The Twins added their second free agent of the offseason on Friday, agreeing to a two-year deal with catcher Victor Caratini, a source confirmed.

Caratini, 32, is a nine-year major league veteran who most recently played for the Houston Astros, hitting .259 with a .728 OPS in 114 games for Houston last year. He also hit a career-high 12 home runs and drove in a career-high 46 runs last season.

The Twins had a need at catcher this offseason with veteran Christian Vázquez hitting free agency himself after three seasons in Minnesota. During those three seasons, the Twins primarily employed an even timeshare between Ryan Jeffers and Vázquez. Now, Caratini and Jeffers — who is a free agent himself after the 2026 season — should split playing time.

The Twins also acquired catcher Alex Jackson, who has limited major league experience, in a minor swap with the Baltimore Orioles earlier this offseason.

While he is primarily a catcher, Caratini — who has played for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers and Astros — also has some experience at first base, appearing in 88 major league games there.

It’s the first contract of more than a year that the Twins have handed out since they extended starting pitcher Pablo López in April 2023. He also becomes the first free agent signed to more than a one-year deal since shortstop Carlos Correa earlier that year.

Caratini’s deal marks the second major league free agent the Twins have signed this offseason, joining first baseman Josh Bell, who signed a one-year deal with a mutual option worth a guaranteed $7 million. It’s been a relatively quiet offseason otherwise for the Twins, who still must make improvements to a bullpen that was dismantled at last season’s trade deadline.

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in Fort Myers, Fla., on Feb. 12, though this front office has often continued making additions to the roster after the beginning of spring training.

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CLARK, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey town whose former mayor was once heard denigrating Black people on secret recordings made by a whistleblower is now facing a state lawsuit that claims he and local police officials directed officers to keep minorities out of the community.

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The complaint, filed by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the office’s Division on Civil Rights, names former Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso, suspended town police chief Pedro Matos and the current police director Patrick Grady as defendants. It claims the town’s leaders “systematically discriminated against and harassed Black and other non-white motorists.”

Bonaccorso, a Republican, was the town’s mayor for about 25 years before he resigned in January 2025, just days after starting his seventh term in office. He had been easily reelected in November 2024 despite allegations of corruption. He left office after pleading guilty to using township resources to benefit his private landscaping business and forging signatures on permit applications for work his company performed in the area.

Bonaccorso did not respond to a voicemail message left Friday. When asked about the suit by NJ.com, he texted them back a two-word response, using an expletive to describe the suit.

In 2020, a police officer told officials he had secretly recorded Bonaccorso, Matos and another police official using racial slurs while referring to Blacks. The town agreed to pay $400,000 to settle the matter out of court, but the allegations later became public.

Clark Mayor Angel Albanese, a Republican who succeeded Bonaccorso, called the state’s lawsuit “frivolous” and accused Platkin of “playing politics” as his term as attorney general comes to an end. Charles Sciarra, an attorney for Matos, voiced similar views while noting the timing of the suit.

Matos has been on paid leave since the Union County Prosecutor’s Office seized control of the police department in July 2020. He has sued Clark to try to block the town from firing him, and those disciplinary proceedings remain active. The prosecutor’s oversight ended last March.

The lawsuit claims the town and its police leadership instituted a variety of discriminatory policing practices at the behest of Bonaccorso. Clark is a New York suburb, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) south of Manhattan.

According to an analysis cited by the attorney general’s office, Black people were stopped 3.7 times more often than white people in Clark between 2015 and 2020, and Hispanic people were stopped 2.2 times more often than white people.

While some of these racial disparities persisted to some extent even after the prosecutor’s oversight began, the data from 2020 to 2024 revealed some notable changes and improvements in policing practices that coincided with the reduction of some of these racial disparities, the attorney general’s office said.

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty on Friday to hacking the U.S. Supreme Court’s filing system more than two dozen times, court records show.

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Nicholas Moore, 24, of Springfield, Tennessee, also admitted that he illegally accessed records from AmeriCorps’ computer servers and a Department of Veterans Affairs electronic platform.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to sentence Moore on April 17.

Moore pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of computer fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of one year. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged him last week.

In 2023, Moore used stolen credentials to hack into the Supreme Court’s filing system on 25 different days, a court filing says. He accessed personal records belonging to the person whose credentials he used, then posted information about the person on an Instagram account using the handle “@ihackedthegovernment,” according to the filing.

Moore also pleaded guilty to using stolen credentials to access a user’s personal information from AmeriCorps’ computer servers and from a U.S. Marine Corps veteran’s account on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “MyHealtheVet” platform. He posted screenshots of information that he accessed from both computer systems on the same Instagram account.

By MANUEL VALDES

With breaches and tail slapping, a pod of orca whales put on a show near Seattle on Friday.

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The close encounter attracted dozens of people to the shore of the West Seattle neighborhood. Whale watchers identified the pod as Bigg’s killer whales, a group that hunts sea mammals and lives in the Salish Sea. The pod was seemingly hunting.

Among the people watching from Alki beach was Summer Staley. She drove from across the city to catch the whales after seeing a post on the Orca Network’s Facebook page alerting of the pod’s arrival. The group tracks whales using reports from people on land and in the water.

“It’s just such a beautiful connection with nature and with the universe to be sharing the same space with these beautiful creatures,” said Staley, who has seen the whales a few dozen times over the last year. “How lucky am I to be able to share this space with them?”

The whales breached and tail slapped for about hour. Sea birds and a bald eagle trailed the pod, looking for scraps.