a simple prophet.”

November plea hearing

At his Nov. 18 plea hearing, under questioning by his attorney John Riemer to establish a factual basis for the plea, Smith agreed that he had used methamphetamine and ecstasy and drank alcohol before going to McCombs’ apartment.

Smith agreed with his attorney’s statements that McCombs had previously cut his hair, and that she had supported him through what the attorney said his client described as “very traumatic mother issues.”

Through McCombs’ support, Riemer asked his client, “you transferred that into seeing this person as your mother?” “Yes, sir,” Smith said.

“In fact, you specifically killed (McCombs), stabbed her, to seek revenge for what your mother did to you?” Riemer asked. “Yes, sir,” Smith said.

‘I fought tirelessly for justice’

Four written victim impact statements from McCombs’ family members and friends were filed in court for the judge to read prior to Friday’s hearing, and a few others were read in court.

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One statement was from McCombs mother, who wrote it before recently dying of cancer. It was read by McCombs’ sister.

“I fought tirelessly for justice, a burden I carried in my heart even as my body waned,” the statement read. “I wished to have been there in her final moments, to hold her and tell her I loved her, and to stand beside her, demanding the truth.”

McCombs had the heart and soul of a protector and giver, her siblings said in a victim impact statement read by prosecutor Ryan Flynn.

“Our sister Tina wasn’t the type to cower from adversity, but on Jan. 9, 2022, our unnerving and strong-willed sister met a fate none of us could have expected,” the statement read. “This tragedy created a hole in our foundation that’s unforgettable and unfillable.”

By LIAM McEWAN

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eight hundred episodes, 37 seasons, and one four-fingered family that refuses to age.

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As “The Simpsons” hits a milestone few series have ever glimpsed this weekend, the architects behind Springfield are reflecting on the choices that turned crude 1987 shorts from “The Tracey Ullman Show” into a cultural juggernaut.

“We’ve done 800 episodes, and I’m really glad we didn’t do a big overarching story,” said Al Jean, executive producer and former showrunner. “You always return to square one at the end of the show. And there’s no question that was a big influence on the longevity.”

For Matt Selman, the current showrunner, the Simpsons’ refusal to age is a liberation that simultaneously raises questions about the weight of their long history: “Do these characters have the emotional memory of the 800 things that have happened to them? … I don’t really know the answer to that.”

Meanwhile, show creator Matt Groening views reaching nearly four decades’ worth of production as a triumph tinged with perfectionism.

“I’ve spent 38 years now trying to get them to draw the characters correctly,” Groening said. “We’ve got to figure out how to shift perspective and do it more cinematically and we’re always trying to improve.”

Episode 800, “Irrational Treasure,” airs Sunday on Fox.

The voices behind Springfield

Nancy Cartwright arrived at her 1987 audition expecting to read for Lisa Simpson. She had other ideas.

“Hi Matt. Nice to meet you. I was out there and I noticed that there’s Lisa, that’s fine, 8-year-old middle child, but then there’s this Bart,” Cartwright recalled saying. “I’d kind of like to do him.”

Groening agreed to the “switcheroo” immediately. “She completely channeled him,” he said.

Nancy Cartwright arrives at a celebration for “The Simpsons” 800th episode, “Irrational Treasure,” on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Andrew Park/Invision/AP)

Nearly four decades later, Cartwright notes that “there are still people that yet don’t know that it’s a woman that does the voice.”

The role has become inseparable from her identity. “It’s become such a part of my lifestyle. I’m used to doing it all the time, and I’m not looking forward to the day when we’re done,” she said.

Lisa Simpson’s defining characteristic emerged just as spontaneously. Animator David Silverman, who drew the original outline for the show’s iconic opening sequence, recalled a production meeting where the middle Simpson child lacked a signature moment.

“We don’t have a gag for Lisa, we have a gag for everybody else. What should we do for Lisa?” Silverman reflects. “And I suggested, ‘Well, maybe she’s in the band and maybe she plays a tuba.’ And so Jim (James L. Brooks) said, ‘Well, I don’t know about the tuba but what if she played the baritone saxophone? In fact, what if she played it really well? That could be her character, she could be the genius kid of the family that nobody appreciates.’”

From controversy to institution

The show’s path to becoming a global institution was paved with early outrage. Groening remembers when Bart Simpson was deemed a threat to American classrooms — he relished every moment of it.

“That was the best move ever when the culture decided ‘The Simpsons’ was too outrageous,” Groening said. “And if you wear a Bart Simpson ‘Underachiever’ T-shirt to school, you got kicked out. That was the best thing for us.”

When Fox executives asked whether the show targeted kids or adults, Groening said the creative team made an immediate choice that defined everything that followed. “We said it’s for adults,” he recalled. “And that was the best instantaneous decision that we made because it meant that we could do a wide range of jokes.”

Matt Groening, left, and Matt Selman arrive at a celebration for “The Simpsons” 800th episode, “Irrational Treasure,” on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Andrew Park/Invision/AP)

As the internet arrived, so did a new breed of critic. Groening admits the “Comic Book Guy” character — Springfield’s perpetually dissatisfied nerd — was created as a direct response to early online fans declaring every new episode the “worst episode ever.”

“I like analysis and I like criticism,” Groening said. “But ‘That’s not funny’ and ‘That’s boring,’ that annoys me. Those are to me the laziest reactions you can get.”

His prediction for the show’s future carries characteristic sarcasm. “Well, I can tell you this because we are time travelers,” Groening joked. “The Simpsons will be on in a thousand years. Still on. Unfortunately, fans are going to say the show’s been going downhill for the last 500 years.”

Predictions, presidents and pop stars

The show’s supposed ability to predict the future — including a 2000 episode where Lisa inherits the presidency from “President Trump” — has become internet legend.

Matt Groening, from left, Nancy Cartwright, and Matt Selman arrive at a celebration for “The Simpsons” 800th episode, “Irrational Treasure,” on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Andrew Park/Invision/AP)

Jean offered a simple explanation: “Well, the predictions are accidental. We’re not from the future.”

But modern technology has turned prophecy into fraud, according to Selman.

“The predictions are all fake now,” Selman said. “They’re just done by AI. And people all go, ‘Oh my God, how do they do it?’ I throw up my hands in despair for the gullibility of mankind.”

Guest stars have become a hallmark of the series, from Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga to the Rolling Stones. Jackson’s 1991 appearance in “Stark Raving Dad” came after he cold-called Groening.

“I was working late in my office at 10 p.m. My phone rang … ‘Hi, this is Michael Jackson.’ And I hung up because, you know, it was obviously a prank. And he called back, ‘No, really, don’t hang up,’” Groening recalled.

While the show secured the King of Pop in Season 3, one prestigious group has consistently declined invitations to Springfield. “The ones that never said yes were U.S. presidents and I don’t think we’re ever going to do that,” Jean said.

‘The Simpsons’ in the streaming era

Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox brought “The Simpsons” to Disney+, introducing the show to new generations — and generating some exclusives not factored into the 800-episode count.

“The fact that ‘The Simpsons’ is on Disney+ has really exposed us to a new generation,” said Selman. “If it’s an 8- to 12-year-old’s favorite show for two or three years of their life before they move on to something else, that’s a big win for us.”

James L. Brooks arrives at a celebration for “The Simpsons” 800th episode, “Irrational Treasure,” on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Andrew Park/Invision/AP)

Streaming has also liberated the show from commercial constraints. “The thing that’s loosened up for us is the time, because things are tied to commercial breaks,” Groening said. “We still do three acts, or sometimes four acts, because we’re on the Fox network. But for the stuff for Disney, we go wild. And we can stretch out a little bit.”

No end in sight for ‘The Simpsons’

For Jean, the show’s greatest achievement is in the personal connections forged over decades. “I’ll have people come up to me and say, ‘My parents were splitting up. I was going through a bad time as a kid and your show got me through it.’ And I just would go, ‘Oh, this couldn’t mean more.’”

Silverman sees that same impact as the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition. “People often asked me when I wanted to be a cartoonist and animator and said, ‘What goals do you have?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. The only goal that I would love to see happen is to be involved in some animation project that makes a difference to people.’ So I guess I can check that one off.”

“There’s no end in sight,” Jean said. “We’re gonna go to Season 40, at least. Full steam ahead.”

For Groening, the future remains as open-ended as the series itself: “Believe it or not, there’s still stories that we haven’t gotten around to that are just in my head that I want us to do.”