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A neat stack of 79-cent bananas and rows of colorful fruit flanked the bilingual alternative pop band Luna Luna as they performed for a small audience at a Latino grocery store in northern Delaware.

The show was part of the monthly Mercadito sessions put on by the Fiesta Fresh Market, a family-owned store in the Philadelphia metro-area city of New Castle, far away from the massive music industry hubs typically associated with artistic opportunity and exposure. But the excitement of new music, paired with the colorful, unassuming stage, has rapidly engaged an international following for the two-year-old store—with up-and-coming bands traveling from far away to perform, and tens of thousands tuning in online.

Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia, one of the store's owners, hopes the series highlights the persistence of joy and creativity in Latino communities, he said.

Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia has worked with both food and music for most of his life. Born in Mexico, Garcia grew up in an apartment adjacent to where he would eventually open Fiesta Fresh Market. Garcia has worked at farmers' markets and grocery stores since he was a teenager, and ran a photography and videography company that also produced regional Mexican music like mariachi, corridos tumbados, and banda.

We did a lot of quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing. Music was always like something I wanted to do as a passion project, but especially here in Delaware, there's really no industry for that, Garcia said.

Garcia initially hoped the shows would attract business, but it was hard to sell local artists on performing in such a quirky context, Garcia said. But soon, the premise caught on. All of the acts in an April show had heard about the small store on social media before they were asked to perform.

While the shows initially featured almost exclusively the Spanish-language music that Garcia produced with his label, the Mercadito sessions now showcase a broad range of artists and genres. I found that super interesting that no matter who the artist was that was playing, people would gather to hear, Garcia said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Beginning in the 1970s, just about every Filipino household in America was either hauling balikbayan boxes in person or mailing them to relatives back in the Philippines.

These care packages that held goodies from the U.S. were seen as an expression of support during hard economic times, as well as one of pure love.

Balik and bayan, Tagalog for return and homeland, respectively, were what President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. called the tourism initiatives he established in 1973. After declaring martial law a year earlier, he wanted to compel Filipino immigrants to come back and visit and further legitimize his new dictatorial regime, says Adrian De Leon, an assistant professor of history at New York University and author of Balikbayan: A Revenant History of the Filipino Homeland.

The balikbayan program proved incredibly profitable for the government as middle-class Filipino Americans came and spent capital.

The dollar stretches way more, De Leon says. Bulk buying becomes a way through which overseas Filipinos are incentivized to maintain an economic connection to their homeland so that the government can take cuts from it and use it for like everything.

The practice of shipping balikbayan boxes grew from there. Initially, canned meat like Spam was a staple of these boxes. Over time, small luxuries like skin-care products, clothes, and candy became sought after, too. Then American entertainment, like music cassettes and movies on Betamax, was tossed in.

What might have been letters being sent back home, now with the balikbayan box, you're sending back American pop culture, De Leon says. Filipinos are doing the work of American soft power for Filipinos at home.

Sending balikbayan boxes has thrived as its own industry. There are a handful of shipping companies in the U.S. that market door-to-door delivery to the Philippines. Filipino immigrants visiting the country get quicker entry at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport through a designated balikbayan lane.

Jamming as many gifts as possible into a balikbayan box remains culturally ingrained in the Filipino diaspora. Filipino American comedian Rex Navarrete has typically made it a stand-up bit, advising: One thing you should never pack in a balikbayan box is air.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The mental well-being of three elephants in a zoo in South Africa is the subject of an unusual court case, with animal welfare groups saying they are depressed and should be moved to a larger conservation park where they can be happy.

The case will ask a South African court to decide if the state is meeting its legal obligations with regard to the welfare of the animals and the conditions in which they are kept, according to David Bilchitz, a board member at Animal Law Reform South Africa, one of the groups bringing the case.

Experts would show in court that the elephants are unhappy, Bilchitz said. The animal welfare groups said a part of the South African Constitution puts an obligation on authorities to look after animals.

The zoo in question in Johannesburg is publicly owned and has defended its management of the elephants, saying they are well cared for.

Bilchitz said elephants have highly complex social structures and specific physical and mental needs, and generally live in herds of 20-50 animals that roam large areas in the wild.

He said that the three elephants at the zoo—named Lammie, Ramadiba, and Mopane—live in an enclosure not much bigger than a soccer field with none of the typical stimulation that elephants need, like trees to forage from and mud pools to bathe in.

They are sad, depressed, and frustrated, Bilchitz told The Associated Press. They are listless and stand around. He said the elephants had shown signs of psychological distress, like standing and rocking, and other repetitive compulsive behavior.

Johannesburg Zoo said in a statement that there had been a media scourge over the condition of the elephants and maintained they were healthy and also popular with zoo staff and visitors. It also said that relocating elephants from zoos to semiwild sanctuaries is not always successful.

There is a kind of precedent for the case. In 2024, an old bull elephant called Charley was relocated from another South African zoo to a game reserve after he outlived his elephant companions at the zoo, and animal experts believed he was lonely.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

An adolescent owl that was found stuck in a concrete mixer in southwestern Utah is finally on the mend, flying free and maybe a bit wiser from the ordeal.

The great horned owl somehow made his way into the truck-mounted mixer in late October and was discovered by workers pouring concrete at a resort construction site. Lucky for him, a series of people gave a hoot about his predicament.

Workers hosed the bird down before it was wrapped in a towel. It took days for employees at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab to pick the concrete from the bird’s face, chest, and right wing, using forceps to carefully crack the dried debris and cleaning the feathers with toothbrushes and dish soap.

The owl started its long recovery at an aviary run by the organization, and employees anxiously waited for it to grow new feathers. But the bird didn’t molt as predicted.

In early May, he underwent a procedure called imping, which uses adhesive to graft donor feathers onto existing shafts.

“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” said Bart Richwalski, a supervisor at the sanctuary.

Great horned owls typically have a downy coating that allows them to fly quietly as they hunt. But the concrete frayed the rescued owl’s feathers and caused it to make a whooshing sound while flying.

To prepare for the imping procedure, sanctuary staff examined the owl’s feather patterns every few weeks and snipped damaged shafts in advance.

The owl was anesthetized, and the donor feathers from a similarly sized owl that had died were laid out nearby to replicate each wing. The staff then cut the feathers to the necessary length, lined them up, and adhered them to the bird.

By the end of the 90-minute procedure, the owl had 10 new primary feathers and a secondary feather on his right wing. But then came the real test: could he fly silently?

The bird was placed in a large aviary to recover from the anesthesia and quickly took flight after awakening.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

An ever-changing, AI-powered portrait of British adults has been launched in the U.K. People can submit selfies, which are turned into digital pictures as part of one collective artwork.

It’s called ‘A National Portrait,’ and it invites adults in the U.K. to take photographs that are transformed using Google’s AI technology. The finished sketches can be submitted to The National Portrait Gallery, which is turning them into one, ever-changing piece of art.

The artist behind the idea is Es Devlin. It is a continually redrawing self-portrait, so everybody who joins it will cause the drawing to redraw itself, and it is a reimagining of what national identity could feel like. It frames national identity as a continuous act of collective imagination, collective authorship. We are all present in this portrait together, and we merge from one to the next,” she says.

The U.K. has become increasingly politically fragmented. Devlin wants British people to feel more united. Patriotism is something that's, I think, been appropriated by the forces of division and separation. And actually, patriotism doesn't need to mean that. Patriotism could mean that we're all together in one place on the planet, whatever it says in our passport, what's indisputable is we are here, and we can all be together in portrait. And I think there are so many forces at work at the moment that fragment us, that distract us, separate us, that serve to remind us that we're separate and isolated and individual. But of course, technically we are all continuous with one another and with this planet,” she says.

All adults in the U.K. are able to submit their digital portraits to the project. Each picture will appear for a matter of seconds before changing into the next. They can remove their finished picture from the initiative at any time.

The technology behind the project is a collaboration between Devlin and Google Arts Culture. The online platform has worked with Devlin to develop an AI model that replicates her style.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Shares of eBay are soaring before the opening bell as Ryan Cohen's GameStop pursues an approximately $56 billion takeover of the company, seeing it as a vehicle to compete with online retail giant Amazon.

The national gaming retailer said that its approximately 1,600 U.S. stores could become drop-off and shipping locations. One proposal includes live sales broadcasts from GameStop locations featuring eBay products.

“eBay has the second-largest commerce franchise, and there’s a big opportunity to do something much larger,” Cohen said in a CNBC interview.

GameStop's bid is $125 per share in cash and stock. The equity value of the proposed deal is $55 billion on paper.

eBay confirmed the huge bid and said that it had no talks with GameStop or received any outreach from the company before it received the proposal. The company's board, along with financial and legal advisors, will review the offer and determine what course of action to take, eBay said.

GameStop said that it started accumulating shares in eBay beginning in February and currently has a 5% stake. The company is looking to lower costs at eBay, saying that the online seller spent $2.4 billion on sales and marketing in fiscal 2025 while only adding 1 million net active buyers. GameStop says it will achieve $2 billion in annualized cost cuts within a year of the proposed transaction's closing.

Cohen, who owns about 9% of GameStop, would serve as CEO of the combined company. He would only be compensated based on the combined company's performance.

Cohen became CEO of GameStop in 2023. At the time, the position had become a revolving door with the company trying to survive as streaming upended the gaming industry. GameStop became one of the most well-known meme stocks to create a frenzy among retail traders on Wall Street. The company’s shares took off in 2021 after a band of smaller-pocketed investors helped boost its stock by 1,000% in two weeks.

GameStop shares have fallen since then, but are still up more than 30% this year. Shares of eBay jumped more than 7% in premarket trading, while GameStop's stock declined nearly 3%.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Greece is preparing major constitutional changes, including an amendment requiring that artificial intelligence serve human society.

Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined the proposed revisions, casting them as necessary to safeguard future generations given global concerns about AI’s risks to democratic governance and humanity itself.

“It’s very important that, in this process of constitutional revision, we take care of the world that will host our children,” Mitsotakis told lawmakers from his governing center-right party.

The proposed changes would include a provision that says, “Artificial intelligence shall serve the freedom of the individual and the prosperity of society, ensuring that risks are mitigated and that the advantages it provides are fully realized.”

Dozens of other changes would include expanding postal voting, increasing mandatory schooling from nine to 11 years, and banning retroactive taxation.

“These challenges already dominate today: from the climate crisis and protection of water resources to renewable energy sources, but above all, the use of artificial intelligence,” the prime minister said. “This great revolution must also be constitutionally placed at the service of individual freedom and social well-being.”

The lengthy revision process involves a series of votes by two successive parliaments and typically requires some cross-party support.

Greece has been an eager adopter of AI and modern technology since emerging from a major financial crisis eight years ago, upgrading border surveillance and rebuilding its tax administration.

A powerful government services platform now manages everything from obtaining a divorce to buying tickets for domestic soccer matches.

In April, the government unveiled plans for a full social media ban for children younger than 16—a move it said was intended to pressure the European Union to adopt similar rules.

Some constitutional experts in Greece argue that AI must be legally required to serve democracy because major private technology platforms now hold enough data and power to operate beyond effective public oversight.

Evripidis Stylianidis, the government’s lead lawmaker on the constitutional revision, said the changes would serve as a long-term guardrail on AI use.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The packaging on some snacks in Japan is turning a somber black-and-white, as the war in Iran disrupts the supply of an ingredient used in colored ink.

Tokyo-based Calbee Inc., which makes potato chips and cereal, said what's inside remains the same. Calbee's popular snacks are available in Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores and shipped to the United States, China, and Australia. This measure is intended to help maintain a stable supply of products, it said in a statement.

The change on 14 products in its lineup started May 25, limiting ink colors to just two, the company said, noting it was necessary to respond flexibly to changing geopolitical conditions. How long the change might last remains unclear, according to Calbee, founded in 1949. The Calbee group employs more than 5,000 people.

The move is the latest as companies grapple with spiking prices and shortages of oil and other products caused by the war in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Japan, which relies almost entirely on imports for its oil, has so far ridden out the worries relatively calmly, as the government has worked to allay such fears by noting the nation's oil reserves. But it's still facing a squeeze on naphtha, an oil-derived product that's used in items like plastics and ink. There's no mistaking the stark change in the chips' packaging.

Calbee's lightly salted chips, known as usu shio, originally came in a bright-orange bag with an image of yellow chips and a potato-man mascot wearing a hat. The new packaging just has monochrome lettering.

The company, which also makes shrimp chips, or kappa ebisen, had just announced an ambitious growth strategy in March.

Calbee will continue to respond flexibly and promptly to changes in its operating environment, including geopolitical risks, and remains committed to maintaining a stable supply of safe, high‑quality products, it said. We ask for your understanding.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Meta Platforms said it's rolling out an “incognito” mode for WhatsApp users to have private conversations with its AI chatbot, a move intended to ease privacy concerns about sensitive information that users share in chats.

The social media company said in a blog post that incognito chat mode provides a way to have private, temporary conversations with Meta AI, its artificial intelligence assistant that's been available on WhatsApp for a few years.

Messages will be processed in a “secure environment that even Meta can't access, won't be saved by default, and will disappear when exiting a session, Meta said.

Generative AI systems have been dogged by privacy concerns because the large language models that underpin these systems are trained on vast troves of data, sometimes including personal information provided by users themselves in their conversations with AI chatbots.

Rival chatbot makers already have some privacy features. Google's Gemini chatbot has the option to disable chat history and opt out of allowing one's data to be used in training its AI models. ChatGPT has similar controls.

Meta says it's rolling out incognito chats because users often ask chatbots sensitive questions or include private financial, personal, health, or work data in their questions.

“We’re starting (to) ask a lot of meaningful questions about our lives with AI systems, and it doesn’t always feel like you should have to share the information behind those questions with the companies that run those AI systems,” Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, told reporters.

Incognito chat mode has safety features to prevent the chatbot from answering questions about harmful topics, Cathcart said.

It will “steer the user towards helpful information if it can and then refuse (to answer) and eventually even just stop interacting with the user completely,” Cathcart said.

Users will only be able to type in questions and get text responses; they won't be able to upload or generate images. They'll also have to confirm their age because Meta doesn't allow users under 13 on its platforms.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Senators unanimously approved a resolution to withhold their pay during government shutdowns, an attempt to make federal closures financially painful for lawmakers after a string of record-breaking impasses in the past year.

The bipartisan support for the measure comes at a time when federal closures have become longer and more frequent, frustrating lawmakers who say there should be punishment when Congress fails at its most basic legislative duty.

Under the resolution, senators' pay would be withheld by the Secretary of the Senate whenever a government shutdown affects one or more agencies, and then released once funding is restored. It will take effect the day after the November 3 general election and does not apply to the House.

Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences, said Sen. John Kennedy, the bill's sponsor, in a floor speech. This is about putting our money where our mouth is, said Kennedy.

Two shutdowns in the past year created significant financial hardship for tens of thousands of federal workers, particularly at the Department of Homeland Security. The department reopened last month after a 76-day partial shutdown, the longest agency funding lapse in history.

The Constitution stipulates that lawmakers must be paid, so they have received salaries during shutdowns even as federal workers went without paychecks. When the full government shutdown began in October amid a dispute over health care subsidies, Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed a constitutional amendment to require members to forfeit their paychecks when the government is closed.

If members of Congress had to forfeit their pay during government shutdowns, there would be fewer shutdowns, and they would end quicker, Graham said at the time.

Graham said his legislation was the most constitutionally sound way to deal with the problem, but the process would have been much more laborious, as three-fourths of states must ratify an amendment.

Lawmakers in previous shutdowns have often pledged to forgo their paychecks while federal workers went unpaid. Senators earn an annual salary of $174,000, but many are independently wealthy.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.