A blast of heat and humidity in the Midwest and Northeast days before the official start of summer put a wet blanket on outdoor activities from festivals to sports camps as officials urged people to take precautions.

Cities that opened cooling centers this week advised that Wednesday's Juneteenth holiday means some public libraries, senior centers and pools where residents could beat the heat will be closed.

The New Jersey man accused of repeatedly stabbing author Salman Rushdie is not interested in an offered plea deal that would shorten his time in state prison but expose him to federal prison on a separate terrorism-related charge, his lawyer said.

Hadi Matar, 26, sat silently in Chautauqua County Court as lawyers outlined a proposal they said was worked out between state and federal prosecutors and agreed to by Rushdie over the past several months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a new partnership that includes a vow of mutual aid if either country is attacked, during a Wednesday summit that came as both face escalating standoffs with the West.

The deal, which the leaders said covered areas including security, trade, investment, and cultural and humanitarian ties, could mark the strongest connection between Moscow and Pyongyang since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Both leaders described it as a major upgrade of their ties.

A member of Hezbollah has been killed by an Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon, the country's state-run National News Agency reported.

The airstrike came as Hezbollah has not claimed any attack on northern Israel since Saturday night, apparently because of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha that began Sunday morning.

One of Donald Trump's emissaries to Arab Americans is a Lebanese-born businessman who moved to Texas as a teenager, speaks Arabic, English and French, and recently joined the Trump family when his son married the former president's younger daughter.

Massad Boulos has taken on the challenge of trying to convince a politically influential community angry at President Joe Biden that Trump is a better option. But many Arab Americans also note Trump has positioned himself as more pro-Israel than Biden and has made a series of comments and policy announcements that critics blast as Islamophobic.

A senior Hezbollah official said the group's intensified attacks along Israel’s northern border will make it difficult for Israel to stage an all-our war on Lebanon because it knows the conflict would be costly.

The attacks are also pressuring Israel to end the war in the Gaza Strip, said Sheikh Ali Daamoush in a sermon during Friday prayers. His comments came as Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed it fired rockets into northern Israel in a third day of barrages, saying it struck several military posts including two in the towns of Metula and Misgav Am.

The Syrian branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group is prepared to send more forces to Lebanon in case Israel launches a full-scale war against Hezbollah, an Islamic Jihad official said.

“All Palestinian youth look forward to facing the Israeli occupation and joining Hezbollah in this resistance,” said Ismail al-Sendawi, national relations officer for the Islamic Jihad in Syria. He spoke at a ceremony in Damascus commemorating members of the group from Syria who died fighting in Lebanon over the past eight months.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump told an influential group of CEOs that he wants to further cut the corporate tax rate he lowered while in office, while President Joe Biden's chief of staff separately told them that the Democratic incumbent's emphasis on global alliances would help their businesses.

Both Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Jeffrey Zients met behind closed doors on Thursday with the Business Roundtable in Washington, with Zients stepping in for Biden during the president's meetings with Group of Seven leaders in Italy. The prominent group representing more than 200 CEOs just rolled out an effort to preserve the tax breaks for businesses that Trump signed into law in 2017.

The artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI has raised tens of millions of dollars from the likes of Jeff Bezos and other prominent tech investors for its mission to rival Google in the business of searching for information.

But its AI-driven search chatbot is already facing challenges as some news media companies object to its business practices and tech giants Google, and now Apple, are increasingly fusing similar AI features into their core products.

The fluttering of 64 kilometers of orange bunting and a hammer driving a nail into a wall to hold up orange tarps are the sounds of a Dutch summer of football in a normally drab suburban street in The Hague.

The Marktweg is one of several streets in the Netherlands that get an all-encompassing orange facelift during European Championships and World Cups when the national team — known as Oranje after the Dutch royal family and the color of their shirts — are looking to add to the Euro it won 36 years ago.