National News at a Glance

Smoke Settles in Massachusetts as Residents Ask, What Happened?

For miles around, neighborhoods were silent. Stores were dark, schools closed, sidewalks empty. The stark scenes across parts of three Massachusetts towns Friday followed a chaotic, cacophonous night of explosions and gas-fueled fires that killed one person, injured more than 20 others and drove thousands of people from their homes. Investigators were searching for the cause of the sudden chain of incidents in parts of Lawrence, Andover and North Andover. But political leaders and residents expressed impatience with Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, whose natural gas lines have been a central focus of inquiry. Residents were waiting for answers and repairs.

Surging Seas, Floods and Rescues as Deadly Storm Roars Ashore

After slamming into the Carolina coast Friday, Hurricane Florence left a trail of devastation as it crawled over the southeastern part of North Carolina, posing what may be its greatest threat in the days ahead as it drops potentially record-setting quantities of water. The storm, whose destructive power was unlike any the area has seen in a generation, had already caused at least five fatalities as of Friday afternoon, and rescue crews were attempting to pluck distressed residents from rooftops. The victims included a mother and her infant in Wilmington, North Carolina, who were killed when a tree fell on their house, police said.

Paul Manafort Agrees to Cooperate With Special Counsel; Pleads Guilty to Reduced Charges

Paul Manafort agreed Friday to tell all he knows to special counsel Robert Mueller as part of a plea deal that could shape the final stages of the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The deal was a surrender by Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, who had vowed for months to prove his innocence in a case stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. And it was a decisive triumph for Mueller, who now has a cooperating witness who was at the center of the Trump campaign during a crucial period in 2016.

Federal Panel Alarmed as Thousands Are Dropped From Medicaid in Arkansas

Members of a federal advisory panel expressed alarm this week that 4,350 low-income people in Arkansas had lost Medicaid coverage because they failed to show they were complying with new work requirements held up by the Trump administration as a model for the nation. Penny Thompson, chairwoman of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, called the data “very concerning” and “very worrisome.” To keep their coverage, Medicaid beneficiaries in Arkansas generally must report 80 hours of “work activities” each month or show they are eligible for an exemption. Work activities include employment, job training, education and volunteering.

Letter Claims Attempted Assault by a Teenage Kavanaugh

A secretive letter shared with senators and federal investigators by the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee charges that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and a male friend trapped a teenage girl in a bedroom during a party and tried to assault her, according to three people familiar with the contents of the letter. She has declined to be publicly identified, and she asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, not to publicize the letter. In a statement shared by the White House, Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, said the charges were false.

As the Ice Melts, NASA Will Be Watching

If all goes well for NASA on Saturday, climate scientists will get a new eye in the sky that will be able to watch the Earth’s ice melt practically drip by drip. OK, not that precisely. But the new satellite, called ICESat-2, will give researchers the sharpest look ever at melting glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice, which make up much of the Earth’s frozen regions that are collectively known as the cryosphere. All that melting ice contributes to sea level rise, and ICESat (an imperfect acronym for Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite) will provide important information about how quickly it’s happening.

Water Droplets Don’t Just Hover on a Hot Pan. They Roll.

Drip water on a hot pan, and the droplets will skitter around the pan like tiny mad hovercraft. This is the Leidenfrost effect. Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost, a German doctor and theologian, described the phenomenon in 1756 in a book about the properties of water. But French scientists have now figured out that when the drops are small enough, the roiling of heat in the liquid will cause the droplet to tilt and rotate. That, in turn, propels the droplet to roll. Scientists — and home cooks — never noticed this before because no one had tried pinning a water droplet on a precisely flat surface.