AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Fires and others disasters are increasing in Hawaii, according to this AP data analysis

KIHEI, Hawaii (AP) — Hurricane-fueled flash floods and mudslides. Lava that creeps into neighborhoods. Fierce drought that materializes in a flash and lingers. Earthquakes. And now, deadly fires that burn block after historic block.

Hawaii is increasingly under siege from disasters, and what is escalating most is wildfire, according to an Associated Press analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency records. That reality can clash with the vision of Hawaii as paradise. It is, in fact, one of the riskiest states in the country.

“Hawaii is at risk of the whole panoply of climate and geological disasters,” said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the international disasters database kept at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. She listed storms, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.

Hawaii has been in more danger lately. This month alone, the federal government declared six different fire disasters in Hawaii — the same number recorded in the state from 1953 to 2003.

Across the United States, the amount of acres burned by wildfires about tripled from the 1980s to now, with a drier climate from global warming a factor, according to the federal government’s National Climate Assessment and the National Interagency Fire Center. In Hawaii, the burned area increased more than five times from the 1980s to now, according to figures from the University of Hawaii Manoa.

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Schools reopening, traffic moving again in signs of recovery from Maui fires that killed 110

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Public schools on Maui started the process of reopening and traffic resumed on a major road in signs of recovery a week after wildfires demolished a historic town and killed at least 110 people, while the head of the island’s emergency agency said he had “no regret” that sirens weren’t sounded to warn people about the encroaching flames.

At least three schools untouched by flames in Lahaina, where entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash, were still being assessed after sustaining wind damage, Hawaii Department of Education superintendent Keith Hayashi said.

“There’s still a lot of work to do, but overall the campuses and classrooms are in good condition structurally, which is encouraging,” Hayashi said in a video update. “We know the recovery effort is still in the early stages, and we continue to grieve the many lives lost.”

Elsewhere crews cleaned up ash and debris at schools and tested air and water quality. Displaced students who enroll at those campuses can access services such as meals and counseling, Hayashi said. The education department is also offering counseling for students, family members and staff.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency opened its first disaster recovery center on Maui, “an important first step” toward helping residents get information about assistance, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Wednesday. They also can go there for updates on aid applications.

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US women’s national team coach Vlatko Andonovski resigns after early World Cup exit, AP source says

U.S. women’s national team coach Vlatko Andonovski has resigned, a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The move comes less than two weeks after the Americans were knocked out of the Women’s World Cup earlier than ever before.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the move had not been officially announced. An announcement was expected Thursday.

The four-time tournament champions struggled throughout the World Cup. A victory over Vietnam to kick off the group stage was followed by a pair of draws against Netherlands and Portugal — barely enough to get the team into the knockout stage,

The Americans played well in the Round of 16 against Sweden, but ultimately fell on penalties after a scoreless tie. The U.S. scored just four goals over the course of the tournament.

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Veto overridden: Ban on gender-affirming care for minors takes effect in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Transgender youth in North Carolina lost access Wednesday to gender-affirming medical treatments after the Republican-led General Assembly overrode the governor’s vetoes of that legislation and other bills touching on gender in sports and LGBTQ+ instruction in the classroom.

GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate enacted — over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s opposition — a bill barring medical professionals from providing hormone therapy, puberty-blocking drugs and surgical gender-transition procedures to anyone under 18, with limited exceptions.

The law takes effect immediately. But minors who had begun treatment before Aug. 1 may continue receiving that care if their doctors deem it medically necessary and their parents consent.

North Carolina becomes the 22nd state to enact legislation restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. But most face legal challenges, and local LGBTQ+ rights advocates vow to take the ban to court. The Senate voted 27-18 to complete the veto override after the House voted 74-45 earlier. Two House Democrats joined all present Republicans in supporting the override bid.

Democratic Sen. Lisa Grafstein, North Carolina’s only out LGBTQ+ state senator, said the gender-affirming care bill “may be the most heartbreaking bill in a truly heartbreaking session.”

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Georgia prosecutor seeks March trial date for Trump and 18 others in election case

ATLANTA (AP) — The prosecutor in Atlanta who obtained an indictment this week against former President Donald Trump and 18 others wants to take the case to trial in March.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in a proposed scheduling order filed with the court Wednesday that she wants the trial to start on March 4.

That would have the trial starting a day before Super Tuesday, when the most delegates are at stake in the primary contest to decide the next Republican presidential nominee. Roughly 14 primaries are set to be held across the country, from California and Texas to Massachusetts and Maine. Trump is currently his party’s dominant frontrunner.

Trump and 18 others were indicted Monday by a Fulton County grand jury. They are accused of committing various crimes as part of a scheme to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Willis is also proposing that arraignments for the defendants happen the week of Sept. 5. She had already set a deadline of noon Aug. 25 for all the defendants to turn themselves in at the Fulton County Jail to be booked. That would seem to suggest that Trump and the others could be making two trips to Georgia in the coming weeks, first to surrender and then later for an arraignment.

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Americans are divided along party lines over Trump’s actions in election cases, AP-NORC poll shows

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of President Donald Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, a new poll shows, with about half saying his alleged attempt to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote count was illegal.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted before Monday’s charges in the Georgia case, also shows that about half of Americans — 53% — approve of the Justice Department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election.

The poll finds 85% of Democrats approve of the criminal charges brought Aug. 2 by Special Counsel Jack Smith, compared with 47% of independents and just 16% of Republicans. Overall, 3 in 10 Americans disapprove, including about two-thirds of Republicans.

The survey suggests that the unprecedented indictments of a former president have done little to shake up a fundamental divide in the electorate: The majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, but he remains popular within the GOP.

Overall, 35% of Americans have a favorable view of Trump and 62% unfavorable. Among Republicans, though, seven in 10 view the former president favorably, and about 6 in 10 say they want him to make another run for the White House.

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Nicaraguan government seizes highly regarded university from Jesuits

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s government has confiscated a prestigious Jesuit-run university alleging it was a “center of terrorism,” the college said Wednesday in announcing the latest in a series of actions by authorities against the Catholic Church and opposition figures.

The University of Central America in Nicaragua, which was a hub for 2018 protests against the regime of President Daniel Ortega, called the terrorism accusation unfounded and the seizure a blow to academia in Nicaragua.

The government did not confirm the confiscation or comment on the Jesuits’ statement.

The Jesuit order, known as the Society of Jesus, said it received a judicial order Tuesday notifying it of the confiscation. It said the government seized all the university’s property, buildings and bank accounts.

“With this confiscation, the Ortega government has buried freedom of thought in Nicaragua,” said María Asunción Moreno, who was a professor at the university until she was forced into exile in 2021.

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Pig kidney works in a donated body for over a month, a step toward animal-human transplants

NEW YORK (AP) — Surgeons transplanted a pig’s kidney into a brain-dead man and for over a month it’s worked normally — a critical step toward an operation the New York team hopes to eventually try in living patients.

Scientists around the country are racing to learn how to use animal organs to save human lives, and bodies donated for research offer a remarkable rehearsal.

The latest experiment announced Wednesday by NYU Langone Health marks the longest a pig kidney has functioned in a person, albeit a deceased one -– and it’s not over. Researchers are set to track the kidney’s performance for a second month.

“Is this organ really going to work like a human organ? So far it’s looking like it is,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s transplant institute, told The Associated Press.

“It looks even better than a human kidney,” Montgomery said on July 14 as he replaced a deceased man’s own kidneys with a single kidney from a genetically modified pig — and watched it immediately start producing urine.

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An appeals court backs some abortion drug limits, pending the Supreme Court’s approval

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mail-order access to a drug used in the most common form of abortion in the U.S. would end under a federal appeals court ruling issued Wednesday that cannot take effect until the Supreme Court weighs in.

The decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned part of a lower court ruling that would have revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. But it left intact part of the ruling that would end the availability of the drug by mail, allow it to be used through only the seventh week of pregnancy rather than the 10th, and require that it be administered in the presence of a physician.

Those restrictions won’t take effect right away because the Supreme Court previously intervened to keep the drug available during the legal fight.

The panel’s ruling would reverse changes the FDA made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.

“In loosening mifepristone’s safety restrictions, FDA failed to address several important concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote for the panel. She was joined by Judge Cory Wilson. Judge James Ho dissented, arguing to fully uphold a Texas-based federal judge’s April ruling that would revoke the drug’s approval, which the FDA granted in 2000.

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Devastated Tuohys ready to end conservatorship for Michael Oher, lawyers say

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A prominent Memphis couple with a longstanding relationship to former NFL player Michael Oher want to end a conservatorship that he’s challenging in court, their lawyers said.

Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy intend to enter into a consent order to end the conservatorship, lawyer Randall Fishman told reporters on Wednesday.

Oher filed a petition Monday in a Tennessee probate court accusing the Tuohys of lying to him by having him sign papers making them his conservators rather than his adoptive parents nearly two decades ago.

Oher, now 37, wants a full accounting of assets considering his life story produced millions of dollars, though he says he received nothing from the Oscar-nominated movie “The Blind Side.” He accuses the Tuohys of falsely representing themselves as his adoptive parents, saying that he discovered in February 2023 that the conservatorship was not the arrangement he thought it was — and that it provided him no familial relationship to the Tuohys.

But the Tuohys’ attorneys said Oher knew very well that he had not been adopted. Fishman said Oher mentioned the Tuohys being conservators for him three times in “I Beat The Odds: From Homeless, To The Blind Side,” Oher’s first book in 2011.