PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) — Rescue crews piloted boats and waded through inundated streets Thursday to save thousands of Floridians trapped amid flooded homes and shattered buildings left by Hurricane Ian, which crossed into the Atlantic Ocean and churned toward South Carolina.

Photos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for popular hoaxes during massive storms. But a cellphone video filmed during Hurricane Ian’s assault on southwest Florida isn’t just another fish story.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Ian destroyed a cross-section of Florida, trapping people in flooded homes, forcing patients from nursing homes and hospitals, cutting off a popular barrier island and obliterating a historic waterfront pier. Nearly 2.7 million people lost power as rain fell and waters rose.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — At least six adults were wounded in a shooting at a school campus in Oakland on Wednesday, with at least some of the victims found inside the school, authorities said.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Ian has made landfall in southwestern Florida as a massive Category 4 storm. About 2.5 million people had been ordered to evacuate the area before the storm hit the coast on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. The storm was heading inland, where it was expected to weaken, but residents in central Florida could still experience hurricane-force winds.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Some historical battle re-enactors in New York are holding their musket fire because of worries over the state’s new gun rules. The law that went into effect this month declares parks, government property, and a long list of other “sensitive” places off limits to guns. The law was geared more toward semiautomatic pistols than flintlock weapons, but re-enactors who fear they risk arrest if they publicly re-stage long-ago battles from the colonial era to the Civil War are staying off the field.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., (AP) — The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Ian has rapidly intensified off Florida, gaining top winds of 155 mph, just shy of the most devastating Category 5 hurricane status. Ian is pushing a storm surge that could cause catastrophic damage along the state’s heavily populated Gulf Coast. Forecasters say the Fort Myers area between Naples and Sarasota is at highest risk.

A libertarian group in California filed a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s plan for student debt cancellation on Tuesday, calling it an illegal overreach that would increase state tax burdens for some Americans who get their debt forgiven.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth. The galactic slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the space rock at 14,000 mph. Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.

NEW YORK (AP) — Civil rights lawyers and Democratic senators are pushing for legislation that would limit U.S. law enforcement agencies’ ability to buy cellphone tracking tools to follow people’s whereabouts, including back years in time, and sometimes without a search warrant.

HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Ian tore into western Cuba on Tuesday as a major hurricane, with nothing to stop it from intensifying into a Category 4 storm before it hits Florida on Wednesday. Ian made landfall at 4:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province, where officials set up 55 shelters, evacuated 50,000 people, rushed in emergency personnel, and took steps to protect crops in Cuba’s main tobacco-growing region.

HAVANA (AP) — Forecasters say Hurricane Ian is nearing Cuba on a track to strike Florida in as a Category 4 as early as Wednesday. Ian is already getting stronger and is forecast to move quickly over Cuba's western Pinar del Rio province on Monday. Then it will turn northward and slow down over warm Gulf of Mexico waters, conditions ripe for brewing the strongest hurricanes

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Authorities and residents in Florida are keeping a cautious eye on Tropical Storm Ian as it rumbles through the Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center said Sunday it expects Ian to rapidly strengthen and become a major hurricane by Monday as it passes over Cuba. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a statewide emergency, expanding an order from Friday that had covered two dozen counties.

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona judge says the state can enforce a near-total ban on abortions that had been blocked for nearly 50 years. Friday’s ruling by a judge in Tucson came after the state’s attorney general sought an order lifting an injunction that was issued shortly after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA is skipping next week's launch attempt of its new moon rocket because of a tropical storm that's expected to become a major hurricane. It's the third delay in the past month for the lunar-orbiting test flight featuring mannequins but no astronauts. Hydrogen leaks and other technical problems caused the previous scrubs.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft is about to clobber a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away. The spacecraft named Dart will zero in on the asteroid Monday, intent on slamming it head-on at 14,000 mph. The impact should be just enough to nudge the asteroid into a slightly tighter orbit around its companion space rock.

CHICAGO (AP) — Officials say eight people were rushed to hospitals after being injured when an explosion Tuesday tore through the top floor of a Chicago apartment building. The explosion at the four-story, 36-unit apartment building occurred at about 9 a.m., officials said. The department conducted a search of the building and found no other victims underneath the debris. No cause of the explosion had been determined

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are pumping an unprecedented amount of money into advertising related to abortion. The spending underscores how central the message is to the party in the final weeks before the midterm elections. The most intense period of campaigning is only just beginning, and Democrats have already invested more than an estimated $124 million this year in television advertising referencing abortion. That’s twice as much money as the Democrats’ next top issue and almost 20 times more than Democrats spent on abortion-related ads in the 2018 midterms.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Authorities are making contact with some of the most remote villages in the United States to determine the need for food and water and assess damage from a massive weekend storm that flooded communities dotting Alaska’s vast western coast. No one has been reported injured or killed during the massive storm — the remnants of a typhoon that traveled north through the Bering Strait over the weekend.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Flood waters are receding in parts of western Alaska battered by the worst storm in a half century. The storm left behind debris flung by powerful Bering Sea waves, the remnants of Typhoon Merbok, which was weakening Sunday as it moved north from the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea.

HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico's southwest coast on Sunday as it unleashed landslides, knocked the power grid out and ripped up asphalt from roads and flung the pieces around.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Just hours after a Montana judge blocked health officials from enforcing a state rule that would prevent transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificate, the state said it would defy the order. District Court Judge Michael Moses chided attorneys for the state on Thursday over the rule. He said it circumvented his April order that temporarily blocked a 2021 Montana law that made it harder to change birth certificates.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana judge has turned down a request to block enforcement of the state’s abortion ban just hours after it took effect. The ruling came Thursday in a lawsuit filed by abortion clinic operators who argue that the state constitution protects access to the procedure.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — After nearly two months of being forced to boil their water before drinking it or using it to brush teeth, people Mississippi’s largest city were told Thursday that water from the tap is safe to consume — but Jackson’s water system still needs big repairs that the mayor says the cash-strapped city cannot afford on its own.

MIAMI (AP) — The National Hurricane Center in Miami says Tropical Storm Fiona is on a path to threaten the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico this weekend. Fiona took shape Wednesday night as the season's sixth named storm, centered east of the Leeward Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.