HOUSTON — The storm that hurtled through Houston late Thursday surprised a city long accustomed to bouts of serious weather. The Astros kept playing baseball, even as rain and wind whipped into the team’s closed-dome stadium. Many people, following their evening routines, were caught unaware on bikes or at the gym.

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Joe Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

Family members of the Army reservist who killed 18 people last fall in Lewiston, Maine, opened up on Thursday about their grief, remorse and anger in testimony before the commission investigating the shooting.

OTTAWA, Ontario — A wildfire near Canada’s largest oil-producing region prompted the evacuation of about 6,600 people Tuesday from Fort McMurray, Alberta. Several thousand other residents of the city were told to be prepared to leave at any moment.

NEW YORK — A lawyer for Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., on Wednesday laid blame for the bribery charges the senator faces squarely on his wife — a woman he found “dazzling” but who, his lawyer said, hid her past dire finances and the source of her newfound income from her powerful husband.

An assailant shot Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, who is known for defying his fellow leaders in the European Union, multiple times at close range Wednesday, in the most serious attack on a European leader in decades.

Finally, some good news on inflation.

At least eight people were killed and dozens of others were injured Tuesday after a bus carrying migrant farmworkers in central Florida collided with a pickup truck driven by a man under the influence, authorities said.