COLU @ CONCEPTS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 U.S. victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top U.S. diplomat has called them “health attacks.” New details learned by The Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling U.S. officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up. “None of this has a reasonable explanation,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there. “It’s jus...

PFORZHEIM, Germany (AP) — A nationalist party that wants Germany to close its borders to migrants, leave Europe’s common currency and end sanctions against Russia is predicted to enter Parliament for the first time this month, propelled by voters’ anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to let over a million refugees into the country since 2015. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is forecast to take between 8 and 11 percent of the vote on Sept. 24, giving it dozens of lawmakers in the national Parliament. Some polls even project that it could even come third behind Merkel’s party and the center-left Social Democrats. If the predictions are correct, it would be the first time in 60 years that a party to the right of Merkel’s conservative Union bloc has attracted enough votes to enter the Bundestag. “It’s quite an achievement for a right-wing party to clear the 5-percent minimum threshold,” said Gideon Botsch, a political scientist at the University of Potsdam near Berlin. ...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Some denounce it as a violation of Islamic law, others embrace it as revolutionary: An initiative by Tunisia’s president to make inheritance and marriage rules fairer to women is reverberating around the Muslim world, and risks dividing his country. The 90-year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, argues that Tunisia needs to fight discrimination and modernize. He’s gambling that he could shepherd through such changes because his secular party is in a coalition with an Islamist one, and because his overwhelmingly Muslim country has a history of relatively progressive views toward women. In a speech last month, Essebsi proposed allowing women the same inheritance rights as men, instead of the current system based on Islamic Shariah law that generally grants daughters only half the inheritance given to sons. The president also suggested allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslims; currently Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslims but not the other way a...

LOWER MATECUMBE KEY, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on Hurricane Irma (all times local): 5:20 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron is visiting hurricane-hammered St. Barts after reportedly staying overnight on the nearby island of St. Martin on a camp cot. Macron is on a visit aimed at offering support and solidarity with struggling islanders after his government had been criticized for not doing enough to prepare and help France’s Caribbean territories devastated by Hurricane Irma last week. Macron’s office said he stayed overnight on St. Martin on Tuesday and is going to St. Barts on Wednesday with the French health minister, who has warned about diseases spreading on the islands after water supplies, electricity and communication were knocked out for days. French media reports said Macron was sleeping on a camp cot in the police station. After spending hours meeting with residents of the French side of the shared French-Dutch island of St. Martin on Tuesday, Macron promised ...

MIAMI (AP) — The Latest on Irma (all times local): 8:45 p.m. Three people are dead from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning at a Florida home following Hurricane Irma, and four others have been hospitalized. Orange County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jeff Williams says a deputy responded to the Orlando home Tuesday evening following a 911 call from what sounded like a juvenile. The deputy was overcome by fumes while approaching the home and called for fire rescue. Firefighters pulled seven people from the home, three of whom died at the scene. Four others were taken to a nearby hospital in various conditions. Rescue workers found a portable gasoline generator running inside the home. Williamson described the victims as a multi-generational family. ___ 8:20 p.m. Authorities say a Mississippi man died in a crash at a Florida intersection where the traffic signals weren’t working after Hurricane Irma. The Ocala Star-Banner reports that the 59-year-old Coffeeville, ...

BOSTON (AP) — Self-driving cars may not hit the road  in earnest  for many years - but autonomous boats could be just around the pier. Spurred in part by the car industry’s race to build driverless vehicles, marine innovators are building automated ferry boats for Amsterdam canals, cargo ships that can steer themselves through Norwegian fjords and remote-controlled ships to carry containers across the Atlantic and Pacific. The first such autonomous ships could be in operation within three years. One experimental workboat spent this summer dodging tall ships and tankers in Boston Harbor, outfitted with sensors and self-navigating software and emblazoned with the words “UNMANNED VESSEL” across its aluminum hull. “We’re in full autonomy now,” said Jeff Gawrys, a marine technician for Boston startup Sea Machines Robotics, sitting at the helm as the boat floated through a harbor channel. “Roger that,” said computer scientist Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik, as he helped to g...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A judge awarded Rebel Wilson record damages of 4.56 million Australian dollars ($3.66 million) on Wednesday over magazine articles the actress said cost her roles in Hollywood films. A Supreme Court jury in Australia’s Victoria state had decided in June the articles claiming she lied about her age, origins of her first name and her upbringing in Sydney were defamatory. Justice John Dixon said a substantial award amount was required to “vindicate” Wilson after her reputation as an “actress of integrity was wrongly damaged.” Bauer Media, publisher of the Australian magazines Woman’s Day, Australian Women’s Weekly, NW and OK, said it was considering the judgment. The 37-year-old Wilson, best known for the comedies “Pitch Perfect” and “Bridesmaids,” was in London on Wednesday and her lawyers were unable to immediately talk to her about the decision. Wilson said on Twitter that the case “wasn’t about the money.” “I’m looking forward to helping ...