NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For months, Carlton Clemons endured crippling pain from a rotting wisdom tooth. He couldn’t sleep, barely ate and relied on painkillers to get by.

The 67-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee, could not afford to see a dentist on the $1,300-a-month his family gets in Social Security and disability payments. So he waited for the state to roll out a program this year that offers dental care to the more than 650,000 Medicaid recipients like him who are 21 and older. Tennessee is spending about $75 million annually on the program.

United Nations (AP) — Russia’s top diplomat denounced the United States and the West on Saturday as self-interested defenders of a fading international order, but he didn’t discuss his country’s war in Ukraine in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

“The U.S. and its subordinate Western collective are continuing to fuel conflicts which artificially divide humanity into hostile blocks and hamper the achievement of overall aims. They’re doing everything they can to prevent the formation of a genuine multipolar world order,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Residents in coastal North Carolina and Virginia braced for potential flooding after Tropical Storm Ophelia made landfall near a North Carolina barrier island on Saturday morning, bringing rain, damaging winds and dangerous surges of water.

21 September 2023; MEMO: Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, said he does not agree with the negative approach other leaders are showing towards his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Turkish broadcasters quoted him as saying on Thursday, Reuters reports.

20 September 2023; MEMO: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi yesterday said the US should prove its “goodwill and determination” to revive the 2015 nuclear pact as months of indirect talks between the long-time foes have led nowhere, Reuters reports.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department and China’s Ministry of Finance launched a pair of economic working groups on Friday in an effort to ease tensions and deepen ties between the nations.

Led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng, the working groups will be divided into economic and financial segments.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife were indicted Friday on charges that they took bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car for a range of corrupt acts, including having the Democrat use his influence over foreign affairs to benefit the authoritarian government of Egypt.

20 September 2023; MEMO: US President Joe Biden urged rapid efforts to reduce violence and tensions in the Occupied West Bank as he met, Wednesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Anadolu Agency reports.

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. (AP) — A charter bus carrying high school students to a band camp veered off a New York highway and tumbled down an embankment Thursday, killing two adults and seriously injuring several others, officials said.

The bus was one of six in a caravan taking the marching band, color guard and dancers from Farmingdale High School on Long Island on a beloved annual trip to a camp in Greeley, in northeastern Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s latest funding plan in ruins and lawmakers leaving town for the weekend, there’s no endgame in sight as hard-right Republicans push dangerously closer to a disruptive federal shutdown.

The White House will tell federal agencies on Friday to prepare for a shutdown, according to an official with the Office of Management and Budget who insisted on anonymity to discuss the upcoming instructions. That’s standard seven days out from a federal disruption.

WASHINGTON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden has informed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Washington will provide Kyiv with ATACMS long-range missiles, NBC News reported on Friday, citing three U.S. officials and a congressional official.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked the Biden administration for Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to help attack and disrupt supply lines, air bases and rail networks in Russian occupied territory.

OSLO, Sept 22 (Reuters) - A pair of F-35A Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) fighter jets have landed on a motorway for the first time, footage from the Norwegian military showed, a step that enables them to reduce vulnerable time on the ground in times of war.

The two Royal Norwegian Air Force aircraft landed in Tervo, central Finland, on Thursday afternoon as part of a military exercise.

Immediately after landing, refuelling was carried out with the engines running, a so-called "hotpit refuelling", the Norwegian military said, before the planes took off again.