AP Top News at 11:43 p.m. EDT
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities found a mass burial site near a recaptured northeastern city previously occupied by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Thursday night. The grave was discovered close to Izium in the Kharkiv region. "The necessary procedures have already begun there. More information — clear, verifiable information — should be available tomorrow,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly televised address. Associated Press journalists saw the site Thursday in a forest outside Izium. Amid the trees were hundreds of graves with simple wooden crosses, most of them marked only with numbers. A larger grave bore a marker saying it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Republican governors are escalating their partisan tactic of sending migrants to Democratic strongholds without advance warning, including a wealthy summer enclave in Massachusetts and the home of Vice President Kamala Harris, to taunt leaders of immigrant-friendly “sanctuary” cities and stoke opposition to Biden administration border policies. The governors of Texas and Arizona have sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in recent months. But the latest surprise moves — which included two flights to Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday paid for by Florida — reached a new level of political theater that critics derided as inhumane.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday appointed a veteran New York jurist to serve as an independent arbiter in the criminal investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, and refused to permit the Justice Department to resume its use of the highly sensitive records seized in an FBI search last month. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon empowered the newly named special master, Raymond Dearie, to review the entire tranche of records taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and set a November deadline for his work. In the meantime, she continued to block the department from using for its investigation roughly 100 documents marked as classified that were seized.
WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Joe Biden was quick to hail Thursday's strike-averting rail agreement as a win for America, it was also a big win for him politically, allowing Democrats to sidestep what could have been an economic debacle before November’s midterm elections. Pressured to choose between labor and business, the president pushed hard for them to work together. Prodded by a strategic late-night phone call from Biden — and fortified with Italian takeout — corporate and union negotiators spent 20 hours in intense talks at the Labor Department. They reached wee-hours common ground following an appeal to act in the shared interests of the nation, avoiding a strike that would have shut down railroads across the country.
LONDON (AP) — Thousands of mourners waited for hours Thursday in a line that stretched for almost 5 miles (8 kilometers) across London for the chance to spend a few minutes filing past Queen Elizabeth II's coffin while she lies in state. King Charles III spent the day in private to reflect on his first week on the throne. The queue to pay respects to the late queen at Westminster Hall in Parliament was at least a nine-hour wait, snaking across a bridge and along the south bank of the River Thames beyond Tower Bridge. But people said they didn't mind the wait, and authorities brought in portable toilets and other facilities to make the slog bearable.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden plans to meet at the White House on Friday with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom remain jailed in Russia, the White House announced Thursday. “He wanted to let them know that they remain front of mind and that his team is working on this every day, on making sure that Brittney and Paul return home safely,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Thursday's press briefing at the White House. The separate meetings are to be the first in-person encounter between Biden and the families and are taking place amid sustained but so far unsuccessful efforts by the administration to secure the Americans' release.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Almost three months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, the landscape of abortion access is still shifting significantly in some states, sometimes very quickly. Changing restrictions and litigation in neighboring Indiana and Ohio this week illustrate the whiplash for providers and patients navigating sudden changes in what is allowed where. Sister clinics who just weeks ago were sending patients from Ohio, where most abortions were banned, to Indiana, where the procedure was allowed, have now flip-flopped roles after the two states' access restrictions reversed, at least temporarily. Here is a deeper look at the current state of the shifting national landscape: WHAT CHANGED THIS WEEK?
Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds. Pakistan’s overall vulnerability, including people living in harm’s way, is the chief factor in the disaster that at one point submerged one-third of the country under water, but human-caused “climate change also plays a really important role here,” said study senior author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London. There are many ingredients to the still ongoing humanitarian crisis — some meteorological, some economic, some societal, some historic and construction oriented.
What a dream it must be to be Marilyn Monroe, a starstruck assistant tells her. “Everyone would give their right arm to be you!” And we cringe, as we'll do many times during Andrew Dominik’s brutal, bruising and often beautiful “Blonde,” starring a heartbreaking Ana de Armas. This time, it's because we already know that Norma Jeane, the real person underneath, is giving so much more than her right arm to be Marilyn. An arm would be getting off easy. She’s giving her body, her sanity, her dignity, her health and probably her very soul to be Marilyn. There’s a lot that “Blonde,” written and directed by Dominik with some stunning cinematography by Chayse Irvin, is.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Patrick Mahomes threw two touchdown passes, rookie Jaylen Watson returned an interception 99 yards for the go-ahead fourth-quarter score, and the Kansas City Chiefs held on to beat the Los Angeles Chargers 27-24 on Thursday night. Mahomes finished with 235 yards passing, and Jerick McKinnon and Justin Watson hauled in the TD passes for the Chiefs (2-0), who fell behind 10-0 in the first quarter and spent most of the game playing catch-up. Jaylen Watson finally put the Chiefs ahead after the Chargers (1-1), answering Matt Ammendola's tying field goal, marched to the Kansas City 3.