YAZOO CITY, Miss. (AP) — A group of hunters have captured the longest alligator ever to be recorded in Mississippi, according to the state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. Four state residents — Donald Woods, Will Thomas, Joey Clark and Tanner White — harvested a male alligator in late August in west Mississippi's Sunflower River.

BREMERTON, Wash. (AP) — An assistant high school football coach in Washington state who lost his job during a controversy over his public post-game prayers was back on the field Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court held his practice was protected by the Constitution. Joe Kennedy strode alone to midfield, knelt and prayed for about 10 seconds after his Bremerton High School football team beat visiting Mount Douglas Secondary School 27-12 Friday night.

HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — This remote seaside enclave known as “Florida's Last Frontier” took much of the pounding from Hurricane Idalia when it struck the state's west coast as a Category 3 storm last week. The damage left behind in the fishing village of Horseshoe Beach is exposing a gulf between haves and have-nots as cash-strapped residents could be forced to leave the quaint, remote community rivaled by few others along the Florida shoreline.

Seven weeks after catastrophic flooding in Vermont destroyed their mobile home, Sara Morris and her family don't yet know what they will do for housing long-term. She and her husband, their three kids and his mother have been staying with Morris' mother since the flooding mangled their home, boring a hole through the side and leaving it tilted in layers of mud.

Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

The number of people on the official list of those missing from the Maui wildfire stood at 385 on Friday, nearly unchanged from a week earlier.

HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Two people were charged with looting a home damaged by Hurricane Idalia in Florida's Big Bend region, as residents' concerns grew that burglars could be tempted to hit other hurricane-ravaged homes since law enforcement is stretched thin in the remote, wooded area along the Gulf Coast. Some residents of Horseshoe Beach, Florida, one of the communities hardest hit after Idalia made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane, urged law enforcement to set up checkpoints where people would have to show identification in order to get into the town.

A vision of armed officers at every school in Texas is crashing into the reality of not enough money or police as a new mandate took effect Friday, showing how a goal more states are embracing in response to America's cycle of mass killings is proving unworkable in many communities.

They were the kids most disrupted by the pandemic, the ones who were still learning to write their names and tie their shoes when schools shut down in the spring of 2020.

One family in central Mexico is struggling to preserve the production of cochineal dye, an intense, natural red pigment so prized that, after gold and silver, it was probably the most valuable thing the Spaniards found in Mexico after the 1521 conquest.

The worst of Hurricane Idalia left residents of a region of  tight-knit communities  trying to find places to live as they rebuild — if they decide it's even worth it — and waiting potentially weeks for electricity to be restored after winds and water took out entire power grids.

NEW YORK (AP) — Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song “Margaritaville” and turned that celebration of loafing into a billion-dollar empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

Maggie T. Sutrov showered, drank treated tap water and watered her garden before she learned that she shouldn't be using the water in her home on Maui after wildfires devastated the island. Concerned about others making the same mistake, she quickly created a flier on water contamination from guidance she'd found on the county's website and worked with a pop-up community center to get the word out.

VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) — Hurricanes and tropical storms are nothing new in the South, but the sheer magnitude of damage from Idalia shocked Desmond Roberson as he toured what as left of his Georgia neighborhood. Roberson took a drive through Valdosta on Thursday with a friend to check out damage after the storm, which first hit Florida as a hurricane and then weakened into a tropical storm as it made its way north, ripped through the town of 55,000.

NEW YORK (AP) — A headless bronze statue believed to depict the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius was ordered seized from the Cleveland Museum of Art by New York authorities investigating antiquities looted from Turkey. A warrant signed by a judge in Manhattan on Aug. 14 ordered the seizure of the statue, which the museum acquired in 1986 and had been a highlight of its collection of ancient Roman art.

PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Idalia headed out to sea Thursday after thrashing parts of Florida and Georgia with punishing rains and destructive winds, leaving residents to begin the arduous process of clearing fallen trees, restoring electricity and picking through the debris of devastated homes. Thus far, authorities have confirmed one death, that of a man hit by a falling tree in Georgia.

CEDAR KEY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday in Florida as a Category 3 storm and unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast, submerging homes and vehicles, turning streets into rivers, unmooring small boats and downing power lines in an area that has never before received such a pummeling.

A rare blue supermoon could raise tides above normal just as Hurricane Idalia takes aim at Florida’s west coast, exacerbating flooding from the storm. The moon will be closest to the Earth on Wednesday, the same day Idalia is expected to make landfall in Florida. While a supermoon can make for a spectacular backdrop in photos of landmarks around the world, its intensified gravitational pull also makes tides higher.

CEDAR KEY, Fla. (AP) — Florida residents living in vulnerable coastal areas were ordered to pack up and leave Tuesday as Hurricane Idalia gained steam in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and threatened to unleash life-threatening storm surges and rainfall. Idalia also pummeled Cuba with heavy rains on Monday and Tuesday, leaving the tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio underwater and many of its residents without power.

HONOLULU (AP) — Crews in Hawaii have all but finished searching for victims of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, authorities said Tuesday, and it is unclear how many people perished. Three weeks after the fire devastated Maui’s historic seaside community of Lahaina, the count of the dead stands at 115. But an unknown number of people are still missing.

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The U.S. government is trying to stop a planned expedition to recover items of historical interest from the sunken Titanic, citing a federal law and an international agreement that treat the shipwreck as a hallowed gravesite. The expedition is being organized by RMS Titanic Inc., the Georgia-based firm that owns the salvage rights to the world’s most famous shipwreck.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2-ranking House Republican, said Tuesday he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment. Scalise, 57, said he will continue to serve in the House. He described the cancer as “very treatable” and said it was detected early.

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago television news crew reporting on a string of robberies ended up robbed themselves after they were accosted at gunpoint by three armed men wearing ski masks. Spanish-language station Univision Chicago said a reporter and photographer were filming just before 5 a.m. Monday in Chicago's West Town neighborhood when three masked men brandishing firearms robbed them, taking their television camera and other items.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Police charged a University of North Carolina graduate student Tuesday with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a faculty member that caused a campus lockdown amid a search for the gunman. Tailei Qi, 34, is due in court later Tuesday for an initial hearing in the Monday killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building on the Chapel Hill campus. In addition to the murder count, he is charged with having a gun on educational property.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Idalia became a hurricane on Tuesday, threatening to bring deadly storm surge and dangerous winds to Florida’s Gulf Coast after lashing Cuba with heavy rain. Florida residents loaded up on sandbags and evacuated from homes in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast to prepare for a storm that the National Hurricane Center projected could have sustained winds of up to 120 mph.