AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Thousands in the dark as Hurricane Francine strikes Louisiana, raising flood fears

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — 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.

Francine crashed ashore in Terrebonne Parish, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Morgan City, the National Hurricane Center announced at 4 p.m. CDT. Packing top sustained winds near 100 mph (155 kph), the hurricane then battered a fragile coastal region that hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021.

Morgan City Fire Chief Alvin Cockerham said the hurricane quickly flooded streets, snapped power lines and sent tree limbs crashing down.

“It’s a little bit worse than what I expected to be honest with you,” Cockerham said of the onslaught. “I pulled all my trucks back to the station. It’s too dangerous to be out there in this.”

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

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An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — 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. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents' fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.

A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield's main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city's annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.

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9/11 anniversary brings Biden, Harris and Trump together at ground zero

NEW YORK (AP) — 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.

In a remarkable tableau, President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stood together at ground zero just hours after Trump and Harris faced off in their first-ever debate. Trump and Biden — the successor whose inauguration Trump skipped — shook hands, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to facilitate a handshake between Harris and Trump.

Then the campaign rivals stood only a few feet (meters) apart, Biden and Bloomberg between them, as the hourslong reading of victims' names began. At Trump’s side was his running mate, Sen. JD Vance.

The image was one of putting politics aside at this year's solemn commemoration of the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. But some victims' relatives, after reading out names, delivered political messages of their own.

“We are pleading for your help, but you ignore us,” Allison Walsh-DiMarzio said, directly challenging Trump and Harris to press Saudi Arabia about any official involvement in the attacks. Most of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, but the kingdom denies it was behind their plot.

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Donald Trump faces his own debate fallout just months after benefiting from Joe Biden's

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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. By the end of Tuesday night, it was the 78-year-old Trump on the defensive after the 59-year-old Harris controlled much of the debate, repeatedly baiting the Republican former president into agitated answers replete with exaggerations and mistruths.

The performance left many Republicans scrambling to pick apart Harris' performance and insist that Trump still has time to refocus on the economy, immigration and other issues that could sway a closely divided electorate.

“I think the contrast could have been drawn more sharply on what her policies have done over the last three and a half years,” said Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia in a critique of the former president's approach. “That’s what I would have focused on.”

Harris’ campaign immediately pitched the idea of a second debate. Fox News has proposed an October matchup but with moderators that Trump has indicated he does not prefer. And he said via his Truth Social account Wednesday that there is no need for a second round,

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Alberto Fujimori, a former president of Peru who was convicted for human rights abuses, dies at 86

LIMA, Peru (AP) — 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.

He had been pardoned in December from his convictions for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people. His daughter said in July that he was planning to run for Peru’s presidency for the fourth time in 2026.

Fujimori, who governed with an increasingly authoritarian hand in 1990-2000, was pardoned in December from his convictions for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people. His daughter said in July that he was planning to run for Peru’s presidency for the fourth time in 2026.

The former university president and mathematics professor was the consummate political outsider when he emerged from obscurity to win Peru’s 1990 election over writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Over a tumultuous political career, he repeatedly made risky, go-for-broke decisions that alternately earned him adoration and reproach.

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Wildfires in Southern California torch dozens of homes and force thousands to evacuate

WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Three major wildfires in Southern California's mountains east of Los Angeles torched dozens of homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate, officials said Wednesday.

At least a dozen people, mainly firefighters, were treated for injuries that were mostly heat-related, authorities said. One person from Orange County was burned. No deaths have been reported.

The wildfires have been endangering tens of thousands of homes and other structures across the region after they sprung to life during a triple-digit heat wave over the weekend. Other major fires were burning in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people had to flee a blaze outside Reno.

In the tight-knit community of Wrightwood that sits on the Pacific Crest Trail, authorities implored residents to evacuate the exploding Bridge Fire, which burned more than a dozen homes in the area.

Resident Erin Arias said she was racing up the mountain when she got the sudden order to leave and did, grabbing her passport and dog. On Wednesday, she and her husband doused water on the roof of their still-standing home. Their cat was missing, she said.

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Speaker Johnson postpones vote on a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.

The legislation to continue government funding when the new budget year begins on Oct. 1 includes a requirement that people registering to vote must provide proof of citizenship. Johnson, R-La., signaled that he was not backing off linking the two main components of the bill.

"No vote today because we're in the consensus building business here in Congress. With small majorities, that's what you do," Johnson told reporters. "We're having thoughtful conversations, family conversations within the Republican conference and I believe we'll get there.”

Congress needs to pass a stopgap spending bill before Oct. 1 to avoid a federal shutdown just weeks before the election. The measure had been teed up for a vote on Wednesday afternoon, but Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed and enough Republicans had voiced opposition to raise serious doubts about whether the measure would pass.

The stopgap bill would generally continue existing funding through March 28. The GOP opponents of the bill argue that it continues spending at levels they consider excessive. And some Republicans simply won’t vote for any continuing resolution, arguing that Congress must return to passing its 12 annual spending bills separately rather than through the one or two catchall bills that have become the norm in recent decades.

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Israeli airstrikes hit UN school and homes in Gaza and kill at least 34 people, hospitals say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — 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.

The war in Gaza is now into its 11th month, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops launched raids in several towns backed by airstrikes, continuing a crackdown across the territory that the military says is targeting militants but has wrecked neighborhoods and killed civilians. One airstrike killed five people the military said were militants threatening its troops. A second strike on a car killed at least three people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

An attacker crashed a fuel truck into a West Bank bus stop near the Israeli settlement of GIvat Assaf, killing an Israeli soldier, the military said. Officials said soldiers and an armed civilian “neutralized” the attacker.

The strike on the U.N.’s al-Jaouni Preparatory Boys School in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 14, including two children and a woman, officials from Awda and al-Aqsa Martyrs hospitals said. At least 18 other people were wounded, they said.

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New CIA workplace assault case emerges as spy agency shields extent of sexual misconduct in ranks

LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — At an impromptu party in the office to celebrate his 50th birthday, a veteran CIA officer got drunk, reached up a colleague’s skirt and forcibly kissed her in front of stunned co-workers, prosecutors alleged in the latest case of sexual misconduct to spill from the spy agency into a public court.

An Associated Press investigation found Donald Asquith's alleged assault last year happened just days after the CIA promised to crack down on sexual misconduct in its ranks — even as the agency has refused to disclose details on the extent of the problem. A recent 648-page internal watchdog report that found systemic shortcomings in the CIA’s handling of such complaints was classified as “secret,” shielded as a potential threat to national security.

“It is inconceivable that sexual misconduct could be considered a state secret,” said Kevin Carroll, an attorney who represents several women in the agency who have made complaints.

The watchdog report followed an earlier AP investigation that found at least two dozen women in the CIA came forward to authorities and Congress with accounts of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they described as a campaign to silence them.

Many were emboldened by a CIA officer trainee who went to police in 2022 after the agency failed to take action against a colleague she accused of assaulting her with a scarf in a stairwell at CIA headquarters. Some of those women now say they have faced retaliation, including the victim of the stairwell attack, who was terminated less than six months after suing the agency.

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Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter win at MTV Video Music Awards, Chappell Roan gets medieval

NEW YORK (AP) — Chappell Roan won the MTV Video Music Award for best new artist.

“I dedicate this to all the drag artists who inspire me," she said in her speech, while wearing chain mail, reading from a written speech in her diary. “And I dedicate this to queer and trans people who run pop. ... Thank you for listening.”

Women dominated the award show, no example greater than an imaginative, medieval set from Roan.

Drag queen Sasha Colby introduced her with “your favorite drag queen’s favorite artist,” a reference to Roan’s now famous Coachella performance, which in turn was inspired by Colby. Real fans no doubt got a kick out of the hyper-referential tidbit.

Roan appeared in armor, shooting a lit crossbow at castle gates that stood behind her, burning them in the process. Her dancers were knights, battling each other in incredible choreography as she sang her queer pop hit, “Good Luck, Babe.”

The Associated Press