With a bit of luck, people in the Eastern United States will be able to witness a rare meteor shower known as the Alpha Monocerotids late Thursday night. Two astronomers predicted the outburst will last less than an hour and could even yield more than 400 meteors in that time.

Cameron Simmons is far more familiar with dengue than he would like to be.

"I've had dengue. My family's had dengue. It's a miserable, miserable experience," he says. "It's not one I'd ever want to repeat or have anyone else experience."

The director of such films as Poison and Safe, Todd Haynes has a well-established interest in contagion. But in his films, illness has always been partly a metaphor, standing for the potentially asphyxiating nature of "normal" life.

On the face of it, director Marielle Heller's exhilaratingly impolite indie resume doesn't make her an intuitive fit for a movie about the nicest man in the world — let alone a big studio picture starring nice Tom Hanks.

In 21 Bridges, Chadwick Boseman is a policeman so haunted by the memory of his own cop father's death in the line of duty that he's built his entire reputation around his itchy trigger finger. He's the "cop killer" killer, the guy the force calls in when they need someone to enact white-hot revenge and spare families from the agony of a trial — shoot first, don't ask questions at all.

Let's start by stating the obvious: Australia is not the U.S.

Now, self-evident as that statement may seem, it is one thing to simply accept the lesson when reading it on a page — and quite another to experience the lesson viscerally, day after blazing day, mile after grueling mile, as you try to run the entire length of each landmass.

Katie Visco knows that difference.

A federal jury in Tucson, Ariz., has acquitted a humanitarian aid worker who was charged with harboring a pair of migrants from Central America after Border Patrol agents reported seeing him provide food and shelter in the Arizona desert.

It was the second time federal prosecutors had put Scott Warren of the faith-based border aid group No More Deaths on trial.

Updated at 6:15 p.m. ET

President Trump has signed a temporary spending bill to fund federal agencies, averting a possible government shutdown, according to an administration official.

The Senate passed the bill earlier Thursday, hours ahead of the midnight shutdown.

Lawmakers voted 74-20 to approve the measure to fund the government through Dec. 20. The legislative measure, known as a continuing resolution, will extend current funding levels at government agencies.