Tentative deal reached to end the Hollywood writers strike. No deal yet for actors

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Union leaders and Hollywood studios reached a tentative agreement Sunday to end a historic screenwriters strike after nearly five months, though no deal is yet in the works for striking actors.

The Writers Guild of America announced the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents studios, streaming services and producers in negotiations.

“WGA has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP,” said in an email to members. “This was made possible by the enduring solidarity of WGA members and extraordinary support of our union siblings who joined us on the picket lines for over 146 days.”

The three-year contract agreement — settled on after five marathon days of renewed talks by negotiators WGA and the AMPTP — must be approved by the guild's board and members before the strike officially ends.

The terms of the deal were not immediately announced. The tentative deal to end the last writers strike, in 2008, was approved by more than 90% of members.

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Weakening Ophelia still poses a risk of coastal flooding and heavy rain in some parts of the US

Nearly a day after being downgraded from a tropical storm, Ophelia still threatened parts of the Northeast on Sunday with coastal flooding, life-threatening waves and heavy rain from Washington to New York City, the National Hurricane Center said.

As Ophelia weakened, a new tropical storm named Philippe brewed in the Atlantic.

Even though Ophelia was downgraded Saturday night, meteorologists warned that swells generated by the storm would affect the East Coast for the rest of the weekend, likely causing dangerous surf conditions and rip currents. Ophelia was also expected to drop 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of additional rain over parts of the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Isolated river flooding was also possible.

Ophelia was south of Washington on Sunday morning and was expected to continue moving northeast before turning east and then weakening more over the next two days, according to the hurricane center. Meanwhile, Philippe was 1,175 miles (1,890 kilometers) west of the Cabo Verde Islands, which are off the west coast of Africa. That storm had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (75 kph).

The National Weather Service said numerous New Jersey communities reported coastal flooding, including, including Sea Isle City and Brielle. Thousands of people in the state remained without power Sunday. NJ.com reported more than 6,000 customers were without electricity Sunday morning, down from a high of 13,000.

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President Macron says France will end its military presence in Niger, pull its ambassador after coup

PARIS (AP) — President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday that France will end its military presence in Niger and pull its ambassador out of the country as a result of the coup that removed the democratically elected president.

Niger's junta said in response that the announcement signals a “new step towards the sovereignty" of the country.

"Imperialist and neo-colonialist forces are no longer welcome on our national territory. The new era of cooperation, based on mutual respect and sovereignty is already underway,” it said in a statement.

The announcement was a significant, if expected, blow to France’s policy in Africa, with French troops having had to pull out of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years after coups there. France had stationed thousands of troops in the Sahel region at the request of African leaders to fight Islamic extremist groups.

France has maintained some 1,500 troops in Niger since the July coup, and had repeatedly refused an order by the new junta for its ambassador to leave, saying that France didn't recognize the coup leaders as legitimate.

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NASA's first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

“We have touchdown!” Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — around 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) — basing it on the deceleration rate.

To everyone's relief, the capsule was intact and not breached, keeping its 4.5 billion-year-old samples free of contamination. Within two hours of touchdown, the capsule was inside a temporary clean room at the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range, hoisted there by helicopter.

The sealed sample canister will be flown on Monday to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it will be opened in a new, specially designed lab. The building already houses the hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts.

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With House Republicans in turmoil, colleagues implore GOP holdouts not to shut down government

WASHINGTON (AP) — Working furiously to take control of a House in disarray, allies of Speaker Kevin McCarthy implored their Republican colleagues Saturday to drop their hardline tactics and work together to approve a conservative spending plan to prevent a federal shutdown.

In public overtures and private calls, Republican lieutenants of the embattled speaker pleaded with a handful of right-flank holdouts to resist further disruptions that have ground the House to a halt and back McCarthy's latest plan to keep government open before next weekend's Sept. 30 deadline for a shutdown.

Republican Rep. Garrett Graves of Louisiana said the holdouts are “absolutely hallucinating” if they think they can wrap up work without the need for a temporary measure that many of them have shunned before time runs out.

“An important part of this strategy is going to be ensuring that we do everything we can to avoid a government shutdown,” Graves said after a Saturday afternoon conference call with lawmakers.

But in a sign of the deep divisions still ahead, one of the conservative holdouts, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., walked past the McCarthy allies' news conference at the Capitol, telling reporters he remained firm in his position.

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Residents prepare to return to sites of homes demolished in Lahaina wildfire 7 weeks ago

HONOLULU (AP) — From just outside the burn zone in Lahaina, Jes Claydon can see the ruins of the rental home where she lived for 13 years and raised three children. Little remains recognizable beyond the jars of sea glass that stood outside the front door.

On Monday, officials will begin lifting restrictions on entry to the area, and Claydon hopes to collect those jars and any other mementos she might find.

“I want the freedom to just be there and absorb what happened,” Claydon said. "Whatever I might find, even if it’s just those jars of sea glass, I’m looking forward to taking it. ... It’s a piece of home.”

Authorities will begin allowing the first residents and property owners to return to their properties in the burn zone, many for the first time since it was demolished nearly seven weeks ago, on Aug. 8, by the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.

The prospect of returning has stirred strong emotions in residents who fled in vehicles or on foot as the wind-whipped flames raced across Lahaina, the historic capital of the former Hawaiian kingdom, and overcame people stuck in traffic trying to escape. Some survivors jumped over a sea wall and sheltered in the waves as hot black smoke blotted out the sun. The wildfire killed at least 97 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, most of them homes.

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A Ukrainian train is a lifeline connecting the nation's capital with the front line

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — Among the hundreds of trains criss-crossing Ukraine’s elaborate railway network every day, the Kyiv-Kramatorsk train stands apart, shrouded in solemn silence as passengers anticipate their destination.

Every day, around seven in the morning, passengers of this route leave the relative safety of the capital and head east to frontline areas where battles between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops rage and Russian strikes are frequent with imprecise missiles that slam into residential areas.

The passengers are a mix of men and women that offer up a slice of Ukrainian society these days. They include soldiers returning to the front after a brief leave, women making the trip to reunite for a few days with husbands and boyfriends serving on the battlefields, and residents returning to check on homes in the Donetsk region.

They are all lost in thought and rarely converse with each other.

Nineteen-year-old Marta Banakh anxiously awaits the train’s next brief stop at one of its nine intermediate stations on the way to Kramatorsk. She disembarks at the station for a quick cigarette break, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

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He spoke no English, had no lawyer. An Afghan man's case offers a glimpse into US immigration court

The Afghan man speaks only Farsi, but he wasn't worried about representing himself in U.S. immigration court. He believed the details of his asylum claim spoke for themselves.

Mohammad was a university professor, teaching human rights courses in Afghanistan before he fled for the United States. Mohammad is also Hazara, an ethnic minority long persecuted in his country, and he said he was receiving death threats under the Taliban, who reimposed their harsh interpretation of Sunni Islam after taking power in 2021.

He crossed the Texas border in April 2022, surrendered to Border Patrol agents and was detained. A year later, a hearing was held via video conference. His words were translated by a court interpreter in another location, and he said he struggled to express himself — including fear for his life since he was injured in a 2016 suicide bombing.

At the conclusion of the nearly three-hour hearing, the judge denied him asylum. Mohammad said he was later shocked to learn that he had waived his right to appeal the decision.

“I feel alone and that the law wasn’t applied,” said Mohammad, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only his first name be used, over fears for the safety of his wife and children, who are still in Afghanistan.

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The threat of wildfires is rising. So are new artificial intelligence solutions to fight them

LONDON (AP) — Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions. Enter artificial intelligence.

Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.

With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology — which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.

California's main firefighting agency this summer started testing an AI system that looks for smoke from more than 1,000 mountaintop camera feeds and is now expanding it statewide.

The system is designed to find “abnormalities” and alert emergency command centers, where staffers will confirm whether it’s indeed smoke or something else in the air.

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AP Top 25: Colorado falls out of rankings after first loss and Ohio State moves up to No. 4

Colorado and Deion Sanders fell out of The Associated Press college football poll on Sunday after a resounding loss in one of the weekend's showcase games, and the teams toward the top of the rankings were shuffled and tightened.

A season-high six teams received first-place votes, the most since the 2016 preseason poll. Georgia is still where it started at No. 1 in the AP Top 25, but it is down to 55 first-place votes out of a possible 63.

Michigan remained No. 2 and got a first-place vote. Texas stayed at No. 3 with two first-place votes. Ohio State moved up two spots to No. 4 and got a first-place vote after beating Notre Dame with a touchdown on its final offensive play.

The Fighting Irish slipped to two spots to No. 11.

Florida State dropped a spot to No. 5 after a victory at Clemson, but it nevertheless received three first-place votes.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023