National News

NEW YORK — With presidential candidates looking on, some 9/11 victims' relatives appealed to them Wednesday for accountability as the U.S. marked an anniversary laced with election-season politics. ...

LIMA, Peru — Alberto Fujimori, whose decade-long presidency began with triumphs righting Peru’s economy and defeating a brutal insurgency only to end in a disgrace of autocratic excess that later sent him to prison, has died. He was 86. His death Wednesday in the capital, Lima, was announced by his daughter Keiko Fujimori in a post on X...

TOPEKA, Kan. — State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation's mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn't fixed persistent deficiencies...

An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race. The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people...

MORGAN CITY, La. — Hurricane Francine slammed into the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening as a dangerous Category 2 storm that knocked out electricity to more than a quarter-million customers and threatened widespread flooding as it sent a potentially deadly storm surge rushing inland along the Gulf Coast...

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio. Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. ...

WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson postponed a vote Wednesday on a temporary spending bill that would keep federal agencies and programs funded for six months as opposition from both parties thwarted his first attempt at avoiding a partial government shutdown in three weeks...

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump emerged Wednesday from a rocky debate against Kamala Harris looking to regain his footing with 55 days until Election Day, the first ballots already going out in Alabama and other states on the cusp of early voting. Not even three months ago, Trump stepped off the debate stage in Atlanta having watched President Joe Biden deliver a disjointed, whispery performance that led the 81-year-old Democrat to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris, his vice president. ...

WASHINGTON — To many Democrats, Kamala Harris was everything Joe Biden was not in confronting Donald Trump on the debate stage: forceful, fleet of foot, relentless in going after her opponent. In a pivot from Biden's debate meltdown in June, Democrats who gathered in bars, watch parties and other venues Tuesday night found lots to cheer in her drive to rattle the Republican...

KYIV, Ukraine — The United States and Britain pledged nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid to Ukraine on Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats as Ukrainian officials renewed their pleas to use Western-provided missiles against targets deeper inside Russia...

HANOI, Vietnam — A flash flood swept away an entire hamlet in northern Vietnam, killing 30 people and leaving dozens missing as deaths from a typhoon and its aftermath climbed to 155 on Wednesday. Vietnamese state broadcaster VTV said the torrent of water gushing down from a mountain in Lao Cai province Tuesday buried Lang Nu hamlet with 35 families in mud and debris...

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight and Wednesday hit a U.N. school sheltering displaced Palestinian families as well as two homes, killing at least 34 people, including 19 women and children, hospital officials said. A U.N. official said six staffers were among the dead...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Amid the explosion of legal gambling in the United States, some things have remained off-limits, including betting on the outcome of U.S. elections. But that could be about to change. A federal judge in Washington has struck down a decision by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prohibit a company from offering what amounts to bets on the outcome of Congressional elections...

WASHINGTON — The post-pandemic spike in U.S. inflation eased further last month as year-over-year price increases reached a three-year low, clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and likely shaping the economic debate in the final weeks of the presidential race...

NEW YORK – The U.S. is remembering the lives taken and others reshaped by 9/11 on an anniversary laced with presidential campaign politics. President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stood together Wednesday at ground zero. ...

PHILADELPHIA — Kamala Harris pressed a forceful case against Donald Trump on Tuesday in their first and perhaps only debate before the presidential election, repeatedly needling him in an event that showcased their starkly different visions for the country on abortion, immigration and American democracy...

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Israeli military said Tuesday an American activist killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing a strong rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the activist's family...

BATON ROUGE, La. — Hurricane Francine barreled early Wednesday toward Louisiana and is expected to make landfall in coming hours as forecasters raised threats of potentially deadly storm surge, widespread flooding and destructive winds on the northern U.S. Gulf coast...

WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift, one of the music industry's biggest stars, endorsed Kamala Harris for president shortly after the debate ended on Tuesday night. “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post, which included a link to a voter registration website...

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed Tuesday to press ahead with requiring proof of citizenship for new voters as part of a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown in three weeks, though the measure appeared likely to be voted down. Democrats overwhelmingly oppose the measure. ...

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday presented Congress' highest honor — the Congressional Gold Medal — to 13 U.S. service members who were killed during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, even as the politics of a presidential election swirled around the event...

HANOI, Vietnam — A flash flood swept away an entire hamlet in northern Vietnam, killing 16 people and leaving dozens missing as deaths from a typhoon and its aftermath climbed to 141 on Wednesday. Vietnamese state broadcaster VTV said the torrent of water gushing down from a mountain in Lao Cai province Tuesday buried Lang Nu hamlet with 35 families in mud and debris...

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike hit a crowded Palestinian tent camp early Tuesday in Gaza, killing at least 19 people and wounding 60, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions. The strike occurred in Muwasi, a sprawl of camps along the coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians to seek shelter from the nearly year-old Israel-Hamas war...

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military on Tuesday released video footage of a Gaza tunnel where it says six hostages were recently killed by Hamas. The video shows a low, narrow passageway deep underground that had no bathroom and poor ventilation. The discovery of the hostages’ bodies last month has sparked a mass outpouring of anger in Israel and the release of the new video could add to the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining hostages held by Hamas home.. ...

LONDON — The United States and Britain formally accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine, announcing new sanctions on Moscow and Tehran before a joint visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy during a visit to London, said Iran had ignored warnings that the transfer of such weapons would be a profound escalation of the conflict...

WASHINGTON — The inflation-adjusted median income of U.S. households rebounded last year to roughly its 2019 level, overcoming the biggest price spike in four decades to restore most Americans' purchasing power. The proportion of Americans living in poverty also fell slightly last year, to 11.1%, from 11.5% in 2022. But the ratio of women's median earnings to men's widened for the first time in more than two decades as men's income rose more than women's in 2023...

Vice President Kamala Harris and and former President Donald Trump are veering sharply in how they gear up for Tuesday’s presidential debate, setting up a showdown that reflects not just two separate visions for the country but two politicians who approach big moments very differently. ...

NEW YORK — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93. His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear...

JERUSALEM — An Israeli strike on an area in the Gaza Strip home to Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others, authorities said Tuesday. The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported the toll for the strike, citing medical officials, and suggested the figures could change...

LONDON, Ky. — The man suspected of opening fire on a highway in Kentucky sent a text message vowing to “kill a lot of people” less than 30 minutes before he shot and wounded five people on Interstate 75, authorities said in an arrest warrant. “I’m going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least,” Joseph Couch, 32, wrote in the text message, according to the warrant affidavit filed in court. In a separate text message, Couch wrote, “I’ll kill myself afterwards,” the affidavit says...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One month after a judge declared Google's search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology. The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology...

MOUNTAIN HOME VILLAGE, Calif. — As a raging wildfire continues to spread east of Los Angeles, driven by days of triple-digit temperatures, a teacher in an evacuation zone is planning to keep instructing online at his home in a Southern California mountain town...

KYIV, Ukraine — A senior Ukrainian official said Monday that Western partner countries must allow Ukraine to use weapons they have supplied to strike military warehouses inside Russia because of strong suspicions Iran has provided ballistic missiles for the Kremlin’s war effort...

DILI, East Timor — Tens of thousands of East Timorese streamed Tuesday toward a seaside park for Pope Francis’ big Mass, held on the same field where St. John Paul II celebrated an historic liturgy during East Timor’s fight for independence from Indonesian rule...

WASHINGTON — Calling it “unserious and unacceptable,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected on Monday a proposal from Speaker Mike Johnson that links continued government funding for six months with a measure to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote...

BATON ROUGE, La. — Tropical Storm Francine strengthened Monday in the Gulf of Mexico and was forecast to make landfall as a hurricane this week in Louisiana, where evacuation orders were quickly issued in some coastal communities and residents began filling sandbags in preparation for heavy rains and widespread flooding...

ATLANTA — Many questions in last week's Georgia school shooting are still unanswered, including how the suspect brought a semiautomatic assault rifle to the campus of Apalachee High School and what may have motivated the violence. The shooting Wednesday in Winder, northeast of Atlanta, killed two teachers and two students. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, with seven of those hit by gunfire...

With early voting fast approaching, the rhetoric by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has turned more ominous with a pledge to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election in the same way he believes they did in 2020, when he falsely claimed he won and attacked those who stood by their accurate vote tallies...

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson is heeding the demands of the more conservative wing of his Republican conference and has teed up a vote this week on a bill that would keep the federal government funded for six more months and require states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote. ...

LONDON, Ky. — Authorities searched a rugged, hilly area of southeastern Kentucky on Sunday for a man suspected in the weekend shooting of nine vehicles and wounding of five people on a busy interstate. Joseph A. Couch, 32, was named a suspect in Saturday's shootings on Interstate 75 after authorities said they recovered his SUV on a service road near the crime scene. ...

ATLANTA — The mother of a student in class with the boy accused of killing four people in a Georgia high school shooting says information that school officials were warned that the boy was having a crisis shows the shooting could have been prevented. ...

Ylenia Aguilar raised her two sons in Arizona — first in Tucson and later Phoenix, so they're no strangers to scorching heat. Just recently, Phoenix hit its 100th straight day at or above 100 degrees, shattering the record set in 1993. She remembers scary moments "seeing soccer kids and my own children pass out and faint from, you know, heat-related illnesses," she said. "It was seeing my sons dehydrated." ...

WASHINGTON — The artificial intelligence industry has gone on a lobbying binge in the past few years, deploying scores of hired influencers to help shape potential government action. The growth is not surprising. The technology is being rapidly adopted by powerful sectors — health care, defense, financial services — all with the hopes of having a say on possible regulations. ...

he impasse between DirecTV and Disney over a new carriage agreement has become more heated as it entered its second week. DirecTV filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission on Saturday night accusing Disney of negotiating in bad faith. ...

CARACAS, Venezuela — Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González arrived in Spain on Sunday after fleeing into exile in as part of a negotiated deal with Nicolás Maduro's government that dealt a major blow to millions who placed their hopes in his opposition campaign. ...

VANIMO, Papua New Guinea — Pope Francis traveled to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea on Sunday to celebrate the Catholic Church on the peripheries, bringing with him medicine, musical instruments and a message of love for the people who live there. ...

KYIV, Ukraine — Two NATO members said Sunday that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. ...

ALLENBY CROSSING, West Bank — Three Israelis were shot and killed Sunday at the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, Israeli officials said, in what appeared to be an attack linked to the 11-month-old war in Gaza. ...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A global human rights watchdog on Wednesday implicated Venezuelan security forces and pro-government armed groups in killings that occurred during the protests that followed the country’s disputed July presidential election. Human Rights Watch, in a report detailing repressive measures the government unleashed after the vote, asserted that credible evidence gathered and analyzed by researchers, forensic pathologists and arms experts ties Venezuela’s national guard and national police to some of the 24 killings that took place as people protested the outcome of the election. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia has long sought to inject disinformation into U.S. political discourse. Now, it's got a new angle: paying Americans to do the work. This week's indictment of two Russian state media employees on charges that they paid a Tennessee company to create pro-Russian content has renewed concerns about foreign meddling in the November election and revealed the Kremlin's latest tactic in a growing information war...