TROPICAL WEATHER

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Businesses boarded over windows and thousands of troops were put on alert as Hurricane Blanca roared toward Mexico's Baja California Peninsula as a powerful Category 3 storm. 

RIO-2016-DIRTY WATER

RIO DE JANEIRO — Activists staged a demonstration on a sewage- and trash-filled strewn Rio de Janeiro beach to protest authorities' failure to make good on promises to clean up the Olympic city's filthy waters ahead of the 2016 games. .

MEXICO-ELECTIONS

MEXICO CITY — Mexico prepared for what could be its most violent elections in years, sending thousands of soldiers and federal police to its southern states to protect polling stations in voting seen as a litmus test for President Enrique Pena Nieto's government. 

ESCAPED PRISONERS

DANNEMORA, New York — Two convicted murderers used power tools to cut through steel pipes at a maximum-security prison near the Canadian border and escape through a manhole, Gov. Andrew Cuomo says.