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

In primary stunner, Pressley unseats incumbent Rep. Capuano

BOSTON (AP) — In a political stunner, incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano lost Tuesday’s primary to Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councillor who is virtually assured of becoming the first black woman to serve Massachusetts in Congress.

The 44-year-old’s upset over a 10-term incumbent congressman underscores the shift underway in a Democratic Party whose base is seeking younger, more diverse candidates who embrace progressive policies. Her victory comes just two months after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez similarly defeated a top House leader in a primary for a New York congressional seat.

Pressley is now on track to represent an area of Massachusetts once served by Democratic icons Tip O’Neill and John F. Kennedy.

“Change is coming and the future belongs to all of us,” Pressley told wildly cheering supporters Tuesday night.

A subdued Capuano told supporters he did everything he could to win re-election.

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In Mass. House race, Pressley wins fight for ‘soul’ of party

BOSTON (AP) — Ayanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and progressive politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era.

The 44-year-old’s upset victory against longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano in Tuesday’s primary sets the stage for Pressley to represent an area once served by Tip O’Neill and John F. Kennedy. Her win comes at the tail end of a primary season in which black politicians have made a series of advances.

In nearby Connecticut, Jahana Hayes is on track to become that state’s first black woman to win a congressional seat if she prevails in November. And black politicians in three states — Florida, Georgia and Maryland — have won the Democratic nomination for governor, a historic turn for a country that has elected just two black governors in U.S. history.

Greeting voters at a Boston polling station, Pressley spoke of “the ground shifting beneath our feet and the wind at our backs.”

“This is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our democracy,” she told reporters. “This is a disruptive candidacy, a grassroots coalition. It is broad and diverse and deep. People of every walk of life.”

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Woodward book puts White House back in damage-control mode

WASHINGTON (AP) — An incendiary tell-all book by a reporter who helped bring down President Richard Nixon set off a firestorm in the White House on Tuesday, with its descriptions of current and former aides calling President Donald Trump an “idiot” and a “liar,” disparaging his judgment and claiming they plucked papers off his desk to prevent him from withdrawing from a pair of trade agreements.

The book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward is the latest to throw the Trump administration into damage-control mode with explosive anecdotes and concerns about the commander in chief. The Associated Press obtained a copy of “Fear: Trump in the White House” on Tuesday, a week before its official release.

Trump decried the quotes and stories in the book on Twitter as “frauds, a con on the public,” adding that Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and chief of staff John Kelly had denied uttering quoted criticisms of the president in the book.

And he denied accounts in the book that senior aides snatched sensitive documents off his desk to keep him from making impulsive decisions. He said in an interview with The Daily Caller, “There was nobody taking anything from me.”

The publication of Woodward’s book has been anticipated for weeks, and current and former White House officials estimate that nearly all their colleagues co-operated with the famed Watergate journalist. The White House, in a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, dismissed the book as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad.”

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Rancorous, partisan start for Kavanaugh high court hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh declared fervently at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday the court “must never, never be viewed as a partisan institution.” But that was at the end of a marathon day marked by rancorous exchanges between Democrats and Republicans, including dire Democratic fears that he would be President Donald Trump’s advocate on the high court.

The week of hearings on Kavanaugh’s nomination began with a sense of inevitability that the 53-year-old appellate judge eventually will be confirmed, perhaps in time for the first day of the new term, Oct. 1, and little more than a month before congressional elections.

However, the first of at least four days of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee began with partisan quarreling over the nomination and persistent protests from members of the audience, followed by their arrests.

Strong Democratic opposition to Trump’s nominee reflects the political stakes for both parties in advance of the November elections, Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign and the potentially pivotal role Kavanaugh could play in moving the court to the right.

Democrats, including several senators poised for 2020 presidential bids, tried to block the proceedings in a dispute over Kavanaugh records withheld by the White House. Republicans in turn accused the Democrats of turning the hearing into a circus.

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Gordon slams Gulf Coast with tropical-force winds, rain

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Tropical-force winds from fast-moving Gordon smashed into the coastline of Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle on Tuesday evening, the frontal edge of a system just offshore that forecasters warned could become a hurricane by the time it makes landfall.

Tropical Storm Gordon strengthened some in the final hours as it neared the central Gulf Coast, clocking top sustained winds of 70 mph 110 kph). The National Hurricane Center said Gordon’s tight core was about 75 miles (125 kilometres) southeast of Biloxi, Mississippi, or about 70 miles (115 kilometres) south of Mobile, Alabama, where heavy rains and winds picked up shortly before nightfall.

More than 27,000 customers are without power Tuesday night as Tropical Storm Gordon began pushing ashore. Those outages are mostly in coastal Alabama and include the western tip of the Florida Panhandle around Pensacola, with a few hundred in southeastern Mississippi. The number of outages has been rising rapidly after dark Tuesday night as Tropical Storm Gordon’s wind and rain began to take a toll on the Gulf Coast’s power grid.

Skies quickly turned dark grey as storms overshadowed Mobile, a port city. Metal chairs were lashed together atop tables outside a restaurant in what’s normally a busy entertainment district, and a street musician played to an empty sidewalk just before the rain began. Conditions were expected to deteriorate westward to New Orleans as the stormed closed in on the coast, possibly becoming the second hurricane to hit the region in less than a year.

Families along the coast filled sandbags, took patio furniture inside and stocked up on batteries and bottled water ahead of Gordon.

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Good for business? Nike gets political with Kaepernick ad

NEW YORK (AP) — Why do it?

Nike has touched off a furor by wading into football’s national anthem debate with an ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who was the first athlete to kneel during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest police brutality against blacks and hasn’t played a game since 2016.

The ad copy reads: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

The ad, part of Nike’s 30th anniversary “Just Do it” campaign, has outraged many. Online, people threatened boycotts and posted videos and photos of shoes set on fire, Nike gear thrown in the trash, and swoosh logos cut out of products.

Most big corporations steer clear of politics, and marketing experts disagreed Tuesday over whether the Kaepernick campaign is good business.

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What deadline? Mueller probe can go up to Nov. 6 and beyond

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deadlines? What deadlines?

For months, President Donald Trump and his allies have said the special counsel needs to wrap up his Russia investigation within 60 days of the midterm elections, in November, citing a Justice Department policy.

But in fact, special counsel Robert Mueller faces no time limit on his investigation. He can continue the probe — and issue new indictments — right up to Nov. 6 and beyond.

A look at what’s ahead, and what’s not, for the investigation:

NO DEADLINE

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North Korean parade a tricky prelude to inter-Korean summit

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As North Korea prepares for a massive parade Sunday featuring thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and lots of scary-looking missiles, some potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, worry is rising in South Korea that a tentative, hard-won detente is starting to slip away.

An authoritarian nation obsessed with big milestones, North Korea will use the celebration for the 70th anniversary of its national founding to glorify Kim Jong Un as a leader who’s standing up for a powerful nation surrounded by enemies.

Kim will also welcome a delegate from his most important ally, senior Chinese official Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking official of the country’s ruling party and head of its rubberstamp parliament, whose presence at the parade would underscore Beijing’s important status in international efforts to solve the nuclear crisis.

That’s a role South Korean President Moon Jae-in covets, and one of several reasons why the pressure will be intense when he travels to North Korea later this month to meet with Kim.

Moon, who previously held summits with Kim in April and May, will arrive in Pyongyang with dual goals: speeding up inter-Korean engagement and breaking an impasse in nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States.

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Fragments found in Brazil museum fire provide some hope

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the still-smouldering National Museum, an official said Tuesday, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes.

Flames tore through the museum Sunday night, and officials have said much of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might be lost. Aerial photos of the main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed.

The firefighters “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s vice director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.”

In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.

Museum spokesman Marcio Martins noted that the collection contains hundreds of skulls, and all material would first need to be examined by the Federal Police, who are investigating the still-unknown cause of the fire. Experts will then examine them to determine their identity.

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New advice on kids’ concussions calls for better tracking

CHICAGO (AP) — New children’s concussion guidelines from the U.S. government recommend against routine X-rays and blood tests for diagnosis and reassure parents that most kids’ symptoms clear up within one to three months.

Signs of potentially more serious injuries that may warrant CT imaging scans include vomiting, unconsciousness and severe, worsening headaches, according to the guidelines released Tuesday.

The guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the first broad evidence-based recommendations for diagnosing and treating children’s concussions, the researchers say. They evaluated 25 years of scientific research on managing concussions in children and chose procedures with the strongest evidence of benefit.

The American Academy of Neurology has similar evidence-based guidelines, but strictly for sports concussions in child and adult athletes and focused on restricting return to play. The American Academy of Pediatrics also has guidance for managing sports concussions, and for returning to school after a concussion.

The CDC’s guidelines are for concussions from all causes, including falls, sports and car accidents. They recommend rest from physical and mental activity including school and sports immediately after a concussion, gradually resuming normal routines.