Serena Williams loses to Tomljanovic in US Open farewell

NEW YORK (AP) — Leave it to Serena Williams to not want to go quietly, to not want this match, this trip to the U.S. Open, this transcendent career of hers, to really, truly end.

Right down to what were, barring a change of heart, the final minutes of her quarter-century of excellence on the tennis court, and an unbending unwillingness to be told what wasn’t possible, Williams tried to mount one last classic comeback, earn one last vintage victory, with fans on their feet in a full Arthur Ashe Stadium, cellphone cameras at the ready.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion staved off five match points to prolong the three-hours-plus proceedings, but could not do more, and was eliminated from the U.S. Open in the third round by Ajla Tomljanovic 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-1 on Friday night in what is expected to be her final contest.

“I’ve been down before. ... I don’t really give up,” Williams said. “In my career, I’ve never given up. In matches, I don’t give up. Definitely wasn’t giving up tonight.”

She turns 41 this month and recently told the world that she is ready to start “evolving” away from her playing days — she expressed distaste for the word “retirement” — and while she remained purposely vague about whether this appearance at Flushing Meadows definitely would represent her last hurrah, everyone assumed it will be.

Trump search inventory reveals new details from FBI seizure

WASHINGTON (AP) — Along with highly classified government documents, the FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate found dozens of empty folders marked classified but with nothing inside and no explanation of what might have been there, according to a more detailed inventory of the seized material made public on Friday.

The agents also found more than 10,000 other government documents kept by Trump with no classification marked.

The inventory compiled by the Justice Department reveals in general terms the contents of 33 boxes and containers taken from Trump’s office and a storage room at Mar-a-Lago during the Aug. 8 search. Though the inventory does not describe the content of the documents, it shows the extent to which classified information — including material at the top-secret level — was stashed in boxes at the home and mixed among newspapers, magazines, clothing and other personal items.

And the empty folders raise the question of whether the government has recovered all of the classified papers that Trump kept after leaving the White House.

The inventory makes clear for the first time the volume of unclassified government documents at the home even though presidential records were to have been turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. The Archives had tried unsuccessfully for months to secure their return from Trump and then contacted the FBI after locating classified information in a batch of 15 boxes it received in January.

EXPLAINER: 5 key takeaways from the August jobs report

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's job market last month delivered what the Federal Reserve and nervous investors had been hoping for: A Goldilocks-style hiring report.

Job growth was solid — not too hot, not too cold. And more Americans began looking for work, which could ease worker shortages over time and defuse some of the inflationary pressures that the Fed has made its No. 1 mission.

Employers added 315,000 jobs, roughly what economists had expected, down from an average 487,000 a month over the past year. The unemployment rate reached 3.7%, its highest level since February. But it rose for a healthy reason: Hundreds of thousands of people returned to the job market, and some didn’t find work right away, which boosted the government's count of unemployed people.

The American economy has been a puzzle this year. Economic growth fell the first half of 2022, which, by some informal definitions, signals a recession.

But the job market is still surprisingly robust. Businesses remain desperate to find workers. They’ve posted more than 11 million job openings, meaning there are nearly two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.

Red flag laws get little use as shootings, gun deaths soar

Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' "red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.

It's a pattern that's played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.

An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar.

AP found such laws in 19 states and the District of Columbia were used to remove firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents. Experts called that woefully low and not nearly enough to make a dent in gun violence, considering the millions of firearms in circulation and countless potential warning signs law enforcement officers encounter from gun owners every day.

“It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple,” Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, who has studied red flag gun surrender orders across the nation, said of the AP tally. “It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.”

EXPLAINER: Mississippi capital's water woes are extensive

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's capital city is struggling with the near collapse of its water system, prompting emergency declarations from President Joe Biden and Gov. Tate Reeves.

Jackson has dangerously low water pressure this week, and many of the city's 150,000 residents have been without water flowing from their faucets.

Problems started days after torrential rain fell in central Mississippi, altering the quality of the raw water entering Jackson's treatment plants. That slowed the treatment process, depleted supplies in water tanks and caused a precipitous drop in pressure.

When water pressure drops, there’s a possibility that untreated groundwater can enter the water system through cracked pipes, so customers are told to boil water to kill potentially harmful bacteria.

But even before the rainfall, officials said some water pumps had failed and a treatment plant was using backup pumps. Jackson had already been under a boil-water notice for a month because the state health department had found cloudy water that could make people ill.

Border Patrol: 8 migrants found dead in Rio Grande at Texas

At least eight migrants were found dead in the Rio Grande after dozens attempted a hazardous crossing near Eagle Pass, Texas, officials said Friday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials made the discovery Thursday while responding to a large group of people crossing the river following days of heavy rains that had resulted in particularly swift currents. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered two others, according to a CBP statement.

The agency said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody. Officials on both sides of the border continue searching for any possible victims, the CBP said.

CPD did not say what country or countries the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on the rescue or search. Local agencies in Texas that were involved did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.

The Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley a distant second at about 35,000.

Northern California wildfire burns homes, causes injuries

WEED, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving wildfire in rural Northern California injured several people Friday, destroyed multiple homes and forced thousands of residents to flee, jamming roadways at the start of a sweltering Labor Day weekend.

The blaze dubbed the Mill Fire started on or near the property of Roseburg Forest Products, a plant that manufactures wood veneers. It quickly burned through homes, pushed by 35-mph (56-kph) winds, and by evening had engulfed 4 square miles (10.3 square kilometers) of ground.

Annie Peterson said she was sitting on the porch of her home near the Roseburg facility when “all of a sudden we heard a big boom and all that smoke was just rolling over toward us.”

Very quickly her home and about a dozen others were on fire. She said members of her church helped evacuate her and her son, who is immobile. She said the scene of smoke and flames looked like “the world was coming to an end.”

Many places in the area were also without power. About 9,000 customers, many of them in Weed, were hit with electrical outages shortly before 1 p.m., according to electric power company PacifiCorp, which said they were due to the wildfire.

Russia’s Gazprom keeps gas pipeline to Germany switched off

BERLIN (AP) — Europe’s energy crisis loomed larger Friday after Russian energy giant Gazprom said it couldn't resume the supply of natural gas through a major pipeline to Germany for now. The company cited what it said was a need for urgent maintenance work to repair key components — in an announcement made just hours before it had been due to restart deliveries.

The Russian state-run energy company had shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday for what it said would be three days of maintenance.

It said in a social media post Friday evening that it had identified “malfunctions” of a turbine and added that the pipeline would not work unless those were eliminated.

The move was the latest development in a saga in which Gazprom has advanced technical problems as the reason for reducing gas flows through Nord Stream 1 — explanations that German officials have rejected as a cover for a political power play following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

European utilities have scrambled to find additional supply during the summer months to get ready for the winter’s heating demands, buying expensive liquefied gas that comes by ship, while additional supplies have come by pipeline from Norway and Azerbaijan.

Apparent assassination attempt against VP roils Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — As Argentina’s powerful Vice President Cristina Fernández stepped from her car outside her apartment building and began shaking hands with a throng of well-wishers, a man pushed forward with a gun, pointed it just inches from her face and pulled the trigger with a distinct click.

The loaded weapon evidently jammed.

Fernández's security detail seized the gunman and took him away, and the 69-year-old former president of Argentina was unhurt. But the apparent assassination attempt against the deeply divisive figure Thursday night shook Argentina — a country with a history of political violence — and worsened tensions in the sharply divided nation.

The gunman was identified as Fernando André Sabag Montiel, a 35-year-old street vendor and Brazilian citizen who has lived in Argentina since 1998 and had no criminal record, authorities said. He was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Sabag Montiel wielded a .38-caliber semiautomatic handgun that was “capable of firing” and was “operating normally,” according to a judicial official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Prosecutor: Trump ally arranged meeting with poll worker

ATLANTA (AP) — After the 2020 election, a Georgia poll worker who was falsely accused of voting fraud by former President Donald Trump was pressured and threatened with imprisonment during a meeting arranged with the help of an ally of the Trump campaign, a prosecutor said in a court filing Friday.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia. As part of the probe, Willis filed court documents on Friday seeking testimony from Willie Lewis Floyd, a director of Black Voices for Trump, a group aimed at increasing the former president's support among Black voters.

In December 2021, Floyd was asked to arrange a meeting to discuss an “immunity deal” with Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker whom Trump and his allies falsely accused of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase, according to Willis.

Willis said Floyd arranged for Trevian Kutti — whom Willis described as a “purported publicist” based in Chicago — to meet with Freeman. The prosecutor has previously sought Kutti's testimony.

Kutti told Freeman that “an armed squad" of federal officers would approach her and her family within 48 hours and that Kutti had access to “very high-profile people that can make particular things happen in order to defend yourself and your family," according to Willis' court filing.

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