US and World News

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the union stronghold of Flint, Michigan, on Friday as she battles with Donald Trump for working-class voters who could tip the scales in this year’s election. Her appearance in the battleground state comes the day after U.S. dockworkers suspended their strike in hopes of reaching a new contract, sparing the country a damaging episode of labor unrest that could have rattled the economy. Meanwhile, Trump is heading to Georgia to appear with Gov. Brian Kemp, the latest sign that he’s patched up his rocky relationship with the top Republican in a key battleground state.

Two voter advocacy organizations have put Ohio’s Republican elections chief on notice that voters are being removed from the rolls, allegedly in violation of federal law. Common Cause and the League of Women Voters threatened Thursday to sue if Secretary of State Frank LaRose doesn’t restore the registrations. His office is reviewing the request. Ohio's registration deadline is Monday, Oct. 7, with early voting starting Tuesday. The advocates say it's illegal to remove batches of voters without following the federal process. The groups cite cases in Delaware, Muskingum, probably Logan and possibly Cuyahoga counties.

An Israeli airstrike has cut a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria. The airstrike Friday led to the closure of a road near the Masnaa Border Crossing where tens of thousands of people fleeing war in Lebanon have crossed into Syria over the past two weeks. Israel has launched a ground incursion into Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group while also conducting strikes in Gaza. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Since then, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon.

North Carolina health workers are distributing Benadryl and epinephrine injections to communities after hurricane flooding has caused bees and yellow jackets to swarm from their underground nests. Hospitals, emergency responders and doctors have been requesting allergy medications as more people run into the insects in Helene's wake. Anaphylaxis is a rare but potentially deadly reaction to stings that should be treated with an emergency epinephrine injection.

Relatives say an Israeli airstrike on a West Bank cafe that the military said targeted Palestinian militants also killed a family of four, including two young children. The strike slammed into a three-story building in the Tulkarem refugee camp late Thursday, setting it on fire and destroying a popular cafe. The territory’s Health Ministry said it killed at least 18 Palestinians. It was the deadliest strike in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war nearly a year ago. On Friday, paramedics searched the rubble inside the blasted-out coffee shop, gathering human remains into small boxes.

The chief of the Shawnee Tribe grew up playing video games, including hundreds of hours colonizing a distant planet in the 1999 title Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. So when that same game studio approached the tribal nation with a proposal to make a playable character out of their historical leader Tecumseh in the upcoming game Civilization 7, Chief Ben Barnes felt a rush of excitement. Meier’s Civilization series remains the bestselling franchise in a strategy genre it helped launch in 1991. But society’s understanding of cultural appropriation and the importance of accurate historical framing has changed. To properly represent the Shawnee leader, game developers looked for the input and blessing of the Shawnee people.

A woman who says she worked as a hair-and-makeup artist for Garth Brooks alleges in a lawsuit that the country music star raped and sexually assaulted her in a Los Angeles hotel in 2019. The woman is not named and goes by Jane Roe in the lawsuit filed in LA Superior Court on Thursday. She alleges that Brooks booked only one hotel suite for the two of them on the trip from Nashville to California, and raped her in the suite. Brooks forcefully denied the allegations in a statement and acknowledged he tried to get a court to stop Thursday’s lawsuit from being filed.

Relentless Israeli airstrikes pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and closed off the main highway linking Lebanon with Syria, forcing civilians to flee across the border by foot. The airstrikes came as the supreme leader of Iran, which backs the anti-Israel militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, praised the country’s recent missile strike on Israel and said it was ready to do it again if necessary. In late September, Israel shifted some of its focus from Hamas to Hezbollah, which holds much of the power in parts of southern Lebanon and some other areas of the country, attacking the militants with exploding pagers, airstrikes and, eventually, an incursion into Lebanon.

Hurricane Helene severely damaged drinking water utilities in the Southeast. Western North Carolina was especially hard hit. Flooding tore through the city of Asheville’s water system, destroying so much infrastructure that officials said repairs could take weeks. The Environmental Protection Agency said that, as of Thursday, about 136,000 people in the Southeast were served by a nonoperational water provider and more than 1.8 million were living under a boil water advisory. Officials in North Carolina are facing a difficult rebuilding task made harder by the steep, narrow valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains that during a more typical October would attract throngs of fall tourists.

Flooding in northern Thailand has forced many residents of the city of Chiang Mai and its outskirts to seek safety on higher ground, with members of the animal world under similar threat. Evacuations are underway at Elephant Nature Park, which houses around 3,000 rescued animals, including 125 elephants. Video posted online shows several elephants fleeing through rising, muddy water to ground less inundated. Three dash through the deluge with some ease but, according to the park, a fourth one is blind and was falling behind as it struggled to pass through wrecked fencing. But it did not go neglected. Its fellows appear to call out to it, to guide it to their sides.

U.S. officials say the U.S. military struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, going after weapons systems, bases and other equipment belonging to the Iranian-backed rebels. The official says aircraft and ships struck Houthi strongholds at about five locations on Friday. The strikes come days after the group apparently shot down a U.S. drone. The Houthis last week claimed responsibility for launching missiles and drones at U.S. ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. All of those strikes were intercepted by U.S. Navy destroyers.

Jurors who will be picked for the trial of a man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack likely won’t hear about the fatwa that authorities have said motivated him to act. The case's prosecutor said Friday that there is no reason to bring up Hadi Matar's motive when he goes on trial for attempted murder. That's because the 2022 attack at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York was witnessed by a live audience and recorded. Jury selection is scheduled to start Oct. 15. Matar faces separate federal terrorism-related charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

The union representing 45,000 striking U.S. dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports has reached a deal to suspend a three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. The International Longshoremen’s Association is to resume working immediately. The temporary end to the strike came after the union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, reached a tentative agreement on wages. That's according to a joint statement from the union and ports. A person briefed on the agreement said the ports sweetened their wage offer from about 50% over six years to 62%. The person didn’t want to be identified because the agreement is tentative.

The United States and South Korea have tentatively agreed to a new deal covering the costs of maintaining the American military presence there. The agreement must still be approved by the South Korean government and ratified by its parliament, but it would see Seoul's contribution rise by 8.3% during the first year of the five-year deal. The Biden administration was pushing to complete the deal before November's U.S. presidential election, in part to allay South Korean concerns that a possible victory by former President Donald Trump might complicate future negotiations. During Trump's term, he repeatedly accused South Korea and other allies of freeloading and suggested he would demand billions of dollars more to extend alliance agreements.

The union representing striking U.S. dockworkers has reached a deal to suspend the strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. U.S. ports from Maine to Texas had been closed due to the strike by the union representing about 45,000 dockworkers. The International Longshoremen’s Association was demanding higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and trucks that are used in the loading or unloading of freight at 36 U.S. ports. Those ports handle roughly half of the nations’ cargo from ships. A lengthy shutdown could have raised prices on goods around the country and potentially caused shortages.

Hurricane Helene’s storm surge struck Florida fast and hard when it slammed into Gulf Coast communities near St. Petersburg. Longtime residents had never seen anything like the 8-foot wall of water that pushed ashore, and that was the problem. Because the Sept. 26 storm surge was unprecedented, many people living near the beaches ignored mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind, thinking the warnings were exaggerated. Some people still escaped the rising waters and others were rescued. But 12 died from the surge, including a retired restaurant owner, a former hairdresser, a beach lover and a teacher who was about to retire.

America’s employers added a surprisingly strong 254,000 jobs in September, easing concerns about a weakening labor market and suggesting that the pace of hiring is still solid enough to support a growing economy. Last month’s gain was far more than economists had expected, and it was up sharply from the 159,000 jobs that were added in August. And after rising for most of 2024, the unemployment rate dropped for a second straight month, from 4.2% in August to 4.1% in September. The latest figures suggest that many companies are still confident enough to fill jobs despite the continued pressure of high interest rates.

Former President Barack Obama is planning to hit key swing states to boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the White House, starting next Thursday in Pittsburgh. The Harris campaign says Obama will travel around the country over the final 27 days ahead of the election. The former president and Harris have a friendship that goes back 20 years, from when they first met while he was running for Senate.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of a Texas man on death row who has long argued that DNA testing would help prove he didn't kill an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery decades ago. The order came down Friday in the case of Ruben Gutierrez, months after the justices stayed his execution 20 minutes before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection. Gutierrez was condemned for the 1998 stabbing of Escolastica Harrison. His attorneys have said there’s no physical or forensic evidence connecting him to the killing. Prosecutors say the request for DNA testing is a delay tactic and that Gutierrez’s conviction rests on other evidence.

The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether to block a $10 billion lawsuit Mexico filed against leading U.S. gun manufacturers over allegations their commercial practices have helped caused much bloodshed there. The gun makers asked the justices to undo an appeals court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to go forward despite broad legal protections for the firearm industry. A federal judge has since tossed out the bulk of the lawsuit on other legal grounds, but Mexico could appeal that dismissal. The defendants include big-name manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt and Glock.

Severe rainstorms have struck Bosnia overnight, killing at least 16 people and flooding several towns and villages in central and southern parts of the country. Rescue services in the south of the country reported several people missing on Friday and called on volunteers and the army to assist. In the towns of Jablanica and Kiseljak, officials said the power was off overnight and there was no cellphone service. The Jablanica fire station says the town is completely inaccessible because roads and railways were closed. The heavy rains and strong winds were also reported in neighboring Croatia, where several roads were closed and the capital of Zagreb prepared for the swollen Sava River to burst its banks.

RZA’s hoarding habit led to his newest adventure in music: a ballet and surprisingly traditional classical music album he calls “A Ballet Through Mud.” Early in the pandemic, the 55-year-old Wu-Tang Clan founder was rummaging through a bag of old spiral notebooks he found in his library. He pulled out a blue Mead notebook full of rhymes, phone numbers and movie ideas that he’d written as a teenager growing up in Staten Island. He began crafting melodies on the piano to match the lyrics, a challenge to himself that over the next several years grew into the super-producer's first classical album.

Solar storms may cause faint auroras across fringes of the northern United States this weekend.  Forecasters are also monitoring for possible disruptions to power and communications. The sun’s magnetic field is currently at the peak of its 11-year cycle, making solar storms and northern lights more frequent. The sun shot out two strong flares earlier this week, including one Thursday that was the biggest since 2017. Faint auroras may be visible as far south as South Dakota, Iowa and New York — but the storms could still intensify or weaken over the weekend.

U.S.-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. That's as thousands of Americans still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights. In Washington, White House officials met with two top Arab American officials to discuss U.S. efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The Pentagon says no evacuation is being considered right now. The State Department has been telling Americans for almost a year not to travel to Lebanon and advising Americans to leave the country on commercial flights for months. Some Americans said their relatives who are U.S. citizens or green-card holders have been struggling to get seats on flights out of Lebanon.

For decades Senegal, a former French colony in West Africa, has been touted as the bastion of the French language in the region. Leopold Senghor, the country’s first president and a poet, is considered one of the founding fathers of the concept of Francophonie, a global alliance of French-speaking countries. But many say a shift is underway. While French remains the country’s official language, inscribed into its constitution, its influence is waning. It is giving way to Wolof, the most widely spoken local language. That's not just on the street, where Wolof has always been dominant, but in the halls of power: government offices, university corridors and mainstream media.