COLU @ CONCEPTS

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Conor McGregor has been kept pretty much under wraps ever since his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. was announced, emerging occasionally to trash Mayweather only to disappear again behind the closed doors of the UFC training center. It’s not by accident. The biggest selling point of the spectacle that is Saturday night’s 154-pound fight is the unknown. Is McGregor good enough to land a big punch on Mayweather? Did he acquire enough boxing skills in just a few short months to make what should be a lopsided fight competitive? Inquiring minds want to know, and there are enough of them to make this the most watched fight in history. Some 50 million people in the U.S. alone are expected to gather with friends and family to see it all unfold. “I will be the king of both sports,” McGregor crowed. “I’m already the king of fighting, I’ll soon be the king of boxing.” Not so fast, said Mayweather, who comes from a boxing family and famously began throwing punches...

PANCHKULA, India (AP) — Security forces on Saturday patrolled the streets of a north Indian state where rampaging mobs left at least 30 people dead and more than 250 others injured, after a court declared a quasi-religious sect leader guilty of raping two of his followers. Authorities lifted the curfew in the town of Panchkula, the main trouble spot, after the night passed relatively peacefully and the area was cleared of protesters, said police officer Pradeep Kumar. On Friday, mobs set fire to government buildings and attacked police and TV journalists in the town, smashing the windshields of news vans and breaking broadcast equipment. Police initially used tear gas and water cannons and then fired bullets in the air in an attempt to control the surging mobs as they vandalized bus stations and government vehicles. Haryana state police chief B S Sandhu said 28 people died, six of them due to bullet wounds, and more than 250 others were injured. More than 1,000 of the ...

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — An attack by ethnic Rohingya militants in western Myanmar left 12 security personnel and 77 Rohingya Muslims dead in a dramatic escalation of communal violence that has plagued the region, as the United States urged authorities to avoid a response that would inflame the tensions. The office of the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said Friday that military and border police responded to the attacks by launching “clearance operations.” Police fought off groups of as many as 100 Rohingya attackers armed with guns, machetes and homemade grenades. The captured weapons were shown in photos posted online by the government. A witness in Maungdaw township in Rakhine state, contacted by phone, said soldiers entered her village at about 10 a.m. Friday, burned homes and property, and shot dead at least 10 people. The witness, who asked to be identified by her nickname, Emmar, because of fear of retribution, said villagers fled in many directions but mostl...

HOUSTON (AP) — The Latest on Hurricane Harvey as it reaches the Texas coast (all times local): 10 p.m. Hurricane Harvey has landed. The National Hurricane Center says the eye of the Category 4 hurricane made landfall about 10 p.m. Friday about 30 miles east-northeast of Corpus Christi between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, Texas, bringing with it 130 mph (215 kmh) sustained winds and flooding rains. The storm quickly grew Thursday from a tropical depression into a Category 1 hurricane, and then developed into a Category 2 storm early Friday. By Friday afternoon, it had become a Category 3 storm before strengthening to a Category 4. Harvey is the first Category 4 hurricane to hit the Texas coast since Hurricane Carla in 1961. ___ This item corrects 30 mph to 30 miles in 2nd paragraph. ___ 9:15 p.m. President Donald Trump says he has signed a disaster declaration for Texas as Hurricane Harvey nears on the middle Texas coast. Trump announced his declaration i...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the early pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll music, but he doesn’t understand why his contributions to country music haven’t been recognized by the Country Music Hall of Fame. Now 81, Lewis said that when he first came to Nashville from Louisiana, he was advised to pick up a guitar instead of playing the piano. “I was trying to get a record out and get my start in the business and they really didn’t any part of rock n’ roll,” Lewis said in an interview Thursday in Nashville, where he was being honored by artists such as George Strait, Kris Kristofferson, Chris Stapleton and Lee Ann Womack during the live concert series Skyville Live. He quickly found fame under the guidance of Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis, where he played alongside Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash in the now famous Million Dollar Quartet. His outrageous talent, energy and ego were showcased on his early hits like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Wh...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two right-wing rallies planned for the weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area were canceled Friday, with organizers citing threats from left-wing agitators, but local officials said they remained concerned about the potential for violence. A Saturday “freedom rally” planned near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was canceled by the group Patriot Prayer, which said it would hold a news conference at a city park instead. Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson said his followers would instead attend an anti-Marxist rally in nearby Berkeley on Sunday, but a short time later the organizer of that rally called it off. “I am asking that no one come to my event,” Amber Cummings said in a lengthy statement issued via Facebook. She said she had “grave concerns for the safety of the people attending my event.” Cummings said her rally was “to speak out against the political violence happening to people who do not agree” with left-wing ideology, and that the me...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump started as the most unpopular new president in the history of modern polling. After seven months, things have only gotten worse. Plunging into undesirably uncharted territory, Trump is setting records with his dismally low approval ratings, including the lowest mark ever for a president in his first year. In fact, with four months left in the year, Trump has already spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president. At 34 percent, his current approval rating is worse than former President Barack Obama’s ever was. Trump’s early descent in the polls defies some longstanding patterns about how Americans view their president. Such plunges are often tied to external forces that the president only partially controls, such as a sluggish economy or an all-consuming international crisis. In Trump’s case, the economy is humming and the foreign crises have been kept to a minimum. Americans also tend to be optimistic about their ne...

Official: Embattled ex-PM flees Thailand ahead of verdict BANGKOK (AP) — Facing a possible 10-year jail term, former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra fled the country ahead of a court verdict her supporters say was politically motivated, a senior member of her party said. Yingluck’s whereabouts were not immediately known Saturday, but local media cited anonymous officials as saying she traveled by land to Cambodia then flew to Dubai to join her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra — another exiled former premier whose government, like hers, was toppled in a military coup. An official of Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party, who is close to the Shinawatra family, told The Associated Press she was no longer in Thailand. The official gave no other details, and declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. Yingluck, who became Thailand’s first female prime minister when her party swept elections in 2011, is accused of negligence in overseeing a money-losin...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro vowed Friday to prosecute for treason opponents he accused of being behind sweeping U.S. financial sanctions that will strain relations between the countries and make it harder for the socialist leader to raise badly needed cash. Maduro accused President Donald Trump of trampling on international law and relations with Latin America by taking actions that he said would cause “great damage” to the Venezuelan oil economy as well as American investors who own the country’s bonds. He singled out the president of Venezuela’s congress, Julio Borges, as being the “mastermind” of the financial and economic “blockade” and called on the government-stacked supreme court and a new, all-powerful constitutional assembly to initiate proceedings against opponents who have lobbied in favor of the sanctions. “You’ve got to be a big traitor to your country to ask for sanctions against Venezuela,” Maduro said in a televised appearanc...