U.S. officials are vowing to unleash an unprecedented amount of federal disaster aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian as the death toll rises amid recovery efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell said Sunday that the government is ready to provide help days after Ian came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a deadly path of destruction through Florida and into the Carolinas. The monster storm killed at least 54 people, including 47 in Florida, and hundreds of thousands of people and businesses remain without power. Officials warn that flooding could still worsen in parts of Florida because all the rain that fell has nowhere to go, with waterways already overflowing.

King Charles III has decided not to attend the international climate change summit in Egypt next month, fueling speculation that the new monarch will have to rein in his environmental activism now that he has ascended the throne. The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the decision came after Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss objected to Charles attending the conference, known as COP27, when she met with the king last month at Buckingham Palace. But a member of Truss’ Cabinet said the government and palace were in agreement about the decision and suggestions to the contrary were untrue. Charles has been a champion of environmental issues for decades.

Local election officials across the United States are bracing for a wave of confrontations on Election Day in November. Emboldened Republican poll watchers, including many who embrace former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, are expected to flood election offices and polling places. The Republican Party and conservative activists have been holding poll watcher training sessions, but in many states they've barred the media from observing those sessions. Some Republican-led states passed laws after the 2020 election that require local election offices to allow poll watchers and give them expanded access to observe and challenge ballots.

Jimmy Carter, already the longest-living U.S. president in history, turned 98 on Saturday. It's another milestone for the 39th president and day to spend with family and friends in Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he and his wife, 95-year-old Rosalynn, were born. And the Carter Center founded by the Carters established together in 1982 is marking 40 years of promoting democracy and advancing public health internationally. Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, describes his grandfather as content with his life and legacy. The younger Carter said the former president was planning a relatively quiet day that includes watching his favorite baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, in a key evening matchup against the New York Mets.

Hurricane Ian ravaged coastal towns in southwest Florida. But the impact has not been confined to the beaches and tourist towns. The rains from the storm's deluge are flowing into inland towns not usually part of the hurricane warnings. In the Sarasota suburb of North Port, water levels have gone up significantly, turning roads into canals, reaching mailboxes, flooding SUVs and trucks, blocking the main access to the interstate and leaving families trapped. Now, as days go by, they are starting to run out of food and water. It’s the rising rivers that cause the flooding, and authorities say that flooding now poses a danger to those nearby.

Experts say that Hurricane Ian is shining a spotlight once again on the vulnerability of the nation’s barrier islands and the increasing cost of people living on them. Florida's Sanibel Island was hard hit by the storm. Homes were destroyed. Two people have been confirmed dead. And Sanibel's lone bridge to the mainland collapsed. Barrier island communities like Sanibel anchor tourist economies that provide crucial tax dollars. But the cost of rebuilding them is often high because they’re home to many high-value properties. Jesse Keenan is a real estate professor at Tulane University. He questions whether such communities can keep rebuilding as hurricanes become more and more destructive from climate change.

The Supreme Court begins a new term on Monday at a time of diminished public confidence and justices sparring openly over the institution’s legitimacy. The court seems poised to push American law to the right on issues of race, voting and the environment. Back in June, the conservative majority overturned nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights. Now, the court is diving back in with an aggressive agenda that appears likely to split the six conservative justices from the three liberals. Joining the nine-member court is new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has whipsawed his way through the national conversation this month, first by putting migrants on planes or buses to Democratic strongholds and then shifting to a more traditional role of crisis manager as Hurricane Ian barreled into his state. He's been forced to partner with a president he has spent the better part of two years demeaning. He’s also gladly accepting the type of federal disaster aid he rejected as a member of Congress. But the past two weeks offer insight into how DeSantis might govern if he wins another term as governor or advances in a presidential contest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed treaties to illegally annex parts of Ukraine, while Kyiv has submitted an “accelerated” application to join NATO. At the Kremlin, Putin and the pro-Moscow heads of the four Ukrainian regions inked the treaties in a sharp escalation of the war. The signing came three days after the end of Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that Kyiv and the West dismissed as a bare-faced land grab, held at gunpoint and based on lies. NATO's chief said the war is at “a pivotal moment,” and that Putin’s decision was “the most serious escalation" since the war began. Russia pounded Ukrainian cities, with one strike in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital killing 30 people and wounding 88.

Saturday marks five years since a gunman rained bullets into an outdoor country music festival crowd on the Las Vegas Strip. The grim drumbeat of mass shootings has only continued in the years since, from New York to Colorado to Texas. Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox oversees a database maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University and says there's also been a horrifying uptick in the number of mass shootings with an especially high number of people killed. The news takes a toll on survivors of the Las Vegas slaying, but a strong sense of community has also developed.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down a constitutional right to abortion and sending the issue to the states has groups on both sides of the debate focusing more than ever on races this fall for state supreme courts. Whether abortion access is maintained, restricted or eliminated in any state could depend on whether a state's high court has a majority of Democratic or Republican justices. Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio are among the states where the races are drawing heavy interest and spending as the midterm elections approach.

Ian’s fierce winds howled through a Gulf coast trailer park with such force that residents felt they would be lifted off the ground, even blown away. Now many homes in North Fort Myers, Florida, are crumpled and splintered. Hurricane Ian bent their metal roofs and splintered wooden structures. James Burdette is a carpenter who moved to Florida from Virginia a few years back. He said he literally watched his house disappear. Burdette sat back on a brown leather chair Thursday surveying debris around him. Now he and his wife don’t know what they will do, and have no plans where to go next.

Hurricane Ian has regained some strength after exiting Florida and taking aim at South Caroline. The National Hurricane Center said the storm spent only a few hours as a weakened tropical storm over Florida before it spun up into a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Rescue crews were wading through water and using boats to rescue Florida residents stranded in the wake of Hurricane Ian. The Orange County fire department posted photos Thursday of crews in a flooded neighborhood in the Orlando area. At least one person in Florida was confirmed dead on the state's eastern coast. Forecasters have issued a hurricane warning for coastal South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina ahead of another landfall Friday.

President Joe Biden says the entire United States "hurts" along with the people of Florida after Hurricane Ian flooded communities across the state, knocked out power and raised fear of a "substantial loss of life.” Biden went to the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a briefing on federal response efforts. The president says the storm could end up as the “deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history.” He also says he intends to visit Florida as soon as “conditions allow." And he'll go to Puerto Rico, which was ravaged by Hurricane Fiona before Ian struck Florida.

Six Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration to try and halt its plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of Americans. They're accusing it of overstepping its executive powers. It’s at least the second legal challenge this week to the sweeping proposal laid out by President Joe Biden in late August, when he said his administration would cancel up to $20,000 in education debt for millions of borrowers. The announcement became immediate political fodder ahead of the November midterms while fueling arguments from conservatives about the program’s legality.

A woman has described a harrowing ordeal in her home as Hurricane Ian passed over. Valerie Bartley said Thursday that her neighborhood in the Fort Myers area had been under an evacuation order but that she felt it was too late to leave earlier in the week with no plans in place. She and her husband had to push their dining room table against a sliding door leading to the back patio because they felt the wind was going to blow it into the house. Bartley says her 4-year-old daughter gave her courage by grabbing her hand and saying that she was scared too, but that it would be OK.