DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The world’s second Sphere is planned to be built in the capital of the United Arab Emirates after the opening of the first giant dome entertainment complex in Las Vegas.

Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism and Sphere Entertainment Co. announced the plan late Tuesday to bring a Sphere to the Middle East.

Under the deal, Abu Dhabi will pay a franchise fee to Sphere Entertainment to build the second location using its designs. Abu Dhabi’s government will pay to build the structure, as well as annual fees to Sphere Entertainment “for creative and artistic content.”

The announcement offered no financing information, nor did it say where the Sphere would be built in the Emirati capital. Abu Dhabi’s government did not immediately respond to questions about the project Wednesday. Sphere declined to comment beyond the initial announcement.

The massive $2.3 billion Las Vegas Sphere opened in 2023 as the gambling capital’s most expensive entertainment venue. A high-resolution LED screen wraps halfway around the 17,500-seat audience. It has hosted concerts and sporting events inside the world’s largest spherical structure standing at 366 feet (111 meters) tall and 516 feet (157 meters) wide.

However, efforts to build a second Sphere abroad have been choppy. London Mayor Sadiq Khan rejected a plan to build one in the city’s east over multiple concerns last year, including light pollution.

Abu Dhabi has been trying to differentiate itself as a travel destination from neighboring Dubai in the UAE, an energy-rich federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.

The UAE is also preparing to open the first casino in the country. While the only one currently under construction is in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, other sheikhdoms in the country are believed to be actively considering having their own.

Sphere is the brainchild of James Dolan, the executive chair of Madison Square Garden and the owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers.

Stock in Sphere closed more than 6% higher Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange to $48.91 a share. That’s a major boost after Benchmark last month downgraded Sphere Entertainment to “sell” over “concerns over the Sphere’s “scalability, high production costs and a potentially underwhelming profitability outlook.”

Meanwhile, some projects in the UAE have failed to be built or been delayed for years after being announced in economic downturns.

Trademark filings show Sphere Entertainment Co. trademark filings made as well in Japan, Oman and Qatar, though there’s no announced plans for similar venues. Companies often protectively trademark their names in other markets without necessarily having business there.

The artificial intelligence boom has benefited chatbot makers, computer scientists and Nvidia investors. It’s also providing an unusual windfall for Anguilla, a tiny island in the Caribbean.

ChatGPT’s debut nearly two years ago heralded the dawn of the AI age and kicked off a digital gold rush as companies scrambled to stake their own claims by acquiring websites that end in .ai.

That’s where Anguilla comes in. The British territory was allotted control of the .ai internet address in the 1990s. It was one of hundreds of obscure top-level domains assigned to individual countries and territories based on their names. While the domains are supposed to indicate a website has a link to a particular region or language, it’s not always a requirement.

Google uses google.ai to showcase its artificial intelligence services while Elon Musk uses x.ai as the homepage for his Grok AI chatbot. Startups like AI search engine Perplexity have also snapped up .ai web addresses, redirecting users from the .com version.

Anguilla’s earnings from web domain registration fees quadrupled last year to $32 million, fueled by the surging interest in AI. The income now accounts for about 20% of Anguilla’s total government revenue. Before the AI boom, it hovered at around 5%.

Anguilla’s government, which uses the gov.ai home page, collects a fee every time an .ai web address is renewed. The territory signed a deal Tuesday with a U.S. company to manage the domains amid explosive demand but the fees aren’t expected to change. It also gets paid when new addresses are registered and expired ones are sold off. Some sites have fetched tens of thousands of dollars.

The money directly boosts the economy of Anguilla, which is just 35 square miles (91 square kilometers) and has a population of about 16,000. Blessed with coral reefs, clear waters and palm-fringed white sand beaches, the island is a haven for uber-wealthy tourists. Still, many residents are underprivileged and tourism has been battered by the pandemic and, before that, a powerful hurricane.

Anguilla doesn’t have its own AI industry though Premier Ellis Webster hopes that one day it will become an hub for the technology. He said it was just luck that it was Anguilla, and not nearby Antigua, that was assigned the .ai domain in 1995 because both places had those letters in their names.

Webster said the money takes the pressure off government finances and helps fund key projects, but cautioned that “we can’t rely on it solely.”

“You can’t predict how long this is going to last,” Webster said in an interview with the AP. “And so I don’t want to have our economy and our country and all our programs just based on this. And then all of a sudden there’s a new fad comes up in the next year or two, and then we are left now having to make significant expenditure cuts, removing programs.”

To help keep up with the explosive growth in domain registrations, Anguilla said Tuesday it’s signing a deal with a U.S.-based domain management company, Identity Digital, to help manage the effort. They said the agreement will mean more revenue for the government while improving the resilience and security of the web addresses.

Identity Digital, which also manages Australia’s .au domain, expects to migrate all .ai domain services to its systems by the start of next year, Identity Digital Chief Strategy Officer Ram Mohan said in an interview.

A local software entrepreneur had previously helped Anguilla set up its registry system decades earlier.

There are now more than 533,000 .ai web domains, an increase of more than 10-fold since 2018. The International Monetary Fund said in a May report that the earnings will help diversify the economy, “thus making it more resilient to external shocks.

Webster expects domain-related revenues to rise further, and could even double this year from last year’s $32 million.

He said the money will finance the airport’s expansion, free medical care for senior citizens and completion of a vocational technology training center at Anguilla’s high school.

The income also provides “budget support” for other projects the government is eyeing, such as a national development fund it could quickly tap for hurricane recovery efforts. The island normally relies on assistance from its administrative power, Britain, which comes with conditions, Webster said.

Mohan said working with Identity Digital will also defend against cyber crooks trying to take advantage of the hype around artificial intelligence.

He cited the example of Tokelau, an island in the Pacific Ocean, whose .tk addresses became notoriously associated with spam and phishing after outsourcing its registry services.

“We worry about bad actors taking something, sticking a .ai to it, and then making it sound like they are much bigger or much better than what they really are,” Mohan said, adding that the company’s technology will quickly take down shady sites.

Another benefit is .AI websites will no longer need to connect to the government’s digital infrastructure through a single internet cable to the island, which leaves them vulnerable to digital bottlenecks or physical disruptions.

Now they’ll use the company’s servers distributed globally, which means it will be faster to access them because they’ll be closer to users.

“It goes from milliseconds to microseconds,” Mohan said.

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit Monday with a new wave of lawsuits accusing him of raping women, sexually assaulting men and molesting a 16-year-old boy. It is the first time he’s been sued by a person alleging they were abused as a minor.

At least six lawsuits were filed against Combs in federal court in Manhattan, adding to a growing list of legal claims against the indicted hip-hop mogul, all of which he has denied. The lawsuits were filed anonymously to protect the identities of the accusers, two by women identified as Jane Does and four by men identified as John Does.

Some of the Does, echoing others who’ve accused Combs in recent months, allege that he used his fame and the promise of potential stardom to entice victims to lavish parties or drug-fueled hangouts where he then assaulted them. Some allege that he beat or drugged them. Others say he threatened to kill them if they didn’t do as he pleased or if they spoke out against him.

The lawsuits describe alleged assaults dating to the mid-1990s, including at Combs’ celebrity-studded white parties in Long Island’s Hamptons, at a party in Brooklyn celebrating Combs’ then-collaborator Biggie Smalls, and even in the storeroom at Macy’s flagship department store in midtown Manhattan.

The plaintiffs in Monday’s lawsuits are part of what their lawyers say is a group of more than 100 accusers who are in the process of taking legal action against Combs following his Sept. 16 federal sex trafficking arrest. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Tony Buzbee announced the planned litigation at an Oct. 1 news conference and posted a 1-800 number for accusers to call.

In a statement, Combs’ lawyers slammed those tactics as “clear attempts to garner publicity,” and said the rapper and his legal team “have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone—adult or minor, man or woman.”

Combs, 54, has pleaded not guilty in his criminal case, which involves allegations he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

Twice denied bail, the Bad Boy Records founder remains locked up at a Brooklyn federal jail while awaiting trial in May. Two judges have concluded that Combs would be a danger to the community if he is released. On Friday, an appeals court judge denied Combs’ immediate release from jail while a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighs his bail request.

Before Monday’s raft of lawsuits, all of the accusers suing Combs had been adults at the time of their alleged abuse, although a Chicago record producer claimed in a February suit that he had “irrefutable evidence” of Combs sexually abusing minors.

In a lawsuit Monday, a John Doe alleged that Combs fondled his genitals when he was 16 at one of Combs’ white parties in 1998. The man, who now lives in North Carolina, alleges that Combs told him he had “the look” of a star and then abruptly ordered the then-teen to drop his pants.

According to the man’s lawsuit, Combs explained to him that it was a rite of passage to becoming a music star, at one point asking him: “Don’t you want to break into the business?” The man said he complied out of fear, anxiety and a power imbalance he felt with Combs, only realizing later that what he says happened was sexual assault.

Other lawsuits filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan include allegations of rape, forced oral sex and drugging to incapacitate victims.

One of the Jane Does alleges Combs raped her in a locked hotel room in 2004 after he invited her and a friend there for a party, gave them drinks and told them to snort cocaine. The woman, then a college freshman, alleges Combs also forced her friend to perform oral sex on him and threatened their lives if they didn’t comply.

Another Jane Doe alleged Combs violently attacked and raped her in a bathroom in 1995 at a party in Brooklyn for Smalls’ music video, “One More Chance.” Smalls, also known as the Notorious B.I.G., was killed two years later in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles.

According to the woman, Combs brought her into the bathroom to talk privately and started kissing her unexpectedly. When she tried pulling away, she alleges, he slammed her head against the wall, causing her to fall to the floor. She said she tried to escape, but Combs hit her again and raped her.

Afterward, according to the woman, Combs nonchalantly adjusted his clothing and told her: “You better not tell anyone about this, or you will disappear.”

The other John Doe lawsuits allege: Combs sexually assaulted a security guard at a 2006 white party after giving him a drugged beverage; forced a man working for a rival fashion brand to perform oral sex on him in the Macy’s stockroom in 2008; and sexually assaulted a man at a party in October 2021.

The latter man, who suspects a drugged beverage left him unable to fight back, recalls multiple men assaulting him and distinctly recalls seeing Combs above him, naked, at one point during the assault, his lawsuit said.

___

Associated Press journalists Andrew Dalton and Jonathan Landrum Jr. in Los Angeles contributed to this report. ___

This story has been corrected to show that the party celebrating Biggie Smalls was in 1995, not 2005, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” required to serve as president, her doctor said in a letter released Saturday that summarizes her medical history and status.

Dr. Joshua Simmons, a U.S. Army colonel and physician to the vice president, wrote that Harris, 59, maintains a healthy, active lifestyle and that her most recent physical last April was “unremarkable.”

She “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” he wrote in a two-page letter.

Harris’ campaign hopes to use the moment to draw a contrast with Republican Donald Trump, who has released only limited information about his health over the years, and raise questions about his fitness to serve, according to a campaign aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Trump has released very little health information, including after his ear was grazed by a bullet during an assassination attempt in July.

Simmons, who said he has been Harris’ primary care physician for the past 3 1/2 years, said the vice president has a history of allergies and urticaria, also known as hives, for which she has been on allergen immunotherapy for the past three years.

Simmons said Harris’ latest blood work and other test results were “unremarkable.”

Also in the report: Harris wears contact lenses for mild nearsightedness; her family history includes maternal colon cancer; she is up to date on preventive care recommendations, including having a colonoscopy and annual mammograms.

As Harris’ office released the medical report, her campaign highlighted recent media reports raising questions about Trump’s health and mental acuity and his failure to provide information about health status and medical history.

Trump, 78, eagerly questioned President Joe Biden’s health when the 81-year-old president was seeking reelection. Since Biden was replaced on the ticket with Harris, Trump’s own health has drawn more attention.

Last November, Trump marked Biden’s birthday by releasing a letter from his physician that reported the former president was in “excellent” physical and mental health.

The letter posted on Trump’s social media platform contained no details to support its claims — measures like weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, or the results of any test.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to release a report Saturday on her medical history and health that a senior campaign aide said would show “she possesses the physical and mental resiliency” needed to serve as president.

Harris’ advisers hope to use the moment to draw a contrast with Republican Donald Trump, who has released only limited information about his health over the years, and raise questions about his fitness to serve, the aide said.

Harris’ office did not go into detail about how thorough the report on her medical history would be. The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the report concludes Harris “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief.”

Trump, for his part, has released very little information, including after his ear was grazed by a bullet during an assassination attempt in July.

Trump, 78, eagerly questioned President Joe Biden’s health when the 81-year-old president was seeking reelection. Since Biden was replaced on the ticket with Harris, who is 59, Trump’s own health has drawn more attention.

Last November, Trump marked Biden’s birthday by releasing a letter from his physician that reported the former president was in “excellent” physical and mental health.

The letter posted on Trump’s social media platform contained no details to support its claims — measures like weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, or the results of any test.