A spectacular light show inspired by the creation of the world has opened in Amsterdam. The display takes place inside the 17th-century church Oosterkerk.

All are projected in vibrant colors across the interior of this historic building. Visitors just need to lie back and enjoy the show taking place above their heads.

“The goal of this experience is really to allow people to take kind of a spiritual journey. So it's really the objective is to freeze time and make them forget about it and have this spiritual awakening. So, we really want to give people the freedom of deciding how to interpret this experience,” says Sofia Recchi, global project manager at Fever Projektil, the Swiss art collective behind the event.

The audiovisual extravaganza tells the story of the creation of the world. It's called Genesis, an appropriate name given its religious venue.

“Genesis, the story in itself, we've done before. We've done in different cities before. However, what makes it special is, as I said before, the architecture of this church. So, the story is the same. However, it's been completely catered to this building. And that's why also the church itself plays a part of the story,” says Lieve de Brauw, producer at Fever Projektil.

The show has already visited Barcelona, Frankfurt, and Lyon, among other cities. But this is a special edition, due to the location.

The Oosterkerk was opened in 1671 when Amsterdam was a center of shipbuilding and the maritime trade of the Dutch East India Company. In 1969, in order to save the building from falling into ruin, the Municipality of Amsterdam bought the building for the symbolic sum of one guilder.

The church became a venue for concerts and exhibitions in 2022.

Genesis opened on December 13 and will run until the end of February. The show runs for 30 minutes.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Kaja Veilleux has been hunting New England attic treasures for more than 50 years. He once found a copy of the Declaration of Independence sitting on a pile of trash, and he made headlines last year when he stumbled upon a million-dollar portrait gathering dust in an old farmhouse in Maine that may have been painted by the Dutch master Rembrandt.

Then there was the time, Veilleux said, he was shown a $50,000 gold coin kicking around in a tool drawer—only to have the well-meaning owner destroy much of its value before he could auction it by using a scouring pad to clean it—and scratch it.

“It’s like a treasure hunt every day,” Veilleux said with a chuckle.

Many people dream of cashing in on some dusty, old heirloom. In October, three sisters from Ohio sold a rare dime for more than half a million dollars. Two years ago, a case of old hockey cards found in a Canadian home sold for more than $3.7 million.

Veilleux, 73, helps people sort gems from junk when he appraises furniture, antiques, and art by using his knowledge of what similar items have sold for in the past.

Each Tuesday, people bring in their heirlooms and collector’s items to Veilleux’s office in Thomaston, Maine, to see what they might fetch at auction. The appraisal is free but Veilleux gets a commission if they end up selling the pieces at his Thomaston Place Auction Galleries.

Erika Taylor stopped by with two artworks her father had collected in China in the 1940s when he was living there after escaping from Nazi Germany. One depicted a blooming peony and the other a grasshopper.

She said Veilleux had given her an initial estimate of up to $30,000 for each of the artworks, based on the photographs she’d shown him. But when Veilleux inspected the artworks closely, he declared they were prints because paint would have permeated the paper.

“It’s disappointing,” Taylor said. “But he has a lot of experience.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Japan’s biggest bank apologized for the alleged theft by an employee of more than 1 billion yen ($6.6 million) from customers' safe deposit boxes.

The bank, formally known as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., said it was investigating. Verified thefts from about 20 of the 60 clients thought to have been affected amounted to 300 million yen (nearly $2 million). Compensation was being worked out, it said.

The thefts occurred at two Tokyo branches of the bank, from April 2020 until the end of October 2024, when the problem was discovered.

MUFG’s president and CEO Junichi Hanzawa told reporters the female employee responsible for managing the safe deposit boxes and their keys is suspected of taking advantage of that position to steal cash and other valuables.

“The case has undermined the customers’ trust and confidence and shaken the very foundation of our banking business,” Hanzawa said. He apologized for causing concern and trouble to MUFG clients.

MUFG said the employee admitted taking the money and using it for investments and her personal purposes. She was fired. She is cooperating with the bank’s internal probe and a police investigation but has not yet been arrested.

After news of the thefts surfaced, dozens more people came forward with claims of suspected losses that the bank is working to verify, it said.

The MUFG case is the second recent one involving criminal activity at a major Japanese financial institution. In November 2024, Nomura Holdings acknowledged that a former employee had been arrested on suspicion of robbery, attempted murder and arson targeting a client in Hiroshima.

Asked about the MUFG thefts, the chief government spokesman said that banking operations require high levels of trust and a sense of public service.

The case was “extremely regrettable,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The largest seafood distributor on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and two of its managers have been sentenced on federal charges of mislabeling inexpensive imported seafood as local premium fish weeks after a restaurant and its co-owner were also sentenced.

“This large-scale scheme to misbrand imported seafood as local Gulf Coast seafood hurt local fishermen and consumers,” said Todd Gee, the U.S. attorney for southern Mississippi. “These criminal convictions should put restaurants and wholesalers on notice that they must be honest with customers about what is actually being sold.”

Sentencing took place in Gulfport for Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. (QPS), sales manager Todd A. Rosetti, and business manager James W. Gunkel. QPS and the two managers pleaded guilty on August 27 to conspiring to mislabel seafood and commit wire fraud.

QPS was sentenced to five years of probation and was ordered to pay $1 million in forfeitures and a $500,000 criminal fine. Prosecutors said the misbranding scheme began as early as 2002 and continued through November 2019.

Rosetti received eight months in prison, followed by six months of home detention, one year of supervised release, and 100 hours of community service. Gunkel received two years of probation, one year of home detention, and 50 hours of community service.

Mary Mahoney’s Old French House and its co-owner/manager Anthony Charles Cvitanovich, pleaded guilty to similar charges May 30 and were sentenced November 18.

Mahoney’s was founded in Biloxi in 1962 in a building that dates to 1737, and it’s a popular spot for tourists. The restaurant pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to misbrand seafood.

Mahoney’s admitted that between December 2013 and November 2019, the company and its co-conspirators at QPS fraudulently sold about 58,750 pounds (26,649 kilograms) of frozen seafood imported from Africa, India, and South America as local premium species.

The court ordered the restaurant and QPS to maintain at least five years of records describing the species, sources, and cost of seafood it acquires to sell to customers, and that they make the records available to any relevant federal, state, or local government agency.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Googly eyes have been appearing on sculptures around the central Oregon city of Bend, delighting many residents and sparking a viral sensation covered widely by news outlets and featured on a popular late-night talk show.

On social media, the city shared photos of googly eyes on installations in the middle of roundabouts that make up its so-called “Roundabout Art Route.” One photo shows googly eyes placed on a sculpture of two deer, while another shows them attached to a sphere. It's not yet known who has been putting them on the sculptures.

While the googly eyes placed on the various art pieces around town might give you a chuckle, it costs money to remove them with care to not damage the art, the city said in its posts.

The Facebook post received hundreds of comments, with many users saying they liked the googly eyes. “My daughter and I went past the flaming chicken today and shared the biggest laugh, one user said, using a nickname for the “Phoenix Rising” sculpture. We love the googly eyes. This town is getting to be so stuffy. Let’s have fun!”

Others said the city should focus on addressing more important issues, such as homelessness, instead of spending time and money on removing the googly eyes.

Over the years, the city’s sculptures have been adorned with other seasonal decorations, including Santa hats, wreaths, and leis. The city doesn’t remove those, and views the googly eyes differently because of the adhesive, Bend's communications director, Rene Mitchell, told The Associated Press.

“We really encourage our community to engage with the art and have fun. We just need to make sure that we can protect it and that it doesn’t get damaged,” she said.

The city has so far spent $1,500 on removing googly eyes from seven of the eight sculptures impacted, Mitchell said, and has started treating some of the art pieces, which are made of different types of metal, such as bronze and steel. The Phoenix Rising sculpture might need to be repainted entirely, she said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

For Nigeria’s poorest communities, finding the money for school fees can sometimes seem like an impossible task. But some parents are collecting plastic waste to pay for their children’s education.

Fatimoh Adeosun scours the streets of her Lagos neighborhood for plastic waste. It has a value which means it can be cashed in to pay school fees.

“One day, I saw people picking plastic, I approached (the school) and asked if I could pick it and they converted it for my son’s school fees and I was given the go-ahead,” she explains.

But rooting around in the trash does mean she has to deal with other people’s judgmental attitudes.

“There are several challenges I encounter in this line of work but the motivation of seeing my son finish his education and in flying colors is what drives me. Sometimes, when we are moving the plastic waste to go sell, some folks use very derogatory statements about us,” says Adeosun.

In the impoverished area of Ajegunle, many parents don’t earn enough to pay school fees. But the initiative by My Dream Stead School is closing that education gap. The organization says accepting plastic waste as payment for school fees has enabled hundreds of children to return to school and receive a basic education.

“Lagos generates over 800,000 (metric) tons of plastic waste annually. And having these parents bring in their waste, they are not only protecting the environment, they are also securing the future of their children through an education,” says Isaac Success, the school’s founder and the man who started the plastic waste for school fees initiative.

He understands the struggles of accessing education first-hand. Isaac sees this as an opportunity to give back to the community that helped shape his journey.

Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children globally, a situation that poses significant challenges to the country’s socio-economic development. This alarming statistic highlights a crisis that affects both rural and urban communities.

They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For Adeosun, one man’s trash is another’s education.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

From answering questions from cabinet ministers, academics and students on climate change, substance abuse and the law to children's inquiries about her birth and links to God, Sophia, the world-famous robot, won hearts at an innovation fair in Zimbabwe.

Boasting the ability to mimic facial expressions, hold human-like conversations with people, and recognize their gestures, Sophia is a global icon of artificial intelligence, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which brought her to the southern African country. She was created by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics in 2016 and granted Saudi Arabian citizenship in 2017, becoming the world's first robot citizen.

It was the first time Zimbabwe hosted a robot of her kind, and she wowed the old and the young alike at the University of Zimbabwe in the capital, Harare. She was there as a special guest at a week-long Artificial Intelligence and Innovation event.

She smiled, frowned, used hand gestures to drive home certain points, made eye contact in various one-on-one interactions and gave some unnatural pauses. She assured people that robots are not here to harm or take over from humans.

But she was quick to differentiate herself from humans when conversations appeared to become too personal.

I don't have romantic feelings towards humans, my purpose is learning, said Sophia.

But she did apologize when one participant chided her for seemingly avoiding looking at him.

Sophia also appeared patient as both adults and children mobbed her for selfies and bombarded her with questions, although she would also fire back with inquiries of her own about what locals were doing to solve the problems besetting them.

On the event’s last day, she exhibited her fashion sense. She smiled and expressed appreciation for being clothed in the country's national dress, a black, long slit number complemented by chevron stripes in red, green and white.

UNDP said it hoped Sophia's engagement would inspire Zimbabwe's youth to explore careers in AI and STEM fields.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

As outside temperatures grow chilly, weighted blankets can be a popular choice to warm up. Some people say the added pressure helps them soothe the worries of the day and get to sleep faster.

But research on the effectiveness of weighted blankets is limited. Here’s what to know.

Weighted blankets come with extra heft in the form of glass beads, pellets, cotton or another filling. Scientists haven’t studied exactly how the blankets work, but they have a few ideas. The blankets’ firm touch may calm the brain’s fight-or-flight response, said Dr. Neal Walia, a sleep medicine expert at UCLA Health.

“The evenly distributed weight on you tells your body, ‘Hey, you’re in a calm environment,’” he said.

The extra pressure also may signal the brain to release what’s called the love hormone, also known as oxytocin. It’s produced during bonding and cuddling, and can also lower anxiety, Walia said.

How do I use a weighted blanket? For most healthy adults, experts say to choose a blanket that is about 10% of their body weight. So, a 150-pound person may opt for a 15-pound blanket.

Weighted blankets are not recommended for babies or toddlers since they can hinder movement and breathing. People with sleep apnea, sleep-related disorders or respiratory problems should check with a doctor before using a weighted blanket.

The blankets aren’t for everyone, and each person gets the best out of their blanket differently. For example, some may find them too hot to use during warmer months.

And the extra swaddling comes at a cost: quality weighted blankets can range from $50 to over $300 depending on the size, weight and material.

Can weighted blankets improve sleep? There are some hints that weighted blankets can help with anxiety, chronic pain and sleep. But the research isn’t conclusive.

Even though there’s not yet strong evidence to back up the benefits of weighted blankets, sleep experts say there’s no harm in giving them a try if you’re willing to splurge.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

As it gets harder to locate specialist clinics with available slots, Australian doctors are turning to social media to help book appointments for their patients. Thousands of doctors have joined Facebook referral groups created to link healthcare providers and secure appointment times.

In 2020, while she was on maternity leave, Adelaide General Practitioner Caitlin Sum launched a social media page directed at doctors only. What was a hobby for Sum has now become the main resource for doctors looking for appointments with specialists.

The “Adelaide GP Referral Network,” as the Facebook page is called, counts more than 2,000 South Australian doctors. And it’s all about saving time. As a lot of specialists have stopped taking new patients, using social media to find one instead of doing endless internet searches or asking around makes a lot of sense.

“I think it bridges that gap and allows us to communicate with each other better and get to know each other and communicate directly,” says General Practitioner Alex Main.

“We would all love to spend less time doing admin, and more time seeing our patients,” says Dr. Sum.

In the state of Victoria, 800 members have joined a similar social media page.

According to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, there’s more and more pressure on general practitioners (GPs). The costs they face are increasing and waiting times for patients are growing. In this context, social media has become crucial for doing things like booking a specialist.

“GPs in the medical profession are hyper-connected, and social media and those discussion spaces, just like everyone, is a really important resource that we use to connect,” says Royal Australian College of GPs president Dr. Nicole Higgins.

These social media groups can only be joined by registered doctors. In order not to breach the Medical Board’s code of conduct, members can’t upload clinical photographs and patients can’t be identified. Sum says that because of the clear value of the service offered by the page, doctors have been abiding by the rules.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A lawsuit filed by a pair of Massachusetts families is adding to the backlash against an approach to reading instruction that some schools still use despite evidence that it’s not the most effective.

States around the country have been overhauling reading curricula in favor of research-based strategies known as the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on sounding out words.

The lawsuit takes aim at approaches that do not emphasize phonics. Among them is the long-established “three-cueing” strategy, which encourages students to use pictures and context to predict words, asking questions like: “What is going to happen next?,” “What is the first letter of the word?,” or “What clues do the pictures offer?”

Families of Massachusetts students who have struggled to read filed the lawsuit against authors and publishers endorsing that approach, including Lucy Calkins, a faculty member at Columbia University’s Teachers College. It seeks damages for families allegedly harmed by the material.

Thousands of schools once used three-cueing as part of the “balanced literacy” approach championed by Calkins and others that focused, for example, on having children independently read books they like, while spending less time on phonics, or the relationship between letters and sounds. Over the last several years, more than 40 states have enacted bills emphasizing instead materials grounded in evidence and scientific research, according to the nonprofit Albert Shanker Institute.

It’s unknown how many school districts still use the contested programs because the numbers aren’t tracked—but there are many, according to Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Many teachers have been trained to teach three-cueing so it may be used even in classrooms where it’s not part of the curriculum, he said.

He said research does show benefits from teaching phonics, but there is less information about the three-cueing method.

The suit asks the court to order the authors, their companies and publishers to provide an early literacy curriculum that incorporates the science of reading free of charge.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.