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LikeBill Belichick, Robert Kraft won't be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year.

TheNew England Patriotsowner did not receive the necessary minimum 40 of 50 possible votes to be selected to the 2026 class,ESPN reported Tuesday.

Kraft had been the contributor finalist, while Belichick had been the coaching finalist. Anywhere from 1-to-3 candidates will be selected among a pool of five coach, contributor and senior player finalists. Roger Craig, Ken Anderson and L.C. Greenwood are the senior finalists.

Meanwhile, 3 to 5 of the 15 modern-era finalists – which include Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald, among others – are to be selected.

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Belichick wasrevealed last week to have not made the cut, with Kraft coming out in support of his former coach.

"Whatever perceptions may exist about any personal differences between Bill and me, I strongly believe Bill Belichick's record and body of work speak for themselves," Kraft said in a statement.

Kraft, 84, purchased the Patriots in 1994, saving the organization from potential relocation and steering it to one of the most successful runs in league history. After Belichick's hire in January 2000, the franchise went on to win six Super Bowls, tying it with the Pittsburgh Steelers for the most of any team.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame's 2026 class will be unveiled Thursday night at the NFL Honors ceremony in San Francisco.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Robert Kraft not chosen for Pro Football Hall of Fame 2026 class

Lindsey Vonn's extraordinary comeback after nearly six years away from ski racing will not be derailed bya fall suffered last week in Switzerland. Vonn announced Tuesday that she had ruptured her right ACL, but after some pre-Olympics practice runs, she will continue to ski at Cortina d'Ampezzo in the2026 Winter Olympics.

"This is not, obviously, what I had hoped for," Vonn said in a news conference on Tuesday. "I've been working really hard to come into these Games in a much different position. I know what my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren't the same as it stands today, but I know there's still a chance, and as long as there's a chance, I will try."

The 41-year-old American also announced that she suffered bone bruising and meniscal damage in the fall that occurred one week before the Opening Ceremony of these Games.

"Considering how my knee feels," Vonn said, "I feel stable, I feel strong, my knee is not swollen, and with the help of a knee brace, I am confident that I can compete on Sunday."

Sunday would be the women's downhill, an event Vonn won at the 2010 Olympics.

Vonn got off-balance coming out of a jump in the upper section of the World Cup downhill race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Jan. 30. She was unable to recover and fell at high speed, skidding across the snow before careening into the orange safety netting on the side of the course.

Here is the replay of Lindsey Vonn's crash:#FISAlpine|#WorldCupCransMontanapic.twitter.com/1xhAuQanP0

— Team USA Olympics Updates and Coverage (@TeamUSAOLYCov)January 30, 2026

While Vonn was able to get to her feet and slowly and gingerly make her down the rest of the course, she stopped several times to grasp at her left knee and appeared to avoid putting any weight on it. Vonn was airlifted from the race area as a precaution.

Later on Jan. 30, Vonn expressed optimism via Instagram that her "Olympic dream is not over." She wrote that she was "discussing the situation" with doctors and "will continue to undergo further exams."

"This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics … but if there's one thing I know how to do, it's a comeback," Vonn added.

Now, she'll attempt to come back from yet another injury, this time just days before the Olympics are set to begin.

Vonn wasn't the only skier to crash amid adverse conditions and poor visibility in Crans-Montana. Austria's Nina Ortlieb and Norway's Marte Monsen, two of the five skiers who started before Vonn, also failed to complete their runs, prompting organizers to cancel the rest of the competition.

"The main reason is the safety of the athletes," Women's World Cup Race Director Peter Gerdol explained. "The visibility was getting worse and worse, they couldn't see the race line properly and it caused mistakes. We saw six athletes starting and all six had some mistakes. This was a sign that it was a high-risk situation."

Vonn was poised to be one of the faces of the Milan-Cortina Games thanks to a comeback story that defied all reasonable expectations. Now that story will only gain momentum if she makes it to the starting gate.

The four-time overall World Cup champion and 2010 Olympic downhill gold medalist retired in 2019 because the physical toll of her many injuries had become too much to bear. When she underwent right knee surgery in April 2024, her goal was nothing more than to be able to live a normal, pain-free life.

Vonn felt so much better after her partial knee replacement surgery that she made a stunning announcement in November 2024 that she was un-retiring. She has been dominant in downhill races this World Cup season and finished on the podium in two of her first three super-G races, raising hopes that she can contend for medals in both disciplines in Cortina.

The women's downhill competition is scheduled for Feb. 8 and the women's super-G will take place four days later. Vonn said her plan is still to compete in both.

Vonn could have skipped the notoriously treacherous Crans-Montana downhill, but she chose to race in hopes of accumulating more World Cup points. She entered the raceleading the downhill standingsandsixth in the overall competition.

Rather than playing it safe in poor conditions with the Olympics just days away, Vonn went all-out. She roared out of the start house and registered the fastest time through the first checkpoint.

For better or worse, Vonn was always going to go for it.

"Unfortunately, in my career, I've had a lot of challenges," Vonn said. "I've always pushed the limits, and in downhill, it's a very dangerous sport, and anything can happen. Because I've pushed the limits, I crash, and I've been injured more times than I would like to ... As many times as I crash, I've always gotten back up, as many times as I've failed, I've always won."

That's how her remarkable comeback made it this far. The question now is, will the injured left allow her to compete at her best.

"I'm not letting this slip through my fingers," Vonn said. "I'm going to do it. End of story."

GENEVA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that the ​first five patients were transferred through ‌Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt, which reopened on Monday.

"On ‌the second of February, WHO and partners supported the medical evacuation of five patients and seven companions to Egypt via the Rafah crossing," ⁠said WHO spokesperson ‌Christian Lindmeier.

"It was the first medical evacuation through this route since sometime ‍in 2025," he said referring to a limited number of evacuations during an early 2025 ceasefire.

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Over 18,500 ​patients are awaiting evacuations after the two-year ‌war, he said, with trauma injuries from the war as well as chronic conditions such as cancer and diabetes.

A UNICEF spokesperson said that more than 3,000 of them were children. ⁠Gaza health authorities are ​choosing whom to prioritise among ​the sick and wounded, Lindmeier said.

"We know that patients have died basically waiting ‍for evacuation, ⁠and that's something which is horrible when you know just a few miles or ⁠kilometers outside that border, help is available," he added.

(Reporting ‌by Emma Farge, editing by Thomas ‌Seythal and Madeline Chambers)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Defense lawyers in the Vatican's"trial of the century"argued Tuesday that Pope Francis inadvertently violated the fundamental rights of their clients by issuing four secret decrees that gave prosecutors "surreal carte blanche" to investigate in ways reminiscent of a "fascist" state where laws aren't published.

The tone of argument in the frescoed Vatican tribunal was so charged Tuesday, as the appeals trial resumed after a three-month break, that at one point the tribunal president asked defense lawyers to refrain from citing Francis by name.

The request by Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo underscored how Francis' problematic role in the big financial trial poses something of an existential dilemma for the Holy See. On the one hand, popes can only be judged by God. On the other, Francis stands accused of issuing decrees that violated the God-given rights of the defendants.

The case concernsthe once-powerful Cardinal Angelo Becciuand eight other defendants, who were convicted of a handful of financial crimes in 2023, after a sprawling two-year trial.

London property and more

The case, whichopened in 2021,had as its main focus the Vatican's investment of 350 million euros ($413 million) in a London property. Prosecutors alleged brokers and Vatican monsignors fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions to acquire the property, and then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros ($16.5 million) to cede control of it.

The original investigation spawned two main tangents involving Becciu, who was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5½ years in prison. The tribunal convicted eight other defendants of embezzlement, abuse of office, fraud and other charges.

All the defendants maintained their innocence and appealed. Prosecutors also appealed, since the tribunal largely threw out their overarching theory of a grand conspiracy to defraud the Holy See and instead convicted the defendants of a handful of serious but secondary charges.

Last month, the Vatican's highest Court of Cassation upheld the lower court's decision to throw out the prosecutor's appeal entirely because prosecutor Alessandro Diddi committed an embarrassing rookie procedural error.

On the same day as the Cassation ruling, Diddi also dropped months of objections and abruptly resigned from the case, rather than face the possibility that the Cassation court would order him removed.

At issue is Diddi's role in a now-infamous set ofWhatsApp chatsthat have thrown the credibility of the entire trial into question. The chats, which document a yearslong, behind-the-scenes effort to target Becciu, suggest questionable conduct by Vatican police, Vatican prosecutors and Francis himself.

Francis' role in focus

The appeal now proceeds on a next line of defense attack focusing on Francis' role in the investigation. During the trial, defense attorneys had argued their clients couldn't receive a fair trial inan absolute monarchywhere the pope wields supreme legislative, executive and judicial power.

At issue are four secret executive decrees Francis signed in 2019 and 2020, during the early days of the investigation, that gave Vatican prosecutors wide-ranging powers, including the unchecked use of wiretapping and the right to deviate from existing laws.

The decrees only came to light right before trial and were never officially published. They provided no rationale or time frame for the surveillance, nor oversight of the wiretapping by an independent judge, and were passed specifically for this investigation.

Legal scholars have said the secrecy of the laws and their ad hoc nature violated a basic tenet of the right to a fair trial requiring the "equality of arms" between defense and prosecution. In this case, the defense was completely unaware of the prosecution's new investigative powers. Even Vatican legal officials have privately conceded that Francis' failure to publish the decrees was deeply problematic.

On Tuesday, attorney Mario Zanchetti argued the whole trial should be annulled because of the secret decrees. His client, broker Gianluigi Torzi, had his cellphones and laptop seized, and was arrested and detained in the Vatican barracks for 10 days without charge or a judge's warrant, based on the sweeping powers granted to prosecutors by Francis' decrees.

Zanchetti argued that even in Iran and Russia, laws must be published, and that the failure to do so risks "making the Vatican's procedural code fascist."

He said he wasn't accusing Francis directly of wrongdoing, but said the late pope had been misled by prosecutors who requested the decrees.

At that point, Arellano the judge said: "I would ask you to not name Pope Francis. We all understand, if you avoid referencing the Holy Father."

Attorney Luigi Panella, for his part, said the decrees provided prosecutors with a "surreal carte blanche" to investigate.

Diddi had argued that Francis' decrees provided unspecified "guarantees" for the suspects, and the tribunal originally rejected the defense motions arguing the trial should be nullified because of them. In a somewhat convoluted decision, the judges ruled that no violation of the principle of legality had occurred since Francis had made the laws.

Zanchetti offered the appeals tribunal a way to avoid a finding against Francis, suggesting that the judges could find that the decrees were merely administrative acts that, because they were never published, are considered "ineffective."

Such a finding could render the evidence gathered under them inadmissible, but would avoid a finding that Francis himself violated divinely inspired norms guaranteeing the dignity and rights of the defendants.

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

Prosecutors in Paris said they askedElon Muskto appear for questioning as part of an investigation into thedistribution of sexual deepfakesandHolocaust denial content, after searching X's offices in the French capital early Tuesday.

The search was carried out by the prosecutor's cybercrime unit, in partnership with French police's own cybercrime unit and Europol, the office said on X.

A voluntary summons was issued for Musk andformer X CEO Linda Yaccarinoto appear and answer questions about the platform's adherence to French law.

The prosecutor's office said it was investigating potential criminal offenses including complicity in the possession and distribution of "child pornography images," the violation of personal rights through the generation of "sexual deepfakes," the denial of "crimes against humanity" and the alleged fraudulent extraction of data from an automated processing system, as part of an organized gang.

"The voluntary interviews with the managers should enable them to explain their position on the facts and, where applicable, the compliance measures envisaged," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Musk and Yaccarino have been summoned to appear in Paris in the week of April 20. It's unclear what legal powers, if any, prosecutors have to compel them to appear.

The Paris prosecutor's office added that it was shutting its own account on X and would communicate on LinkedIn and Instagram instead.

In a later statement Europol, European Union's law enforcement agency, said the investigation concerned "a range of suspected criminal offences linked to the functioning and use of the platform, including the dissemination of illegal content and other forms of online criminal activity."

X did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.

But the company's global government affairs account has previouslycriticized the French investigationas "politically motivated" and said the company "categorically denies" the allegations.

X has long facedpolitical pressure from European countriesand from the European Union itself for its alleged influence on elections.

Last year, the E.U.fined X the equivalent of $140 millionfor failing to combat hate speech and misinformation. Last month, the 27-nation bloclaunched a formal investigationinto sexual deepfakes created by X's Grok chatbot.

The probe came a day after Musk said Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence startup xAI in a record-setting deal that combined the rocket and satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot.

"This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!" Musk said.

In the United Kingdom, the information commissioner's office said Tuesday it had begun its own investigation into X and the processing of personal information in the generation of deepfakes.

"The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people's personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualized images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this," William Malcom, an executive director at the office, said in a statement.

This follows thelaunch last month of a separate probe by Ofcom, the British communications regulator.

MILAN (AP) — Six cities across the United States have been named as hosts of soccer games at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Group stage games will go to New York City; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; plus San Diego and San Jose in California, organizers of the next Summer Games said on Tuesday.

LA 2028 chief executive Reynold Hoover told International Olympic Committee members the Games would be played in "premier existing Major League Soccer stadiums."

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The Rose Bowl in Pasadena was previously confirmed to host knockout and medal games.

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

Olympic speedskating championErin Jacksonand bobsledder Frank Del Duca have been selected as the flag bearers for Team USA's delegation at the opening ceremony of theMilano Cortina Winter Games.

Jackson, who won gold in the women's 500 meters in Beijing in 2022, will be back to defend her title and compete in the 1,000 meters as well. This will mark her third Olympic appearance.

"Being chosen to represent the United States on the world stage is a tremendous honor," Jackson said in a news release. "It's a moment that reflects far more than one individual – it represents my family, my teammates, my hometown, and everyone across the country who believes in the power of sport."

Olympic gold medalist, history making speed skater Erin Jackson

Del Duca − a sergeant in the U.S. Army stationed in Lake Placid, New York − made his Olympic Winter Games debut in Beijing, and has been in the sport for over a decade. He is part of the U.S. Army's World Class Athlete Program (WCAP).

"Being flag bearer for Team USA is an incredible honor," Del Duca said. "It was also quite the surprise. I'm grateful for the support from my teammates, coaches and staff, Team USA, U.S. Army WCAP, family and friends, and everyone who has helped me on this journey."

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Jackson and Del Duca were chosen by a vote of fellow Team USA athletes, and their selection was announced Tuesday, Feb. 3, by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Jackson becomes the eighth speedskater in history to earn the honor of Team USA flag bearer, while Del Duca becomes the sixth bobsledder to carry the flag.

The opening ceremony will be held Friday, Feb. 6 at Milano San Siro Olympic Stadium in Milan.

It will be broadcast live Friday on NBC and Peacock beginning at 2 p.m. ET. Primetime coverage will begin at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and Peacock.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Olympians Erin Jackson, Frank Del Duca to carry US flag in Milan