Home Blog Page 447

Riviera newcomers Penge and Bridgeman share lead at Genesis with McIlroy on their heels

By
The Associated Press
-

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Marco Penge and Jacob Bridgeman had superb finishes at Riviera on Friday, each with a 7-under 64 that left them tied for the lead at the Genesis Invitational with Rory McIlroy right on their heels.

For Scottie Scheffler, the objective was just getting to the weekend. He accomplished that by the smallest of margins, a 7-foot par putt that caught just enough of the lip to swirl in.

Penge, the leading player from the European tour to secure a PGA Tour card for this year, pulled away with five birdies over his final seven holes and was the first to post at 12-under 130. More remarkable than his score was keeping his mind on golf — his wife is moving into their new home in Florida and expecting their second child next week.

“It’s been quite tough, to be fair, the last four weeks for me and my family,” Penge said. “She’s been in the U.S. on her own, heavily pregnant, looking after a 1 1/2-year old at the same time with no family or friends around.

“It’s been like a bit of a gamble of me just kind of going to compete and leaving her on her own.”

Bridgeman only played Riviera for the first time Wednesday because of rain. He birdied his last three holes, finishing with a 5-iron into a cool breeze to 8 feet to join Penge.

The former Clemson star has discovered a fondness for poa annua, the strain of grass that get bumpy with spikes and footprints and late afternoon growth, and can be downright terrifying on short par putts when the greens are this fast.

Joe Greiner, a caddie in his group, even asked him, “Are you sure you’re not from the West coast?”

“It’s shocking how soft they are and how fast they are,” Bridgeman said. “I think two or three times today I hit it 6 feet by the hole and was just like, ‘Wow, I don’t know how they’re that fast,’ because you can hit a 5-iron and it will back up. This is probably the most pure poa annua I’ve ever seen.”

McIlroy has opened 66-65 and he has only one bogey on his card through 36 holes, quite a change from last week at Pebble Beach when he had three double bogeys and a triple bogey that ruined his chances to contend.

He played the three par 5s with two birdies and an eagle on the 11th, and he birdied the par-3 fourth for the second straight day. The hole was lengthened to 273 yards, which McIlroy called a “horrible change” at the start of the year. The PGA Tour has yet to use that tee.

The biggest change was keeping mistakes out of his round.

“There’s no Pacific Ocean to hit it into around this golf course, so that helps,” McIlroy said. “I still hit some loose shots, but the course setup is in a way that you can get away with it a little bit more. But I’ve hit it well, I’ve controlled my distance well for the most part, and I’ve holed some nice putts from inside 8 feet for pars when I’ve needed to.”

Xander Schauffele showed more strides toward sharpness with a 65 that left him three shots behind, along with two-time Riviera winner Adam Scott, who had the low round of the day at 63. Scott was 9 under through 13 until spending the final hour scrambling for par and only failing to do that on the last hole.

This is one of three signature events that has a 36-hole cut to top 50 and ties, and anyone within 10 shots of the lead. Scheffler, who had to rally Friday morning for a 74 to complete the rain-delayed first round, was well aware where he stood. He was on the ropes, 4-over par for the tournament, 10 holes to play, figuring he needed to get to even par.

The world’s No. 1 player promptly made three straight birdies around the turn, the last two the product of his exquisite short game, and picked up another on the par-5 17th. But he got steep on a simple chip at the 18th and lightly pumped his fist when the 7-footer for par curled into the cup.

It was the third straight week he failed to break par in the opening round — something he hasn’t done since his rookie season in 2020 — and he rallied in Phoenix and Pebble Beach to give himself a chance to win. This was about giving himself a chance to play, and he was delighted.

“I started the day not where I wanted to,” Scheffler said. “But yeah, battled and it looks like I get another couple rounds to see what I can do.”

___

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

Unbeaten Floyd Mayweather says he will return to pro boxing 9 years after his retirement

By
The Associated Press
-

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Floyd Mayweather says he is ending his nine-year retirement and returning to competitive boxing this summer.

Mayweather, who turns 49 on Tuesday, hasn’t fought in a real boxing match since 2017, when he beat Conor McGregor. Following that big-money bout against a mixed martial artist, Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) declared himself retired for the third time in his career.

The former five-division world champion has still been in the ring regularly throughout his 40s with a series of lucrative exhibition bouts against the likes of online influencer Logan Paul, YouTuber Mikuri Asakura and John Gotti III, the grandson of the infamous mafia boss.

Mayweather already has announced yet another exhibition coming up this spring against 59-year-old Mike Tyson, although no location or television partner has been confirmed.

But Mayweather says he is also returning to real ring competition this year under a promotional deal with CSI Sports/Fight Sports.

“I still have what it takes to set more records in the sport of boxing,” Mayweather said in a statement. “From my upcoming Mike Tyson event to my next professional fight afterwards, no one will generate a bigger gate, have a larger global broadcast audience and generate more money with each event (than) my events.”

Mayweather spent more than a decade as arguably the biggest American star in boxing, and he beat Manny Pacquiao in 2015 in the richest fight in boxing history at the time. His superb defensive skills and quick hands were his ring strengths, but his stardom and wealth proliferated largely because of his “Money May” antihero persona.

Mayweather has flaunted his extravagant lifestyle online practically since the invention of social media, but he filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Showtime Networks and Stephen Espinoza, the former president of Showtime Sports, alleging he is owed more than $300 million. Mayweather’s intricate suit appears to fault the network for not protecting the boxer from the business practices of his longtime financial advisor, Al Haymon.

Mayweather has also been sued this year over his alleged failure to pay rent at a Manhattan apartment, and he is in financial disputes with at least two prominent jewelers.

Mayweather is returning to pro boxing one year after the now-47-year-old Pacquiao resumed his own career. Pacquiao is slated to take on Ruslan Provodnikov in Las Vegas on April 18 in the second fight of his comeback.

___

AP boxing: https://apnews.com/boxing

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI considered alerting Canadian police about school shooting suspect months ago

By
The Associated Press
-

TORONTO (AP) — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Friday it considered last year alerting Canadian police about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.

OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities.”

The San Francisco tech company said it considered whether to refer the account the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but determined at the time that the account activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement. OpenAI banned the account in June 2025 for violating its usage policy.

The 18-year-old killed eight people in a remote part of British Columbia last week and died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.

OpenAI said the threshold for referring a user to law enforcement is whether the case involves an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others. The company said it did not identify credible or imminent planning. The Wall Street Journal first reported OpenAI’s revelation.

OpenAI said that, after learning of the school shooting, employees reached out to the RCMP with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT.

“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy. We proactively reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT, and we’ll continue to support their investigation,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.

The RCMP said Van Rootselaar first killed her mother and stepbrother at the family home before attacking the nearby school. Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health contacts with police.

The motive for the shooting remains unclear.

The town of 2,700 people in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta. Police said the victims included a 39-year-old teaching assistant and five students, ages 12 to 13.

The attack was Canada’s deadliest rampage since 2020, when a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 13 people and set fires that left another nine dead.

US military strikes another alleged drug boat in eastern Pacific, killing 3

By
The Associated Press
-

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said Friday that it has carried out another deadly strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

U.S. Southern Command said on social media that the boat “was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” It said the strike killed three people. A video linked to the post shows a boat floating in the water before bursting into flames.

Friday’s attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to at least 148 people in at least 43 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”

Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world

By
The Associated Press
-

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.

Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.

Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.

The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.

Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.

There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.

While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.

They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.

But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.

While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.

Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.

His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.

Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.

Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.

“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.

“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”

___

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

Murakami shakes off traffic delay ahead of Cactus League debut with the White Sox

By
The Associated Press
-

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Munetaka Murakami was a late arrival for his first spring training game with the Chicago White Sox.

Once he got to the ballpark, everything went pretty smoothly.

Murakami had two hits and two RBIs in his Cactus League debut on Friday. The Japanese slugger is learning his way around the major leagues after reaching a $34 million, two-year contract with the rebuilding White Sox in December.

The 26-year-old Murakami was momentarily removed from the starting lineup after he got caught in some traffic on his way to Sloan Park. But he arrived about 20 minutes before the first pitch and bounced to second base in his first at-bat in the first inning of an 8-1 victory over the Cubs.

“There was a big, big accident in the highway,” Murakami said through a translator. “I was just concerned the whole time. … To be really, really honest, I wasn’t able to prepare fully, but I made it in time I think.”

Murakami was part of a slate of debuts on the first day of spring training games. Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso and Diamondbacks third baseman Nolan Arenado homered for their new teams, and Alex Bregman went 0 for 2 while playing three innings in his first game with the Cubs.

“It was a great to be out here and play in a spring training game with the Cubs,” said Bregman, who signed a $175 million, five-year contract with the team in free agency. “It was fun. Obviously super cool to have all that energy in the ballpark.”

Alonso got a warm ovation before his first at-bat against the Yankees. He was robbed of a hit on Kenedy Corona’s diving catch in the third, but he drove Bradley Hanner’s first-pitch curveball deep to left for a two-run shot in the sixth inning of Baltimore’s 2-0 win in Florida.

Alonso hit 38 homers last year in his final season with the New York Mets. He agreed to a $155 million, five-year contract with the Orioles in December.

Arenado hit a leadoff drive in the second inning of a 3-2 victory over the Rockies in Scottsdale. The eight-time All-Star was acquired in a trade with St. Louis in January.

Murakami is hoping to provide a lift for the White Sox after they dropped a whopping 324 games over the previous three seasons. He hit .270 with 246 homers and 647 RBIs in 892 games over eight years with the Yakult Swallows of Japan’s Central League.

Murakami, who started at first base, got his first hit when he drove a 91.9 mph sinker from Connor Schultz the middle in the third inning. The one-out single had a 108.3 mph exit velocity.

With one out and the bases loaded in the fourth, Murakami hit a drive to center off Porter Hodge. Cubs center fielder Seiya Suzuki lost the ball in the sun, and it landed on the back of the warning track for a two-run double.

“I’m really happy how it went, without any injuries,” Murakami said. “I had butterflies inside me the first few minutes of it. But after I started fielding and I got an at-bat, I felt a bit more comfortable and felt myself.”

Murakami and Suzuki are going to play together for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic, and the two talked in the offseason about what it’s like to play in Chicago.

“I loved him, but after the popup, I hate him. So I’m not going to support him,” Suzuki joked through a translator.

Murakami looked at a called third strike in his final at-bat in the sixth. He was replaced in the field before the bottom half of the inning.

Manager Will Venable praised Murakami for collecting himself after his trouble getting to the game.

“This guy is so committed and such a professional,” Venable said. “We’ve asked him to do some things that he hasn’t necessarily been accustomed to and how he prepares and his adaptability and flexibility to do those things has been awesome. That adjustability gives you confidence that he’s going to be able to go out there and make adjustments throughout the year.”

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Justice Department swiftly fires lawyer chosen as top federal prosecutor for Virginia office

By
The Associated Press
-

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer picked by judges to serve as the top federal prosecutor for a Virginia office that pursued cases against foes of President Donald Trump was swiftly fired Friday by the Justice Department in the latest clash over the appointments of powerful U.S. attorneys.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the firing of James Hundley on social media shortly after he was unanimously chosen by judges to replace former Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. While the law says that the district court may choose U.S. attorneys when an initial appointment expires, the Trump administration has insisted that the power lies only in the hands of the executive branch.

“EDVA judges do not pick our US Attorney. POTUS does. James Hundley, you’re fired!” Blanche said in a post on X.

Hundley, who has handled criminal and civil cases for more than 30 years, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday evening.

The firing of Hundley is the latest reflection of tumult in one of the Justice Department’s most elite prosecution offices, which since September has been mired in upheaval following the resignation of a veteran prosecutor amid Trump administration pressure to prosecute two of the president’s biggest political foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

That prosecutor, Erik Siebert, was effectively forced out and swiftly replaced by Halligan, a White House aide who secured indictments against Comey and James but was later deemed by a judge to have been unlawfully appointed. The cases were dismissed, but the Justice Department has appealed that decision.

Halligan resigned from the position last month after judges in the district signaled continued skepticism over the legitimacy of her appointment.

U.S. attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in regional Justice Department offices around the country, typically require Senate confirmation but the law does permit attorneys general to make temporary appointments for limited time periods. In several instances, though, the Justice Department has attempted to leave its temporary appointees in place in ways that have invited court challenges and drawn resistance from judges who have found the appointments unlawful.

Last week, a lawyer appointed by judges to be the U.S. attorney for northern New York was fired by the Justice Department after spending less than a day in the job. Judges in the district appointed Kinsella after declining to keep the Trump administration’s pick, John Sarcone, in place after his 120-day term elapsed.

Just over half ball/strike challenges successful on first day of spring training games

By
The Associated Press
-

Just over half the ball/strike challenges were successful on the first day of spring training games Friday as Major League Baseball prepared for the first regular-season use of the automated ball-strike system — the so-called robot umpires.

Thirteen of 23 calls were overturned during the five games, MLB said, which came to 56.5%.

There were an average of 4.6 challenges per game and 2.6 overturned calls per game.

Seven challenges were made of plate umpire Alex MacKay’s calls during Arizona’s 3-2 win over Colorado, and six were successful. The Diamondbacks had four of five decisions reversed and the Rockies were 2 for 2 in challenges.

MLB experimented with the ABS system during spring training last year and teams won 52.2% of their ball/strike challenges (617 of 1,182) challenges.

Each team has the ability to challenge two calls per game. Teams that waste their challenges get one additional challenge in each extra inning. A team retains its challenge if successful, similar to the regulations for big league teams with video reviews, which were first used for home run calls in August 2008 and widely expanded to many calls for the 2014 season.

___

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

Court clears way for Louisiana law requiring Ten Commandments in classrooms to take effect

By
The Associated Press
-

A U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for a Louisiana law requiring poster-sized displays of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms to take effect.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 12-6 to lift a block that a lower court first placed on the law in 2024. In the opinion released Friday, the court said it was too early to make a judgment call on the constitutionality of the law.

That’s partly because it’s not yet clear how prominently schools may display the religious text, if teachers will refer to the Ten Commandments during classes, or if other things like the Mayflower Compact or Declaration of Independence will also be displayed, the majority opinion said.

Without those sorts of details, the panel decided it didn’t have enough information to weigh any First Amendment issues that might arise from the law. In other words, there aren’t enough facts available to “permit judicial judgment rather than speculation,” the majority wrote in the opinion.

But the six judges who voted against the decision wrote a series of dissents, some arguing that the case was ripe for judicial review and others saying that the law exposes children to government-endorsed religion in a place they are required to be, presenting a clear constitutional burden.

Circuit Judge James L. Dennis wrote that the law “is precisely the kind of establishment the Framers anticipated and sought to prevent.”

The ruling comes after the full court heard arguments in the cases in January following a ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that Louisiana’s law was unconstitutional. Arkansas also has a similar law that has been challenged in federal court.

Texas’ law took effect on Sept. 1, marking the largest attempt in the nation to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools. Multiple school districts were barred from posting them after federal judges issued injunctions in two cases against the law, but they have already gone up in many classrooms across the state as districts paid to have the posters printed themselves or accepted donations.

The laws are among the pushes by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, to incorporate religion into public school classrooms. Critics say it violates the separation of church and state while backers argue that the Ten Commandments are historical and part of the foundation of U.S. law.

The laws have been challenged by families representing a variety of religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, and clergy, in addition to nonreligious families.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The court found that the law had no secular purpose but served a plainly religious purpose.

And in 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin.

___

This story has been updated to correct the day of the week the ruling was issued to Friday, not Tuesday.

Bad Bunny positioned to consolidate his popularity in Brazil with first-ever performances

By
The Associated Press
-

SAO PAULO (AP) — While Bad Bunny has dominated global charts, the superstar has not had quite the same success in Brazil, a country notoriously hard for foreign stars to win over due to a devotion to national artists.

But a shift that began with his Grammy-winning album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” may accelerate further after his first-ever gigs in Brazil on Friday and Saturday in Sao Paulo.

Bad Bunny has come to Brazil at the peak of his career so far, following the phenomenal hype around his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show.

“It’s the best time to try and unlock a country like Brazil, at a time when he’s managed to dominate practically the entire world,” said Felipe Maia, an ethnomusicologist who is pursuing a doctoral degree on popular music and digital technologies at Paris Nanterre University.

For years, the Puerto Rican artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has been one of the most-streamed artists on the planet.

But neither the singer, nor his album, nor his songs were among the most played last year in Brazil, according to Spotify. The most streamed artists in the country on the platform in 2025 were all Brazilian.

In the land of samba, funk, bossa nova, choro, sertanejo, forro and pagode, among other Brazilian music genres, 75% of streaming consumption in Brazil focuses on national artists, according to the 2025 midyear music report of Luminate, a company specializing in entertainment industry data. Brazil is the country that most listens to its own music, it said.

Sold-out shows

Still, particularly since “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” the fever around Bad Bunny has made headway in Brazil. Only one performance was initially scheduled at the Allianz Parque arena, but it sold out so quickly the artist added an extra date, which also sold out.

By mid-afternoon on Friday, long queues had formed. Brazilian fans mixed with people from El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela. Many came wearing straw hats — used by Bad Bunny and traditionally worn by jíbaros, rural Puerto Rican farmers.

Tickets on Ticketmaster, the official vendor, ranged from $50 to $210, but resellers on Friday were selling tickets for that same night for more than $830 — more than 2.5 times the minimum monthly wage in Brazil.

Flávia Durante, a Sao Paulo -based DJ who specializes in Latin American music, said that some Brazilians have a tendency to see Spanish-language music as corny due to the association with Mexican telenovelas, but that Bad Bunny pierced a bubble with his latest album.

“Nowadays everyone knows all the songs, they sing along and really get into it. I normally play him at the peak of the night. People request him, even at rock or 80s pop themed parties,” Durante said.

Since the half-time Super Bowl show, that popularity has grown. Bad Bunny’s average streams grew by 426% on Spotify in Brazil in the following week compared with the previous one. Many songs experienced massive streaming surges, with “Yo Perreo Sola” leading the growth with a 2,536% increase.

‘Latino resistance’

During Brazil’s Carnival celebrations, Bad Bunny themed costumes were a fixture in Rio’s raucous, dazzling street parties.

Nicole Froio, a Colombian Brazilian writer specializing in Latin American cultural issues, went kitted out in a straw hat and plastic, tropical plants that echo the background of his latest album. It was the third Carnival in which Froio — who has two Bad Bunny tattoos and a third one planned — wore attire that evoked the Puerto Rican artist.

For a long time, Froio was the sole person among her Brazilian friendship group who liked Bad Bunny. She believes that Brazilians in general have trouble identifying themselves as Latino.

“There’s a lot of prejudice around Hispanic music and there were preconceptions against him because of his Puerto Rican accent, because people don’t understand him,” she said.

Brazil’s Latino identity exists but it is diffuse and difficult to seize due to the variety within the continent-sized country, said Maia. But Bad Bunny succeeds in giving it emphasis, particularly in cosmopolitan cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, he said.

Brazil, like other countries in the Americas, was listed by Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl halftime show, when he reminded the world that while “America” is used as a synonym for the U.S. in the U.S., it is the name used across two continents.

Bad Bunny’s global success, including in Brazil, “reinforces that we’re part of this — that we belong,” said 22-year-old Diogo da Luz, a longtime fan of the Puerto Rican ahead of Friday’s concert. “He reinforces that we are one people and that we’re very united.”

For Froio, who has been waiting to see him live for six years and will see him on Saturday, Bad Bunny “represents a Latino resistance.”

She pointed to the fact that other Latin American superstars, including Anitta, Shakira, and Ricky Martin, have recorded full songs in other languages, while Bad Bunny has kept his music almost entirely in Spanish.

“For me, there’s a great authenticity in his sound that inspires me to be who I am and let everyone else deal with it,” Froio said.

1...446447448...22,146Page 447 of 22,146