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-===== Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients =====
+===== Austria welcomes JJ back home with cheers, hugs and roses after he wins the Eurovision Song Contest =====
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-By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press
+By PHILIPP JENNE and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press
-NEUCHATEL, Switzerland (AP) — The world's woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery? The Swiss town of Neuchâtel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor's note to do it for free.
+VIENNA (AP) — Austrian fans enthusiastically welcomed classically trained singer JJ back home at Vienna airport on Sunday after he won the 69th Eurovision Song Contest with "Wasted Love."
-Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of "museum prescriptions" issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town's four museums as part of their treatment.
+As JJ walked through the gate, hundreds of fans cheered, some played his song and others surrounded the new star, hugging him and asking for autographs.
-The project is based on a 2019 World Health Organization report that found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and "premature mortality," among other upsides.
+The 24-year-old countertenor, whose winning song combines operatic, multi-octave vocals with a techno twist, and who also sings at the Vienna State Opera, held up his trophy in one hand and a big bouquet of roses in the other. He smiled, wiped away tears and told the crowd "that victory is for you."
-Art can help relax the mind — as a sort of preventative medicine — and visits to museums require getting up and out of the house with physical activity like walking and standing for long periods.
+JJ, whose full name is Johannes Pietsch, was Austria's third Eurovision winner, after bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst in 2014 and Udo Jürgens in 1966.
-Neuchatel council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine said the COVID crisis also played a role in the program's genesis. "With the closure of cultural sites (during coronavirus lockdowns), people realized just how much we need them to feel better."
+"This is beyond my wildest dreams. It's crazy," said the singer when being handed the microphone-shaped glass Eurovision trophy after his win in the Swiss city of Basel on Saturday night.
-She said so far some 500 prescriptions have been distributed to doctors around town and the program costs "very little." Ten thousand Swiss francs (about $11,300) have been budgeted for it.
+On Sunday night, JJ told reporters in Vienna that "I don't think you'll realize that you did it at all until you're on your deathbed."
-If successful, local officials could expand the program to other artistic activities like theater or dance, Courcier Delafontaine said. The Swiss national health care system doesn't cover "culture as a means of therapy," but she hopes it might one day, if the results are positive enough.
+**'All of Austria is happy'**
-Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in the town of 46,000 who helped devise the program, said it built on a similar idea rolled out at the Fine Arts Museum in Montreal, Canada, in 2019.
+Austria's president, Alexander van der Bellen, celebrated JJ in a video posted on X.
-She said many types of patients could benefit.
+"What a success! What a voice! What a show!" he exclaimed. "All of Austria is happy."
-"It could be a person with depression, a person who has trouble walking, a person with a chronic illness," she said near a display of a feather headdress from Papua New Guinea at the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel, a converted former villa that overlooks Late Neuchatel.
+Chancellor Christian Stoecker wrote on X: "What a great success — my warmest congratulations on winning #ESC2025! JJ is writing Austrian music history today!"
-Part of the idea is to get recalcitrant patients out of the house and walking more.
+The Vienna State Opera also expressed joy over the win. "From the Magic Flute to winning the Song Contest is somehow a story that can only take place in Austria," opera director Bogdan Roscic told the Austrian press agency APA.
-Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation.
+Several Austrian cities were quick to show their interest in hosting next year's contest. Innsbruck Mayor Johannes Anzengruber told APA that "not everything has to take place in Vienna. ... Austria is bigger than that," and the towns of Oberwart in Burgenland and Wels in Upper Austria also threw their hats into the ring.
-He said a wider rollout is planned once a control group is set up. For his practice, the focus will be on patients who admit that they've lost the habit of going out. He wants them to get moving.
+JJ himself said he hoped that Vienna would get the next ESC which he would love to host together with his mentor, Conchita Wurst.
-"It's wishful thinking to think that telling them to go walk or go for a stroll to improve their fitness level before surgery" will work, Sauvain said on a video call Saturday, wearing blue scrubs. "I think that these patients will fully benefit from museum prescriptions. We'll give them a chance to get physical and intellectual exercise."
+**A nail-biting final**
-"And as a doctor, it's really nice to prescribe museum visits rather than medicines or tests that patients don't enjoy," he added. "To tell them 'It's a medical order that instructs you to go visit one of our nice city museums.'"
+Israeli singer Yuval Raphael came second at an exuberant celebration of music and unity - JJ won after a nail-biting final that saw Raphael scoop up a massive public vote from her many fans for her anthemic "New Day Will Rise."
-Some museum-goers see the upsides too.
+At a post-victory press conference, JJ said the message of his song about unrequited romance was that "love is the strongest force on planet Earth, and love persevered.
-"I think it's a great idea," said Carla Fragniere Filliger, a poet and retired teacher, during a visit to the ethnography museum. "There should be prescriptions for all the museums in the world!"
+"Let's spread love, guys," said JJ, who added that he was honored to be the first Eurovision champion with Filipino heritage, as well as a proudly queer winner.
-===== In the rapidly shifting world of work, many employees are unclear what's expected of them =====
+**Eclectic and sometimes baffling**
+The world's largest live music event, which has been uniting and dividing Europeans since 1956, reached its glitter-drenched conclusion with a grand final in Basel that offered pounding electropop, quirky rock and outrageous divas.
+Acts from 26 countries — trimmed from 37 entrants through two elimination semifinals — performed to some 160 million viewers for the continent's pop crown. No smoke machine, jet of flame or dizzying light display was spared by musicians who had three minutes to win over millions of viewers who, along with national juries of music professionals, picked the winner.
+Estonia's Tommy Cash came third with his jokey mock-Italian dance song "Espresso Macchiato." Swedish entry KAJ, which had been favorite to win with jaunty sauna ode "Bara Bada Bastu," came fourth.
+The show was a celebration of Europe's eclectic, and sometimes baffling, musical tastes.
+Grieshaber reported from Berlin. Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in Basel, Switzerland contributed to this report.
+===== The UK and the EU hail a new chapter as they sign fresh deals 5 years after Brexit =====
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+By SYLVIA HUI Associated Press
+LONDON (AP) — Britain and the European Union hailed a new chapter in their relationship Monday after sealing fresh agreements on defense cooperation and easing trade flows at their first formal summit since Brexit.
+Five years after the U.K. left the EU, ties were growing closer again as Prime Minister Keir Starmer met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other senior EU officials in London for talks.
+The deals will slash red tape, grow the British economy and reset relations with the 27-nation trade bloc, Starmer said, while von der Leyen called the talks a "historic moment" that benefits both sides.
-By CATHY BUSSEWITZ Associated Press
+"Britain is back on the world stage," Starmer told reporters. "This deal is a win-win."
-NEW YORK (AP) — When Nikelle Inman started a new job coaching first-generation college students, she looked forward to meeting with them one-on-one to talk about how to surmount obstacles and find resources to succeed.
+He hailed Monday's agreements — the third package of trade deals struck by his government in as many weeks following accords with the U.S. and India — as "good for jobs, good for bills and good for our borders."
-Instead, she and her fellow success coaches at a community college in North Carolina spent a year mired in paperwork, tasked with reviewing applications from aspiring undergraduates. They never did get to meet with students.
+But Britain's opposition parties slammed the deals as backtracking on Brexit and "surrendering" anew to the EU. "We're becoming a rule-taker from Brussels once again," Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said.
-"Admissions work kind of took over what we were supposed to do," Inman, 34, said. "I felt disengaged with the position, more so because I just didn't feel valued."
+Here are the main takeaways from the summit:
-It's disorienting when a job turns out to be completely different than advertised or morphs into something we didn't expect. But more U.S. workers have reported feeling disconnected from their organization's purpose and unclear on how to meet expectations  since the coronavirus pandemic changed the way we work, according to a new Gallup analysis.
+**Cutting red tape on food trade**
-Just under half of U.S. employees who participated in a Gallup survey in November "strongly agreed" that they know what is expected of them at work, which is one of the factors the polling firm uses to measure employee engagement. In January 2020, the figure stood at 56%.
+Officials said they will remove some routine border checks on animal and plant products and align with EU regulations, which will reduce costs on food imports and exports and make it easier for goods to flow freely across borders.
-The new survey showed that new employees, younger employees, people in white-collar industries like technology, insurance and finance, and those in hybrid work arrangements were especially likely to report that expectations for their roles weren't clear.
+Businesses have complained about trucks waiting for hours at borders with fresh food that cannot be exported to the EU because of laborious post-Brexit certifications.
-The findings make intuitive sense. Managers and employees have bushwhacked their way through disruptive changes since COVID-19 first upended public life five years ago. In late 2024, about one-quarter of employees with the ability to work remotely were doing so exclusively, up from around 1 in 10 in 2019, Gallup found. Another 55% were working in the office some days and remotely the rest, according to the 2024 data, up from about one-third in 2019.
+The changes will mean the U.K. can sell products like raw British burgers, sausages and seafood to the EU again, officials said. The benefits will apply also to movements between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, where post-Brexit customs checks have been a thorny issue for years.
-More recently, layoffs at tech companies and in the government and other sectors have left organizations with fewer people to handle the load, and expectations aren't always adjusted to the new realities.
+While the EU is the U.K.'s largest trading partner, the government said the U.K. has been hit with a 21% drop in exports since Brexit because of more onerous paperwork and other non-tariff barriers.
-"With all the rounds of layoffs, people's scope and responsibilities are shifting constantly," said Jeremy Guttenplan, an executive leadership trainer and coach based in New York. "You think about the ones left behind and the work is just getting piled on them."
+**Defense procurement pact**
-Here are some strategies for eliminating confusion when the scope and responsibilities of a job are ambiguous.
+A new security and defense partnership will pave the way for the U.K. defense industry to access a new EU loan program worth 150 billion euros ($170 billion.) That will allow Britain to secure cheap loans backed by the EU budget to buy military equipment, in part to help Ukraine defend itself.
-**Establish expectations early**
+The EU has said that the loan program will help boost the readiness of European defense as well as enable more coordinated support for Ukraine.
-Spell out or make sure you understand what a new role or project entails — along with any relevant deadlines or performance markers — from the beginning so everyone agrees on what's realistic and wanted. Writing it down in a shared document can help prevent future misunderstandings.
+**Fishing rights**
-When a successful real estate developer asked Amber Krasinski to film and produce 85 TikTok videos in three hours, she thought hard about whether she really wanted to take him on as a client. The job might be good exposure for her communications agency, IvyHill Stategies, but Krasinski knew it would be impossible to complete in so little time. She turned it down.
+The deal included a 12-year extension of an agreement allowing EU fishing vessels to operate in U.K. waters until 2038, which angered U.K. fishermen and their supporters.
-Krasinski regularly gives her client progress updates and tries to make a practice of asking clarifying questions before taking on new projects.
+While economically minor, fishing has long been a sticking point and symbolically important issue for the U.K. and EU member states such as France. Disputes over the issue nearly derailed a Brexit deal back in 2020.
-"Any time I have a conversation with a prospective client, I have that in the back of my mind," Krasinski said. "Avoiding that people-pleasing side that says, 'You can figure it out, you can do it.' You don't want to let anybody down, but you also need to set yourself up for success."
+Elspeth Macdonald, head of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, called the agreement a "horror show for Scottish fishermen" that was granted in order to secure other objectives. Scottish First Minister John Swinney said the deal was "the direct opposite of what was promised by Brexit."
-**Seek frequent feedback**
+**Easing movement for young people**
-No one wants to spend all day in meetings. But more frequent check-ins with a manager or supervisor may help staff members who are unsure if they are prioritizing their time appropriately or don't know what they are supposed to be doing.
+Post-Brexit visa restrictions have hobbled cross-border activities for professionals such as bankers or lawyers, as well as academic and cultural exchanges, including touring bands.
-Organizations can explore different ways of building connection between employees and providing more opportunities for feedback, which can result in better understanding of workplace expectations. Brian Smith, founder and managing partner of IA Business Advisors, said his company hosts gratitude sessions for 30 minutes each week.
+The U.K. and EU said they agreed to co-operate on a youth mobility plan that's expected to allow young Britons and Europeans to live and work temporarily in each other's territory, though no details were provided.
-The first 20 minutes are led by a coach who advises attendees on issues such as how to effectively manage time or deal with challenging customers. Highlighting specific problems and strategies can help workers understand what's expected of them. At the end of the session, participants have an opportunity to share what they're grateful for.
+British officials insisted that numbers would be capped and stays would be time-limited.
-**Start the conversation**
+The free movement of people remains a politically touchy issue in the U.K., with the youth mobility plan seen by some Brexiteers as inching back toward completely free movement for EU nationals to move to the U.K. The U.K. has similar youth mobility arrangements with countries including Australia and Canada.
-Workers don't have to wait for a supervisor to seek feedback or clarify expectations. You can suggest a quick check-in at any point, if you're unsure how to prioritize long-term goals or short-term deadlines,
+**Cutting airport waits**
-"Managing upwards is going to make your life easier," said Dale Whelehan, founder of 4 Day World, a think tank that explores new models of work. "Don't assume that management has all the answers. They're probably just as lost."
+British passport holders will be able to use e-gates at more European airports as part of the deal.
-However, in hierarchical organizations where questioning management may be viewed negatively, it's important to be delicate, he said.
+Since Brexit, many British travelers cannot use automated gates when they arrive at EU airports. The new measure will end "the dreaded queues at border control," officials said.
-To initiate a feedback discussion, you can ask to meet with a manager about a current project. Whelehan outlined how to approach the conversation if the meeting gets scheduled. Start by sharing what you understand your assignment to be. Then request the manager's confirmation or clarification by saying something such as, "I just want to make sure that there's alignment here," he advised.
+**Opposition objects to a 'surrender'**
-Ask about anything else you need to clarify and close out the conversation by saying, "From what I understand from this conversation, my role is this. ... Have I understood that correctly?" Follow up with an email restating what you agreed to, Whelehan said.
+Britain's opposition parties have criticized Starmer's bid to reset relations with the EU. The pro-Brexit and anti-immigration Reform U.K. party, which recently won big in local elections, and the Conservatives have called the trade-offs in the deals a betrayal of Brexit.
-**Trust your instincts**
+Starmer is "taking us backwards. We left the European Union. That was settled, we drew a line under that," said Badenoch, the Conservative leader. "This deal is taking us to the past and that is why we call it surrender."
-With workplaces experiencing so many changes, employees can find themselves jumping from one assignment to the other, distracted by new responsibilities picked up after colleagues were laid off, or adjusting to spending more time physically in the office.
+Starmer stressed that he did not violate his "red lines": The U.K. won't rejoin the EU's frictionless single market and customs union, and will not agree to the free movement of people between the U.K. and the EU.
-If it all feels too chaotic, take a moment to pause. Revisit your priorities. And then work on the most important task.
+David Henig, a U.K. trade policy expert at the European Centre for International Political Economy, suggested that while some will continue to argue against agreeing to EU regulations, most Britons likely believe it's time to move forward.
-"If something doesn't feel right, don't just accept it," Inman said. "Whatever that avenue is, if it's staying and trying to make it better or leaving, just don't give up on what you know is right."
+"Simply following EU rules in some areas is going to be controversial to those who thought that Brexit means casting off all influence from the EU entirely," he said. "That wasn't realistic for a trading nation like the UK., where 50% of our trade is with the EU."
-Have you overcome an obstacle or made a profound change in your work? Send your questions and story ideas to cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP's Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well.
+Pan Pylas and Jill Lawless in London and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed reporting.
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