One team faces two years without a competitive match, and the other needs to learn how to become competitive again.

For France coach Didier Deschamps, Thursday's match against Spain is the first in a long series of friendly matches in the build up to the 2016 European Championship, which France will host.

"Summer of the Dead" (Minotaur Books), by Julia Keller

Small towns — where everyone knows your name and keeping secrets seems unfathomable — can be hotbeds of concealment. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors or within a family's dynamics.

On the day that the outlook for the European economy may have just become a little bit brighter following a cease-fire agreement in eastern Ukraine, a closely watched survey shows the extent to which the crisis in the country has weighed on business confidence across the continent.

Financial information company Markit highlighted tensions in Ukraine for a sharp fall in its monthly gauge of business activity for the 18-country eurozone.

Gael Monfils follows his own rules.

The guy does things on a tennis court no one else has — or can. Just search his name on YouTube and watch any of many video clips showcasing his speed and agility; start with the parallel-to-the-ground, a-few-feet-in-the-air dive at this year's French Open.

Caroline Wozniacki knew, as anyone paying attention does, that the woman she played in the U.S. Open quarterfinals, Sara Errani, does not hit booming serves.

And after noticing that Errani's previous opponent, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, tried unsuccessfully to pound those soft serves, Wozniacki decided the best course of action was simply to make sure she put those balls in play.

A year ago at this time, Roger Federer was dealing with a bad back. He was experimenting with new rackets. And his nine-year run of reaching at least the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open ended with a fourth-round loss.

Things are different these days for the 33-year-old Federer.

The founder of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides free music lessons to low-income students from gang-ridden neighborhoods began to notice several years ago a hopeful sign: Kids were graduating high school and heading off to UCLA, Tulane and other big universities.

That's when Margaret Martin asked how the children in the Harmony Project were beating the odds.

Japan's prime minister picked a record-matching five women for his Cabinet Wednesday, sending the strongest message yet about his determination to revive the economy by getting women on board as workers and leaders.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has set a goal of having women in 30 percent of leadership positions by 2020, and proved he is out to practice what he preaches in his selection for the 18-member Cabinet, which includes Yuko Obuchi, daughter of a former prime minister, as the trade and economy minister.

To keep private pictures private, never upload them online.

That's the advice experts offer after hackers broke into female celebrities' personal accounts, stole nude photos and posted them on the web. Jennifer Lawrence and Mary Elizabeth Winstead have said they were victims of the hack attack.

Pakistan's military says it has killed 910 suspected militants and lost 82 soldiers in a major offensive launched in June in a restive tribal region near Afghanistan.

The military statement released Wednesday says it has cleared the main towns of Miran Shah, Mir Ali, Datta Khel, Boya and Degan, all former militant strongholds in North Waziristan, since June 15, when it launched a major operation there to eliminate local and foreign insurgents accused of orchestrating attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.