BALTIMORE (AP) — The NFL will look into allegations that Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker behaved inappropriately toward massage therapists at four spas and wellness centers in the Baltimore area, a league spokesman said.

The Baltimore Banner detailed the accusations in a lengthy report Thursday. The paper said it spoke to six massage therapists who recounted firsthand experiences with Tucker from 2012 to 2016. Several therapists said they ended Tucker’s sessions early or refused to work on him again, and managers from two spas said they banned him from returning.

“We first became aware of the allegations from the reporter investigating this story as they were not previously shared with the NFL,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement. “We take any allegation seriously and will look into the matter.”

Tucker is accused of exposing his genitals, brushing two therapists with his exposed penis and leaving what they believed to be semen on the massage table after three treatments, according to the Banner.

Tucker posted a statement on social media calling the allegations about him in the Banner story “unequivocally false.”

“In accusing me of misconduct, the article takes innocuous, or ambiguous, interactions and skews them so out of proportion they are no longer recognizable, and it presents vague insinuations as fact,” he said.

Tucker, 35, just finished his 13th season in the NFL, all with the Ravens. He’s achieved stardom both league-wide and among Baltimore fans in a way that’s rare for a kicker, and his 66-yard field goal in 2021 remains the longest successful kick in league history.

In 2022, Tucker agreed to a four-year contract extension through the 2027 season. That deal included $17.5 million guaranteed.

“We are aware of the Baltimore Banner’s story regarding Justin Tucker as well as his response,” a Ravens spokesman said. “We take any allegations of this nature seriously and will continue to monitor the situation.”

According to the Banner, a representative of the spa chain Ojas said Tucker was “immediately terminated as a client” in 2014 after “a massage therapist reported an incident that allegedly occurred during a massage therapy session with Justin Tucker.” Owners of Studio 921, which is now closed, said through an attorney they “took immediate and decisive action to ban this individual from our business and services to ensure a safe environment for all.”

In his response, Tucker said: “I have never received any complaints from a massage therapist, have never been dismissed from a massage therapy or bodywork session, and have never been told that I was not welcome at any spa or other place of business.”

The allegations have some similarities to unrelated accusations made against another NFL player, quarterback Deshaun Watson. More than two dozen women accused Watson of sexual assault and harassment during massage therapy sessions while he played for Houston. After being traded to the Cleveland Browns, Watson missed the first 11 games of the 2022 season after an independent arbitrator determined that he had violated the league’s personal conduct policy.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A newly discovered asteroid has a tiny chance of smacking Earth in 2032, space agency officials said Wednesday.

Scientists put the odds of a strike at slightly more than 1%.

“We are not worried at all, because of this 99 percent chance it will miss,” said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. “But it deserves attention.”

First spotted last month by a telescope in Chile, the near-Earth asteroid — designated 2024 YR4 — is estimated to be 130 to 330 feet (40 to 100 meters) across.

Scientists are keeping close watch on the space rock, which is currently heading away from Earth. As the asteroid’s path around the sun becomes better understood, Chodas and others said there’s a good chance the risk to Earth could drop to zero.

The asteroid will gradually fade from view over the next few months, according to NASA and the European Space Agency. Until then, some of the world’s most powerful telescopes will keep monitoring it to better determine its size and path. Once out of sight, it won’t be visible until it passes our way again in 2028.

The asteroid came closest to Earth on Christmas Day — passing within roughly 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) of Earth, about twice the distance of the moon. It was discovered two days later.

Chodas said scientists are poring over sky surveys from 2016, when predictions show the asteroid also ventured close.

If scientists can find the space rock in images from then, they should be able to determine whether it will hit or miss the planet, he told The Associated Press. “If we don’t find that detection, the impact probability will just move slowly as we add more observations,” he said.

Earth gets clobbered by an asteroid this size every few thousand years, according to ESA, with the potential for severe damage. That’s why this one now tops ESA’s asteroid risk list.

The potential impact would occur on Dec. 22, 2032. It’s much too soon to know where it might land if it did hit Earth.

The good news, according to NASA, is that for now, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge set a March 2026 trial date on Monday and moved an initial conference from mid-February to next week as the public feud between Blake Lively and her “It Ends With Us” costar and director Justin Baldoni continued to grow and accelerate.

And in a new and separate front in the series of legal battles surrounding the film that became a surprise hit last summer, Lively in a Texas court filed a request for a deposition of a man she says was central to turning online sentiment against her during its release and promotion.

The New York federal judge, Lewis J. Liman, told both sides in an order late Monday to prepare for a March 9, 2026, trial.

He also moved an initial conference from mid-February to next week and told lawyers to be prepared to address complaints about pretrial publicity and attorney conduct.

Liman took the actions after Lively’s lawyers claimed in a filing on Monday that an attorney for Baldoni was trying to taint potential jurors over lawsuits the actors have filed against each other.

The lawyers said Baldoni’s attorney was trying to wreck Lively’s career and turn potential New York jurors against her by creating a website to release selected documents and communications between Lively and Baldoni.

The lawyers said attorney Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni, was “engaging in this extrajudicial campaign to influence these proceedings and the public perception of legal filings to this Court, and there already is a serious risk that his misconduct is tainting the jury pool.”

They added: “The endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements must end.”

Freedman said in a statement in response to Monday’s assertions that the “irony is not lost on anyone that Ms. Lively is so petrified of the truth that she has moved to gag it.”

“We will always respect the court; however, we will never be bullied by those suggesting we cannot defend our clients with pure, unedited facts,” the lawyer said. “All we want is for people to see the actual text messages that directly contradict her allegations, video footage that clearly shows there was no sexual harassment and all the other powerful evidence that directly contradicts any false allegations.”

In a letter to the judge on Thursday, Baldoni attorney Kevin Fritz accused Lively of a publicity campaign that left Baldoni and other defendants the “objects of public scorn and contempt.”

He said the actions had damaged those she sued so that they were “exiled from polite society and suffered damages totaling hundreds of millions of dollars due to Ms. Lively’s scorched-earth media campaign.”

In the separate filing in Hays County, Texas, a precursor to another potential lawsuit, Lively asks for an order for a deposition from Jed Wallace, a crisis management specialist she alleges was behind much of the social media manipulation surrounding the film that turned public sentiment against her through posts on Reddit and TikTok.

Wallace and his Texas-based firm Street Relations were brought on as subcontractors by publicists working with Baldoni and his production company, the filing said.

“He weaponized a digital army around the country, including in New York and Los Angeles, to create, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums,” the filing alleges.

Wallace is identified in Lively’s federal lawsuit, but he is not a defendant.

Freedman, who the filing says is Wallace’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.

Lively sued Baldoni, his production company and others in New York in late December for sexual harassment and attacks on her reputation and asked for unspecified damages. Baldoni sued earlier this month, accusing Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, of defamation and extortion and seeking at least $400 million in damages.

The judge said Monday that he’ll likely combine the lawsuits for trial.

“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel that begins as a romance but takes a dark turn into domestic violence, was released in August, exceeding box office expectations with a $50 million debut. But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni.

Lively came to fame through the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” and bolstered her stardom on the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012. She has since starred in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book pushing back against traditional notions of masculinity.