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Delivery drones are so fast they can zip a pint of ice cream to a customer’s driveway before it melts.Yet the long-promised technology has been slow to take off in the United States. More than six years after the Federal Aviation Administration approved commercial home deliveries with drones, the service mostly has been confined to a few suburbs and rural areas. That could soon change. The FAA proposed a new rule last week that would make it easier for companies to fly drones outside of an operator’s line of sight and therefore over longer distances. A handful of companies do…

PARIS (AP) — Swimming in the Seine is an increasingly popular tourist attraction in the French capital — and a must-do for Parisians themselves. Thousands of people have enjoyed a dip in the river since three public bathing sites opened last month, the first in over a century.The swimming areas are expected to get even more crowded as a heatwave arrives in the region on Tuesday. Paris has been placed under “high vigilance” by national weather service Meteo France, with temperatures up to 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) expected.At the Grenelle site in the west of Paris, visitors swim and…

It’s time — or getting to be time — for us gardeners to reap what we’ve sown.Although it’s fairly evident when some edibles, like tomatoes, are ripe for the picking (uniform red, yellow or orange color), that isn’t the case with every crop.Popular crops’ telltale signs of deliciousnessZucchini, for instance, doesn’t change color. Although it might be tempting to grow a 15-inch-long squash, it will likely be tough. For optimal tenderness, pick individual fruits when they’re 6-8 inches (15-20 centimeters) long.All varieties of green beans should be harvested when they are about as thick as a pencil. Once the plant…

It was six months ago that Selin Celikoyar bought her last tampon and switched to a reusable menstrual disc.“I had already been wary of tampons from an environmental perspective and also from a biological perspective. I felt that they were very wasteful and expensive to consistently keep buying,” she said. Americans go through 19 billion disposable period products per year — most made from plastic and water-guzzling cotton — that all end up in landfills. From menstrual cups to discs, there are better ways. The flexible discs and other reusable menstrual products are gaining traction as alternatives to the billions…

Vanessa Kirby starring in a gritty film about the aspirations of home ownership, “Night Always Comes,” and Maroon 5 releasing their eighth studio album with songs featuring Lil Wayne and Blackpink’s LISA are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.Also among the streaming offerings worth your time, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Alicia Silverstone leading a new TV crime drama called “Irish Blood.,” the multigenerational, wholesome drama “The Chicken Sisters” rolls out its second season on Hallmark and EA Sports jumps aboard the artificial intelligence bandwagon with Madden NFL…

This computer science professor became a billionaire launching four startups out of his privately-funded research lab, including unicorns Databricks and Anyscale. But it’s never been just about business. Berkeley Professor Ion Stoica and his students don’t like being one-upped by anyone, let alone by archnemesis Stanford. That’s why, when a user asked for a way to compare their open-source chatbot Vicuna with the rival school’s Alpaca model, the Berkeley team pitted the bots against each other in a bloody AI battle. The user community went wild. Soon, Stoica’s group added the ability to test random models side by side and…

James Litinsky, chief executive officer of MP Materials, during the Hill & Valley forum at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg© 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP In July, the Defense Department made an unusual move for a federal U.S. agency when it purchased $400 million of newly created shares, plus warrants to buy additional stock, in the rare earths miner MP Materials. As part of the deal, the DoD also signed a 10-year agreement to buy rare earth magnets from MP Materials to power its future instruments of warfare. The federal government…

Robert Smith committed historic tax crimes. Facing federal scrutiny, he moved next door to the president. IN SEPTEMBER 2020, a month before the Department of Justice revealed one of the biggest tax-evasion cases in U.S. history, the phone rang at the Palm Beach Police Department. The caller was Hope Smith, the wife of private-equity billionaire Robert Smith. Mrs. Smith had taken inventory of her jewelry collection ahead of a planned move and found that a 3.63-carat diamond ring, worth $1.1 million, was missing from a safe. “Smith advised she does not recall where or when it was lost,” explained the…

NEW YORK (AP) — Debra Taylor has had a busy year or so: She’s going through a divorce while in the process of retiring — and she’s moving to Portugal from Southern California with one of her daughters.After deciding her next home would be outside the U.S., she narrowed down her choices based on tax burdens (Spain was out with its wealth taxes), climate (no Costa Rica, too hot) and ease of travel within Europe, one of her favorite parts of the world. She then toured Portugal with a relocation company, Expatsi, and found her new home, Aveiro. It’s a…

ToplineThe value of U.S. gold futures rose to a record high Friday, after the Trump administration tacked on “surprise” tariffs that some economists warned could disrupt global bullion trade. One analyst said the Trump administration tacking on new tariffs was “precisely what the market feared.”AFP via Getty ImagesKey FactsU.S. gold futures, often relied on by investors to hedge positions, rose to an all-time high of just over $3,534 per troy ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange early Friday.Gold’s latest rally follows a Financial Times report on Thursday indicating Customs and Border Protection would hit one-kilo and 100-ounce gold bars…