Vice President Mike Pence is facing backlash for his staunch efforts to ignore North Korean officials at the Winter Olympic Games, even as the two Koreas continued their temporary truce, marching and competing as one team.

Pence’s cold demeanor toward the North Koreans at the Pyeongchang games was overshadowed by friendly cooperation between the North and South. The vice president also drew criticism from some openly gay members of Team USA, who questioned his role at the Olympics due to his anti-LGBT views.

Pence continued his tough rhetoric even after South Korean officials announced North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had invited President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang for talks. He insisted on Saturday that the U.S., South Korea and Japan were united in their goal of isolating North Korea over the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“There is no daylight between the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the need to continue to isolate North Korea economically and diplomatically until they abandon their nuclear and ballistic missile program,” Pence told reporters aboard a flight back to the U.S.

In the days leading up to the Olympics, Pence warned that the North was trying to “hijack the message and imagery” of the event with a propaganda campaign, according to Reuters.

Prior to the opening ceremony on Friday night, Pence arrived late to a dinner reception between the two Koreas and greeted everyone at a main table except for Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state, Reuters reports. He left the reception five minutes later.

“South Korea has some difficult homework to solve regarding some countries,” President Moon said in a speech before Pence arrived. “There are some who would not want to be in the same room together if it wasn’t for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. But what is more important than anything is that we are together.”

In a rare public moment, President Moon shook hands with Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong Un, at start of the opening ceremony. Pence, who was seated just a few feet away from Kim, did not appear acknowledge her. Then when the Korean team entered the stadium under a unified flag, Pence sat stone-faced while Moon and North Korean officials stood together in applause.

A senior White House official said Pence was not trying to avoid the delegation from North Korea but rather ignore them, according to the AP. Asia experts said Pence’s sour conduct toward the North Koreans could be seen as disrespectful to the South Korean hosts, who were demonstrating a moment of harmony with the North.

“The grievances that the world has about North Korea are very legitimate,” Frank Jannuzi, an expert on East Asia at the Mansfield Foundation told the AP. “But the Olympic moment that President Moon is trying to generate here is not a time to nurse those grievances. It’s a time to focus on messages of reconciliation and peace.”

The vice president’s visit was also marked by bad blood between Pence and some U.S. athletes. Openly gay American freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy took a swipe at Pence in an Instagram post, posing with fellow openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon.

“I feel incredibly honored to be here in Korea competing for the US and I’m so proud to be representing the LGBTQ community alongside this amazing guy! Eat your heart out, Pence,” Kenworthy wrote.

In January, Rippon criticized Pence’s role in the Olympics, citing the widespread belief that the vice president supports gay conversation therapy. In an appearance on Ellen earlier this month, Kenworthy called out Pence, saying he has “directly attacked the LGBT community.”

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Two Canadian retirees have taken time out of their schedule to make it to the Olympics. They’re celebrating 20 years together and are eager for their favorite event: Ice dancing free dance (a part of the figure skating category). At 28 and 30 years old, athletes Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir came out of retirement for one last skate on the Olympic stage. After the disappointment of a silver medal in Sochi, they’ll leave it all on the ice. Within good taste, that is.

The pair has honed a free program to a medley from the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge!, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. It’s the love story of a poor writer and a beautiful courtesan in Belle Epoque Paris. There’s intrigue, jealousy, deception — and lots of raw passion. And the athletes originally included a lift that really leaned in to that passion.

Virtue and Moir performed the routine at last month’s Canadian championships. The national news agency The Canadian Press found it risqué enough to hesitate before circulating images, according to The Toronto Star. (NPR could not find such photos from the outlet.)

The lift begins when Virtue dips her leg underneath her upright body, then extends it at full speed to launch herself, twisting and flipping up Moir’s torso. She lands with her legs on Moir’s shoulders, one leg on each side. They spin as she straddles his head for a moment before she gracefully floats back down, touching her skates to the ice.

It takes just a few seconds, but it was too long for comfort for some (despite much of the crowd erupting in standing applause).

(Caution: 2001 movie spoiler ahead.)

“I think edgy would probably summarize most of the program quite well and that’s what we were going for,” Virtue told The Toronto Star. “We knew that taking the ice at an Olympic Games again meant that we needed to have a different style. We wanted to make a bit of a different statement. If that was bringing an edge or sexuality or darkness, or a contemporary feel to it, then mission accomplished I guess.”

Though they won first place in the championships, Moir and Virtue chose to make a change for the decidedly more conservative international Olympic crowds. Not only have they toned down the lift, The Toronto Star reports, but they’ve also tweaked the ending to make it even more dramatic.

“Of course, my character dies and that was the original ending we’d gone with, sort of faltering to this dramatic death,” Virtue told the outlet. “This is a little bit, perhaps, more triumphant in a way … because our love story gets to linger a little bit longer, with more depth to it. But there’s still some sort of heartbreak in the end and there’s still some desperation. We’re clinging on to something.”

The pair is coming back from what many perceived to be a heartbreaking loss to Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White in Sochi 2014. When asked about it in an interview with Canadian magazine Maclean’s, they said they were proud of their performance, but decided it was time to leave the field. The two stoke a comfortable and extremely close vibe. They even wrote a book together about their long working relationship.

Virtue and Moir were the designated flag bearers for the 225 athletes competing as part of Team Canada. The ice dancing free dance medal competition is scheduled for 12:20 p.m. Monday in South Korea — which is 10:20 p.m. Sunday on the East Coast.

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The Pyeongchang Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony is Friday, but the first competitions are already under way. The U.S. curling team of Matt and Becca Hamilton led off a mixed doubles tournament by defeating a team from Russia.

There was a smattering of applause for each team as they were announced. The loudest cheers were reserved for the host South Korean team, which was also on the ice as part of the mixed-doubles tournament at the Gangneung Curling Center.

The Russians wore simple black and white uniforms. Other than their names, their jerseys bore only one tag: Olympic Athlete From Russia – a requirement of anti-doping penalties against their country.

The two teams had a customary handshake at the start of the match. And the Russians also brought a gift. After the teams were introduced, Anastasia Bryzgalova ran over to the Americans and presented a stuffed brown bear to Matt Hamilton.

This is the first time the Olympics has featured mixed doubles, a form of play that’s been part of the world championships since 2008. The Hamiltons used their more accurate delivery to overcome the Russian pair, whose past success includes a gold medal at the 2016 world championship.

In the first end, the teams took turns seeking control of the target area, with Matt Hamilton successfully dislodging two Russian stones from the house, the inner circles where points are scored. After the Russians reestablished themselves, Becca Hamilton cleaned them out again and left the Americans’ stones in place, taking a 3-0 advantage in the first end.

Trying to add to their edge in the second end, the Hamiltons grouped four stones on the red circle to the Russians’ two. But the center then became clogged with six stones – and the Russians used their last stone to secure an advantage and take two points.

The Hamiltons settled in from there. After six ends, the score was 7-3 and the Wisconsin natives were well on their way to their first victory in Pyeongchang.

The match went quickly, a hallmark of the mixed doubles format. And in this match between representatives of rival nations, there were no signs of awkwardness out on the sheet — other than an incident midway through, when Matt Hamilton got tangled up with his counterpart, Alexander Krushelnitskiy.

As they attempted to sweep stones along the outer ring, Hamilton fell to the ice, and Krushelnitskiy quickly gestured an apology. The two shook hands, and Hamilton headed back to the other end with a smile on his face.

The first meaningful competition in the 2018 Olympics brought an appearance by the Olympic mascot Soohorang. And as play began inside the arena, the Olympic torch was making its way through streets nearby, destined to arrive at Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony that will be held Friday night in Pyeongchang (Friday morning in the U.S.).

The Winter Olympics run through Feb. 25, and curling has one of the longest competition schedules at the games.

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The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl on Sunday night. You could be forgiven for not expecting it — it’s never happened before. And on this historic occasion, Stephen Thompson and I sat down Monday morning to talk with some of our favorite panelists about the game and the surrounding entertainment. With us is Katie Presley, a New Orleans Saints fan without too much at stake in this game. But also with us is Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch team. Gene is a longtime Eagles fan who had, in terms of fandom, a lot at stake in this game.

We break down the game itself, from the built-in assumptions of Tom Brady’s inevitability to the moment when he lost the ball with just over two minutes left to play. We talk about the halftime show, which conscripted Prince into a duet with Justin Timberlake and proved once again that getting the sound mix right at the Super Bowl is very, very difficult. And we talk about Super Bowl commercials, from the endearing return of our favorite body wash pitch man to the uncomfortable juxtaposition of civil rights activism and selling trucks.

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North Korea’s ceremonial leader, Kim Yong Nam, will visit South Korea as part of a high-level delegation attending the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics this week amid somewhat eased tensions between the bitter rivals.

Kim is the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and is the nominal head of North Korea, although nearly all real power is concentrated in the hands of third-generation hereditary ruler, Kim Jong Un.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is hoping for a one-on-one meeting with Kim Yong Nam during the latter’s visit, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency says.

“President Moon will be meeting with Kim, beginning with the Olympic opening ceremony,” Yonhap says, quoting an official from Moon’s office. “But it is something that should be discussed with the North’s advance delegation whether Kim will separately pay a visit to President Moon,” the official said.

“[Kim’s visit] shows North Korea’s resolve for improved inter-Korean relations and the success of the Olympics, as well as its sincere, earnest attitude,” a spokesman for Moon during a news conference on Monday.

Kim Yong Nam will be at the head of a 22-member delegation to the South, beginning Friday and staying through the end of the Games on Feb. 25.

Vice President Pence is expected to attend the Winter Games. President Trump on Friday said during a meeting with North Korean defectors that Pyongyang’s participation in the Olympics could result in “something good.”

Last month, the two sides agreed to field a joint team at the Olympics, which would march under a flag of inter-Korea unification. The two teams have done so similarly at several previous Olympic Games.

But the latest move at sports détente has not gone over well, with many in South Korea – including some of its Olympic athletes — opposed to the move.

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All eyes will be on the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday as the teams face off in Super Bowl LII. Who will win the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy this year, the perennial favorite or the underdog? You can spend hours analyzing statistics, or you could trust the intuition of animals that don’t understand football. As a reference, the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had the Patriots as 4-point favorites on Friday.

This might not be the most scientific approach, but it’s undoubtedly the most adorable. Here are the results:

Bubbles, the elephant: Eagles

At the Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, Bubbles, a 9,000-pound African elephant, flipped over the Eagles helmet with her trunk and devoured the apple underneath.

Fiona, the hippo: Eagles

Cincinnati Zoo’s celebrity hippopotamus, Fiona, ate her greens out of the Eagles box. Underdogs have to stick together, after all.

Nicholas, the dolphin: Patriots

When given the choice between a Patriots and Eagles football, Nicholas the rescued dolphin at Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida guided the Patriots football toward the “dolphin football judge.” This psychic dolphin is six for seven in sports predictions, including a correct selection last year for the reigning Super Bowl champions Patriots. The Eagles have reason to fear.

Fernando, the sloth: Eagles

Phoenix Zoo’s sloth, Fernando, made a decisive pick in favor of the Eagles by slowly climbing toward Philadelphia’s container. It’s always a delight watching sloths eat flowers, but this video set to a sultry soundtrack is a true gem.

April, the giraffe: Patriots

The Patriots are going to get its third Super Bowl title in four years, according to April, Animal Adventure Park’s celebrity giraffe. April gained worldwide fame in 2017 when the late stages of her pregnancy and eventual delivery were streamed live on YouTube.

Le Le, the panda: Eagles

Le Le, a giant panda at the Memphis Zoo, declared Philadelphia to be the Super Bowl LII champions by pulling down the Eagles banner first. At just 1-3 in Super Bowl predictions, though, Le Le is more cute than accurate.

Jimmy Fallon’s puppies: Patriots

In the 2018 installment of this fan-favorite segment, more of Jimmy Fallon’s 11-panel of puppies ate from the Patriots bowl than the Eagles bowl. The real MVP, though, is the puppy that refused to participate at 1:39.

Ahren, the eagle: Eagles

Ahren the eagle, a resident of Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, swooped down from a perch and looked briefly at the stuffed bear donning Patriots gear before picking her stuffed counterpart. Of course, this surprised no one. Even Ahren’s handler admitted: “She might be a bit biased.”

Linda Wang is an intern on the National Desk.

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