LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Barkley intends to remain with TNT Sports through the remainder of his contract.

The Hall of Fame player announced Tuesday that he will not retire next season, reversing the announcement he made in June during the NBA Finals.

Barkley said at the time that the 2024-25 season would be his last on television, no matter what eventually happened with the NBA’s media deal negotiations. He signed a 10-year contract extension with TNT Sports in 2022.

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT Sports, has sued the NBA in New York state court after the league did not accept the company’s matching offer for one of the packages in its new 11-year media rights deal, which will begin with the 2025-26 season.

“I love my TNT Sports family. My (number one) 1 priority has been and always will be our people and keeping everyone together for as long as possible. We have the most amazing people, and they are the best at what they do. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them both on the shows we currently have and new ones we develop together in the future. This is the only place for me,” Barkley said in a statement. “I have to say … I’ve been impressed by the leadership team who is fighting hard and have been aggressive in adding new properties to TNT Sports, which I am very excited about. I appreciate them and all of my colleagues for their continued support, and most importantly our fans. I’m going to give my all as we keep them entertained for years to come.”

ESPN/ABC, NBC and Amazon Prime Video were expected to try to court Barkley before Tuesday’s announcement. “Inside the NBA” host Ernie Johnson has also said he intends to remain with TNT but the futures of Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith remain uncertain.

Barkley joined TNT in 2000 and has been a part of the iconic “Inside the NBA” show, which has won 21 Sports Emmy Awards and has been a model for studio shows. Barkley took home his fifth Sports Emmy for Outstanding Studio Analyst in May.

What Barkley’s future looks like if TNT does not have the NBA remains to be seen. Turner has had an NBA package since 1984 and games have been on TNT since the network launched in 1988.

However, the relationship started to become strained when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an RBC Investor Conference in November 2022 that Turner and WBD “don’t have to have the NBA.”

TNT Sports also carries the NHL and NCAA men’s basketball tournament with CBS. It recently has added the College Football Playoffs, Big East basketball, NASCAR and the French Open.

“Charles is one of the best and most beloved sportscasters in the history of television. I know I speak for all the members of the TNT Sports family when I say we are incredibly thrilled to share this mutual commitment to continue showcasing Charles’ one-of-a-kind talents and entertain fans well into the future,” TNT Sports Chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser said in a statement. “We continue to add to the breadth and depth of our sports portfolio and it’s fantastic to have Charles for this journey as we develop new content ideas and shows for our fans.”

Barkley was the co-host of “King Charles,” a weekly talk show on CNN with “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King. But the limited-run series ended in April after six months.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When a 911 call came in saying a woman in Nashville was experiencing sudden labor, emergency operator Kaitlyn Kramer says her training kicked in as she successfully coached the expectant mom and bystanders through delivering a healthy baby boy.

Audio of the July 7 call reveals Kramer’s calm voice guiding the process even as the voices on the other end grew frantic as the mother’s water broke and the baby’s head started crowning.

Kramer is a training officer for Nashville’s Department of Emergency Communications.

“Whatever the call comes in, you have to be able to maintain control,” Kramer said, adding that she had to remember to stay calm herself.

“We’re going to do this together,” Kramer told a friend of the mother’s over the phone. Moments later, the caller is yelling with excitement that the baby arrived but mentioned that the cord was wrapped around his neck.

Kramer said the bystanders were able to free the baby and soon enough, Kramer could hear his first wails over the phone.

“When I think of a baby being first born, the biggest thing for me is I want to hear them cry,” said Kramer. “And he did that on his own.”

The whole call lasted about eight minutes before the ambulance arrived and Kramer got to congratulate the mother and bystanders on a job well done. The family did not respond to a request for an interview.

“I think my favorite part about this whole situation was there was also another younger child in the room, maybe between the ages of seven and 10 years old,” Kramer said “She started talking to the baby, welcoming him to the world. And that absolutely just melted my heart.”

Kramer said this is the second time she has helped during a delivery over the 911 hotline.

“We get a lot of sad here. Our job is hard,” Kramer said. “This is one of the reasons that remind me that what I do is important … it just it makes me happy to do what I do.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, accusing the company of violating children’s online privacy law and running afoul of a settlement it had reached with another federal agency.

The complaint, filed together with the Federal Trade Commission in a California federal court, comes as the U.S. and the prominent social media company are embroiled in yet another legal battle that will determine if – or how – TikTok will continue to operate in the country.

The latest lawsuit focuses on allegations that TikTok, a trend-setting platform popular among young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance violated a federal law that requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting personal information of children under 13. It also says the companies failed to honor requests from parents who wanted their children’s accounts deleted, and chose not to delete accounts even when the firms knew they belonged to kids under 13.

“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children’s private information without any parental consent or control,” Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.

TikTok said it disagreed with the allegations, “many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the company said in a statement.

The U.S. decided to file the lawsuit following an investigation by the FTC that looked into whether the companies were complying with a previous settlement involving TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.

In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by failing to notify parents about its collection and use of personal information for kids under 13.

That same year, Musical.ly — acquired by ByteDance in 2017 and merged with TikTok — agreed to pay $5.7 million to resolve those allegations. The two companies were also subject to a court order requiring them to comply with COPPA, which the government says hasn’t happened.

In the complaint, the Justice Department and the FTC allege TikTok has knowingly allowed children to create accounts and retained their personal information without notifying their parents. This practice extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” a version of TikTok for children under 13. The feature allows users to view videos but bars them from uploading content.

The two agencies allege the information collected included activities on the app and other identifiers used to build user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing the data with other companies – such as Meta’s Facebook and an analytics company called AppsFlyer – to persuade “Kids Mode” users to be on the platform more, a practice TikTok called “re-targeting less active users.”

The complaint says TikTok also allowed children to create accounts without having to provide their age, or obtain parental approval, by using credentials from third-party services. It classified these as “age unknown” accounts, which the agencies say have grown into millions.

After parents discovered some of their children’s accounts and asked for them to be deleted, federal officials said TikTok asked them to go through a convoluted process to deactivate them and frequently did not honor their requests.

Overall, the government said TikTok employed deficient policies that were unable to prevent children’s accounts from proliferating on its app and suggested the company was not taking the issue seriously. In at least some periods since 2019, the complaint said TikTok’s human moderators spent an average of five to seven seconds reviewing accounts flagged as potentially belonging to a child. It also said TikTok and ByteDance have technology they can use to identify and remove children’s accounts, but do not use them for that reason.

The alleged violations have resulted in millions of children under 13 using the regular TikTok app, allowing them to interact with adults and access adult content, the complaint said.

In March, a person with the matter had told the AP the FTC’s investigation was also looking into whether TikTok violated a portion of federal law that prohibits “unfair and deceptive” business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data.

Those allegations were not included in the complaint, which is asking the court to fine the companies and enter a preliminary injunction to prevent future violations.

Other social media companies have also come under fire for how they’ve handled children’s data.

In 2019, Google and YouTube agreed to pay a $170 million fine to settle allegations that the popular video site had illegally collected personal information on children without their parents’ consent.

And last fall, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. A lawsuit filed by 33 states claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of COPPA. Nine attorneys general are also filing lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 plus Washington, D.C.