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'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' keeps record pace, 'The Odyssey' sets new high for Nolan
NEW YORK (AP) -- "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" continued its blistering pace in theaters, collecting $144.5 million domestically over its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, while Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" set a new high for the director.
The Sony-Marvel release has accrued $1.67 billion worldwide in just 10 days of release, putting it on a trajectory to be among the biggest blockbusters ever. Domestically, no movie has wracked up a higher total faster. In U.S. and Canadian cinemas, "Brand New Day" has grossed $655.1 million thus far. Overseas, it's already surpassed $1 billion.
It took only seven days for "Brand New Day" to become the highest grossing movie of the year, easily displacing "Toy Story 5" ($1.07 billion worldwide). No Sony film has ever cleared $100 million in its second weekend before. It came close to toppling the best sophomore frame on record: "The Force Awakens," with $149.2 million in 2015.
Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" also crossed $1 billion. In its fourth weekend, the Universal Pictures release added $31.5 million domestically to bring its global total to $1.1 billion.
Nolan's Homeric epic is the director's first movie to reach that threshold since 2012's "The Dark Knight Rises." It now ranks as Nolan's biggest box-office hit ever, not accounting for inflation, eclipsing both "The Dark Knight Rises" ($1.08 billion) and 2009's "The Dark Knight" ($1 billion). Nolan's "Oppenheimer" ($975 million) ended just shy of the milestone.
A big part of that success, of course, has been on IMAX. With $147.3 million domestically on the company's large-format screens, "The Odyssey" now ranks as IMAX's highest grossing domestic release of all time.
"The Odyssey" still has one major market left. It opens in China on Friday.
Trump's immigration crackdown looms over Minnesota's bruising Senate primary
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- In the streets surrounding a drab federal office complex next to the Minneapolis airport, the beleaguered resistance to President Donald Trump found its footing.
As U.S. immigration agents staged at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building for a monthslong deportation campaign, protesters with whistles and cellphone cameras assembled to oppose them. Two were shot and killed in the city's streets before Trump pulled back under pressure.
Months later, those confrontations remain the backdrop to Minnesota's Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, which features establishment-backed U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and the more progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. The immigration debate is an added schism in a race that otherwise echoes many of the other left versus center divides that have played out across the United States this year.
Craig voted for tighter enforcement soon after Trump returned to office last year, only to later express regret for her decision after the Republican president sent a surge of agents into Minneapolis. She backed a resolution that condemned antisemitism after a 2025 firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, and expressed thanks for law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Those votes may turn out to be some of the most fraught of Craig's eight-year career in Congress, decisions that Flanagan has highlighted while trying to portray her rival as unwilling to fight an unpopular administration in Washington.
"I think that's when she lost my vote permanently and that's why I will not vote for her no matter what," said Bryce Bohne, 40, of Minneapolis. The teacher and owner of an educational tourism company is supporting Flanagan.
Around the Whipple federal building, the fences and barriers are down. The ambient soundtrack is no longer the whistles and chants of protesters, just the rumble of departing jets and passing buses.
But the signs of what happened remain. A few volunteers in bright orange vests keep vigil across the street for 12-plus hours a day, ready to help people getting released from immigration detention or leaving hearings at the immigration court inside.
A few miles away, visitors still bring fresh flowers and handwritten notes to memorials marking the spots where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed.
Craig flipped a Republican-held seat in 2018, and every two years she overcame millions of dollars of attack ads to win tough reelection campaigns.
Until Craig's Senate run, the heat came from the right. Newly under fire from the other side, the decisions she made as a swing-seat congresswoman have become a liability as a statewide Senate candidate. At one recent event, she adopted the language of the insurgent left, though it did not always seem to come naturally.
"The working class keeps getting screwed," she told volunteers preparing to knock on doors for her Saturday in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb. "Folks, I don't know about you, but it is time that we had a working folks reno-- reso-- renovation--"
Here, she took a breath.
"--revolution in this country."
El-Sayed spoke with Obama as Michigan Democrats look to unite after a bitter Senate primary
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) -- Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, said Sunday he has spoken with Barack Obama and hopes the former president campaigns with him as the party tries to unite after a bitter primary that exposed deep rifts between its progressive and moderate wings.
El-Sayed said his Friday conversation with Obama was "really warm and inspiring." The candidate did not provide details.
"I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm, very inviting, and I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play," El-Sayed told NBC's "Meet the Press."
Asked if he would like to see Obama come to Michigan to drum up support for Democrats before the midterm elections in November, El-Sayed said he "really" hoped so and that Obama "knows a lot about winning Michigan" after carrying the state in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races.
An Obama spokesperson confirmed the call.
The discussion came the same day that a group of Michigan nominees and other notable national Democrats tried to present a united front at a rally in Detroit. The crowd cheered loudest for El-Sayed, a former public health official who last week narrowly beat establishment-backed U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in a contentious and closely watched primary. A Democratic victory in the fall is crucial to the party's chances of regaining a Senate majority.
Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is not seeking reelection in the perennial swing state, which Republican Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024, while Democrat Joe Biden carried in 2020.
El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman who narrowly lost the Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in 2024 and has tried to capitalize on lingering tensions within the Democratic Party.
Rogers has released a video message attempting to appeal to Democrats who feel their party may be moving too far to the left with El-Sayed. "You have a home with us," Rogers says in the video.
During an interview Sunday with CNN's "State of the Union," El-Sayed acknowledged that "we aired our differences" in the heated primary. But he said the internal divisions are "so much smaller than the similarities that we share."
"You're seeing folks come together," El-Sayed said, before adding of moderate Democrats, "We might see the world differently. But we also recognize the responsibility to come together."
Wildfires burn across western US and Canada as residents are evacuated
Wildfires burning across the western U.S. and Canada on Sunday left some residents keeping a wary eye out for possible evacuation orders while others already forced to flee their homes waited to see what would be left on their return.
In western Canada, over 20,000 people were forced to flee communities along Okanagan Lake in British Columbia over the weekend as a fast-moving wildfire destroyed homes and dozens had to be rescued by aircraft. In the U.S., crews in Washington that have been fighting three wildfires that began burning in the Spokane area for over a week continued clean-up near containment lines.
Laurie Allen left her home in Nine Mile Falls, a community north of Spokane, last weekend, fleeing with her husband, dog and two kittens as a wildfire burned a short distance away. The roads into her neighborhood were still closed Sunday but she said she'd learned from a friend that while covered in ashes, her house and others nearby were intact.
"I've been here 65 years. It's never happened," Allen said. "We didn't think about anything but grabbing our animals and leaving. But now it's affected so many of our friends and family around. So it's pretty dang devastating."
In Canada, Anette Boulet was among residents who fled Summerland, home to about 12,000 people along Okanagan Lake. As she and her family left around 4:30 a.m. Saturday, their home was shrouded in smoke.
"You couldn't see barely. It was, it was just dark, and the ridge, the ridge of fire just coming towards you," said Boulet, who evacuated to a center in Penticton.
"There's no words to express it," she said. "The fear."
Besides the evacuations in Summerland, the Bald Range fire, first reported Friday evening, has also led to the evacuation of about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland. British Columbia declared a state of emergency Saturday.
Eleanor Olszewski, Canada's minister of emergency management and community resilience, said Sunday on social media that she'd approved a request for federal assistance from British Columbia to provide shelter and accommodations for those forced to flee.
How to spot the Perseid meteor shower, a summer light show that promises to dazzle
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Perseid summer light show is back -- and viewing conditions are especially promising for the Northern Hemisphere.
The meteor shower's peak Wednesday night into Thursday morning coincides with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade -- though the best time to view the fireballs will come after totality.
As many as 50 to 100 meteors per hour may be visible under ideal conditions, according to NASA. The American Meteor Society estimates 30 to 50 meteors per hour could be seen from rural regions.
Random meteors are visible in dark skies on any given night. Meteor showers tend to put on dazzling celestial shows and happen at predictable times every year when the Earth plows through trails of debris left behind by comets and, sometimes, asteroids. Those remnants collide with Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds, producing streaks of light known as shooting stars.
"Comets typically have orbits that cross the orbit of the Earth. So as they get near the sun and the sun evaporates the ice, a lot of the dirt and crap that's frozen into the comet gets released, and continues in orbit around the sun," astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The Perseids are debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, an icy ball that orbits the sun every 133 years and isn't scheduled for a return visit until 2125. Observations of this meteor shower date back over 2,000 years.
The Perseids are a perennial favorite because they tend to produce brilliant fireballs. Summer temperatures also make this shower popular.
"We don't have to suffer through a cold winter night to get a good view of meteors," said astronomer Zach Vanderbosch with McDonald Observatory in Texas.
The moon will be in its new moon phase during the Perseids' peak, making viewing conditions even better.
"The moon is beautiful, but it's such a diva," said astronomer Aparna Venkatesan with the University of San Francisco. "New moon means we don't have moonlight flooding the sky, and you tend to see way more meteors as a result."
To spot the meteors, go outside after dark, away from clouds and city lights. Venkatesan plans to drive to the Sierra Nevada.
The best views will be between midnight and dawn when the constellation Perseus is high in the northern sky. The meteors will appear to radiate from that constellation.
Look up and give your eyes a half hour to adjust to the darkness. Vanderbosch recommends picking a patch of sky to focus on until a quick, bright streak passes by -- even in your peripheral vision -- and to avoid looking at your phone.
"There's just something magical about it," Vanderbosch said.
Boat capsizes in New York Harbor, woman and 5-month-old baby die
NEW YORK (AP) -- The operator of a boat that capsized in New York Harbor, killing a mother and her infant daughter, is facing criminal charges and authorities are investigating whether the vessel was an illegal charter, the U.S. Coast Guard said Sunday.
The 22-foot Bayliner speedboat overturned around 10:25 p.m. Saturday near Liberty Island, home to the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Twelve people were rescued from the water before police arrived, and police divers later located the 27-year-old woman and 5-month-old girl in the water. Both were taken to a hospital where they were pronounced dead. According to the Coast Guard, the others were in stable condition.
"We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life last night, and our thoughts are with the victims' family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time," said Capt. Doreen McCarthy, the Coast Guard Sector New York commander. "We are extremely grateful for the heroic, swift actions of our partner agencies and Good Samaritan vessel who assisted in rescuing survivors from the water."
Manuel Hernandez, 46, of New York, has been charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment, police said. No phone number for him could be found Sunday, and the case has not yet been entered into online court records.
The victims' identities have not been released pending notification of family, police said Sunday.
Adam Schwartz said his sightseeing company's hot tub boat, Sea the City II, was out on a cruise when the accident occurred and took the 12 survivors onboard.
"Our captain and both crew members immediately assisted, called in to the Coast Guard and … then coordinated with the Coast Guard and NYPD Harbor units to bring them to land in Brooklyn," Schwartz told The Associated Press on Sunday.
McCarthy said Coast Guard investigators are working with police to investigate and are committed to holding lawbreakers accountable. According to the Coast Guard, an illegal charter is any passenger-for-hire vessel operation that lacks Coast Guard credentials, safety equipment and inspection certificates.