WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, ending a historic run as the first woman with the gavel and making way for a new generation to steer the party after Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in the midterm elections.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have won control of the U.S. House, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A space capsule is hurtling toward the moon for the first time in 50 years. The spacecraft with three test dummies aboard launched on top of NASA’s new moon rocket early Wednesday. The Florida launch brings the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program. If all goes well, the crew capsule will be propelled into a wide orbit around the moon, before returning to Earth with a Pacific splashdown in three weeks.

A judge sentenced a man who killed six people and injured many others when he drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee to life in prison with no chance of release Wednesday, rejecting arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA's new moon rocket blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard Wednesday, bringing the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jay Leno says he's doing OK after suffering serious burns in a gasoline fire. In a statement to Variety, Leno said he needs a “week or two” to get back on his feet. The cause and time of the fire wasn’t immediately clear. The 72-year-old former “Tonight Show” host is known for his famed car collection, which is housed at a garage in Burbank, north of Los Angeles.

KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a triumphant visit to the newly liberated city of Kherson. He hailed the Russian withdrawal from the southern city as the “beginning of the end of the war” but also acknowledged the heavy price Ukrainian soldiers are paying in their grinding effort to push back the invaders.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Authorities said a University of Virginia student and former member of the school’s football team fatally shot three current players as they returned from a field trip. The shooting set off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured Monday.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at a parking garage at the University of Virginia, according to the school’s president, and police searched Monday for a student who was a suspect.

DALLAS (AP) — A national transportation official probing the cause of a midair crash of two historic military planes during an air show that left six people dead said Sunday that one of the key questions for investigators is why the aircraft were seemingly sharing the same space just before impact.

DALLAS (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration says two aircraft have collided at an air show in Dallas. It was unclear how many people were on board the aircraft and if anyone on the ground was hurt. Emergency crews were responding to the scene at the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show at the Dallas Executive Airport. The FAA says a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m. Saturday.

A U.S. judge in Texas has blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to provide millions of borrowers with up to $20,000 apiece in federal student-loan forgiveness. The program was already on hold while a federal appeals court in St. Louis considers a separate lawsuit by a half-dozen states challenging it. District Court Judge Mark Pittman said Thursday that the program usurped Congress's power to make laws.

WILBUR-BY-THE-SEA, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole has weakened to a tropical depression as it crosses the Florida Panhandle on its way north into Georgia. The storm had sent Florida homes toppling into the Atlantic Ocean earlier Thursday and threatened a row of high-rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away the beach and destroyed seawalls only weeks ago. Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday near Vero Beach but the brunt of the damage was along the East Coast well north of there.

WILBUR-BY-THE-SEA, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole has sent multiple homes collapsing into the Atlantic Ocean. Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday near Vero Beach, Florida, but the brunt of the damage was along the East Coast well north of there, in the Daytona Beach area. Its damaging coastal surge was hitting beachfront properties in Daytona Beach Shores that lost their last protections during Hurricane Ian.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic. NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced the discovery Thursday. Divers for a TV documentary crew spotted the piece in March, and NASA recently verified that it was part of the shuttle that broke apart during liftoff in 1986.

A toddler is thriving after doctors used a novel technique to treat her for a rare genetic disease before she was born. The girl, now 16 months, began receiving the critical protein her body can't make while still in the womb. The treatment was delivered through a needle inserted through the mother’s abdomen and guided into a vein in the umbilical cord.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday near Vero Beach, Florida. It's such a sprawling storm that it has covered nearly the entire peninsula while reaching into Georgia and South Carolina. Weather-weary central Florida is still getting strong winds and heavy rain, with a damaging coastal surge in places like Daytona Beach Shores. The rare November hurricane led officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations.

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida-bound storm has strengthened into Hurricane Nicole after pounding the Bahamas and state officials ordered evacuations that included former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. It’s a rare November hurricane for storm-weary Florida, where only two hurricanes have made landfall since recordkeeping began in 1853.

MIAMI (AP) — Crews evacuated dozens of people from vulnerable locations in the northwestern Bahamas as Tropical Storm Nicole approached and residents of Florida braced for the storm, which could strengthen to a rare November hurricane. Nicole is the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a devastating Category 5 storm that hit in 2019. Nicole is then expected to strike storm-weary Florida on Wednesday night and move into Georgia on Thursday.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been elected Arkansas governor and will be the first woman to lead the state. Sanders on Tuesday defeated Democratic nominee Chris Jones in the race for governor in her predominantly Republican home state. Sanders will succeed fellow Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is barred by term limits from seeking reelection.

MIAMI (AP) — Subtropical Storm Nicole began strengthening and transitioning into a tropical storm as it churns toward the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic coastline. Jack Bevin, a senior forecaster at the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, says Nicole could become a “full-blown tropical storm" later Tuesday. A range of warnings and watches remain in place throughout the region.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A newly launched cargo capsule has run into trouble with a solar panel after liftoff. Only one of the two solar panels on the Northrop Grumman capsule opened successfully following Monday's predawn liftoff. NASA officials say the company has assured them there's enough power for Wednesday's rendezvous with the International Space Station. But NASA was still assessing the situation.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane watches have been posted for the northwestern Bahamas and Florida's Atlantic Coast as Subtropical Storm Nicole approaches, threatening to bring a “prolonged period of hazardous weather." The National Hurricane Center is now expecting Nicole to reach hurricane strength “given how warm the waters are." Hurricane specialist Phillippe Papin told The Associated Press that Nicole will still be far enough offshore Tuesday to avoid impacting Florida's Election Day voting.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — This week's total lunar eclipse is the last one for three years. Tuesday's total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North America in the predawn hours. Asia, Australia and the rest of the Pacific can catch it after sunset. Totality will last nearly 1 1/2 hours as Earth passes directly between the moon and sun. The so-called blood moon will appear red from the light of Earth's sunsets and sunrises.

IDABEL, Okla. (AP) — Residents in southeastern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas began assessing weather damage Saturday, working to recover and thankful to have survived after a storm stretching from Dallas to northwest Arkansas spawned tornadoes and produced flash flooding, killing at least two people, injuring others and leaving homes and buildings in ruins.