“IT” FLOATS AWAY WITH RECORD $117.2 MILLION
HOLLYWOOD» “It,” the Stephen King adaptation from New Line and Warner Bros., shattered records during the weekend, earning $117.2 million from 4,103 locations, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Not only is “It” now the largest ever opening for a horror movie and the largest September opening of all time, the film more than doubled the earnings of the previous record holders. Before this weekend “Paranormal Activity 3” had the biggest horror opening with $52.6 million from 2011, and the highest September debut was “Hotel Transylvania 2,” with $48.5 million in 2015.
Heavy rains, floods hit Italy; at least six dead in Tuscany.
ROME» Torrential rain in Italy triggered flooding that killed at least six people Sunday in the Tuscan port of Leghorn, including a family of four who were trapped by rising water in a basement. Two other people were reported missing.
Strong winds toppled trees, and parked cars were nearly submerged by floodwaters that left the streets clogged with mud.
“The city is literally devastated,” said Leghorn Mayor Filippo Nogarin, adding that “a crazy amount of rain” pummeled the area in just a few hours.
The Italian news agency ANSA said the bodies of a 4-year-old boy, his parents and his grandfather were found in the flooded basement of their two-family home. Before dying, the grandfather managed to save the boy’s sister, state TV RaiNews24 reported.
Leghorn province’s interior ministry official, Anna Maria Manzone, said Sunday afternoon two people were still missing. Sky reported the six dead included two elderly people who died in a hillside hamlet.
U.S. calls for vote on sanctions.
The United States called for a Monday vote on new U.N. sanctions against North Korea, though exactly what measures would be in the resolution remained a mystery.
Security Council diplomats, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly because talks have been private, said the U.S. and China were still negotiating the text late Sunday.
Feds, Texas offer choices for students homeless after Harvey.
HOUSTON» Michael Evan Hilburn says he can’t wait to start kindergarten this week at a school about 20 miles from the Houston shelter where he and his father have been living since Harvey devastated the city.
The 5-year-old is a beneficiary of state and federal laws that seek to make it easier for homeless kids to go to school — a blessing, his father said, as they try to overcome the chaos of a catastrophic disaster that has disrupted life in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
“The sooner he’s in school, the sooner I can start work,” Michael Howard Hilburn said. “I want him to be happy, make lots of friends. He needs consistency.”
Shark bites surfer’s board in half.
SYDNEY» A 35-year-old surfer was taken to a hospital after a shark snapped his board, tore his hip and flung him into the air off the Australian east coast. A police statement says Abe McGarth was surfing at Iluka on the north coast of the state of New South Wales on Sunday when what he described as an 11-foot great white shark attacked the board from underneath. The shark’s teeth tore McGrath’s wetsuit and left a gash on his right hip. Police say McGrath grabbed half his board and surfed to shore.
Stateless Mikheil Saakashvili breaks through into Ukraine.
Mikheil Saakashvili and a small crowd of supporters shoved their way through a line of guards at the Ukrainian border Sunday, making good on the politician’s vow to return to the land that had stripped him of citizenship.
The return of the divisive and headstrong Saakashvili poses a strong challenge to Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko, who once was Saakashvili’s patron but then revoked his citizenship in July.