UR MAG

DRAMMEN, Norway (AP) — Norwegian cross-country skiing star Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo said Friday he sustained a concussion from a fall in a World Cup race a day earlier but that he was "all good in the hood."

Norway Cross-Country World Cup

Klaebo,one of the stars of the recent Milan Cortina Games, said he would "take some days off" to recover after his crash involving U.S. skier Ben Ogden during on Thursday.

Klaebo posted a photo of himself giving a thumbs-up from a hospital bed, and he included audio of the Bee Gees disco hit "Stayin' Alive."

"Took a fall yesterday and hit my head pretty hard, but luckily everything is all good in the hood," he wrote on Instagram.

"Ended up with a concussion so I'll take some days off from both training and the internet just to make sure everything settles properly. Only got one head, so have to take good care of it."

Advertisement

Klaebo, who last month set a record for most gold medals (six) won at a single Winter Olympics, also thanked "everyone who reached out and checked in."

Klaebo's status for theWorld Cup finalsnext week in Lake Placid, New York, was unclear.

Thursday's crash happened in a semifinal heat of the men's sprint competition in Drammen. Ogden lost his balance and fell across the skis of Klaebo, who fell backward and hit his head on the snow.

Klaebo's 11 career gold medals is also a Winter Olympics record.

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

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Khris Middleton scored 22 of his season-high 35 points in the fourth quarter, Daniel Gafford added a season-best 22 points and the Dallas Mavericks snapped an eight-game losing steak with a 120-112 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday night.

Mavericks Grizzlies Basketball

Max Christie and Cooper Flagg added 13 points apiece for Dallas. Middleton was 10 of 17 for the game, including 8 of 10 from 3-point range. Gafford added 14 rebounds.

Jaylen Wells led Memphis with 23 points and GG Jackson finished with 20. Javon Small had 19 points and nine assists. Taylor Hendricks had 17 points and 10 rebounds.

The Mavericks, who led by 20 in the first half, were outscored 30-21 in the third quarter and led just 86-84 going into the final period. Middleton had the first 11 Dallas points of the fourth to take the lead back to double digits and went to have the highest-scoring quarter of his career.

The Grizzlies, as has often been the case in recent weeks, had more players on the injured list than dressed for the game, and that included Tyler Burton signed from the Grizzlies G League squad Memphis Hustle to a 10-day contract. Eleven Memphis players were absent with various injuries and ailments.

Advertisement

From the start, Dallas worked inside against a frontline where the Grizzlies' absences led to overmatched defenders. The Mavericks led 65-54 at the half, holding a 31-17 advantage on the boards, including 10 offensive rebounds compared to only four for Memphis.

Dallas ended the night with a 64-42 advantage in the paint and controlled the boards 60-38, its highest rebounding total of the season.

Up next

Mavericks: Host the Cavaliers on Friday, their only home appearance in a nine-game stretch.

Grizzlies: At Detroit on Friday.

AP NBA:https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — One grew up in rural Haiti amid the poverty and violence of his beautiful but troubled Caribbean nation. The other grew up in Michigan as a self-described "blue-collar farm kid" from Middle America.

Clergy Allies Haitian Migrants

Both became pastors in Springfield, Ohio. Both share a goal inspired by their faith: supporting the city's Haitian migrants who fear deportation under President Donald Trump's ongoing immigration crackdown.

Reginald Silencieux, pastor of the First Haitian Evangelical Church, and Carl Ruby, pastor of Central Christian Church, share a common cause — and a mutual respect for one another. They both stood up for Haitians whenTrump falsely accused Springfield's Haitian migrantsof eating their neighbors' cats and dogs in 2024.

They offered them shelter in their churches andinvited community membersto join in prayer and peaceful protest of the false rumors that exacerbated anti-immigrant fears.

In the weeks after Trump's comments, schools, government buildings and the homes of elected officials received dozens ofbomb threats. Ruby and Silencieux were targeted, too. Still, they persevered.

They've heldtrainingsto document and protest potential immigration enforcement raids, provided legal aid and food, and continued offering worship services in Creole and English-language classes.

And while they'veprayed for Trump, they've demanded an extension of the Temporary Protection Status program that has allowed thousands of Haitians to legally arrive in Springfield in recent years,escaping unrestandgang violencein their homeland.

"Both of them have been great leaders for the community," said Viles Dorsainvil, who has worked closely with both pastors as executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield.

He calls Ruby a champion of migrants, even putting his life at risk to support and welcome them.

He's grateful to Silencieux for hosting the Haitian community center in his church since 2021 and inviting immigration attorneys to meet with congregants after services.

"He prays for them; he's fasting with them; he's giving them spiritual advice," Dorsainvil said.

Guiding the hub of Haitian spiritual life in Springfield

Silencieux grew up in a Christian family, loving Jesus and wanting to serve God — just not as a pastor. Instead, he became an attorney.

But by his mid-twenties, he was preaching part-time and eventually moved to Port-au-Prince where he pastored several churches in thegang-controlled capital city.

"Life in Haiti was not easy. But it shaped my character," Silencieux said. "It taught me perseverance, responsibility and the importance of community."

It also prepared him for his next challenge.

In 2021, he felt called to move to Springfield, where Haitian immigrants were helping meet rising labor demands for the city's growing manufacturing industry. He didn't know English and he left behind his wife and children, who still live in Haiti.

Since then, he has been helping some of the thousands of Haitians who legally moved to Springfield in recent years under the TPS program. The U.S. initially gave TPS to Haitians following a devastating earthquake in 2010 and extended it several times since. But the Trump administration has pushed to end that status, saying conditions in Haiti have improved.

A federal judge recently ruled tokeep the protectiontemporarily in place. But uncertainty and fear continue in Springfield.

After her ruling, the judge receiveddeath threats. Bomb threats closed schools, offices and businesses in Springfield.

Silencieux feels powerless at times, but he reminds the community — and himself — to keep faith.

"As a pastor, I don't have any possibility to protect them," he said. "Faith helps me to help the community."

At a recent Sunday service, he recommended that his congregants stay home as much as possible in case of immigration raids. He offered a prayer for Trump and the Haitian community.

"The president is our president. He can take decisions. But he is limited," he said. "God is unlimited."

Advertisement

Leading a faith-based movement for migrants

Ruby grew up in a Baptist family in rural Michigan and spent most of his life identifying as an evangelical and a Republican. When he moved to Springfield — and for years after — he knew no Haitians.

But tensions flared in 2023 after a boy was killed and dozens injured when a Haitian immigrant driverhit a school bus.

From home, Ruby tuned into a live city council meeting discussing the crash.

"I was hearing one ugly racist statement after another," he said, recalling how he drove immediately to the meeting to speak out.

"All I said was, 'We need to remember that there are advantages of having immigrants come into our community; they're good people.' And I immediately became the friend of Haitians in town and the enemy of anti-immigrant people in town."

After Trump's derogatory comments in 2024, Ruby invited Springfield's Haitians to worship at his church. He encouraged his congregation to hand out cards around Springfield with a supportive message for Haitians. In Creole and English, it read: "I'm glad you are here. Christ loves you and so do I."

Ruby said God began preparing him for this moment 15 years ago. At the time, he was vice president of student life at Cedarville University, a Baptist college near Dayton, Ohio, and he organized a trip with students to trace the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The group visited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where in 1963 four Black girls were killed when abomb planted by Ku Klux Klan membersexploded during a Sunday service.

They also visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, where Ruby read King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." The letter was directed at Alabama clergy who had asked King to delay civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham.

"I didn't know that was a letter addressed to pastors who had failed to stand because they wanted to be safe," Ruby said.

"I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't do that; that if there were an opportunity for me to use my voice to help someone who was being oppressed, that I wouldn't be silent."

He organized a national conference of Christian colleges, hoping students could return to their campuses inspired to launch organizations focused on serving immigrants.

His work for migrants continued when he became pastor in 2015.

Working with faith leaders, he foundedG92, an immigrant advocacy group named after the Hebrew word "ger," meaning stranger or foreigner, which appears 92 times in the Old Testament.

Today, he takes pride that Springfield's resistance to Trump's immigration crackdown is faith-based.

"This is definitely a faith-led movement," he said. "God loves immigrants and part of demonstrating that you're one of God's people is taking care of immigrants."

He has been targeted with threats and slanderous comments. But he remains undaunted.

"I've never lost a moment of sleep over worrying about someone harming me," he said. "I believe God will protect me."

On Feb. 2, he helped put on an event wherehundreds packed a churchto sing and pray in support of Haitians. So many people turned up that a fire marshal asked scores to leave because the church had exceeded its capacity.

"Outside beautiful events with my family, it was the most beautiful day of my life," Ruby said.

With the TPS program's uncertain future, Ruby remains worried about the fate of Haitian migrants in Springfield. But he's also hopeful.

"I think God's going to bless our city for doing the right thing."

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.

Burning scraps of plastic and cardboard in a large tin can outside his family's tent in a southernGazagraveyard, Raed Abu Ouda prepares a meal for his children, remembering a time when they didn't have to live this way.

"We used to live in palaces, but now we live in graves," Abu Ouda, 42, who said he was injured in February when a shell struck his home despite the ongoing ceasefire, told NBC News this week. His family's tent is one of several built in an area used as a cemetery outside the Jordanian field hospital inKhan Younis.

The graveyard, he said, was the best shelter his family could find, with thousands of Palestinians still blocked from returning to their homes, or at least what's left of them, because they sit behind the"yellow line"— a boundary delineating territory still occupied by Israeli forces, comprising roughly half of Gaza.

"We have become people living in unnatural conditions," said Abu Ouda, who lost his work as a farmer after the conflict in Gaza began. Describing the daily struggle to get food, water and the most basic supplies for survival in the Palestinian enclave, five months into the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, he questioned how he was supposed to support his family of seven, including his youngest child, 1-year-old Arwa.

"I can't even provide a single jerrycan of water for them," he said.

Hopes that the ceasefire, brokered in part by President Donald Trump, would advance — and that the process of rebuilding Gaza might begin after more than two years of war — swelled after Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushnerunveiled plansfor the enclave's future, marked by gleaming high-rise towers and beaches packed with tourists. Kushner had outlined a timetable of a few years for the reconstruction despite the ongoing strikes in Gaza, but large-scale work is yet to begin.

Now, a wider war consumes the region after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran last month, triggering retaliatory attacks from Tehran and its proxies. Palestinians in the battered enclave fear they have been forgotten, with progress on advancing the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas largely sidelined by the latest hostilities. Key obstacles include the futuredisarmament of Hamasand thewithdrawal of Israeli troopsfrom areas that are still occupied.

"The war involving Iran has had a major impact on Gaza," Doaa Basam, a 26-year-old pharmacist displaced from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza to Khan Younis, told NBC News on Wednesday.

Basam noted a continued "shortage of many essential supplies," including adequate food and medicine.

The Kerem Shalom crossing is currently the only functioning route in and out of Gaza. Israel closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt "until further notice" as the Iran conflict broke out, citing security fears, just weeks afterit was reopened under the ceasefire deal.

Meanwhile, fears have grown for future access to aid in the enclave after dozens of humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, were barred by Israel from operating in the Palestinian territories over their refusal to cooperate with newvetting rulesthat would have forced them to provide lists of their staff, as well as their personal information.

The Israeli government said the rules were implemented on security grounds, to rule out any links to terrorism among humanitarian workers.

Israel's top court issued a temporary injunction to allow the organizations to continue most of their activities while it weighs a petition from 17 aid groups challenging the government ban, but a decision on the case has yet to be made.

Advertisement

Speaking at a news briefing Wednesday, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said "ongoing restrictions on aid operations" were "worsening an already critical humanitarian situation."

Between Feb. 27 and March 5, just more than 3,400 pallets of aid administered by the U.N. and partners were offloaded at Gaza's crossings, according to an update published March 6 by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That works out to around 485 pallets per day, with around 70% of them containing food supplies, according to OCHA.

The figures are a significant decrease from the average over the period since the ceasefire came into effect, with an average of 2,240 pallets a day delivered across the period between Oct. 10 and March 5. Those figures only pertain to aid administered by the U.N. and its partners, however.

OCHA warned a week ago that, even before the crossing closures and challenges posed by the Iran conflict, additional food supplies were "urgently needed to ensure that partners have sufficient stocks to maintain distributions," with its partners' operations covering "only 50 percent of minimum caloric needs" for 1.2 million of Gaza's 2 million residents.

OCHA also noted thatmedical evacuationsout of Gaza were also on hold amid the Iran war, while only "a limited number of commercial supplies have been permitted to enter," with delays causing fuel shortages, driving up prices and increasing reliance on humanitarian aid.

Asked about when the other crossings into Gaza might reopen and how much aid overall was getting into Gaza since the ceasefire began and since the Iran war started, COGAT, the Israeli military's liaison with the Palestinians, did not respond.

COGAT earlier this month said it was continuing to facilitate the entry of aid into Gaza in line with its "commitments and subject to the necessary security restrictions stemming from the security situation."

Meanwhile, deadly Israeli airstrikes have continued with more than 650 people killed in Gaza since the ceasefire began, according to the Health Ministry in the enclave, while most of the population is still internally displaced and living in makeshift shelters.

"People are still languishing in tents (almost) six months after this so-called ceasefire was established," Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and former adviser to Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

She added: "Ceasefire has become a new term for continuing to kill, and everybody's attention is focused elsewhere, on Iran."

"God willing, the war will end," said Abu Ouda, the father living with his family in the cemetery in Khan Younis. Until then, he said, his family would continue to "suffer unimaginably."

"Suffering to find water, suffering to find something to drink, something to eat, something to wear," he said.

"Everything is suffering."

As deadly tornadoestore through the Midwest and Plainslast weekend, state and local search-and-rescue crews rushed to the devastated areas to look for survivors. It wasn't until the teams deployed that they realized they were operating without a critical tornado-tracking tool typically provided by FEMA.

That left responders with a less precise picture of where to search first, two sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

The mapping tool pinpoints a tornado's path of destruction within minutes of touchdown, helping responders focus on the hardest-hit neighborhoods as quickly as possible. Even in storms where FEMA itself doesn't respond, state and local rescuers rely on the mapping tool, which is provided to them through the agency.

But it wasn't available this time, because FEMA's roughly $200,000 contract with the company that provides the data expired in February, and the agency's request to renew it is still moving through Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's strict spending-approval process, according to the two sources and internal documents reviewed by CNN.

"Rescuers were flying blind, having to drive around or use news reports to figure out where the impacts were," one of the sources told CNN. "And when a tornado hits in the middle of the night, every moment counts."

The disruption echoesproblems FEMA facedduring last July's deadly floods in Texas, when the same approval processes implemented by Noem – including a rule that all spending over $100,000 receive her personal signoff – slowed the agency's ability to pre-position search-and-rescue teams, left call centers understaffed and delayed the sharing of data with state partners.

Billions of dollars in contracts and grants have stalled at the agency in recent months pending approval by Noem and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as the Trump administration seeks to rein in wasteful spending and shift more responsibility for disaster response to states.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

FEMA insiders have been warning that Noem's policies are hampering operations and their ability to respond to disasters.

Noem is scheduled to leave her position atop DHS at the end of March. Trump has tapped Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, to replace her. For now, her team continues to oversee FEMA's operations.

Over the past week, dozens of tornadoes have been reported from Texas to Michigan, part of a wave of severe storms that have killed at least 11 people.

As the storms spread, officials from several states started contacting FEMA, asking why they couldn't access the tornado tracking data. By early this week, they were reaching out to FEMA's acting chief, Karen Evans – appointed by Noem and the Trump administration – urging her to get the contract approved, especially with more tornadoes in the forecast.

Inside FEMA, leaders pressed Evans and DHS to let them restore the mapping tool, which search-and-rescue teams across the country can access when they need it most.

This wasn't the first time they had made the request. FEMA staff wrote to DHS back in January, asking officials to renew the contract and ensure the potentially life-saving technology would be readily available, especially heading into the spring, when tornadoes are most common, according to two sources with knowledge of the request.

Thousands of FEMA spending requests have made their way to the desks of Evans and Noem, sources and documents show. Many have been slashed; others have sat for months.

As of earlier this week, the tornado mapping contract still had not been renewed, the two sources said.

Advertisement

"We've been told to get out of the way and empower the states, but the reality of what that looks like is not even providing these basic enabling technologies to our state and local partners," one of the sources said.

Shutdown: 'Sitting around with nothing to do'

When DHS partially shut down last month, Noem directed FEMA to scale back to "bare-minimum, life-saving operations only." In a follow-up email to the agency's regional leaders, Karen Evans wrote that "all activities at FEMA need to cease."

The email, which CNN obtained, carved out four exceptions: work tied to President Trump's State of the Union address, immediate response to the recent winter storms, meetings connected to the World Cup and Olympics and "Nuclear activities."

The directives were unusual, officials inside the agency said, as much of FEMA's work typically continues uninterrupted during government shutdowns because it's funded through the Disaster Relief Fund – a separate pot of money Congress provides for disasters and emergencies.

Nonetheless, work stopped immediately for some workers, seven FEMA officials in various parts of the country told CNN.

While some teams and regions directed workers to continue operating as usual, or close to it, others told staff to stand down from a wide range of projects that help communities recover from past disasters and prepare for the next.

"People are being told not to even open their computers," a high-ranking FEMA official said about their regional office, one of several across the country. "It's the most appalling experience of my professional life."

For those left with little to do, some are playing video games or cards to pass the time; others are watching TV at their desk. Some staffers have been told to stop communicating with state and local partners.

"We're sitting around with nothing to do," a high-ranking FEMA official in a separate region said. "I literally had someone next to me fall asleep at his desk the other day. Next week we're planning a cookout at the office."

Others are "making up work" for staffers "like case studies, reviews of plans, and inventory," another regional official told CNN.

FEMA insiders say, at this time of year, they should be focused on preparing for hurricane season, spring tornadoes and a severe drought that could fuel wildfires in the coming months.

"It's a huge waste of time and taxpayer money for no reason, just to make the impact of the shutdown more significant," another FEMA official said.

Noem and the Trump administration haveblamed Democratsfor the budgetary impasse at DHS, which they say is hampering disaster response work and holding up relief. Democrats support standalone funding for several key agencies, including FEMA, but Republicans have opposed such a piecemeal approach.

Noem has been one of FEMA's fiercest critics over the past year, calling it bloated, partisan and ineffective, and at times calling for it to be eliminated altogether.

All this comes as a task force assembled by President Trump to help reform FEMA is set to present its final list of recommendations in the coming weeks.

CNN's Brandon Miller contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com