Vice President Harris will do her first Fox News interview Wednesday

NEW YORK — Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down with Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday for her first interview on the conservative-leaning channel.

The network announced Monday that Baier will talk with the Democratic nominee for president in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where polls show her with a slight lead over her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. The interview will air on "Special Report With Bret Baier," which airs at 6 p.m. Eastern and 3 p.m. Pacific.

Harris has never made a formal appearance on Fox News, whose conservative hosts and commentators malign her on their programs throughout the day.

Since becoming her party's nominee, Harris has frequently been criticized on the network for choosing friendly media forums for her interviews, although the same case can be made against Trump, who bailed out of a scheduled "60 Minutes" booking earlier this month. (Harris appeared on the program.)

—Los Angeles Times

Five days after Milton, fewer than 5,000 Central Florida customers still without power

ORLANDO, Fla. — Most Central Floridians who lost power during Hurricane Milton got it back right after the storm or over the weekend, with fewer than 5,000 Central Florida utility customers still in the dark on Monday.

In Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties, just 4,790 out of the more than 1.3 million customers remain without power, with the lion’s share in Orange and Lake, according to poweroutage.us, which collects data from utilities nationwide.

Tens of thousands of customers got their lights back on over the weekend. As of Saturday afternoon, 77,355 customers were still without power in Orange, Lake, Osceola and Seminole counties. Last Friday, roughly 200,000 customers in the four-county area were waiting for their power to be restored.

The area’s largest utilities, Orlando Utilities Commission and Duke Energy, said last week they would restore power for most customers by the end of Sunday and it appears they kept that promise.

—Orlando Sentinel

Nobel Prize goes to economists studying Europe’s colonial legacy

The long-lasting impact of Europe’s former empires on growth forms the basis of research by three U.S.-based academics who will share the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics.

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson — a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund — along with James A. Robinson, were praised for their analysis of how prosperity can come about, and the importance of institutions in that process.

Their work’s relevance to the present day, in discerning why some countries are rich and some much poorer, was highlighted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, whose award of 11 million-krona ($1.1 million) will be shared between them.

“Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges,” Jakob Svensson, chair of the academy’s Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement on Monday. “The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this.”

—Bloomberg News

Experts: Cuba’s alliance with Russia not enough to give it entry to emerging-economies club

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel is expected to attend a meeting of an organization of major emerging economies later this month in Russia after the island requested partnership in the group as a new way to seek aid and credits for its ailing economy.

Viktor Koronelli, the Russian ambassador in Havana, recently told a Russian news agency that Cuba sent a formal request to join in a letter to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who is chairing the group, BRICS, this year. He said Díaz-Canel received an invitation to join the gathering.

Carlos Pereira, a senior Cuban Foreign Affairs official, later confirmed the letter in a publication on X. He said BRICS is becoming “a key actor in global geopolitics and a hope for the countries in the south.”

BRICS, formally created in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China, seeks to strengthen economic ties among developing nations while advocating for an international order that is less dominated by Western nations.

—Miami Herald