National

Hurricane Ian may be long gone from Florida, but the job of restoring power and searching for anyone still inside flooded or damaged homes presses on. About 400,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity Tuesday in Florida and it will be the weekend before most power is restored. Meanwhile, the much weakened storm isn't finished. Officials warned that Ian's remnants could still cause coastal flooding from Long Island, New York, south to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Eighty-four deaths have been blamed on Ian, including 75 in Florida, five in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia. Authorities say the death toll could rise as crews continue searching homes in the hardest-hit areas.

The tumultuous saga of Elon Musk’s on-again off-again purchase of Twitter has taken a turn toward a conclusion. The mercurial Tesla CEO proposed to buy the company at the originally agreed-on price of $44 billion. Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter that the company disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It comes less than two weeks before a trial between the two parties is scheduled to start in Delaware. In a statement, Twitter said it intends to close the deal at $54.20 per share. Trading in Twitter’s stock had been halted for much of the day pending release of the news. It resumed trading late Tuesday and soared 22% to close at $52.

As Hurricane Ian flooded Naples, Florida, one man went to rescue his 86-year-old mom from her home after she had refused to evacuate. He sent photos and short videos to his family, letting them know he was OK. That's how Johnny Lauder ended up unintentionally documented the whole rescue. His mom Karen had lost a leg and requires a wheelchair. As the waters rose, she called her son for help. Lauder swam, waded and walked about a half mile to her. Several hours later, the water subsided enough for him to push her through the streets to safety.

Police say a California serial killer appears to be “on a mission” throughout the fatal shooting of six men and the wounding of one woman. Ballistics tests and some video evidence have linked the crimes in Stockton and Oakland, about 70 miles apart. Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said Tuesday: “We don’t know what the motive is. What we do believe is that it’s mission-oriented.” Authorities last week announced that five men in Stockton had been slain in recent months, ambushed and shot to death alone in the dark. Police said late Monday that two additional cases from last year have been tied to those killings. There is a $125,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

As California’s drought deepens, more rural communities are running out of water. Heavy pumping is depleting groundwater supplies that aren’t being replenished by rain and snowmelt. More than 1,200 wells have run dry this year statewide, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year, according to state data. The groundwater crisis is most severe in the San Joaquin Valley, the country’s most productive agricultural region, where farmers rely more heavily on groundwater because they aren’t getting much water from the state’s depleted reservoirs.

A county commission in central New Mexico is seeking to remove its top local elections regulator from office just five weeks before Election Day, citing allegations that she improperly certified vote-counting equipment. Torrance County is among a handful of New Mexico counties grappling with simmering mistrust and conspiracy theories about voting systems after former President Donald Trump lost re-election in 2020. State and local authorities say Otero County Clerk Yvonne Otero pre-signed certification papers for ballot-counting machines before the equipment was tested, without ever attending the inspection of machines. Otero could not be reached immediately. The county is repeating its inspection of voting equipment.