Energy giant BP said Tuesday that it earned nearly $2.6 billion in the second quarter, almost half what it posted in the first three months of the year as oil and natural gas prices that surged after Russia's invasion of Ukraine have fallen.

The company's underlying replacement cost profit, which excludes one-time items and fluctuations in the value of inventories, was down nearly 70% from the April-to-June period a year ago, when London-based BP brought in $8.45 billion.

Australia's central bank on Tuesday left its benchmark interest rate on hold at 4.1% for a second consecutive month raising expectations that rates might have reached their peak or are close to plateauing in the current cycle.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has hiked the cash rate 12 times from a record-low of 0.1% in May last year — as the board has attempted to rein in inflation — to a target range between 2% and 3%.

Spectators at the DC Open were told before Ukraine's Elina Svitolina defeated Belarus' Victoria Azarenka 7-6 (2), 6-4 on Monday night that the players would not shake hands when their first-round match ended.

During the war in Ukraine, Svitolina — like several other players from her country — has declined to participate in the usual meeting at the net with opponents from Russia or Belarus. Russia invaded Ukraine with the help of Belarus in February 2022 and fighting continues.

A poster hanging at the DC Open site shows Frances Tiafoe — a competitor in the field from nearby Maryland — flanked by other men such as Andy Murray and Taylor Fritz and women such as Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula.

It is a simple visualization of a complicated change to a tournament that began Monday and has been around for men since 1969, added women via a simultaneous but lower-tier and less-promoted event in 2009 and now is taking a further step by touting itself as the first combined ATP-WTA 500 event. That is two levels below Grand Slams and one level below Masters 1000s and was accomplished by elevating the women's portion through the lease of what had been a hard-court tourney in San Jose, California, played during the same week.

Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots and it doesn't take long for them to spout falsehoods.

Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it's now a problem for every business, organization and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to compose documents and get work done. Some are using it on tasks with the potential for high-stakes consequences, from psychotherapy to researching and writing legal briefs.

There are now more golden lion tamarins bounding between branches in the Brazilian rainforest than at any time since efforts to save the species started in the 1970s, a new survey reveals.

Once on the brink of extinction, with only about 200 animals in the wild, the population has rebounded to around 4,800, according to a study released Tuesday by the Brazilian science and conservation nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin Association.

Iran announced a nationwide two-day holiday because of increasing temperatures, state media reported Tuesday.

Government spokesperson Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the decision to close governmental offices, banks and schools on Wednesday and Thursday came after the health ministry warned about a possible increase in cases of heat exhaustion because of high temperatures in the country, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Its balmy beaches have been vacation spots for Russian czars and Soviet general secretaries. It has hosted history-shaking meetings of world leaders and boasts a strategic naval base. And it has been the site of ethnic persecutions, forced deportations and political repression.

Now, as Russia's war in Ukraine enters its 18th month, the Crimean Peninsula is again both a playground and a battleground, with drone attacks and bombs seeking to dislodge Moscow's hold on the territory and bring it back under Kyiv's authority, no matter how loudly the Kremlin proclaims its ownership.

The National Institutes of Health is beginning a handful of studies to test possible treatments for long COVID, an anxiously awaited step in U.S. efforts against the mysterious condition that afflicts millions.

Monday's announcement from the NIH's $1.15 billion RECOVER project comes amid frustration from patients who've struggled for months or even years with sometimes-disabling health problems — with no proven treatments and only a smattering of rigorous studies to test potential ones.

Jan Pappas and Ronald Yasuda hired a contractor to fasten the roof of their 1960s-era home to their walls with metal plates and nails so high winds of a potential hurricane wouldn't blow it away.

Their motivation? Global warming fueling natural disasters around the planet.