Shawn Levy is no novice when it comes to rumors around his projects. Years on "Stranger Things" taught him how to tune out the noise. Yet even he's found himself astonished by the sheer volume of speculation around "Deadpool & Wolverine."

"The rumors around this movie are overwhelming," Levy said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "But so is the anticipation, which is a nice situation."

Online fast-fashion retailer Shein must face the European Union's strictest level of digital regulations, the bloc said on Friday as it added the company to its list of big platforms that need extra scrutiny.

The EU's Executive Commission said it formally classed Shein as a "very large online platform" under the 27-nation bloc's Digital Services Act, an expansive rulebook designed to clean up online platforms and keep internet users safe.

Xavi Hernández says he walked back his decision to leave Barcelona this summer after his players convinced him "this is a winning team" even if this season will end without any trophies.

"Many people, including my players, have made me see that this is not over," Xavi said on Thursday at a news conference.

Uruguay goalkeeper Fernando Muslera, who played in the past four World Cups, announced his retirement from international soccer on Thursday.

The 37-year-old Muslera played 133 matches for La Celeste, helping the team win the 2011 Copa America. He remains a player for Turkish club Galatasaray.

FIFA deepened its ties to Saudi Arabia by confirming a sponsorship on Thursday with the kingdom's state oil firm Aramco which made a profit of $121 billion last year.

The deal was expected and became inevitable once Saudi Arabia was all but sealed last October as the 2034 host of the men's World Cup.

There could be a surprising team from each of Europe's "big five" leagues when the new-look Champions League debuts next season.

Aston Villa, Bologna, Brest, Girona and Stuttgart are all, remarkably, on course to qualify for Europe's elite competition going into the final few rounds of their national league.

Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of college campuses following last week's arrest of more than 100 demonstrators at Columbia University.

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel's military efforts in Gaza — and in some cases from Israel itself.

A court on Friday sentenced a Syrian woman to life in prison for a deadly explosion on a busy shopping district in Istanbul in 2022, Turkey's state-run news agency reported.

Alham Albashir was given seven consecutive life sentences after being convicted on terrorism charges.

Flooding in Tanzania caused by weeks of heavy rain has killed 155 people and affected more than 200,000 others, the prime minister said.

That is more than double the number of deaths reported two weeks ago as the amount of rainfall increases, especially in the coastal region and the capital, Dar es Salaam.

Circumstantial evidence points to climate change as worsening the deadly deluge that just flooded Dubai and other parts of the Persian Gulf, but scientists didn't discover the definitive fingerprints of greenhouse gas-triggered warming they have seen in other extreme weather events, a new report found.

Between 10% and 40% more rain fell in just one day last week — killing at least two dozen people in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and parts of Saudi Arabia — than it would have in a world without the 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming that has come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas since the mid-19th century, scientists at World Weather Attribution said Thursday in a flash study that is too new to be peer-reviewed.