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A bipartisan group in Congress is urging the Education Department to add nursing to a list of college programs that are considered professional, adding to public outcry after nurses were omitted from a new agency definition.

The Trump administration's list of professional programs includes medicine, law, and theology, but leaves out nursing and some other fields that industry groups had asked to be included. The professional label would allow students to borrow larger amounts of federal loans to pursue graduate degrees in those fields.

Under new rules proposed by the Trump administration, students in graduate programs deemed professional could borrow up to $200,000 for their degrees in total, and up to $50,000 a year. Loans for other graduate programs would be capped at $100,000 in total and $20,500 per year.

In the past, graduate students had been able to borrow federal loans up to the full cost of their programs.

In a letter, lawmakers argue that a $100,000 cap on nursing graduate programs would make it harder for students to pay for expensive but high-demand programs, like those for nurse anesthetists. The annual cap would also pinch students in year-round nurse practitioner programs, which charge for three terms a year rather than just two and often cost more than $20,500 a year, they wrote.

Asked for comment, the Education Department referred to a previous statement saying that 95% of nursing students are studying in programs that won't be affected by the new caps.

Programs for certified nurse anesthetists can cost more than $200,000, lawmakers said, but the programs typically pay off and supply a workforce that overwhelmingly provides anesthesia to rural and underserved communities where higher cost physicians do not practice.

Another Democrat, Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, sent a similar letter. Excluding nurses would require students to take out riskier private loans or put tuition out of reach entirely, said Torres, who represents the South Bronx.

The Trump administration has said new loan caps are needed to pressure colleges to reduce tuition prices.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Spain's government has fined Airbnb 64 million euros ($75 million) for advertising unlicensed tourist rentals, officials said. The move is the latest government action in Spain against short-term rental companies such as Airbnb and Booking.com as the country grapples with a housing affordability problem, particularly in city centers.

The consumer rights ministry said the rentals didn’t include license numbers—a requirement in many regions in Spain—or listed license numbers that didn’t match what authorities had. Others had incorrect information about hosts, it said.

Airbnb said that it plans to challenge the fine in court. The company said it was working with Spanish authorities to comply with a new national registration system for short-term rentals, and that more than 70,000 listings on the platform had added a registration number since January 2025.

Spain's leftist government and many Spaniards across the political spectrum see short-term rental companies as bearing responsibility for driving up housing costs.

The nation on the Iberian Peninsula is one of the world's most visited countries, and short-term holiday rentals have cut into many cities' stretched supply.

“There are thousands of families living on the edge because of the housing crisis, while a few enrich themselves with business models that evict people from their homes,” Spain’s consumer rights minister, Pablo Bustinduy, said in a statement.

In May 2025, the consumer rights ministry ordered Airbnb to take down around 65,000 listings because of rule violations.

In 2024, Spain's anti-trust watchdog fined Booking.com 413 million euros ($448 million), saying the online travel company had abused its dominant market position in the country over the previous five years.

Local authorities in Barcelona have said they plan to phase out all of the 10,000 apartments licensed in the city as short-term rentals by 2028 to safeguard the housing supply for residents.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Geneva is a hotspot for luxury shopping. From precision watches to caviar, it's a paradise for those hunting for expensive Christmas gifts.

At the Blancpain store, watchmakers craft precision timepieces for customers who expect the very best. At the world's oldest registered watch brand, a single misplaced screw can mean the difference between a masterpiece and mediocrity.

This is one of the results: the Blancpain Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar 2025. A limited edition of just 50 pieces, retailing for 80,000 Swiss francs. It marries the Gregorian calendar with ancient Chinese lunar cycles, featuring a green Grand Feu enamel dial and the representative of the Year of the Snake appearing through an aperture at twelve o'clock.

This is, of course, Geneva—the cradle of watchmaking and a place where luxury has been refined into an exact science. And this city extends across many brands.

A few doors down from Blancpain sits Gübelin, another family dynasty. Founded in 1854 as a watchmaker's shop in Lucerne, Gübelin established its renowned gemmological laboratory over a century ago in 1923, setting the gold standard for authenticating precious stones worldwide.

Inside the boutique, the marriage of history and innovation continues, and its wares are never more in demand than in December. “Christmas time is one of the biggest periods in Geneva. We have about 20 to 30% of the turnover made during that month,” says the boutique's manager, Clement Mercier.

The clientele arrives from every continent, drawn by Switzerland's reputation for discretion and quality. Mercier outlines the demographics. “First would be Americans, we have USA. We have also South Americans, Brazil. And then we have, of course, more during the summer season, Middle East. And Asia throughout the year,” he explains.

Exclusivity is not just about the objects you can buy—it's about experiences.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Holiday shoppers in Nashville said they felt the pressure of higher prices in 2025 as they looked to buy gifts for their friends and family for the festive period.

At an outlet mall, residents looked for deals ahead of Christmas but also tried to spend wisely with an eye on the following year.

When you've got a lot of people to buy presents for, you know, you kind of got to divvy up that budget, said shopper Bennett Roach. Everybody gets a little slice of the pie, but the pie, you know, is getting smaller and smaller every year.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity, and holiday gifts in recent months, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Roughly half of Americans say it’s harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential purchases more than they would normally.

I used to get my hair done and my nails done, and I don't do any really of that anymore, said another shopper, Missy Hunt. I started getting my nails done around my birthday, and that's kind of like a special treat now. So those kind of things, I don't really spend as much money on, like, makeup anymore.

Hunt, who works in healthcare, said her concerns this holiday season are for others who are facing potential increased healthcare costs. It's one of those things where I hear so many stories about people who are about to be losing their healthcare, said Hunt. And, like, at a time like this, when I'm, like, not focused on that at all for myself, I know that's what, like, the number one thing on a lot of people's minds for 2026 and 27.

For shoppers like Jackie Castro, she wanted her gifts to have an impact, so she was looking for brand-name deals. I feel like if I know whoever I'm buying the gifts for is going to like it, then I'm willing to spend more and only buy one thing for them, she said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Cyclist Barnaby Wickham has collected more than 700 lost hubcaps, mostly on bike rides around Baltimore. They have inspired a quest to turn litter into art, including Christmas wreaths, a giant fish, and a large head of Snoopy.

It is a hobby that developed nearly two years ago from his love of cycling and the joy of making something out of the junk he has collected.

I think it's sort of the excitement of the hunt, for one thing, Wickham said. I love to cycle. I love Baltimore. I love to go out in Baltimore, and there's just enough hubcaps and other things like car grilles to be interesting, but not so many that it's too easy.

Wickham, 54, says he can't quite explain it, but one day while cycling in early 2024, he decided to bring home a lost hubcap. Since then, he has started stringing hubcaps he comes across to his backpack. I keep track of them, and I have a Google map, he said. I pin locations where I find each of them.

Others in his community who have taken an interest in his projects let him know when they see hubcaps by the road. Now, Wickham keeps a list of them that he refers to as hubcaps in the wild. He wants to do the collecting himself. That is part of the joy.

Wickham also gets a hand from his wife, Kate, who helps hold materials during construction and offers opinions. I'm just support team, and occasionally the cautious person who says, you can't drive on this road, you can't bike on this road, or whatever. So I'm just more kind of supporting his love of trying new things, she said.

It might seem like an odd pastime, but Baltimore has been known to celebrate its quirky side. The city is known for director John Waters, whose offbeat films earned him the moniker of the Pope of Trash. Baltimore is also home to the American Visionary Art Museum, which is nationally recognized as a repository for the work of self-taught artists and intuitive art.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A growing exotic pet trade has conservationists calling for stronger regulations to protect the reptiles, birds, and other animals in the wild that are increasingly showing up for sale on internet marketplaces and becoming popular on social media.

The two-week 20th Conference of the Parties (CoP) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ran from November 24 to December 5, 2025, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Several proposals related to the pet trade were considered during the conference.

Participants have proposed tighter regulations or complete bans on the trade of several species, including iguanas from the Galapagos Islands, more than a dozen species of Latin American tarantulas, and an odd-looking turtle from Africa.

In the past, the trade was dominated by sales in animal parts like elephant ivory and tiger bones. But the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said live animals for the pet trade are increasingly turning up on the internet.

Several of the species proposed for greater protection at the CITES conference are in Latin America, where an IFAW report last year found illegal trade is on the rise.

The report, covering 18 Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, says there were more than 100,000 animals seized or poached from 2017 to 2022, with seizures increasing every year.

The report found the live pet trade accounted for a growing piece of the trade, with reptiles representing about 60% of the animals, while nearly 30% were birds, and more than 10% were amphibians.

Many animals were traded locally or regionally, but there was also evidence of animals shipped to collectors in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Microsoft announced its biggest-ever Asia investment, amounting to $17.5 billion, in India over the next few years to advance the country’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. CEO Satya Nadella revealed this in an X post after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Nadella said that Microsoft was committing the investments to help India build the “infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities” needed for its AI future. The announcement underscored the growing global competition among major technology companies to expand in India, which has become one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets.

In October, Google said it will invest $15 billion in India over the next few years to establish its first AI hub in the country. Located in the southern city of Visakhapatnam, the hub will be one of Google’s largest globally.

Nadella was in India on a three-day trip that included discussions with policymakers, as well as participation in AI-focused events in the country's tech hub, Bengaluru, and financial capital, Mumbai.

India has set ambitious targets to become a leading global hub for AI and semiconductor manufacturing. The government has introduced financial incentives aimed at attracting global chipmakers and major technology companies to strengthen the country’s innovation ecosystem, boost jobs, and reduce dependence on imported technologies.

“When it comes to AI, the world is optimistic about India,” Modi said on X after meeting with Nadella.

Microsoft’s latest India investment plan tops its earlier announcement in 2025 of investing $3 billion in building cloud and AI infrastructure, as well as new data centers and skilling the workforce over the next few years.

The company, which has operated in India for more than three decades, employs more than 22,000 people in the country and has been expanding cloud and data center capacity to support advanced computing needs.

Microsoft said in a statement that it hopes to scale up its ongoing operations across India. It plans to have its largest hyperscale presence in the country with a new data center going live in mid-2026.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and will bring characters such as Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Luke Skywalker to the AI company's Sora video generation tool, in a licensing deal that the two companies announced on December 11.

At the same time, Disney went after Google, demanding the tech company stop exploiting its copyrighted characters to train its AI systems.

The OpenAI agreement makes the Walt Disney Co. the first major content licensing partner for Sora, which uses generative artificial intelligence to create short videos.

Under the three-year licensing deal, fans will be able to use Sora to generate and share videos based on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters.

AI video generators like Sora have wowed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips based merely on text prompts. But a flood of such videos on social media, including clips depicting celebrities and deceased public figures, has raised worries about “AI slop” crowding out human-created work alongside concerns about misinformation, deepfakes, and copyright.

Disney and OpenAI said they are committed to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.

“This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.

Disney CEO Robert Iger said the deal will “extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”

As part of the deal, some user-generated Sora videos will be made available on the Disney+ streaming service.

Children's advocates, however, criticized the move. Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, said Disney's decision to partner with OpenAI “is a betrayal of countless children around the world who adore Mickey Mouse, Frozen, and Toy Story. OpenAI claims children are prohibited from using Sora, yet here they are luring young kids to their platform using some of their favorite characters.” Disney, he added, is aiding and abetting OpenAI’s efforts to addict young children to its unsafe platform and products.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Creepy, zany, and demonstrably fake content is often called slop. The word's proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it on Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year.

It's such an illustrative word, said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster's president, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of the announcement. It's part of a transformative technology, AI, and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying, and a little bit ridiculous.

Slop was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. In other words, you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books, Barlow said.

AI video generators like Sora have wowed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips based merely on text prompts. But a flood of these images on social media, including clips depicting celebrities and deceased public figures, has raised worries about misinformation, deepfakes, and copyright.

The word slop evokes unpleasant images of mud-caked pigs crowding around a dirty trough, or perhaps a bucket of steaming, fetid stew. Or AI amalgamations of algorithmic biases laden with offensive or nonsensical imagery. For some, the word induces dread.

But to Barlow, it brings a sense of hope. The dictionary's president says the spike in searches for the word reflects that people have grown more aware of fake or shoddy content and desire the inverse. They want things that are real, they want things that are genuine, he said. It's almost a defiant word when it comes to AI. When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI actually doesn't seem so intelligent.

To select the word of the year, the dictionary's editors review data about which words have risen in search results and usage. Then they come to a consensus about which word best reflects the span of the year. We like to think that we are a mirror for people, Barlow said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The Cooper family knows how to work heavy machinery. The kids could run a hay baler by their early teens, and two of the three ran monster-sized drills at the coal mines along with their dad.

But learning to maneuver the shiny red drill they use to tap into underground heat feels different. It's a critical part of the new family business, High Altitude Geothermal, which installs geothermal heat pumps that use the Earth’s constant temperature to heat and cool buildings. At stake is not just their livelihood but a century-long family legacy of producing energy in Moffat County.

Like many families here, the Coopers have worked in coal for generations—and in oil before that. But that work is ending for Matt Cooper and his son Matthew as one of three coal mines in the area closes in a statewide shift to cleaner energy.

“My family has worked in producing energy for other people to consume in various forms for 105 years,” said Matt Cooper. “Now with the coal mines going away, we're transferring into geothermal to try to have something to keep us going.”

Many countries and about half of U.S. states are moving away from coal, citing environmental impacts and high costs. Burning coal emits carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

President Donald Trump has boosted coal as part of his agenda to promote fossil fuels. He's trying to save a declining industry with executive orders, large sales of coal from public lands, regulatory relief, and offers of hundreds of millions of dollars to restore coal plants.

That's created uncertainty in places like Craig. As some families like the Coopers plan for the next stage of their careers, others hold out hope that Trump will save their plants, mines, and high-paying jobs.

Craig residents have always been entrepreneurial, and that spirit will get them through this transition, said Kirstie McPherson, board president for the Craig Chamber of Commerce. Still, she said, just about everybody here is connected to coal.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.