Just-released polls contain bad news for President Trump and his Senate allies, with Joe Biden expanding the electoral map to states that have long been bastions of the Republican Party.

The only man ever convicted in a U.S. court for a role in the Sept. 11 attacks now says he is renouncing terrorism, al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Zacarias Moussaoui is serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Colorado after narrowly escaping the death penalty at his 2006 trial. Instead, prosecutors pinned responsibility on Moussaoui because they said he could have prevented the attacks if he had not lied to the FBI about his knowledge of al-Qaida and its efforts to attack the U.S. when he was arrested in August 2001.

Rising floodwaters unleashed by two dam failures submerged parts of the central Michigan town of Midland on Wednesday, displacing thousands of residents and spreading into a Dow Chemical Co plant in the riverfront city. By late morning, the company said, floodwaters were confirmed to be "comingling with on-site containment ponds" at the sprawling Dow plant, located just upstream from a Superfund hazardous waste cleanup site on the rain-swollen Tittabawassee River. The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of "life-threatening" flooding as the Tittabawassee rose to historic levels.

The body of China's ambassador to Israel, who died earlier this week, was handed to Chinese authorities in a ceremony at Israel's Ben Gurion international airport on Wednesday. The coffin was placed on a black altar surrounded by white wreaths of flowers ahead of the body's repatriation to China.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Wednesday that the state will "hold people responsible" for two dam failures Tuesday that caused severe flooding and forced 10,000 evacuations in areas along the Tittabawassee River.Whitmer said the dam failures were a known threat (regulators had revoked the Edenville dam's license in 2018 over its ability to handle floods) and Michigan will review "every legal recourse that we have" in its investigation into what caused the catastrophe.The flooding, which Whitmer said has been described by experts as a "500-year event," will likely have lasting consequences for the state, which is already dealing with the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic. The governor promised to take aggressive action and procure aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal outlets, the Detroit Free Press reports.As for the flooding, Midland, Michigan's city manager said the peak is expected by Wednesday evening when water will have flooded an additional three feet. Read more at the Detroit Free Press.More stories from theweek.com Researchers estimate earlier lockdowns could have prevented tens of thousands of U.S. coronavirus deaths Taxpayers paid for food, a harpist, and goody bags for Pompeo's frequent 500-guest formal dinners Republicans are up in arms about Flynn's 'unmasking.' He was reportedly never masked in the first place.