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

Tight race for control of Congress could be decided by just a handful of campaigns

WASHINGTON (AP) — The race for control of Congress is as close as ever, with barely two dozen House seats and a handful in the Senate likely to determine the majority this November and whether a single party sweeps to power with the White House.

Lawmakers are returning to Washington for a three-week legislative sprint, away from the campaign trail where races have become “trench warfare” and a seat-by-seat slog. Many of the highest-profile races are being waged in Montana, New York, California and beyond, far from the presidential battleground states contested by Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.

“Buckle up,” said Jack Pandol, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Upended by the summer shake-up that replaced President Joe Biden with Harris atop the Democratic ticket, the down-ballot campaigns enter this fall stretch at a virtual toss-up, a high-wire uncertainty where every single seat won or lost could make the difference in party control.

What's changed is not so much the fundamentals of the individual races, but which side has the energy and enthusiasm to make sure their voters actually show up and cast their ballots, strategists said.

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Harris and Trump are getting ready for Tuesday's debate in sharply different ways

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Kamala Harris and 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.

The vice president is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate's rules. She's been working with aides since Thursday and chose a venue that allows the Democratic nominee the option of mingling with swing-state voters.

Trump, the Republican nominee, publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate. The former president is choosing instead to fill his days with campaign-related events on the premise that he'll know what he needs to do once he steps on the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“You can go in with all the strategy you want but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” he said during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

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Sharp divisions persist over Walz's response to the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Gov. Tim Walz faced the biggest crisis of his political career when Minnesota’s two largest cities erupted in protests and riots after a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd.

The Black man's murder in 2020 sparked a nationwide reckoning over racial discrimination and police misconduct. His death, and its complicated aftermath, tested Walz’s leadership at one of the state’s most consequential moments.

What the governor did — or failed to do — during and after the violence in Minneapolis and St. Paul drew sharp criticism from Republicans in Minnesota. Nor did it satisfy some progressives who had urged him to take bolder steps to remake policing in the state. Walz's defenders say he did an exemplary job under unprecedented circumstances.

Four years later, on the national stage as the Democratic nominee for vice president, Walz is facing similar questions and criticism: Republicans are calling him a left-wing radical who was too slow to act and some progressives are saying he was not radical enough in addressing police abuses.

A review by The Associated Press — based on government documents, consultant reports, news accounts, video and audio recordings, as well as interviews with families, activists, lawyers and public officials — paints a nuanced picture of how Walz handled the challenge. As a relatively new governor, he tried to balance the competing pressures and interests of local and federal officials, including then-President Donald Trump, while navigating the dangers posed by fast-evolving protests and riots taking place amid a deadly global pandemic.

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US believes Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, AP sources say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has informed allies that it believes Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter.

They did not offer any details about how many weapons have been delivered or when the transfers may have occurred, but they confirmed the U.S. intelligence finding. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not been publicly disclosed.

The White House declined to confirm the weapons transfer but reiterated its concern that Iran is deepening its support of Russia. The White House has been warning Iran for months not to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.

"Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and lead to the killing of more Ukrainian civilians," National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement. "This partnership threatens European security and illustrates how Iran’s destabilizing influence reaches beyond the Middle East and around the world.”

The U.S. finding comes as the Kremlin tries to repel Ukraine's surprise offensive that has led to the seizure of about 500 square miles (1,300 kilometers) of Russia’s Kursk region. Meanwhile, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is pressing allies to allow his country to use Western-supplied missiles to strike deep inside Russia and hit sites from which Moscow launches aerial attacks.

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Mom of Georgia shooting suspect called school to warn of emergency, aunt says

The mother of the 14-year-old who has been charged with murder over the fatal shooting of four people at his Georgia high school called the school before the killings, warning staff of an “extreme emergency” involving her son, a relative said.

Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school about 30 minutes before gunfire is believed to have erupted.

Brown confirmed the reporting to The Associated Press on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.

Colt Gray, 14, has been charged with murder over the killing of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, outside Atlanta, on Wednesday. His father, Colin Gray, is accused of second-degree murder for providing his son with a semiautomatic AR 15-style rifle.

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With father of suspect charged in Georgia shooting, will more parents be held responsible?

Murder charges filed against the father of a 14-year-old boy accused of a Georgia school shooting follow the successful prosecution of two parents in Michigan who were held responsible for a similar tragedy at a school north of Detroit.

Is it a sign of a crackdown on parents accused of gross negligence when it comes to kids and guns? Could public outrage lead to more prosecutions or changes in law in other states, too?

“It’s a matter of looking at the relationship between what the child says and does and what the parent knows about what the child says and does,” said David Shapiro, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the deaths of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine more people were wounded.

Gray's son, Colt Gray, is charged with murder. Investigators said he used a "semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” in the attack.

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Israelis surge into the streets again in protest as the toll in Gaza grows

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Huge numbers of Israelis again poured into the streets to protest the government's failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, while hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.

The new protest came a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war following the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza, and after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against pressure for a cease-fire deal and declared that “no one will preach to me.”

“I think even those who were maybe reluctant to go out, who are not used to protest, who are sad but prefer to be in private space within their sadness, understood our voice must join together to one huge scream: Bring the hostages with a deal. Do not risk their lives," said one protester in Tel Aviv, Efrat Machikawa, niece of hostage Gadi Moses.

Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal, but Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

Inside Gaza, health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak. The drive, launched after the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed the health care system. The third phase of vaccinations will be in the north.

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Maui's toxic debris could fill 5 football fields 5 stories deep. Where will it end up?

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Hinano Rodrigues remembers being 4 or 5 years old, carrying a bucket across a highway to the ocean in the Maui community where he still lives.

At dawn, he would accompany his grandmother to a reef at low tide, where she plucked black snails, spiny lobsters and spiky sea urchins from the craggy rock. In Hawaiian, she would instruct him to break off a branch of kiawe, a type of mesquite, to tease out an octopus hiding in a hole.

It taught Rodrigues, 71, the value of ahupuaa, a Native Hawaiian system for dividing land from the mountains down to the ocean, with the residents of each section living off the land and waters within it.

But now the section where he lives and where his ancestors have always lived — the Olowalu ahupuaa — is also home to a temporary landfill being used to store debris from the deadly wildfire that decimated the historic nearby town of Lahaina last summer, destroying thousands of buildings and killing 102 people. It's enough refuse to cover five football fields five stories high, including soil contaminated with lead and arsenic.

A controversy over whether that site is truly temporary — and over where the debris might finally wind up — has sparked a fierce legal fight with tens of millions of dollars at stake, not to mention a priceless ecosystem rich with coral, manta rays and other sea life just offshore.

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‘The Room Next Door' tops Venice Film Festival. Nicole Kidman misses acting honor due to mom’s death

VENICE, Italy (AP) — “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, topped the Venice Film Festival and was awarded its Golden Lion award Saturday.

Nicole Kidman was awarded the best actress prize, for her raw and exposing portrayal of a CEO embroiled in an affair with an intern in “Babygirl,” but missed the ceremony due to the death of her mother.

“I arrived in Venice and found out shortly after that my beautiful, brave mother, Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed,” Kidman said in a statement read by “Babygirl” director Halina Reijn. “I'm in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her. ... She shaped me and made me."

The 81st edition of the festival came to a close Saturday, with the Isabelle Huppert-led jury bestowing top prizes to Brady Corbet, for directing the 215-minute post-war epic “The Brutalist” and Vincent Lindon, for his lead performance in “The Quiet Son.” Lindon plays a single father whose son is radicalized by the far right.

Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio” won the Silver Lion award, the runner up prize. The Italian-French-Belgian drama is about the last year of World War II, in which a refugee soldier happens upon a large family.

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Just how rare is a rare-colored lobster? Scientists say answer could be under the shell

BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — Orange, blue, calico, two-toned and ... cotton-candy colored?

Those are all the hues of lobsters that have showed up in fishers' traps, supermarket seafood tanks and scientists' laboratories over the last year. The funky-colored crustaceans inspire headlines that trumpet their rarity, with particularly uncommon baby blue-tinted critters described by some as "cotton-candy colored" often estimated at 1 in 100 million.

A recent wave of these curious colored lobsters in Maine, New York, Colorado and beyond has scientists asking just how atypical the discolored arthropods really are. As is often the case in science, it's complicated.

Lobsters' color can vary due to genetic and dietary differences, and estimates about how rare certain colors are should be taken with a grain of salt, said Andrew Goode, lead administrative scientist for the American Lobster Settlement Index at the University of Maine. There is also no definitive source on the occurrence of lobster coloration abnormalities, scientists said.

“Anecdotally, they don't taste any different either,” Goode said.

The Associated Press