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Los Angeles Lakersbig manJaxson Hayeswas handed a one-game suspension by the NBA "for pushing aWashington Wizardsmascot during pregame introductions,"the league said in a statementon Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Hayes shoved the Wizards' mascot, G-Wiz, during pregame introductions before the Jan. 30 game in Washington. The mascot had been running with a giant flag when Hayes, 25, made contact, sending the mascot careening into cheerleaders running onto the court, video of the incident shows.

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The Lakers will be without Hayes for Thursday night's game against thePhiladelphia 76ers.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Jaxson Hayes pushes mascot, receives suspension from NBA

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL suspended injured Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Caleb Jones for 20 games on Wednesday for violating the terms of the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program.

Jones, 28, is in his first season with the Penguins. The club placed him on injured reserve in late October with a foot injury, then assigned him to their American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He played one game for Wilkes-Barre in January before sustaining an upper-body injury.

Jones said through a statement released by the NHL Players Association that he believes he was exposed to a contaminated substance while undergoing exosome therapy from an outside provider.

"While I did not use the prohibited substance intentionally or for performance enhancement, I understand that players are responsible for everything that enters their body and accept the discipline imposed by the program," Jones said. "I'm sorry to have let down my teammates, the Penguins organization, and our fans."

Jones, the younger brother of Panthers defenseman Seth Jones, had one point in seven games with the Penguins in October after signing a two-year deal with Pittsburgh last summer.

Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas said the club "appreciates" Jones' transparency and that Jones will follow all NHL and NHLPA protocols during the suspension. Dubas added that Jones has the "full support" of the organization.

AP NHL:https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Gavin McKenna, the potential No. 1 overall pick in the2026 NHL Draft, was arrested and charged with felony aggravated assault and a misdemeanor charge of simple assault, plus summary offenses for disorderly conduct and harassment following an altercation Saturday,according to Onward State.

The 18-year-old Penn State freshman forward was reportedly at a downtown State College, Pennsylvania, bar with the team and friends and family following theNittany Lions' outdoor game at Beaver Stadium against Michigan State. It's unknown how the altercation began, but McKenna reportedly broke the jaw of an unidentified individual.

According to thePennsylvania court docket, McKenna is awaiting a preliminary hearing on the matter.

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The Penn State athletic department released the following statement to Onward State a few hours after the arrest was reported:

"We are aware that charges have been filed; however, as this is an ongoing legal matter, we will not have any further comment."

In July, McKenna announced that he would be attending Penn State following three seasons with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League, one of three leagues that makes up the Canadian Hockey League. The move was made possible after theNCAA's ruling that allowed CHL players to play collegiately.

Through 24 games this season, McKenna has 11 goals and 32 points for the Nittany Lions, who are in third place in the Big Ten. He was recently ranked as theNo. 1 North American skater by NHL Central Scoutingahead of June's NHL draft.

By Tarek Amara

TUNIS, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Tunisian police arrested lawmaker Ahmed Saidani on Wednesday, two of his colleagues said, in what appeared ​to be part of an escalating crackdown on critics of ‌President Kais Saied.

Saidani has recently become known for his fierce criticism of Saied. On Tuesday, he ‌mocked the president in a Facebook post, describing him as the "supreme commander of sewage and rainwater drainage," blasting what he said was the absence of any achievements by Saied.

Saidani was elected as a lawmaker at the end of 2022 ⁠in a parliamentary election ‌with very low voter turnout, following Saied's dissolution of the previous parliament and dismissal of the government in 2021.

Saied has ‍since ruled by decree, moves the opposition has described as a coup.

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Most opposition leaders, some journalists and critics of Saied, have been imprisoned since he seized control of ​most powers in 2021.

Activists and human rights groups say Saied has ‌cemented his one‑man rule and turned Tunisia into an "open‑air prison" in an effort to suppress his opponents. Saied denies being a dictator, saying he is enforcing the law and seeking to "cleanse" the country.

Once a supporter of Saied's policies against political opponents, Saidani has become a vocal critic in recent months, accusing ⁠the president of seeking to monopolize all ​decision-making while avoiding responsibility, leaving others to ​bear the blame for problems.

Last week, Saidani also mocked the president for "taking up the hobby of taking photos with the poor ‍and destitute," sarcastically ⁠adding that Saied not only has solutions for Tunisia but claims to have global approaches capable of saving humanity.

Under Tunisian law, lawmakers enjoy ⁠parliamentary immunity and cannot be arrested for carrying out their duties, although detention is allowed ‌if they are caught committing a crime.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; editing ‌by Mark Heinrich and Bill Berkrot)

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — FormerU.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, a crewcut-wearing Indiana Democrat from southern Indiana who was a leading foreign affairs voice during three decades in Congress and helped oversee investigations of theSept. 11 attacks, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Hamilton, a moderate lawmaker respected by Democrats and Republicans alike who also led a congressional probe of the Reagan administration'sIran-Contra affair, died Tuesday peacefully in his Bloomington, Indiana, home, said his son Doug Hamilton, who did not cite a cause.

The elder Hamilton was at the forefront of congressional opposition tothe 1991 Persian Gulf Warwaged by President George H.W. Bush and advocated continued economic sanctions against Iraq before military action over its invasion of Kuwait.

He decided against seeking reelection in 1998 and said after leaving Congress that he believed the U.S. needed to be regarded around the world as more than a leader of military coalitions.

"The United States must be — and must be seen as — an optimistic and benign power," Hamilton said in 2003. "We must speak and act as a source of optimism, a beacon of freedom, a benign power forging a consensus approach toward a world of peace and growth and freedom. And American power must be accompanied by American generosity."

President Barack Obama presented Hamilton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, saying during the ceremony that Hamilton was a man "widely admired" on both sides of the aisle, "for his honesty, his wisdom, and consistent commitment to bipartisanship."

"Indiana mourns the passing of Lee Hamilton, a man whose life embodied integrity, civility, and public service," Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, said in a statement Wednesday.

9/11 investigations

Hamilton was a small-town lawyer known for his exploits as a high school basketball star when he first won election to his southern Indiana congressional seat in 1964 at the age of 33.

With his thick glasses and calm, deliberate manner, Hamilton rose to become chairman of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees and a Democratic leader on international relations before retiring from Congress in 1999.

His reputation as an evenhanded moderate had Capitol Hill leaders turn to him for some of the most tumultuous matters facing Washington. But he also faced criticism that he was not aggressive enough in pursuing allegations of wrongdoing by Republican administrations.

Hamilton was tapped in 2002 as vice chairman of the Sept. 11 attacks commission. That group spent 20 months investigating the 2001 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people when 19 hijackers flew airliners into New York's World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside.

He presented a united front with the panel's Republican chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, through clashes with the George W. Bush White House and its lobbying efforts for changes to the U.S. intelligence system.

The commission found that both the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to grasp the gravity of terrorist threats and took actions so feeble that they never even slowed the al-Qaida plotters.

"The fact of the matter is, we just didn't get it in this country," Hamilton said when the commission released its report in 2004. "We could not comprehend that people wanted to kill us; they wanted to hijack airplanes and fly them into big buildings."

Iran-Contra committee

Hamilton gained national prominence in the mid-1980s with his selection as a co-chairman of the congressional Iran-Contra committee, which investigated the Reagan administration's diversion of profits from Iran arms sales to help Nicaragua's Contra rebels. The panel's report found that President Ronald Reagan created an atmosphere at the White House in which subordinates felt free to skirt the law and Constitution.

"There was too much secrecy and deception," Hamilton said at the time. "Information was withheld from the Congress, other officials, friends and allies and the American people."

Hamilton, however, gained little Republican support for the committee's work. Then-Rep. Dick Cheney, a top Republican on the Iran-Contra committee, called the report a political document that selected only the most damaging evidence against the Reagan administration.

Hamilton was considered as a possible vice presidential running mate both for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992, but they decided against picking the nontelegenic congressman from a Republican-leaning state.

Born April 20, 1931, in Daytona Beach, Florida, Hamilton was the son of a Methodist minister and moved with his family to Evansville, Indiana, as a child.

He went on to college at DePauw University and attended Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, before graduating from Indiana University's law school in 1956.

Former Indiana governor and former vice president Mike Pence, a Republican, said in a statement that while their politics differed, his respect for Hamilton was "boundless."

After Congress

After serving in Congress, Hamilton continued with his interests in foreign affairs and congressional reform as director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center. He also spent time as a faculty member at Indiana University, which in 2018 named its School of Global and International Studies after Hamilton and longtime Republican Sen. Richard Lugar,who died in 2019.

Hamilton's son said he took his father into his office on Monday, the day before he died.

"He believed in doing as much good as he could for as long as he could," Doug Hamilton said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Hamilton and his wife were married for 58 years after meeting while students at DePauw. Nancy Hamilton died in 2012. He is survived by three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert contributed from Lansing, Michigan. Davies is a former Associated Press writer.

Microsoft co-founderBill Gatessaid he "regrets every minute" he ever spent withJeffrey Epstein, speaking out after the release ofEpstein filesthat included mentions of him.

Gates told"Nine News Australia"in an interview posted Wednesday that it was "foolish" to have spent time with Epstein, the convicted sex offender, and that Epstein's claims about him in the files were "false."

" Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent; the email is false," he said. "So I don't know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way?

"It just reminds me, every minute I spent with him I regret, and I apologize that I did that," he added.

Gates was one of several of the world's richest and most prominent men mentioned in the millions of filesthe Justice Department released Fridayin connection with Epstein.

He said that he met Epstein in 2011, years after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes, and that they had "a number of dinners" together.

He denied ever having gone to Epstein's private island.

"The focus was always he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health," Gates said. "In retrospect, that was a dead end, and I've said many times, but I'll say again, I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him."

In a series of emails from 2013 that he sent to himself, Epstein appeared to suggest that Gates was having an extramarital affair and seeking illicit drugs.

Epstein wrote in an email dated July 18, 2013, that he had decided to resign from a role he had with the Gates Foundation and BG3, a think tank Gates founded, because he got "caught up in a severe martial dispute between Melinda and Bill." Melinda French Gates is Gates' ex-wife.

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"I have the greatest respect for my friend of 7 years, and wish them both well," Epstein wrote.

With multiple typos, Epstein wrote about his relationship with Gates: "In my role as his right hand I had been asked on mulitple occassion and in hindsight , wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate , to the ethically unsound and had been repeatedly asked to do other things that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal."

Epstein described those activities as "helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls, to facilictating his illicit trysts, with married women,to being asked to provide adderal."

A spokesperson for Bill Gates denied the allegations in a statement Tuesday. "These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false," the statement said. "The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein's frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame."

Melinda Gates said in an interview with NPR's "Wild Card" podcast Tuesday that she felt "unbelievable sadness" seeing her ex-husband's name mentioned in the new batch of files.

"Whatever questions remain there ... for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me," she said. "And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there."

Gates was among a long list of powerful men, which includes President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and former President Bill Clinton, named in the millions of files the Justice Department collected.

Trump, Musk and Clinton have denied wrongdoing, and authorities have not accused them of any crime in connection to Epstein. Clinton and former Secretary of StateHillary Clintonagreed Monday to testify in Congress about Epstein in the near future.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend and accomplice, is the sole person to have been charged and convicted of crimes associated with Epstein. She is serving a prison sentence in Texas.

Epstein died in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.

The Utah Jazz are expected to waive Lonzo Ball after acquiring the guard in a three-team trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers, meaning Ball is poised to become a free agent,ESPN's Shams Charania reported Wednesday.

In addition to the 28-year-old Ball, the Cavaliers are also sending their 2028 and 2032 second-round picks to the Jazz,according to NBA insider Jake Fischer.

As part of the trade, the Jazz are shipping center Jock Landale off to the Atlanta Hawks for cash considerations, permultiplereports.

The Jazz collect a pair of second-round picks, the Hawks acquire Landale — who had been averaging a career-high 11.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game for the Memphis Grizzliesbefore the 30-year-old big man was first dealt to Utah in the Jaren Jackson Jr. trade— and the Cavaliers dump salary amid deadline chaos that's already brought themJames Harden,Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder.

Trading Ball frees Cleveland of his $10 million salary,according to The Athletic.

This past summer,Ball landed with the Cavs, then his fourth team since going No. 2 overall out of UCLA in the 2017 NBA Draft. He had previously played for the Los Angeles Lakers, New Orleans Pelicans and Chicago Bulls, the last of whom traded him to Cleveland for wing Isaac Okoro.

[Get more Cavs news: Cleveland team feed]

At the time, Cleveland was looking to reinforce its backcourt followingthe free-agency departure of Ty Jerome. However, Ball hasn't made the impact the Cavaliers imagined.

He's shooting a meager 30.1% from the field this season, including a ghastly 27.2% from deep. His 4.6 points per game are, by far, a career low.

Plus, Ball is averaging just 3.9 assists per game, his second fewest since reaching the league. He played 20.8 minutes per contest in his 35 outings with the Cavs.

In October 2024, Ball returned to the court for his first game in more than 1,000 daysafter missing 2 1/2 seasons because of an array of knee injuries.

Since then, he's yet to score more than 18 points in a game.