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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Among the whimpering of rescued dogs, a soft whistle cuts through. It’s Feven Melese, a young woman hoping to support thousands of abandoned dogs on the streets of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.The 29-year-old music degree graduate has put up a rare shelter on the outskirts of the city, where she provides food and a place to stay for 40 dogs, while feeding about 700 others every week on the streets.Melese said she has found new homes for more than 300 dogs in the past two years. Together with fellow young animal rights activists, they…

Tour the outrageous backyard treehouse of America’s chicken finger king, featuring a bar, a bathroom—and Snoop Dogg. “It’s fun to have things that are magical,” says Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers founder Todd Graves, standing near a flat-screen TV in the living room of his backyard treehouse. With three levels and a $400,000 price tag, the hangout—nestled in a 100-foot live oak tree among the sprawling gardens of Graves’ Baton Rouge estate—is less a kids’ playplace and more a tree-home fit for a billionaire. There’s the standard slide and crow’s nest, of course, but also 450 square feet of outdoor deck…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation has risen in three of the last four months and is slightly higher than it was a year ago, when it helped sink then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to President Donald Trump or even some of the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.Trump told the United Nations General Assembly late last month: “Grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down, and inflation has been defeated.” And at a high-profile speech in August, just before the Fed cut its key interest rate for the first time this year, Federal…

Branson made his first investments starting at age 13, gambling his pocket change on two ventures that failed miserably—but taught him priceless lessons. Sir Richard Branson was 19 years old when he and his childhood buddy Nik Powell cofounded what later became the international conglomerate known as Virgin Group. It was 1970, and the two teenagers picked the name “Virgin” for their mail-order record company as a cheeky nod to their inexperience in business. Next came, in rapid succession, Virgin record stores, Virgin Megastore, and Virgin Games, all within the first dozen years. Then, boldly, an airline, Virgin Atlantic, in…

POTSDAM, Germany (AP) — Wolfgang Bivour, a renowned fungi expert in Germany, leads mushroom hunting tours near Potsdam. This activity, once a necessity after World War II, is seeing a revival. The pandemic and a growing interest in veganism and medicinal fungi have fueled this trend. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors. Wolfgang Bivour 75, center, a mushroom hunting tour leader, instructs mushroom pickers on how to hunt mushrooms in a forest in Potsdam, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) Wolfgang Bivour 75, center, a mushroom hunting tour leader, instructs mushroom pickers on how…

POTSDAM, Germany (AP) — Wolfgang Bivour carefully emptied a basket of freshly collected mushrooms onto a forest floor covered with fallen autumn leaves. Brown-capped porcini and bay boletes lay beside slimy purple brittlegills and honey-colored armillaria — and, among them, the lethal green death caps.Bivour, one of Germany’s most famous fungi connoisseurs, described the different species just collected in an oak and beech forest on the outskirts of Potsdam in eastern Germany. Surrounding him were 20 people who listened attentively, among them university students, retirees and a Chinese couple with their 5-year-old daughter.Across Germany, the traditional forest art of mushroom…

From left to right: Astera Labs cofounders Sanjay Gajendra, Jitendra Mohan and Casey Morrison.Astera Labs Shares of the artificial intelligence-focused semiconductor networking firm have more than tripled over the past six months amid the ongoing AI arms race. Over the past six months, shares of Astera Labs have soared by 250%, making two of the company’s cofounders the latest new billionaires of the AI infrastructure boom. Thanks to their stakes in the artificial intelligence-focused semiconductor networking firm, Forbes estimates that Astera Labs’ CEO Jitendra Mohan is worth $1.6 billion, while its COO Sanjay Gajendra is worth $1.7 billion. With companies…

A $2 billion investment from NYSE parent ICE vaults Polymarket’s 27 year-old founder Shayne Coplan into the three-comma club and intensifies its rivalry with prediction market competitor Kalshi. At 27, Shayne Coplan has become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. His estimated 11% stake in Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction platform he founded in 2020, is now worth at least $1 billion. New York Stock Exchange parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, announced it poured $2 billion into the firm at a $9 billion valuation—in exchange for a 20% stake, according to PitchBook. The deal caps a meteoric ascent for Polymarket, which was valued…

NEW YORK (AP) — With Halloween on the horizon, Chicago Costume is stuffed. Packaged costumes, including superheros and Japanese animation characters in both kid and adult sizes, dangle near colorful wigs and bottles of fake blood. Downstairs, vintage clothes from the 1970s beg for one more boogie night. The frightening possibilities mask the work that’s gone on behind the scenes to stock the family-owned shop and its sister store for the spooky season. Owner Courtland Hickey said he ordered 40% fewer costumes this year because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on products from China.To fill the gap, Hickey and his…

AST Spacemobile CEO Abel AvellanJamel Toppin for Forbes On Wednesday, AST SpaceMobile announced a deal to provide cellular service from space to fill in coverage gaps for Verizon customers, starting in 2026. The agreement, which expands on a $100 million May 2024 deal, sent AST stock skyrocketing 9% Wednesday—making the Texas-based satellite cellular provider’s founder and CEO Abel Avellan almost $500 million richer in a single day. The recent surge is the cherry on top of a profitable 30-day span for Avellan, a Venezuelan native who founded AST in 2016 using his proceeds from the $550 million sale of his…