By PAT GRAHAM and EDDIE PELLS, AP Sports Writers

Lindsey Vonn’s stirring return to ski racing in her 40s will hit its crescendo at the Milan Cortina Olympics, while the comeback quest of another U.S. gold medalist, snowboarder Jamie Anderson, came up short.

Anderson, a two-time champion in slopestyle who returned to the sport after having two kids, failed to reach a podium this season and will not join the U.S. Ski & Snowboard team in the mountains of Italy.

Mikaela Shiffrin made her fourth Olympic team, while snowboarder Chloe Kim is trying to make it three gold medals at three Olympics — though her health is in question after hurting her shoulder in training earlier this month.

They’re the headliners as U.S. Ski and Snowboard named its 97-person roster on Thursday. It contained few surprises, since virtually all the spots were determined based on results over the last two years.

The 41-year-old Vonn, Kim and Shiffrin, who have five Olympic gold medals between them, lead a roster that is short in experience. There are 48 first-time Olympians.

In all, there are 50 women and 47 men, ranging in ages from 15 (halfpipe freestyle skier Abby Winterberger) to 44 (snowboardcross rider Nick Baumgartner, at his fifth Olympics, and defending champion in the mixed event). The team is slated to be officially announced on Monday.

The skiers and snowboarders brought home 15 of the United States’ 25 medals at the Beijing Games four years ago. They’ll make up almost half of the entire contingent the U.S. brings to Milan Cortina.

“I am confident about the impact they will make in Italy,” U.S. Ski & Snowboard president and CEO Sophie Goldschmidt said. “More than the results, our athletes are also bringing some of the most captivating story lines to Milano Cortina.”

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Vonn returned last season after a partial knee replacement and quickly began to show the form that made her a four-time overall World Cup champion. She’s won two World Cup downhill races this season — to bring her career total to 84 — and will be a favorite in both speed events in Cortina. She may even pair with Shiffrin as the team combined event makes its Olympic debut.

Shiffrin is trying to bounce back after going 0 for 6 in her bid to win a medal four years ago. She captured gold in the slalom at the 2014 Sochi Games and gold in giant slalom four years later in South Korea. She’s locked in this season in the slalom, winning six races.

This will be the fourth and final Olympics for cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, a three-time Olympic medalist, including gold in the team sprint in 2018, who plans to retire at the end of the season.

“Throughout this season, we’ve seen quite remarkable results from our athletes across all 10 of our sports,” said Anouk Patty, the chief of sport for U.S. Ski & Snowboard. “I know this is one of the strongest teams we have sent to the Games.”

Alpine skiing

It’s been a bumpy road back to the Olympics for Breezy Johnson, who tore her right knee a month before the 2022 Beijing Games. The 30-year-old Johnson competed at 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

Vonn and Paula Moltzan both were once taught at Buck Hill in Minnesota under the tutelage of late coach Erich Sailer.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle was a silver medalist in the super-G at the Beijing Games.

Snowboarding

Eight years ago, Red Gerard lit up the Olympics by winning gold in slopestyle at 17. He’s back for his third Olympics and now, there’s another 17-year-old on the squad. It’s Ollie Martin, who is the first to land a pair of 2160-degree spins in opposite directions and could be a threat in both slopestyle and big air.

The post-Shaun White era on the halfpipe starts with a roster full of underdogs. Chase Josey returns for his third Olympics and Jake Pates is back after missing in 2022. Neither has finished higher than sixth.

Freeskiing

Nick Goepper, who has two silver medals and a gold in slopestyle, moves over to the halfpipe for his fourth Olympics. He’ll be joined there by Alex Ferreira, who has silver and bronze on the halfpipe.

David Wise, who has two gold medals and a silver, didn’t make the team after failing to reach the podium over the qualifying period. Also missing is big air silver medalist Colby Stevenson.

In slopestyle, Alex Hall returns to defend his slopestyle title.

Moguls & aerials

Jaelin Kauf is the reigning Olympic silver medalist in moguls, while Chris Lillis will try to add to the gold medal he won with Ashley Caldwell and Justin Schoenefeld in mixed team aerials in China four years ago. Winter Vinecki has a fitting first name as she competes in her second Olympics.

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

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — With the acquittal in the first Texas trial over the hesitant police response to the Robb Elementary School mass shooting, prosecutors must now decide how to try their case against the only other officer who was charged.

Adrian Gonzales’ trial was a rare prosecution of an officer accused of failing to save lives by preventing a crime. For nearly three weeks, Uvalde County’s district attorney laid out a case to jurors how Gonzales did nothing to stop the gunman and bore responsibility for failing to protect the 19 fourth-graders killed in one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

But jurors found Gonzales not guilty after seven hours of deliberations, leaving Pete Arredondo, Uvalde’s former schools police chief, as the only officer still facing trial over the response to the May 24, 2022, attack, which also killed two teachers.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell declined immediate comment Thursday on plans to proceed against Arredondo, but legal experts said prosecutors will likely consider changes to how they present evidence and witness testimony. Prosecutors also will face pressure from victims’ families, some of whom have spent years questioning why more of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to the school the day of the attack weren’t charged.

“Again, we are failed. I don’t even know what to say,” Javier Cazares, the father of 9-year-old Jackie Cazares, told reporters after Wednesday’s verdict.

Gonzales and Arredondo were both indicted on felony charges of child abandonment or endangerment, but the actions behind the counts are markedly different.

Gonzales, who was one of the first officers to arrive that day, was accused of abandoning his training and duty to confront the gunman.

Arredondo, who was deemed the incident commander, is accused of failing to enforce the school district’s active shooter response plan through a series of decisions that led law enforcement to wait more than an hour before entering the classroom where the gunman was. While officers waited, children and teachers lay dead or wounded inside, and some made emergency calls pleading for help.

Gloria Cazares, mother of Robb Elementary school shooting victim Jackie Cazaeres, reacts after the jury found former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales not guilty at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas (Sam Owens/The San Antonio Express-News via AP, Pool)

The difference in the cases against Gonzales and Arredondo

The case against Gonzales focused on what he did in the first frantic seconds and minutes after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos began shooting at the school.

Gonzales said he never saw the gunman before he entered the building. Gonzales also noted that he was among the first group of officers who tried to reach the classroom before they retreated under gunfire.

Arredondo was indicted on 10 charges stemming from the excruciating time period when Ramos was inside a classroom while dozens of officers gathered in the hallway, and hundreds more were outside. Arredondo’s decisions included negotiating with the gunman he considered contained. A tactical team eventually forced its way into the classroom and killed Ramos.

Gonzales and Arredondo were indicted on the same day in June 2024, but Arredondo’s trial has been delayed.

Prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit to force several members of the U.S. Border Patrol, including two who were on the team that killed the gunman, to testify.

The Border Patrol officers submitted previous written statements to investigators, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection has refused to make them available to testify.

Former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, right, embraces his attorney Jason Goss after the jury found Gonzales not guilty at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas. (Sam Owens/The San Antonio Express-News via AP, Pool)

The next steps for prosecutors

In light of Gonzales’ acquittal, prosecutors may want to change how they present evidence and witnesses against Arredondo, said Terry Bentley Hill, a Dallas criminal defense attorney who is not involved in either case but watched Gonzales’ trial closely.

Like Gonzales, the Arredondo case will focus heavily on police training and decisions made in a crisis, Hill said.

She predicted prosecutors will take Arredondo to trial.

“I think they would go forward because this man was in a supervisory position,” Hill said. “A grand jury of 12 people heard the evidence and decided there was probable cause. … I don’t believe the prosecutors would dismiss that indictment.”

Arredondo came under more intense scrutiny that anyone for the police response. Within days of the attack, state police officials shifted blame to him. He was suspended and then fired by the school district.

Arredondo has said little publicly, but he complained in a CNN interview shortly after his indictment that he had been “scapegoated from the very beginning.”

Arredondo attorney Paul Looney said he wants a trial, although he thinks prosecutors will dismiss the case.

“Pete needs the public vindication,” Looney said. “Pete was a hero. He stood closest to the shooter out of all the officers without even a vest on trying to figure out how to get in the classroom.”

Mitchell, the Uvalde district attorney, has never explained why only two officers were indicted or whether others were investigated.

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Police accountability to act

Gonzales’ acquittal is the second for a law enforcement officer accused of failing to do his duty in a school mass shooting.

After the 2018 school massacre in Parkland, Florida, a sheriff’s deputy was acquitted after being charged with failing to confront the shooter in that attack — the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting.

Gonzales’ attorneys told jurors that a conviction would set a precedent that officers have to be “perfect” in their response to a crisis and would lead many to sit on sidelines to avoid legal exposure.

Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Jackie Cazares, criticized the verdict.

“The message is clear: If you’re an officer, you don’t have to do anything,” Rizo said. “You stand back and wait for the Army, for the Marines, everybody to show up. No one takes accountability.”

BALTIMORE (AP) — Clothing retailer Under Armour is investigating a recent data breach that purloined customers’ email addresses and other personal information, but so far there are no signs the hackers stole any passwords or financial information.

The breach is believed to have happened late last year, and affected 72 million email addresses, according to information cited by the cybersecurity website Have I Been Pwned. Some of the records taken also included personal information that included names, genders, birthdates and ZIP codes.

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In an Under Armour statement acknowledging its investigation into the claims of a data breach, the Baltimore-based company said: “We have no evidence to suggest this issue has affected UA.com or systems used to process payments or store customer passwords. Any implication that sensitive personal information of tens of millions of customers has been compromised is unfounded.”

Have I Been Pwned CEO Troy Hunt said that he agrees with Under Armour’s assertion, based on the information that has emerged so far.

By STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House was voting Thursday on a resolution that directs President Donald Trump to remove U.S. military forces from Venezuela as Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Congress to curb the president’s aggression in the Western Hemisphere.

The Trump administration told senators last week that there are no U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela and committed to getting congressional approval before launching major military operations there. But Democrats argued that the resolution is necessary after the U.S. raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and since Trump has stated plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.

Thursday’s vote was the latest test in Congress of how much leeway Republicans will give a president who campaigned on removing the U.S. from foreign entanglements but has increasingly reached for military options to impose his will in the Western Hemisphere. So far, almost all Republicans have declined to put checks on Trump through the war powers votes.

Rep. Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, accused Democrats of bringing the war powers resolution to a vote out of “spite” for Trump.

“It’s about the fact that you don’t want President Trump to arrest Maduro, and you will condemn him no matter what he does, even though he brought Maduro to justice with possibly the most successful law enforcement operation in history,” Mast added.

Still, Democrats stridently argued that Congress needs to assert its role in determining when the president can use wartime powers. They have been able to force a series of votes in both the House and Senate as Trump in recent months ramped up his campaign against Maduro and set his sights on other conflicts overseas.

“Donald Trump is reducing the United States to a regional bully with fewer allies and more enemies,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a floor debate. “This isn’t making America great again. It’s making us isolated and weak.”

Last week, Senate Republicans were only able to narrowly dismiss a Venezuela war powers resolution after the Trump administration persuaded two Republicans to back away from their earlier support. As part of that effort, Secretary of State Marco Rubio committed to a briefing next week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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The response to Trump’s foreign policy

When the House voted on a similar Venezuela war powers resolution last month, three Republican House members — Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has since resigned from Congress — joined Democrats in voting for the legislation. Trump has since carried out the attack on Venezuela to seize Maduro, as well as turned his ambitions to possessing Greenland.

Trump’s insistence that the U.S. will possess Greenland over the objections of Denmark, a NATO ally, has alarmed some Republicans on Capitol Hill. They have mounted some of the most outspoken objections to almost anything the president has done since taking office.

Trump this week backed away from military and tariff threats against European allies as he announced that his administration was working with NATO on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security.

But Bacon still expressed frustration with Trump’s aggressive foreign policy and planned to vote for the war powers resolution, even though it only applies to Venezuela.

“I’m tired of all the threats,” he said.

Trump’s recent military actions — and threats to do more — have reignited a decades-old debate in Congress over the War Powers Act, a law passed in the early 1970s by lawmakers looking to claw back their authority over military actions.

The war powers debate

The War Powers Resolution was passed in the Vietnam War era as the U.S. sent troops to conflicts throughout Asia. It attempted to force presidents to work with Congress to deploy troops if there hasn’t already been a formal declaration of war.

Under the legislation, lawmakers can also force votes on legislation that directs the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities.

Presidents have long tested the limits of those parameters, and Democrats argue that Trump in his second term has pushed those limits farther than ever.

The Trump administration left Congress in the dark ahead of the surprise raid to capture Maduro. It has also used an evolving set of legal justifications to blow up alleged drug boats and seize sanctioned oil tankers near Venezuela.

Democrats question who gets to benefit from Venezuelan oil licenses

As the Trump administration oversees the sale of Venezuela’s petroleum worldwide, Senate Democrats are questioning who is benefitting from the contracts.

In one of the first transactions, the U.S. granted Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil broker, a license worth roughly $250 million. A senior partner at Vitol, John Addison, gave roughly $6 million to Trump-aligned political action committees during the presidential election, according to donation records compiled by OpenSecrets.

“Congress and the American people deserve full transparency regarding any financial commitments, promises, deals, or other arrangements related to Venezuela that could favor donors to the President’s campaign and political operation,” 13 Democratic senators wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Thursday in a letter led by Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

The White House has said it is safeguarding the South American country’s oil for the benefit of both the people of Venezuela and the U.S.