WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is using a New Hampshire campaign stop to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses. She's presenting a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes. She wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for small business startup expenses, with the goal of eventually spurring 25 million new small business applications over four years. Harris is making the announcement Wednesday, in the Portsmouth area, near Maine’s border. It marks a rare deviation from Harris spending most of her time visiting a tight group of Midwest and Sun Belt battlegrounds especially key to November’s election.

PHOENIX (AP) — It’s always hot this time of year in central Arizona, but 2024's endless summer has been especially hot in Phoenix. On Tuesday, the city hit its 100th straight day with at least 100 degree temperatures. According to data from the National Weather Service, that’s long since shattered the record of 76 days in a row set back in 1993. The temperature hit 102 in Phoenix on May 27 and has made it to triple digits every day since. It doesn’t look like a break is coming any time soon. Unseasonably high September temperatures are expected this week across the western U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has announced criminal charges against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other militants in connection with the Oct. 7 rampage in Israel. The criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City includes charges of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death. 

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, one of Ukraine’s most recognizable faces on the international stage, has submitted his resignation ahead of an expected major government reshuffle. Russian strikes meanwhile killed at least seven people in the Ukrainian city of Lviv near the Polish border, a day after one of the deadliest missile attacks since the war began.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Pope Francis has urged Indonesia to live up to its promise of “harmony in diversity” and fight religious intolerance. Francis had a packed first full day in Indonesia, meeting with outgoing President Joko Widodo and other Indonesian authorities at the presidential palace. In the afternoon, Francis meets with Indonesian clergy and nuns in Jakarta’s Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral for his traditional pep talk to the local church. 

FOREST PARK, Ill. (AP) — Officials say a man suspected of killing four people aboard a Chicago-area transit train shot them at close range while they were asleep. The shooting happened before 5:30 a.m. Monday aboard the Chicago area’s L system. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Maryland resident has been sentenced to more than one year behind bars for making thousands of threatening and harassing telephone calls to dozens of congressional offices across the country.

In other news:

—The Associated Press

About this program

Host Terry Lipshetz is managing editor of the national newsroom for Lee Enterprises. Besides producing the daily Hot off the Wire news podcast, Terry conducts periodic interviews for this Behind the Headlines program, co-hosts the Streamed & Screened movies and television program and is the former producer of Across the Sky, a podcast dedicated to weather and climate.