Hurricane Francine makes landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 storm

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Hurricane Francine has made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 storm, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding on the northern U.S. Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center says Francine drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters and had maximum sustained winds of nearly 100 mph when it roared ashore in Terrebonne Parish. Parts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle are at risk of flash and urban flooding, followed by a threat of possible flooding later in the week into the lower Mississippi Valley and lower Tennessee Valley as the soggy remnants of Francine sweep inland.

Wildfires scorch Southern California hillsides, torching homes and injuring several

EL CARISO, Calif. (AP) — Devastating wildfires have swept across Southern California hillsides torching vehicles, burning buildings and injuring more than a dozen people. In Orange County, the Airport Fire charred cars, left a wake of rubble and ash and injured eight firefighters and two residents. Tens of thousands of homes and other structures were threatened and evacuation orders were expanded Tuesday night as the fires grew. Parts of the popular ski town of Big Bear and the entire community of Wrightwood were included. Firefighters have been working in steep terrain in temperatures above 100 degrees but cooler weather is expected for the rest of the week. Wildfires are burning across the West, including in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada.

Remains found in car in Illinois river identified as 2 men who vanished in 1976, coroner says

ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) — Authorities say DNA testing on skeletal remains found in a car pulled this year from an Illinois river confirmed they are those of two men who vanished in 1976. The Winnebago County Coroner’s Office said Tuesday the testing by the Illinois State Police Division of Forensic Services confirmed they are the remains of Clarence Owens and Everett Hawley. More than 100 bones were retrieved from a car found in March in the Pecatonica River about 100 miles west of Chicago. The Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office says Hawley, 72, of Stockton, Illinois, and Owens, 65, of Freeport, Illinois, vanished after leaving a farm auction in that car in February 1976, near the Winnebago-Ogle County line.

More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate

(AP) — An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. That’s 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 the Nielsen company said it was shown on 17 different networks. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people. Tuesday’s count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.