WRITE ON: Hollywood writers and the studios have reached a tentative deal to end their 146-day strike. The Writers Guild of America told its members that no one should return to work quite yet, but picketing is to be suspended immediately. Members of the WGA will have to vote to approve.

  The terms of the deal were not immediately announced. The agreement comes just five days before the strike would have become the longest in the guild’s history.

  The stickiest issues have included language governing the use of artificial intelligence for writing, minimum staffing in writers’ rooms, and the establishment of residuals to reward writers in proportion to the viewership of streaming series. 

  The strike began in early May and gained power as actors led by SAG-AFTRA joined the scriveners on the picket line in mid-July, pretty much completely shutting down film and scripted television productions. The actors’ strike continues.

WATER WATER: The US Army Corps of Engineers is planning to barge 36 million gallons of fresh water every day into the lower Mississippi River near New Orleans to counter saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico that is threatening the supply of drinking water. 

  The hot summer and low rainfall have combined to reduce the flow of the Mississippi, allowing salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to creep further upstream and get into drinking water systems. The Mississippi is forecast to reach “historic lows over the next several weeks,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said during a news conference. He said, “I’m going to ask the people to pray for rain.”

  The plan is to add fresh water at treatment centers and create a mixture that is safe for treatment. Gov. Edwards also announced plans to deliver bottled water in bulk to the New Orleans area. 

THE WAR ROOM: Russian missiles and drones hit the Ukrainian port of Odesa today in Moscow’s first large attack there since Ukraine started using a new route to ship grain out of the Black Sea.

  Ukraine’s military claimed to have shot down most of 19 drones and two missiles aimed at the city. Two people were killed in a grain warehouse, a marine terminal was damaged, and fire broke out at the nearby Hotel Odesa, which is prominent in the city’s skyline but has been abandoned for nearly 10 years.

  In the meantime, the first of 31 American M1 tanks promised to Ukraine have been delivered in time for Ukraine’s counter offensive against the Russians. Ukraine admits that the American tanks will have to be used carefully to avoid losing them in combat.

ORANGE ALERT: In a last ditch effort to delay his upcoming civil trial in New York, Donald Trump has sued New York Attorney General Letitia James and the judge presiding over the case.

  Trump’s lawsuit argues that James and the judge ignored a June appeals court ruling that excused Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, from the case. His lawyers claim that the ruling dismissing the case against Ivanka also excused the former president.

  The attorney general’s office called Trump’s lawsuit “brazen and meritless,”

  The civil trial set to start on October 2^nd accuses Trump, his family business, and three oldest children of lying about the former president’s net worth to secure favorable loans and other financial benefits.

END OF STORY: After 26 years as an instructor in Bennington College’s Master of Fine Arts writing program, author Susan Cheever has been let go. And she’s suing the school as well as program director, Mark Wunderlich, for age discrimination.

  The only daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Cheever, the 80-year-old Susan Cheever was the writing program’s longest serving instructor. The online news site Air Mail reports that her lawsuit claims Wunderlich had repeatedly described the program’s faculty as “too old, too straight, too white” before Cheever was given notice last spring. Wunderlich is gay.

  The 2 ½ year, low-residency, five session program costs $60,000 and has some highly successful and fiercely loyal alumni. It’s also a moneymaker for the college. Wunderlich appears to be prepping Bennington for a new generation of writers and Cheever, who has a way with words, had something to say about that. “They’ve stopped reading,” she has said about young writers. “They talk about Joan Didion, but they haven’t read her.”

THE SPIN RACK: California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would order state judges presiding over child custody battles to take into consideration a parent’s support for a child’s gender identity when making custody and visitation decisions. Newsom said in a letter of explanation that establishing the precedent of singling out a characteristic could also be used by people with less generous intentions to violate someone’s civil rights. — After traveling for seven years and billions of miles, NASA’s Osiris-REx mission touched down in the Utah desert yesterday, bringing home the world’s first sample of material from an asteroid out there in space. The sample has been described as “a coffee mug’s worth of rock” and other material collected from the asteroid Bennu. — US soccer star Megan Rapinoe played her last game with the national team last night in a 2-0 win over South Africa. —New Jersey’s Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez is refusing to resign after being indicted on charges of taking bribes and payoffs. FBI searchers found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in the senator’s home. “Those who believe in justice believe in innocence until proven guilty,” Menendez said in a statement. “I am not going anywhere.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Two racial-justice themed stained glass windows have replaced windows in the same space in the National Cathedral that honored Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The new windows, titled “Now and Forever,” show a group of protesters marching in different directions and holding up large signs that read “Fairness” and “No Foul Play.” The previous windows had been fixtures in the cathedral for 60 years. 

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