AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Putin agrees that US, Europe could offer NATO-style security guarantees to Ukraine, Trump envoy says

NEW YORK (AP) — Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Donald Trump that the United States and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the war, a U.S. official said Sunday.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who took part in the talks Friday at a military base in Alaska, said it “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that” and called it “game-changing.”

“We were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Witkoff offered few details on how such an arrangement would work. But it appeared to be a major shift for Putin and could serve as a workaround to his deep-seated objection to Ukraine’s potential NATO membership, a step that Kyiv has long sought.

It was expected to be a key topic Monday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and major European leaders meet with Trump at the White House to discuss ending the 3 1/2-year conflict.

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European leaders to join Ukraine’s Zelenskyy for meeting with Trump

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington to present a united front in talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine and firming up U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table.

Leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland are rallying around the Ukrainian president after his exclusion from Trump’s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy’s side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter.

“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.

“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said.

Putin agreed at his summit in Alaska with Trump that the U.S. and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war, special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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Israel’s growing frustration over the war in Gaza erupts in nationwide protests

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli protesters demanding a deal to free hostages in Gaza attempted to shut down the country Sunday in one of the largest and fiercest protests in 22 months of war. Organizers, representing the families of hostages, asserted that hundreds of thousands of people took part.

Frustration is growing in Israel over plans for a new military offensive in some of Gaza’s most populated areas. Many Israelis fear that could further endanger the remaining hostages. Twenty of the 50 who remain are believed to be alive.

“We live between a terrorist organization that holds our children and a government that refuses to release them for political reasons,” said Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is held in Gaza.

Even some former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs now call for a deal to end the fighting.

Protesters gathered at dozens of places including outside politicians’ homes, military headquarters and on major highways. They blocked lanes and lit bonfires. Some restaurants and theaters closed in solidarity. Police said they arrested 38 people.

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Air Canada suspends restart plans after flight attendants union defies return to work order

TORONTO (AP) — Air Canada said it suspended plans to restart operations on Sunday after the union representing 10,000 flight attendants said it will defy a return to work order. The strike was already affecting about 130,000 travelers around the world per day during the peak summer travel season.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered airline staff back to work by 2 p.m. Sunday after the government intervened and Air Canada said it planned to resume flights Sunday evening.

Canada’s largest airline now says it will resume flights Monday evening. Air Canada said in a statement that the union “illegally directed its flight attendant members to defy a direction from the Canadian Industrial Relations Board.”

“Our members are not going back to work,” Canadian Union of Public Employees national president Mark Hancock said outside Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. “We are saying no.”

Hancock ripped up a copy of the back-to-work order outside the airport’s departures terminal where union members were picketing Sunday morning. He said they won’t return Tuesday either.

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Black mayors of cities Trump decries as ‘lawless’ tout significant declines in violent crimes

As President Donald Trump declared Washington, D.C., a crime-ridden wasteland in need of federal intervention and threatened similar federal interventions in other Black-led cities, several mayors compared notes.

The president’s characterization of their cities contradicts what they began noticing last year: that they were seeing a drop in violent crime after a pandemic-era spike. In some cases the declines were monumental, due in large part to more youth engagement, gun buyback programs and community partnerships.

Now members of the African American Mayors Association are determined to stop Trump from burying accomplishments that they already felt were overlooked. And they’re using the administration’s unprecedented law enforcement takeover in the nation’s capital as an opportunity to disprove his narrative about some of the country’s greatest urban enclaves.

“It gives us an opportunity to say we need to amplify our voices to confront the rhetoric that crime is just running rampant around major U.S. cities. It’s just not true,” said Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah, Georgia, and president of the African American Mayors Association. “It’s not supported by any evidence or statistics whatsoever.”

After deploying the first of 800 National Guard members to Washington, the Republican president is setting his sights on other cities including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland, California, calling them crime-ridden and “horribly run.” One thing they all have in common: They’re led by Black mayors.

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Shooting in a crowded New York club leaves 3 dead, 9 wounded

NEW YORK (AP) — A club shooting in the New York City borough of Brooklyn early Sunday left three people dead and nine others wounded in a year of record low gun violence in the city.

Investigators believe up to four shooters opened fire at Taste of the City Lounge in Crown Heights after a dispute just before 3:30 a.m. The violence appeared to be gang-related, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.

There were no immediate arrests. At a news briefing, Tisch called the killings “a tragic, senseless act of violence.”

The crime is the second mass shooting within weeks in New York City during a year that has otherwise seen declining gun violence. On July 29, a man stalked through a Manhattan office tower with a rifle, wounding one person and killing four others. A New York City police officer was among those who died.

Mayor Eric Adams said both shootings reinforce “why we do this work of going after guns off our streets.”

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Hurricane Erin weakens to Category 3 as forecasters warn of storm’s rapid growth

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Erin weakened to a Category 3 hurricane on Sunday, its outer bands lashing the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, as forecasters warned of a growing risk of life-threatening surf and rip currents along the U.S. Eastern seaboard during the week from what is expected to become a very large hurricane.

While Erin’s maximum winds diminished Sunday, its overall size kept growing as forecasters issued tropical storm warnings for the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeast Bahamas. The hurricane’s outer bands pelted parts of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands with heavy rains and tropical-storm winds during the day.

The storm wasn’t expected to directly hit the U.S. East Coast, but by doubling or tripling in size its impacts threatened the North Carolina Outer Banks, the thin, low stretch of barrier islands off the mainland, that juts far out into the Atlantic, Dare County emergency officials said in declaring a state of emergency.

They ordered an evacuation of Hatteras Island starting Monday. Several days of heavy surf and high winds and waves could wash out parts of North Carolina Highway 12 running along the barrier islands that are a popular vacation destination, the National Weather Service said.

The center of the storm is forecast to stay at least 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the Outer Banks but will also bring rip tides all along the East Coast, officials said.

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Pakistan defends flood response after over 270 people killed in northwestern district

BUNER, Pakistan (AP) — Rescuers recovered dozens more bodies from the rubble of collapsed homes in a northwestern district of Pakistan, bringing the death toll to at least 274, as authorities defended their response to the flooding and said they did not need any foreign help at this point.

Heavy rains and flooding also killed dozens of people in neighboring Kashmir.

Mohammad Suhail, a spokesman for Pakistan’s emergency service, said 54 bodies were found in Buner, a mountainous area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and cloudbursts triggered massive flooding on Friday.

Suhail said villagers remain missing, and search efforts are focused on areas where homes were flattened by torrents of water that swept down from the mountains, carrying boulders that smashed into houses like explosions.

Authorities have warned of more deluges and possible landslides between now and Tuesday, urging local administrations to remain on alert. Higher-than-normal monsoon rains have lashed the country since June 26 and killed more than 600.

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Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivians headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential and congressional elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation’s long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades.

The election on Sunday is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable.

Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided. Polls show the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando “Tuto” Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat.

But a right-wing victory isn’t assured. Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling.

With the nation’s worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting for hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidized bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates are billing the race as a chance to alter the country’s destiny.

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Terence Stamp, British actor who portrayed General Zod in early Superman films, dies at 87

LONDON (AP) — Terence Stamp, the British actor who often played the role of a complex villain, including that of General Zod in the early Superman films, has died. He was 87.

His death on Sunday was disclosed in a death notice published online, prompting a wave of tributes from and an array of fans and those close to him within the industry, including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA.

The London-born Stamp started his film career with 1962’s seafaring “Billy Budd,” for which he earned Oscar and BAFTA award nominations.

His six decades in the business were peppered with highlights, including his touching portrayal of the transsexual Bernadette in 1994’s “The Adventure of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” the second of his two BAFTA nominations.

But it will be his portrayal of the bearded Zod in 1978’s “Superman” and its sequel “Superman II” two years later that most people associate with Stamp. As the Kryptonian arch enemy to Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel, Stamp introduced a darker, charming and vulnerable — more human — element to the franchise, one that’s been replicated in countless superhero movies ever since.