Fewer at the fair: Fair attendance dips amid brush from Ian

Advocates say schools increasingly are removing children with disabilities from the classroom because of behavior issues related to their disability but not recording the actions as suspension. The practice is known as informal removal, which advocates say amounts to a form of off-the-books, de facto denial of education that evades accountability. Because the removals aren’t recorded, there’s no way to quantify how often they happen. But the assistant secretary for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, Catherine E. Lhamon, says the practice has "taken hold in a way that is dangerous for students and needs to be addressed.”

A Delaware judge says cigarette manufacturer ITG Brands assumed liability for tobacco settlement payments to the state of Florida when it acquired four brands from Reynolds American in 2015. Vice Chancellor Lori Will also said in Friday's ruling that ITG must compensate Reynolds American for losses due to that assumed liability. Reynolds sold the Kool, Winston, Salem and Maverick brands to ITG in 2014 to gain federal regulators' approval of Reynolds’ acquisition of Lorillard Inc. Before the sale closed, Reynolds American affiliate R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was making payments under a preexisting settlement agreement with Florida for reimbursement of smoking-related health care costs.

North Carolina’s State Board of Elections is directing county election officials not to engage in signature matching when reviewing absentee ballot envelopes this fall after a judge rejected the GOP appeal of a state board ruling prohibiting the practice. According to a directive sent to county election directors from the board’s legal counsel Paul Cox, the judge’s ruling maintains the status quo outlined in state law. Superior Court Judge Stephan Futrell ruled from the bench Monday afternoon, denying the party’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preventing the use of signature matching in the 2022 general election, state board spokesperson Pat Gannon said.

Emergency responders are seeking to evacuate residents from the largest barrier island off Florida's Gulf Coast, and survivors there spoke of the terror of riding out Hurricane Ian in flooded homes and howling winds. A volunteer group, Medic Corps, was flying residents off Pine island by helicopter on Saturday. The bridge to Pine Island was heavily damaged by the hurricane, leaving it reachable only by boat or air. Some residents said they hadn’t seen anyone from outside the island for days and spoke of being trapped in flooded homes as boats and other debris crashed around their houses in the storm surge. Some feared they wouldn't make it.

The remnants of Hurricane Ian have downed trees and power lines across North Carolina, and at least four storm-related fatalities.. The Johnston County Sheriff's Office says a woman found her husband dead early Saturday morning after he went to check on a generator running in their garage overnight. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper's office says there were also two storm-related traffic fatalities in Johnston County on Friday, and a drowning in Martin County. Damage reports across the state were less severe than in South Carolina and Florida. But over 90,000 people statewide were without power Saturday afternoon. That was down from over 330,000 earlier in the day.

A revived Hurricane Ian has pounded coastal South Carolina after causing catastrophic damage in Florida. The storm washed away parts of piers and flooded streets in parts of South Carolina. The U.S. death toll from Hurricane Ian rose to at least 27 as Florida authorities confirmed several drowning deaths and other fatalities. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Friday that the deaths included a 22-year-old woman ejected in an ATV rollover because of a road washout. Many other deaths were drownings, including that of a 68-year-old woman swept into the ocean by a wave. Authorities expect the death toll to rise further.

Stocks rose sharply on Wall Street Tuesday and clawed back more of the ground they lost in a miserable several weeks. The S&P 500 rose 2.8% in afternoon trading on Tuesday. The benchmark index has been rallying since hitting its lowest point of the year on Friday to close out a September slump. Other major U.S. indexes were also higher. Treasury yields continued to pull back from their multiyear highs. European markets also posted strong gains. Australia's market jumped 3.8% overnight after that country's central bank made an interest rate increase that was smaller than previous ones.

Elon Musk is offering to go through with his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. The Tesla CEO said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that he notified Twitter of plans to go through with the deal. A trial seeking to compel Musk to buy the social media platform is set to start in Delaware Chancery Court in less than two weeks. Trading in Twitter’s stock had been halted for much of the day pending release of the news,. It resumed trading late Tuesday and soared almost 22% to $51.80.

Hurricane Ian may be long gone from Florida, but the job of restoring power and searching for anyone still inside flooded or damaged homes presses on. About 430,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity Tuesday in Florida and it will be the weekend before most power is restored. Meanwhile, the much weakened storm isn't finished. Officials warned that Ian's remnants could still cause coastal flooding from Long Island, New York, south to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Seventy-nine deaths have been blamed on Ian, including 71 in Florida, five in North Carolina and three in Cuba. Authorities say the death toll could rise as crews continue searching homes in the hardest-hit areas.

Three scientists have jointly won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for their work on quantum information science that has significant applications, including the secure encryption of information. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger were cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for discovering the way that unseen particles, known as photons, can be linked, or “entangled,” with each other even when they are separated by large distances. The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

Advocates say schools increasingly are removing children with disabilities from the classroom because of behavior issues related to their disability but not recording the actions as suspension. The practice is known as informal removal, which advocates say amounts to a form of off-the-books, de facto denial of education that evades accountability. Because the removals aren’t recorded, there’s no way to quantify how often they happen. But the assistant secretary for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, Catherine E. Lhamon, says the practice has "taken hold in a way that is dangerous for students and needs to be addressed.”

Micron, one of the world’s largest microchip manufacturers, will open a semiconductor plant in New York, promising an investment of up to $100 billion and a plant that could bring 50,000 jobs to the state. The company was lured to the Syracuse area with a generous set of federal, state and local incentives, including up to $5.5 billion in state tax credits over 20 years. The announcement comes months after Congress passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which set aside $52 billion to bolster the semiconductor industry. Companies like Micron manufacture the diminutive chips that power everything from smartphones to computers to automobiles.