HONOLULU (AP) — Soon after one of Maui's Japanese Buddhist temples, the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, burned in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, its resident minister was desperate to go back and see what remained. Six weeks later, he's more hesitant. “Now I feel like I have to have mental preparation to go there,” the Rev. Ai Hironaka said. “I'm kind of afraid.”

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. (AP) — A charter bus carrying high school students to a band camp veered off a New York highway and tumbled down an embankment Thursday, killing two adults and seriously injuring several others, officials said. The bus was one of six in a caravan taking the marching band, color guard and dancers from Farmingdale High School on Long Island on a beloved annual trip to a camp in Greeley, in northeastern Pennsylvania.

MIAMI (AP) — A tropical storm warning was issued Thursday from coastal North Carolina to Delaware ahead of a potential tropical cyclone that's approaching the densely populated East Coast. The National Hurricane Center announced “Potential Tropical Cyclone Sixteen” on Thursday morning. Its 2 p.m. advisory said the disturbance was located about 355 miles southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and moving north at 9 mph. Maximum sustained winds were 35 mph.

The United States had 3.5 million residents who identify as Middle Eastern or North African, Venezuelans were the fastest-growing Hispanic group last decade and Chinese and Asian Indians were the two largest Asian groups, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a whirlwind return visit to Washington on Thursday to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine, delivering an upbeat message on the war's progress while facing new questions about the flow of American dollars that for 19 months has helped keep his troops in the fight against Russian forces.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is providing $600 million in funding to produce new at-home COVID-19 tests and is restarting a website allowing Americans to again order up to four free tests per household — aiming to prevent possible shortages during a rise in coronavirus cases that has typically come during colder months.

A 96-year-old U.S. federal appeals court judge was barred Wednesday from hearing cases for a year after a panel said she refused to undergo medical testing amid concerns that she is no longer mentally fit to serve on the bench. It's the latest development in an unusually public and bitter fight over whether Judge Pauline Newman should continue to serve on the Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that has sparked a lawsuit and turned judges against one another.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington’s revolving door kept spinning this week as the Drug Enforcement Administration’s recently departed second-in-command returned for a new stint with the high-powered consulting firm where he previously advised Purdue Pharma and a drug distributor fighting sanctions over a deluge of suspicious painkiller shipments.

Planet Earth is about to receive a special delivery — the biggest sample yet from an asteroid. A NASA spacecraft will fly by Earth on Sunday and drop off what is expected to be at least a cupful of rubble it grabbed from the asteroid Bennu, closing out a seven-year quest. The sample capsule will parachute into the Utah desert as its mothership, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft, zooms off for an encounter with another asteroid.

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — Five puppies learning to be assistance dogs had a howling good time during a training exercise at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. During the Tuesday training, the quintet of pooches and their trainers walked through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint, rode an elevated tram and boarded an airplane.

KANSAS CITY NATIONAL SECURITY CAMPUS, Mo. (AP) — In an ultra-sterile room at a secure factory in Kansas City, U.S. government technicians refurbish the nation’s nuclear warheads. The job is exacting: Each warhead has thousands of springs, gears and copper contacts that must work in conjunction to set off a nuclear explosion.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Temple University acting president JoAnne A. Epps has died after collapsing at a memorial service Tuesday afternoon, the university said. Epps was transported to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, the university said. She was 72.

DALLAS (AP) — A man accused of killing nearly two dozen older women and who was convicted last year in the slayings of two was killed Tuesday morning by his cellmate at a Texas prison, an official said. Billy Chemirmir, 50, was found dead in his cell, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney. She said that Chemirmir's cellmate, who is serving a sentence for murder, was identified as the assailant, but said she couldn't release the cellmate's identity or how Chemirmir was killed.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The crash site for a stealth fighter jet that went missing during the weekend after its pilot ejected was located Monday in rural South Carolina after the military asked the public for help finding an aircraft built to elude detection. The debris field was discovered in Williamsburg County, about two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston. Residents were being asked to avoid the area while a recovery team worked to secure it.

CHICAGO (AP) — Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded not guilty in Chicago on Monday to U.S. drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges during his first court appearance since being extradited to the U.S. from Mexico.

MORGANTOWN, Pa (AP) — Nine juveniles who escaped from a detention center in Pennsylvania and were at large for less than a day have been captured, state police said Monday. All will be charged with escape and some may face other charges.

BAR HARBOR, Maine (AP) — Atlantic storm Lee — which made landfall at near-hurricane strength, bringing destructive winds and torrential rains to New England and Maritime Canada — kept weakening Sunday after officials withdrew warnings and predicted the storm would disappear early this week.

PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities asked for the public's help and offered a $250,000 reward as investigators searched Sunday for the assailant who shot and killed a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy as he sat in his patrol car at an intersection. Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, 30, died at a hospital after being found unconscious in the vehicle while on duty around 6 p.m. Saturday in the city of Palmdale, Sheriff Robert Luna said.

Alisha Alderson placed her folded clothes and everything she needed for the last month of her pregnancy in various suitcases. She never imagined she would have to leave the comfort of her home in rural eastern Oregon just weeks before her due date. But following the abrupt closure in August of the only maternity ward within 40 miles, she decided to stay at her brother’s house near Boise, Idaho — a two-hour drive through a mountain pass — to be closer to a hospital.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky.  — More than 2,000 people responded to the gospel during the Answers in Genesis 40 Days & 40 Nights of Christian Music festival in Kentucky, according to the organization’s founder, Ken Ham. According to Answers in Genesis, tens of thousands of people attended this summer's musical event, dubbed 40/40, between Aug. 1 and Sept. 9. The organization invited more than 150 artists to perform during the course of the festival, held at the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum attractions in northern Kentucky.

Authorities in Hawaii have adjusted the number of deaths from the deadly Maui wildfire down to at least 97 people.

Fishermen removed lobster traps from the water and residents hauled hundreds of boats ashore — leaving some harbors looking like ghost towns — while utility workers from as far away as Tennessee began taking up positions Friday ahead of Hurricane Lee’s heavy winds, high seas and rain that's expected to span hundreds of miles of land and sea.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — After a deluge of rain, flooding, sinkholes and tornadoes this week, New England is about to face Hurricane Lee. A tropical storm warning was in place from Maine to Massachusetts and part of Maine was under the first hurricane watch in 15 years as the storm packing powerful gusts and 20-foot ocean swells approached. Forecasters said there would be tropical storm-force winds — 40 mph or greater — across an area spanning more than 400 miles ahead of landfall Saturday afternoon.

WASHINGTON (AP) — While the nation has been transfixed by the two-week manhunt for escaped prisoner Danelo Souza Cavalcante in Pennsylvania, another fugitive drama has been playing out in the nation's capital with comparatively minimal attention. Christopher Haynes has been on the run for a week, since escaping from police custody at George Washington University Hospital on Sept. 6.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA said Thursday that the study of UFOs will require new scientific techniques, including advanced satellites as well as a shift in how unidentified flying objects are perceived. The space agency released the findings after a yearlong study into UFOs.