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BRUSSELS (AP) — Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair says his country looks on track to meet NATO’s military spending guideline. He says Canada notably plans to boost investment in the high Arctic near its shared border with Russia as the region warms quickly due to climate change. NATO allies agreed to halt national budget cuts

By MARIA SHERMAN AP Music Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A comet must have landed at the 2024 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The members of R.E.M. had joked only hours before it would take “a comet” to get the band to perform together one last time. Yet there they were, reunited during the

By FU TING Associated Press Chinese soccer fans have poured their love — and money — into a Singaporean goalkeeper’s food stall after his performance in a game this week indirectly helped China advance to the third qualifying round for the World Cup in 2026. Hassan Sunny, a 40-year-old goalkeeper on the national team, became

By MATT O’BRIEN and SARAH PARVINI AP Technology Writers The artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI has raised tens of millions of dollars from the likes of Jeff Bezos and other prominent tech investors for its mission to rival Google in the business of searching for information. But its AI-driven search chatbot is already facing challenges

By MOUSTAPHA DIALLO Associated Press SAN, Mali (AP) — For hundreds of years, people have gathered in the southern Mali town of San for a collective fishing rite in June that begins with animal sacrifices and offerings to the water spirits of Sanké pond. The rite is on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage. The

By ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ and CRISTIANA MESQUITA Associated Press HAVANA (AP) — He was the poetic voice of the Cuban Revolution, an inspiration for millions of Latin Americans living under dictatorships throughout the 1960s and 1970s who dreamt of the ideal Cuba that he — and his guitar — helped evoke. Troubadour Silvio Rodríguez, one of

SYDNEY (AP) — A 16-year-old boy accused of committing a terrorist act by stabbing a bishop in a Sydney church in April faces two additional charges. The boy was arrested at the scene of the stabbing on April 15 in an Assyrian Orthodox church as a service was being streamed online. A prosecutor told the

By SAMY MAGDY Associated Press MINA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — In sweltering temperatures, Muslim pilgrims in Mecca converged on a vast tent camp in the desert on Friday, officially opening the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Ahead of their trip, they circled the cube-shaped Kaaba in the Grand Mosque, Islam’s holiest site. More than 1.5 million pilgrims

By R.J. RICO and JESSE BEDAYN Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — In a dreary part of downtown Atlanta, shipping containers have been transformed into an oasis for dozens of previously unsheltered people who now proudly call a former parking lot home. The gated micro community known as “The Melody” doesn’t look like a parking lot

By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Friday after Wall Street’s continued frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology nudged indexes on Wall Street to more records. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.4% to 38,868.94 after the Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy intact, though it did say it intends to

By TERRY SPENCER Associated Press PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — A crew is scheduled Friday to begin tearing down the three-story classroom building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The victims’ families have been invited to watch the first blows and hammer off a piece themselves

By FREIDA FRISARO, TERRY SPENCER and DANIEL KOZIN Associated Press FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Forecasters warned Floridians to prepare for additional flash flooding after a tropical disturbance dumped as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rainfall in the southern parts of the state, with worsening conditions expected Friday. The disorganized storm system was