LUY-Development

Blog

  • A Bosnian song about disillusionment with the American Dream becomes a World Cup banger


    SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The opening lyrics couldn’t be plainer: “I am from Bosnia; take me to America.” But by rewriting its classic “USA,” the Bosnian band Dubioza Kolektiv has transformed a song about disillusionment with the American Dream into a viral anthem powering Bosnia-Herzegovina’s own World Cup dreams.

    On the eve of Friday’s match between Bosnia and Canada, members of the genre-bending rock group met The Associated Press in the Sarajevo neighborhood where they filmed the new music video for the accordion-heavy earworm, now titled “I Am From Bosnia, Take Me to America.” In less than three weeks, the video celebrating soccer’s working-class roots has notched nearly 2 million views on YouTube — on top of the 26 million views the original “USA,” released in 2011, has amassed over the years.

    “It’s an interesting story how this song got its second and third and fourth incarnation in these 15 years,” muses Vedran Mujagić, bassist for the band that has woven political and social causes into its identity. “It evolved from this satirical take on immigration and (the) American Dream and it was translated into (an) American football dream for the entire nation.”

    Bosnia-Herzegovina is making only its second appearance at a World Cup, a goal that once seemed improbable as more traditional soccer powers stood in the way of qualification. At the end of April, though, Bosnia’s late goal against Wales propelled the team to a victorious penalty shootout, a feat it would replicate days later against Italy. The band members were surprised when fans unfurled a banner emblazoned with their lyrics, singing them as a rallying cry.

    “First, it was working as a joke, but what I like the most is the supporters kind of loaded completely new meaning to the old song, and this is the best thing for the band or for the song: when people take over and load new meaning and then it becomes theirs,” keyboardist Brano Jakubović says. “It’s not ours anymore.”

    An own goal lament turns joyous

    The original “USA” is as up-tempo and catchy — it’s hard not to wander around muttering, “I can no longer wait, take me to United States / Take me to Golden Gate, I will assimilate” — but its protagonist’s eagerness to flee slides quickly to disenchantment with life outside the Balkans.

    The band decided to deliver an updated version of what Jakubović describes as a “typical immigrant song,” writing new lyrics befitting a soccer anthem. While “USA” is in English, this version is mostly in Bosnian — “so people will understand,” he says — and mostly about the sport. The language switch has done nothing to lessen its global appeal, as a quick perusal of the YouTube comments suggests, though there are some jokes Jakubović acknowledges would be inscrutable outside Bosnia. (See: burek without cheese.)

    Jakubović’s favorite new line is a chance to excise something that has haunted the country since the 2014 World Cup: “And that goal against Nigeria, that was never offside.”

    “So this is like a big national trauma in Bosnia, so I used the song and lyrics to kind of release this trauma,” he says.

    He’s being wry there, but trauma has been a mainstay since Bosnia’s independence amid the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. Interethnic war almost immediately broke out, leading to genocide. More than 30 years after the Srebrenica massacre, deep division between Bosnian Serbs and Bosniak Muslims persist.

    “Football in this moment is much more than just a game, it’s a hope and it’s very basically (a) political thing because it brought all the people from Bosnia together, which is usually not the case,” Jakubović says.

    I am from Bosnia, take me to … Canada?

    Bosnia’s first match is in Canada, but the team will indeed be taken to America. Their base camp is in Sandy, Utah, and the other group stage matches — against Switzerland and Qatar — are in the States. And, as Mujagić points out, many of the players were born in the U.S. or elsewhere in the diaspora.

    “They are children of those people who went outside in search of a better life or as refugees or whatever their story was. And they kind of see and hear these lyrics and this song entirely differently from us,” he says.

    Mujagić thinks the original message of “USA” endures as Bosnians still emigrate. Once they leave, he finds, “they encounter this hostility of the locals, right-wingers, and they just don’t want them there.”

    “So it’s this schizophrenic situation in which you want to go there, but you somehow know that you won’t have it good on the other side as well,” he concludes. “So in that sense, this song still works perfectly well as it worked before.”

    In St. Louis, home to a thriving Bosnian community, Admir Hodzic is one of the founders of the supporter group BH Loyals. The 40-year-old business owner was born in Bosnia and has moved back and forth between his homeland and the U.S., not unlike the protagonist of “USA.”

    “I think every Bosnian that lives here and understands how the system works and everything else, I think they will find the truth in that song, and that song is honestly nothing but the truth,” he says. There are more opportunities in the U.S. than elsewhere, he says, but “it’s a matter of biting your teeth and pulling through the worst times possible.”

    He and his fellow supporters are big fans of Dubioza Kolektiv and sing their anthem at matches and watch parties. More often than not, though, it’s the original “USA.”

    “It’s engraved in their brain and their hearts,” he says, “and no matter what, they just go back to the old lyrics, you know?”

    ___

    Sen reported from New York.

    ___

    AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup


  • Linda and Andrew Clem

    [vc_single_image image=”1514″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”1515″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][headerText widget_name=”Birthday and Anniversary Cakes Provided By Dairy Queen” level=”h3″ url=”” el_class=””]

    Happy Anniversary to Linda and Andrew Clem!

    Anniversary Cake winner 06/12/26

  • US OPEN ’26: Scottie Scheffler trying to make history and Shinnecock tries to avoid recent history


    So much history is involved when the U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills, the only golf club to host this major championship in three centuries.

    Scottie Scheffler will try to take his place in history when the No. 1 player goes after the final leg of the career Grand Slam. Should he win, he would be the seventh player to win all four majors and join Tiger Woods as the only players since 1960 — the modern era of the slam — to get it done on his first try.

    That ordinarily would be the sole focus of the 126th U.S. Open, to be played June 18-21, except for the recent history at Shinnecock Hills.

    It has not been smooth sailing off the Great Peconic Bay on Long Island.

    “It’s hard when you run one tournament a year — and you run it on a different golf course every year — to get it just right,” Scheffler said. “And you’re trying to make it hard. I think in the U.S. Open, they push the boundaries. If they’re going to continue to push the boundaries, eventually they’ll screw up and then they’ll dial it back.”

    The 2004 U.S. Open already was brutally tough when the USGA failed to account for the strength of the warm wind. The par-3 seventh, with its Redan green, became so impossible to hold that officials had to douse it with water between groups on the final day. No one broke par, and the average score was 78.73.

    Among the blistering comments came this from Jerry Kelly: “I think they’re ruining the game. They’re ruining the tournament. This isn’t golf.”

    When the U.S. Open returned to this New York gem in 2018, the greens were so glassy from sun and wind the last 45 players on the tee sheet Saturday failed to break par. Phil Mickelson staged a bizarre protest by swatting a moving ball on the 13th green. Brooks Koepka saved the week by becoming the first repeat champion in 29 years.

    So a return to the fabled course evokes one thought: What will go wrong this time?

    “Hopefully, they get the balance right of all the different challenges, and it’s not contrived,” Adam Scott said. “These great tracks, they’ve gotten into trouble when they’ve been manipulated.”

    Wider fairways planned for this year

    John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief competitions officer, was asked to take a hard look after 2018 to see what went wrong and why. The short answer was greens not properly hydrated.

    The real answer comes over four days at Shinnecock Hills, the sixth time for it to host the U.S. Open, never under this much scrutiny. The early scouting report from Scheffler and Rory McIlroy was wider fairways than they are used to seeing at a U.S. Open. That wasn’t a mirage.

    Bodenhamer said the USGA wanted to present a course the way William Flynn designed it in 1931 when he was brought into reshape a course that first opened in 1891, the oldest golf club in America still in the same location.

    That means an average fairway width of 48 yards, compared with 42 yards in 2018 and 32 yards wide last year at Oakmont. He anticipates slower green speeds to account for so many putting surfaces perched on a hill and exposed to the wind.

    “The way we’re thinking about this year is to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock,” Bodenhamer said.

    That should be enough. In the five U.S. Opens at Shinnecock Hills, three players have finished the tournament under par — Raymond Floyd in 1986, Retief Goosen and runner-up Mickelson in 2004.

    McIlroy said the green speeds were just over 11 on the Stimpmeter — slightly under the target speed the USGA has in mind — and the Masters champion doesn’t thing they need to be much fasters.

    “If they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens,” McIlroy said. “If it’s set up the right way, I think it’s one of the best championship tests in the country. It’s an amazing golf course.”

    Scheffler goes for the career Grand Slam

    McIlroy became the most recent player with the career Grand Slam by winning the Masters in 2025. At the time, Scheffler had two green jackets but only one leg of the career slam. And then he steamrolled the competition at the PGA Championship and British Open.

    “Fixed that,” Scheffler said with a laugh at the start of the year.

    Now he’s on the cusp of the most elite club in golf. McIlroy had to wait 11 years to get the final leg. Jack Nicklaus (1966 British Open) and Gary Player (1965 U.S. Open) each waited three years for their final pieces. Scheffler is the betting favorite, even though he hasn’t won in five months.

    He was runner-up in 2022 at The Country Club, his best chance. He was in the mix at Los Angeles in 2023 and on the fringe of contention at Torrey Pines.

    “I like the challenge of playing a really hard golf course against a really good field,” he said.

    Adam Scott playing his 100th straight major

    Scott is among three players — potentially four depending on alternates — who is playing a third time at Shinnecock Hills, though he has yet to make the cut there.

    He still has cause of celebration. Scott is playing in his 100th consecutive major, dating to the 2001 British Open, the second-longest streak behind Nicklaus and his incomparable run of 146 in a row.

    “It’s crazy,” said Jordan Spieth, next in line at 52 in a row. “It’s not only playing at a high level, it’s take care of yourself the right way. Almost every single person you think of that could have reached 100 missed it because of injury.”

    The toughest test

    Players were due to start arriving around the weekend to prepare a major with a reputation as being the toughest test in golf. For Shinnecock, the test starts with wind on a course that more closely resembles a Scottish links than any other in America.

    Flynn created a series of triangles — holes that run in that shape so players are forced to cope with different wind direction no matter which way it’s blowing.

    And for the players, the test can be what goes on between the ears. Nicklaus once said he could rule out most players having a chance when he hears them complain. And there’s been a lot of complaining the last two times at Shinnecock Hills.

    “Your acceptance meter, you’ve got to add some at the top end,” Xander Schauffele said. “If it’s 100, you need to make it 150 because 100 is not enough. It might be the second or third hole of the day and you might have already had four bad breaks. It’s really penalized. It’s the most tired I am of the four majors.”

    ___

    AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf


  • David Hockney, iconic British artist known for his colorful landscapes and pool scenes, dies at 88


    LONDON (AP) — David Hockney, a treasured British artist whose paintings of shimmering pools and colorful iPad drawings became icons of contemporary art, has died, his publicist said Friday. He was 88.

    Over a seven-decade career, Hockney explored and reimagined classical portraiture, landscape painting and pop art, working in painting, collage, photography and digital drawing.

    Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.

    Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France’s Normandy region. One of the most popular and critically lauded British artists of his generation, his works sold for record prices at auction.

    Historian Simon Schama said it’s no mystery why the appeal of his work endures.

    “His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure,” Schama wrote in an essay accompanying a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.

    Hockney’s publicist, Erica Bolton, said he died at his home in London on Thursday, less than a month short of his 89th birthday. She did not give a cause of death.

    He is survived by his longtime partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima; his great-nephew and studio assistant, Richard Hockney; his brothers Philip and John; and numerous nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.

    Hockney was an icon of the swinging 60s

    With his trademark round glasses and bleached-blond hair, Hockney was a well-known figure in the swinging British and American art scenes of the 1960s, even before he reached the age of 30. His paintings were just as distinctive, many of them creating a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, and human forms rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.

    “I’m excited every day,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “London has lots of dreary parts, but I never find anything dreary in Los Angeles.”

    Hockney was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city whose chief export was woolen textiles. He spent his first two decades there before going to London’s Royal College of Art. He made an impact even before his graduation, and art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable of artists in 1961.

    His artistic influences ranged widely, including Renaissance portraits, 18th-century English artist William Hogarth’s satirical drawings, 19th-century English painter J.M.W. Turner’s landscapes, Pablo Picasso’s experiments in Cubism and 20th-century American pop art.

    He shared with other pop artists an interest in the polished surface of modern life. And, like Andy Warhol with his Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans, Hockney occasionally incorporated advertising labels, such as a British Typhoo Tea box used in his 1961 “Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style.”

    He saw success early in his career

    He told The New York Times in 1964 that he enjoyed the burgeoning pop art scene in New York but wasn’t sure he was part of it.

    “I’m just an ordinary artist,” he said. “I do admire American pop — in fact it seems that everything fresh-looking and vital in England these days has been coming from the U.S.”

    Nonetheless, he said in 1995 that he still considered himself “very much an artist in the English tradition.”

    Hockney, who was out as a gay man long before it was common, explored erotic themes, giving youthful male bodies the same tender scrutiny that artists had been giving the female nude for centuries.

    Early works like “We Two Boys Together Clinging” and “Two Men in a Shower” celebrated gay relationships when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.

    Early in his career, two of his drawings were bought for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

    “The moment I first sold pictures to earn a living, I felt rich. I’ve been rich ever since,” he told The Associated Press in 1995. “I didn’t have much money, but I did what I wanted. … You are a rich man if you do the things you want to do.”

    In 2018, his 1972 painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold at a Christie’s auction for $90.3 million, at the time a record for a living artist.

    While many of his best-known paintings had American scenes, he also tackled British subjects. He immortalized his parents in several portraits and his friends Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell in “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy,” a 1971 portrait voted one of Britain’s greatest paintings in a 2005 BBC poll.

    Hockney’s work went beyond drawing and painting

    Like many traditional artists, he considering drawing a fundamental skill and lamented that it wasn’t taught as rigorously as it used to be.

    “Human beings are the most interesting things we see, so they’re the hardest to draw,” he said in a 1996 AP interview.

    Hockney also embraced other media, including printmaking, photo collage and video. He contributed costume and set designs for the theater and opera, including a celebrated production of “Tristan und Isolde” first staged in 1987 at the Los Angeles Opera.

    When he took up photography, he fused genres, assembling individual photos into elaborate collages like “Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April, 1986,” built up of individual views of a desert highway intersection.

    “My photographer friends said it was a painting,” Hockney told the AP in 2001. “I said it’s a photograph; I used a camera.”

    Later he began to draw on iPads, which became his favorite tool.

    In the early 2000s, he looked afresh at the fields and forests of Yorkshire in a series of landscape paintings that combined bold color with minute attention to the texture of snow on a hillside or a blossom on a hawthorn hedge. They featured in a 2017 exhibition at Tate Britain in London that was visited by half a million people and moved to the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

    Hockney used the English landscape for inspiration in his design for a stained-glass window installed at Westminster Abbey in 2018 to celebrate the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

    King Charles III paid tribute to “one of life’s true originals” as he mourned “a man whose irrepressible charm, talent and constant innovation will be most sorely missed, but whose dazzling creativity lives on in galleries and museums around the world.”

    He worked right up until his death

    In 2019, he moved to Normandy, where during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown he produced joyous iPad drawings of springtime for his friends. His message — “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring” — was emblazoned in neon across the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris when it hosted a huge Hockney exhibition that opened in April 2025.

    Art critic Estelle Lovatt said Hockney “changed how we see the world.”

    “He was one of the first artists to use a fax machine,” she told the AP. “He was one of the first artists to use the Polaroid camera to make collages. He was one of the first artists to use really, really vibrant colors.”

    An unrepentant cigarette smoker who railed against government anti-smoking rules, Hockney complained when a poster for the 2025 exhibition was banned from the Paris Metro because it showed him holding a cigarette.

    The announcement of his death from his publicist noted that Hockney was “a committed life-long and defiant smoker, expressing the pleasure in life it brought him. … He smoked up to the end.”

    Hockney had a minor stroke in 2012 and was increasingly deaf in later years — something he said improved his visual perception.

    “If you lose one sense, you gain other senses, and I feel I could see space clearer,” he told the AP in 2017.

    He never stopped working.

    “It’s my work that keeps me young,” Hockney told the Sun newspaper in 2017. “I’ve been a professional painter for 60 years. Sixty years of getting up every day and doing exactly what I want to do.”

    ___

    Associated Press journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this report.


  • North Natchez Park Complaints, Teacher Stipend Fight, AG Court Win


    City officials this week heard complaints regarding conditions at North Natchez Park and its renovated youth center. The youth center underwent a renovation three years ago at a cost of nearly one million dollars, and new playground equipment was installed at the site near Martin Luther King and Wilson Roads. Two board members raised concerns about plumbing issues, overgrown weeds, and grass at the park. City staff will assess the conditions, but maintenance will depend on available budget and priorities.

    Several Louisiana school superintendents are opposing Governor Jeff Landry’s proposal to redirect $168 million in public school funding to provide a $2,000 stipend for teachers. Landry says the plan is feasible, but Paris School Superintendent Jeff Powell disagrees, saying the plan reflects a misunderstanding of how school finances operate. Landry’s executive order states that non‑instructional funds would be used for the stipends, but Powell says those funds cover operational costs essential to student learning. The plan requires two‑thirds approval from both the House and Senate, with lawmakers asked to mail in votes by June 23.

    The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled that the Attorney General’s office is the sole authority responsible for managing litigation and prosecuting lawsuits to recover money for the state. The decision reverses a lower court ruling that allowed the state auditor’s office to file lawsuits in certain situations. The case centered on efforts to recover funds tied to Mississippi’s welfare scandal. State Auditor Shad White filed suit against former NFL quarterback Brett Favre to recover interest on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds he received for speaking engagements. Favre repaid the original amount but did not pay interest, prompting White to pursue legal action.

    Early voting begins today in Louisiana for the U.S. Senate runoff. Low voter turnout is expected, with political observers noting that many residents may be unaware an election is taking place. The race has drawn little attention, and analysts say the results are largely anticipated, including looking ahead to the November general election.

    The Mississippi River at Natchez‑Vidalia is at 37.53 feet and falling. News, sports, and weather updates are available anytime at listenupyall.com.

  • Disclosure Movie and what’s really out there? AFTER THE SHOW 6/12

    Funny how in a week where Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure is opening, a new round of asking the U.S. government to release more from its studies on UAPs is also happening. But how does the average person feel about other forms of life in outer space, things we can’t see, and has any photo or video really ever proved there’s other life out there?

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ seizes the small-story moment in prestige TV with Dunk and Egg


    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ser Duncan is tall, but his story is small.

    And Ira Parker, showrunner of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdom,” HBO’s latest entry to the “Game of Thrones” universe that has charmed and disarmed viewers with its humble story of big, raw, aspiring knight Dunk and his tiny, cue ball-bald squire Egg, says it’s going to stay that way.

    “If anything, I’d say Season 2 might feel even smaller,” Parker said. “It’s not at all busy and everything. There’s almost some loneliness creeping into this.”

    Parker spoke to The Associated Press from the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, where he’s making the second season of the show based on George R.R. Martin’s series of novellas about the journeys and adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his sidekick whose nickname obscures his true identity.

    After eight sprawling seasons of “Game of Thrones” and two seasons of the almost-as-epic “House of the Dragon,” some worried about Westeros fatigue when “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” arrived in January. Instead, it was enthusiastically embraced by fans and plenty of newcomers. People seemed to want a world with no dragons or clashing kings, just an overgrown orphan without a last name trying to become somebody.

    Everything about the show is scaled down. Season 1 had just six episodes averaging about 35 minutes, all of them centered entirely on Dunk and Egg.

    “It is 100% a function of the underlying material,” Parker said. “We don’t want to have to stretch the story. We like building out the world and hanging out with our characters and having some fun in Westeros. But we don’t want to have odd little side quests.”

    Smaller stories may be having a moment in elite TV. “The Pitt,” last year’s best-drama Emmy winner and a favorite to repeat the win, is set almost entirely in one part of one hospital. “Pluribus,” the acclaimed Apple TV+ show that will give it Emmy competition this year, has a single main character.

    “Game of Thrones” was also the mother of all Emmy contenders, getting more nominations during its full run than any drama ever.

    This little brother of a show could get a little Emmy attention too when nominations are announced next month after a voting period that started Thursday. Its two stars, each as unlikely to find themselves in the spotlight as the characters they play, could both get acting nominations.

    Peter Claffey, who plays Duncan, is a 6-foot-5, 29-year-old former professional rugby player who has had a steady stream of supporting roles since switching to acting in 2019 but nothing remotely like the title role in a franchise series.

    When he got the Egg gig, Dexter Sol Ansell was plenty experienced for a 9-year-old. (He’s 11 now.) But now he’s become a memeable charmer as the little hairless scamp who’s devoted to Dunk but sitting on big secrets.

    They were both big, and lucky, finds for Parker and his team. Dexter was the first kid they looked at for Egg. And he and Claffey have established an off-screen rapport that translates to the screen.

    “They’ve just been growing up together and they’re coming up together and they really do talk to each other like brothers now,” Parker said. “There’s an aspect of that that you just can’t create.”

    Parker himself has a humble background and isn’t used to being the center of such attention. He wrote for shows including “The Last Ship,” “Better Things” and, crucially, “House of the Dragon” before having this gig, and a sort of stardom, fall into his lap.

    The sophomore year, however, is going a little roughly.

    “Worst experience of my life,” Parker said, smiling but not entirely joking.

    Season 2, based on Martin’s 2003 novella “The Sworn Sword,” is set in a drought that they’re supposed to be recreating in Spain. But Gran Canaria is getting historic downpours.

    “The whole story is about the drought,” he said. “The whole story is somebody damming the water to keep it from someone else.”

    But he spoke to AP after a day of sun, with hope for more.

    “If we can somehow manage to corral this thing back into its box of sunshiny-ness,” he said, “I think we’re going to have something special.”


  • Disaster drills helped prevent more deaths when powerful quake hit the southern Philippines


    MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine officials said Friday that years of disaster-preparedness drills helped prevent a larger casualty toll when one of the strongest earthquakes in 50 years struck the south and left 46 people dead with 38 others missing.

    The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, which struck Monday off Sarangani province, injured at least 688 people and displaced more than 45,000 people, about half them still in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses across farming towns and cities.

    The numbers of dead and missing were considerably lowered after multiple verifications, the Office of Civil Defense said in a statement.

    Many of the displaced were still too traumatized to return home because of strong aftershocks, officials said.

    Days after the earthquake hit, more videos of the chaotic moments have been posted on social media showing horrified crowds witnessing the collapse of small buildings, and flag-raising ceremonies turning chaotic when the ground started to shake on the first day of school after a long summer break.

    Students are seen on videos screaming in panic, but staying seated or standing still outside school buildings, with some covering their heads with their hands as teachers admonished them to calm down.

    One video, which has gone viral on Facebook with millions of views, showed dozens of grade-schoolers screaming and breaking into tears as they sat on a tree-ringed school ground, which visibly swayed them from side to side. A tin roof shed nearby later collapsed with a loud thud, prompting many to dash away, but were asked by teachers to return and stay seated.

    The grade school in the coastal town of Malita in Davao Occidental province reported no injuries from the quake.

    “This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of earthquake preparedness and the value of regular disaster response drills,” the Mahayahay elementary school said in a statement.

    Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said years of disaster-preparedness drills helped people anticipate and brace for extreme events like Monday’s quake, one of the strongest to hit the archipelago in a half-century.

    He said that it was also fortunate that the quake hit at 7:37 a.m., a few minutes before work and classes were to start indoors.

    “It’s good that our efforts to educate people on what to do when earthquakes hit somehow paid off,” Bacolcol told The Associated Press.

    He expressed concern, however, over the collapse of some buildings that he said should have withstood the powerful quake, if construction standards based on the country’s building code were followed.

    Ednar Dayanghirang, director of the Office of Civil Defense in a quake-hit region of about 5 million people, said that regular disaster-preparedness drills helped reduce casualties in many ways, including by preventing deadly stampedes.

    “We required all school principals to take one-day courses on incident management, then they appointed disaster-response teams among teachers to deal with earthquakes, tsunamis,” Dayanghirang said. “They listened and they learned.”

    The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.


  • Tornadoes in Illinois and Indiana leave residents grappling with damage; cleanup efforts underway


    Residents in tornado-ravaged areas in Illinois and Indiana were grappling with the damage to their homes and neighborhoods on Friday, after the strong line of storms barreled through communities south of Chicago and left trails of destruction. Cleanup efforts were underway, and utility companies said power restoration efforts could extend into next week.

    Thursday’s storms ripped roofs off of buildings, flattened homes, brought down scores of trees and power lines and caused hundreds of thousands of power outages and major air traffic disruptions. Officials said there were no reports of deaths or life-threatening injuries, though there were several people treated for minor injuries.

    Tornado damage was reported in several towns including Merrillville and Hebron in Indiana and Streator, Illinois. Authorities were surveying the damage Friday and preparing to issue emergency declarations needed to get recovery funding.

    Marsha Smith was in her apartment building in Merrillville, about 33 miles (53 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, when the tornado struck the complex, tearing roofs off three buildings, knocking down trees and breaking car windshields before heavy rain caused more damage to the homes. She and some neighbors huddled under an indoor stairwell holding hands and praying.

    “The louder the tornado got, the louder I started praying,” said Smith, 54, a CPR instructor. “I said, ’Oh God it’s here.′ I said, ’Lord Jesus make it pass, let it pass, let it pass over. I said, ’God give us the strength to make it through this.’ And it just started wrecking.”

    Smith said there was an eerie calm just before the tornado struck. Then it sounded like a freight train smashing into her building, she said. She thanked God no one was hurt. Friday morning, she surveyed her neighborhood and described it as a catastrophe.

    Officials in Merrillville said more than 200 buildings were damaged, including some that were destroyed. Downed trees and power lines blocked streets, and part of a high school’s roof was ripped off. Cleanup crews were out working Friday.

    Multiple agencies from the region helped local first responders search and assessed damaged areas, town officials said on social media. Crews worked into the night clearing roads. The American Red Cross set up a 700-bed shelter.

    In and around Streator and Hebron, photos and videos posted on social media showed damage in those areas similar to that in Merrillville. The National Weather Service said tornadoes hit those areas as well, and it was surveying the damage to determined exactly how many tornadoes touched down.

    In Streator, a manufacturing and farm city about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, emergency crews were inspecting the damage. Officials said nearly a dozen homes were damaged, including some that were destroyed. A reunification center for displaced residents was set up in its city hall and the Red Cross opened a shelter.

    Streator Mayor Tara Bedei said there were no reported deaths. “We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel,” she said in a statement. Officials said four people were treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

    First responders also worked through the night in Hebron, a small town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, officials said in a Facebook post. Damage assessments were underway.

    Jennifer Hall was in her garage in Elkhart, Indiana, as the winds and rain picked up Thursday evening. Suddenly, she said, she heard a loud crash and discovered a tree limb had gone through the roof of her rental home. She used buckets to catch the rain coming in from the hole.

    “I’m just nervous because it’s just been one thing after another,” said Hall, explaining she just had surgery and her husband is out of town.

    The tornadoes came after severe storms swept through the Midwest on Wednesday, knocking out power, damaging buildings and canceling flights.

    There were nearly 180,000 power outages in Illinois on Friday afternoon, down from more than 200,000 earlier in the day. Nearly 115,000 homes and businesses in Indiana were in the dark, down a few thousand from earlier Friday, according to poweroutage.us.

    Commonwealth Edison, a major electricity provider in Illinois, said it expected to restore 80% of the power outages from Wednesday’s storms by Saturday night, and 80% of outages from Thursday’s storms by Sunday night. In Indiana, NIPSCO said it was working to restore power as fast as possible but did not provide a timeline.

    The storms delayed or halted flights at airports in some cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and New York on Thursday. Parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic also strained under high heat and humidity. Dozens of flights were canceled or delayed Friday at Chicago’s O’Hare International and Midway International airports, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.

    Police in Des Moines, Iowa, said a 54-year-old man was found critically injured Thursday morning at a homeless encampment in a park after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms.” He died at the scene.

    ___

    This story was updated to correct that police said a man in Des Moines hit by a fallen tree was found Thursday, not Wednesday.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.


  • SpaceX stock soars in debut and makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire


    NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after shares of his rocket company SpaceX soared in Wall Street’s biggest initial public offering of stock.

    Shares in SpaceX jumped more than 19% after opening for trading Friday, a sign that investors are looking past the billions the company is losing and instead betting that its massive investments in satellites, orbital data centers and artificial intelligence will pay off in the future.

    SpaceX opened around midday at $150 a share, then rose to around $168, before finishing the day just below $161. That price gave the company a market value of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth largest public U.S. company — larger even than its founder and CEO’s other big business, the electric vehicle maker Tesla.

    Between his holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, where he is also CEO, Musk is now worth an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.

    Why SpaceX is going public now

    Musk says SpaceX, founded in 2002, is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars.

    He marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

    He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multiplanetary.”

    “Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”

    Known for his technological breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk was able to whip up enthusiasm for the IPO. The typical company going public has seen a 7% jump in its first day of trading, from 1980 through 2025, according to Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.

    Institutional and retail investors alike jumped at the opportunity to buy a piece of the company at $135 per share before trading began. The $75 billion in proceeds SpaceX raised easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.

    In addition to establishing a one-million person Martian colony, the company has promised to save humanity by establishing other outposts in space, launch data centers the size of football fields into orbit and outdo rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to make money from artificial intelligence.

    To reach its goals, SpaceX needs billions more than it currently takes in from its rocket and satellite business. Between the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., lost $8.7 billion.

    Pros and cons for investors

    Betting on SpaceX is in many ways a bet on Musk himself. In an unusual arrangement that has drawn criticism from shareholder watchdogs, he holds 82% interest in a special B class of shares, giving him sweeping power to control the company even though his ownership stake is about half that.

    “There’s a lot of hype, but I see the faith that investors have in Musk,” said Yordys Coro, an IT support contractor in Miami as he watched his $14,000 investment in SpaceX shoot up to $17,000 in just a few hours. “I’m going to hold on.”

    Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are also enthusiastic about the company — and the big fees they will earn — but not everyone thinks the stock price is justified.

    Analysts at research firm Morningstar, which doesn’t earn any investment banking fees, wrote that the IPO is “significantly overvalued.”

    Citing SpaceX’s technology challenges, including shielding its orbiting datacenters from radiation damage and catching up to leaders in AI such as Anthropic and OpenAI, they estimated the company is only worth $780 billion — less than half its IPO value.

    SpaceX itself has hinted at the challenges, conceding in regulatory documents that some of its business plans rest on “unproven technologies.” It also indicated that another part of the company, its artificial intelligence business called xAI, has no clear path to profitability and is burning cash to catch up with rivals.

    On a livestreamed conference Thursday with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the investment banks making big money off the IPO, Musk offered few details.

    He entertained the crowd with talk of “moon hotels,” a future Martian colony and a network of Earth-orbiting data centers powered by the sun. But when asked about plans for his flagship chatbot offering Grok, he pivoted to talking about his satellites.

    How Elon made his fortune

    Still, Musk has pulled off the seemingly impossible before.

    The now-trillionaire — on paper at least — made his initial fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about $200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles cool.

    Musk has realized vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he’ll only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets.

    His recent pay package from Tesla was so large it even drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he’s worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.

    But a rising stock price has cured all ills: Since it went public in 2010, Tesla has returned 20,000% for shareholders, or more than $1.2 trillion in investor wealth.

    SpaceX is the first of three “megacap” companies expected to go public this year, with Anthropic and OpenAI to follow. Nasdaq even revised its rules to allow SpaceX to gain entry into funds tied to its indexes in 15 days, which means investors will end up buying the rocket maker’s shares much earlier.

    Not all investors are thrilled about SpaceX potentially showing up in their holdings of index funds.

    Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims and how much power Musk will hold over the company.

    __

    AP reporters Stan Choe and Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed from New York and reporter Matt O’Brien contributed from Providence.