After a successful joint outing in 2023, Lionel Richie and Earth, Wind and Fire will kick off another tour together in St. Paul on June 24 at Grand Casino Arena.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Ticketmaster. Citi cardholders have access to a presale that runs from 10 a.m. Tuesday through 10 p.m. Sunday.

The two acts drew a crowd of about 13,000 to the former Xcel Energy Center in August 2023.

An Alabama native, Richie considered becoming a priest but chose to pursue music instead. In 1968, he joined the Commodores as a singer and saxophonist. The band signed to Motown and scored a series of hits including “Easy,” “Brick House,” “Three Times a Lady” and “Lady (You Bring Me Up).”

In 1980, Richie wrote the No. 1 hit “Lady” for Kenny Rogers. The following year, he sang the theme song for the film “Endless Love” with Diana Ross, which became one of Motown’s biggest hits. Richie then went solo and released a string of successful singles including “Truly,” “All Night Long (All Night),” “Hello,” “Say You, Say Me” and “Dancing on the Ceiling.”

In the late ’80s, Richie took a break from his career to care for his father, who died in 1990. In the time since, he has taken a more casual approach to music, occasionally releasing new music and touring sporadically. In 2018, he joined Katy Perry and Luke Bryan as a judge on “American Idol,” a gig he has continued annually including the currently airing 24th season.

Founded in Chicago in 1969 by the late Maurice White, Earth, Wind and Fire has earned 17 Grammy nominations, including a lifetime achievement award in 2016, and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While the band’s time spent ruling the pop charts is now in the past, EWF did release a series of classic singles still heard on radio, including “Shining Star,” “September,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “After the Love Has Gone.”

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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s leading prisoner rights organization said Monday that dozens of prisoners were released over the weekend, as the United States continues to pressure the acting government to free hundreds of dissidents jailed during the administration of ousted leader Nicolás Maduro.

Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal, said in a post on X that 266 “political prisoners” had been freed since Jan. 8, when Venezuela’s acting government promised to release a “significant number” of prisoners in what it described as an effort to promote national reconciliation.

Maduro was captured by the United States in a raid on Jan. 3, and was replaced by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime ruling party insider, who is now the nation’s acting president.

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According to human rights groups, prisoners released this weekend included an opposition activist, a human rights lawyer and a journalism student who was imprisoned in March after he published complaints about his hometown’s sewage system, and was charged with “inciting hatred.”

However, at least 600 dissidents remain detained in Venezuela, according to Foro Penal, including several members of the Vente Venezuela party, led by opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado.

On Friday acting President Rodríguez said that her administration had freed more than 620 prisoners adding that she would ask the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to verify the release lists.

Human rights groups in Venezuela have accused the government of inflating the number of prisoners that have been freed.

Outside Venezuela’s prisons, relatives of detainees have held regular vigils to demand the release of those still behind bars.

By TRISHA THOMAS, Associated Press

ROME (AP) — The first refugee to lead the U.N. refugee agency said Monday the world faces “a very difficult moment in history” and is appealing to a common humanity amid dramatic change.

Repression of immigrants is growing, and the funding to protect them is plummeting. Without ever mentioning the Trump administration or its policies directly, Barham Salih in an interview with The Associated Press said his office will have to be inventive to confront the crisis, which includes losing well over $1 billion in U.S. support.

“Of course it’s a fight, undeniably so, but I think also I’m hopeful and confident that there is enough humanity out there to really enable us to do that,” said Salih, a former president of Iraq.

He also was adamant on the need to safeguard the 1951 refugee convention as the Trump administration campaigns for other governments to join it in upending a decades-old system and redefining asylum rules.

Salih, who took up his role as high commissioner for refugees on Jan. 1, described it as an international legal responsibility and a moral responsibility.

According to his agency also known as UNHCR, there are 117.3 million forcibly displaced people around the world from 194 countries. Salih’s challenge is supporting some 30 million refugees with significantly less funds.

In 2024 and 2025, funding from the U.S. dropped from $2.1 billion to $800 million, and yet the country remains UNHCR’s largest donor.

“Resources made available to helping refugees are being constrained and limited in very, very significant way,” Salih said.

The Trump administration is also reviewing the U.S. asylum system, suspending the refugee program in 2025 and setting a limit for entries to 7,500, mostly white South Africans — a historic low for refugee admittance since the program’s inception in 1980.

The Trump administration also has tightened immigration enforcement as part of its promise to increase deportations while facing criticism for deportations to third countries and an uproar over two fatal shootings by federal officers and other deaths.

“We have to accept the need for adapting with a new environment in the world,” Salih said. His agency is seeking to be more cost-effective, “to really deliver assistance to the people who need it, rather than be part of a system that sustains dependency on humanitarian assistance,” he added.

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Meeting the pope

Salih has already met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. He said he was grateful for the support of the pontiff — the first pope from the United States.

“The voice of the church and faith-based organizations in this endeavor is absolutely vital,” Salih said. “His moral support, his voice of the need for supporting refugees and what we do as UNHCR at this moment is very, very important.”

Asked whether he discussed the current events in Minneapolis, where residents and others are protesting an immigration enforcement crackdown, Salih said no.

Salih’s experience as a refugee shapes his work.

He first fled Iraq to Iran as a teenager in 1974. Then, after being arrested and tortured under the Saddam Hussein regime, he fled Iraq again to the United Kingdom in 1979. He returned to Iraq and served as president from 2018-2022.

Since taking on his new role, Salih has visited refugees from Sudan’s ongoing civil war living in Chad, and refugees from Somalia, Congo and Ethiopia living in Kenya.

Despite seeing the funding challenges in person, Salih remained hopeful and called his work a great honor.

“Refugees are not just numbers and victims,” he said. “With protection and opportunity, things can be very, very different for a lot of people.”

Two-time Grammy Award-winning reggae drummer Sly Dunbar, who fueled countless tracks from Bob Marley to Bob Dylan and was one-half of the influential reggae rhythm section Sly & Robbie, has died. He was 73.

Dunbar’s wife, Thelma, announced the death to the Jamaica Gleaner.

Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare — Sly & Robbie, also known as “The Riddim Twins” — played on reggae classics by Black Uhuru, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh and would garner attention far from Jamaica, from the likes of Grace Jones and the Rolling Stones.

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Sly & Robbie played on three of Jones’ albums — “Warm Leatherette,” “Nightclubbing” and “Living My Life” — as well as four albums by Serge Gainsbourg and three by Dylan, 1983’s “Infidels,” 1985’s “Empire Burlesque” and 1988’s “Down in the Groove.”

“Words cannot describe how heartbroken I am to hear of the passing of my friend and legend,” singer Ali Campbell of UB40 posted on Facebook. “Modern day beats simply wouldn’t be what they are without the influence of reggae and dancehall riddims that Sly single-handedly pioneered.”

“Sly & Robbie were undisputed masters of the art, bringing a nuanced, unhurried and rock-solid rhythmic approach,” Rolling Stone magazine wrote in tribute. Shakespeare died in 2021.

Dunbar played with the Revolutionaries, the house band for Jamaica’s Channel One studio, while also touring, and played on Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves,” Maxi Priest’s “Easy to Love,” Dave and Ansell Collins’ classic “Double Barrel” and Marley’s “Punky Reggae Party.”

Nominated 13 times for a Grammy, he won twice — when Black Uhuru’s “Anthem” nabbed the inaugural Grammy for best reggae recording in 1985 and when Sly & Robbie’s “Friends” won best reggae album in 1999.

In 1980, Sly & Robbie co-founded Taxi Records, which has nurtured such artists as Shaggy, Shabba Ranks, Skip Marley, Beenie Man and Red Dragon.

“When you buy a reggae record, there’s a 90% chance the drummer is Sly Dunbar,” producer Brian Eno told the New Music New York festival in 1979. “You get the impression that Sly Dunbar is chained to a studio seat somewhere in Jamaica, but in fact what happens is that his drum tracks are so interesting, they get used again and again.”