Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson branded his veteran Republican opponent, Susan Collins, an “arsonist” during a debate in which the longtime senator sought to distance herself from President Donald Trump.

“Senator Collins is like the arsonist who helped set the fire, and she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out,” Jackson said during the candidates’ first in-person clash of the campaign.

Collins, 73, is campaigning for a sixth Senate term in a state that backed Kamala Harris in 2024, Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016—making the race particularly challenging for a Republican with a conservative record.

Asked whether she would welcome a visit from Trump to Maine in the final weeks before the midterm election, Collins avoided offering a direct answer and predicted that the president would not come.

“I don’t think that President Trump is going to come to Maine,” she said. “He’s talking about going to a lot of different states. I’ve heard nothing from his office, and I’m not exactly his favorite senator.”

Trump appeared to suggest otherwise on Monday, saying, “I think we’re going to Maine too,” when asked about his upcoming campaign plans.

Jackson cited an analysis indicating that Collins voted with Trump 95 percent of the time. Collins countered with a different study, saying it showed her supporting Trump 72 percent of the time while backing Biden 92 percent of the time.

“This study found that I voted against my party more than any other senator on either side of the aisle,” Collins said, highlighting her reputation for independence from the Trump administration.

Jackson also faulted Collins for supporting Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, arguing that her votes helped create the court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. Collins responded that she is the only Republican senator to have voted for three justices nominated by Democratic presidents.

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The encounter marked the first of four scheduled debates between Collins and Jackson over the next two weeks.

With early voting opening on October 5, Maine voters have already begun choosing between the two candidates in a closely watched contest that could help determine whether Trump and Republicans retain control in Washington.

Maine is among several competitive Senate battlegrounds for Republicans, alongside Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Republicans have effectively conceded North Carolina’s Senate race, where the party has halted its campaign spending.

Democrats must gain four seats to take control of the Senate, and party strategists widely view Maine as a crucial part of that path.

Voters say their leading concerns include inflation and the rising cost of living, with the war in Iran contributing to further price pressures.

Although Trump remains unpopular in a state carried by Harris in the 2024 presidential election, Collins has spent years creating distance between herself and the MAGA movement and has occasionally criticized the president and his senior allies.

The latest polling points to an extremely tight contest, with most results falling within the surveys’ margins of error. Jackson holds a narrow advantage in many of the polls.

Both candidates have had scandals erupt during the contentious campaign that already saw former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner spectacularly drop out after a slew of sexual misconduct allegations. 

Filling in as the Democratic candidate, Jackson, self-styled as a ‘fifth-generation logger,’ has stirred headlines after it was revealed his longtime partner and mother of his two sons is also his second cousin by blood, according to The Maine Wire.

Collins, meanwhile, helped a little-known defense contractor in Hawaii win millions in contracts while the company bankrolled her re-election campaigns, according to a ProPublica investigation. It’s a charge she’s vehemently denied. 

Eva Marie Saint, the elegant, slender performer who won an Oscar for her very first film, “On the Waterfront,” and later starred with Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” has died at 102.

A family representative, Jeff Sanderson, said Saint died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. Her acting career continued into her 90s.

Saint’s arrival in Hollywood was extraordinary. In “On the Waterfront,” she played the romantic partner of Marlon Brando’s troubled dockworker, Terry Malloy, and her first Academy Awards ceremony produced one of the night’s most memorable moments. Pregnant with her first child, she accepted the Oscar from Frank Sinatra and joked, “I think I may have the baby right here.” Her son, Darrell, arrived two days later.

Her performance in the 1954 classic made Saint an immediate star, but she quickly established that she would shape her career on her own terms. Rather than sign studio contracts or rush into another major film, she stepped away to spend time with her newborn son. Her daughter, Laurette, was born in 1958.

A curated career

Saint made only seven movies during her first 10 years in Hollywood, passing on high-profile projects including “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck, “Summer and Smoke” with Laurence Harvey and “The Rainmaker” with Burt Lancaster. Her husband, television and theater director Jeffrey Hayden, ultimately persuaded her to accept the role of Eve Kendall in Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller “North by Northwest.” As a mysterious spy, her character seduces Grant’s hero before genuinely falling in love with him.

Recalling the decision in a 2014 interview with Vanity Fair, Saint said Hayden advised her, “Honey, I think you should find a quiet spot. I’ll take care of the children and I want you to really think about this and reread this script.” She added, “He was so right. And that’s what husbands are for.”

Her selective approach did not diminish her appeal to filmmakers. Saint continued receiving leading offers, appearing in movies such as “Exodus” with Paul Newman, “Raintree County” with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, and “All Fall Down” alongside Warren Beatty.

During the 1970s, Saint increasingly worked in television, then found a new wave of popularity in the 1980s. She played Cybill Shepherd’s mother on the hit series “Moonlighting” and portrayed Tom Hanks’ mother in the comedy “Nothing in Common.” Her later credits included an Emmy-winning performance in the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us,” as well as appearances in “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Superman Returns” and “Winter’s Tale,” based on Mark Helprin’s novel. In 2021, she performed as Marisa Tomei’s aunt in “The Bus Ride,” a short audio play produced for “The Pack Podcast.”

Saint and Hayden were married for 55 years, until his death in 2016.

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That was her real name

Her name sounded so theatrical that many people assumed it was a stage creation, but Eva Marie Saint was born with it on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey. Her family later moved to Delmar, a small community near Albany, where her father managed a Goodrich Rubber Co. operation. Saint initially hoped to follow her mother into teaching third grade. That plan changed at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, when she auditioned for a play and won the lead role.

After college, she returned to live with her parents in Flushing, Long Island, while pursuing acting work in Manhattan. A year of unsuccessful auditions ended when she landed two lines as a telephone operator on a radio drama. Soon, she was appearing regularly in soap operas and evening dramas, including a two-year run as Claudia on “One Man’s Family.” As network television expanded in the early 1950s, her beauty and emotional precision made her a sought-after performer.

A major step came when Saint auditioned for Elia Kazan and was admitted to the Actors Studio, the influential training ground for a generation of method actors. She later said acting teacher Lee Strasberg helped her break through her natural shyness.

In a 2009 interview with The Santa Barbara Independent, Saint recalled that Strasberg assigned her a scene that required her to cry in front of her fellow actors. She said she spent considerable time preparing, eventually performed the scene and began crying as members of the audience cried with her. “It was just an incredible moment for me,” she said.

Saint initially lost the only female role in the play “Mister Roberts,” but was hired as an understudy for Jocelyn Brando, Marlon Brando’s sister. During six difficult months, she never had the opportunity to take over the part. Her Broadway debut finally came in “A Trip to Bountiful,” a production she had previously performed on television.

Kazan later asked Saint to audition for “On the Waterfront” by improvising with Marlon Brando. The scene required her to prevent a young man from entering her apartment. Saint told the Los Angeles Times in 2001 that Brando entered, switched on music and began dancing with her, even flicking her skirt. Kazan, she said, saw the chemistry between them—and awarded her the role.

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A planned march by UCLA students on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel has sparked strong criticism, with opponents denouncing the event as “depraved.”

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA is organizing a mass protest on Wednesday, three years after Hamas terrorists launched their unprecedented assault on Israel. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage in the attack.

According to an announcement by the student group, the protest is scheduled to begin at noon on Oct. 7 at Bruin Plaza on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus.

SJP said the demonstration would commemorate what it called three years of “escalated genocide in Palestine” while seeking to “recognize and uplift” Palestinian resistance.

“In the face of Zionist occupation and genocide, the Palestinian people have remained disciplined in the fight toward the inevitable reality of liberation,” the group said in its announcement.

The organization described two central aims for the protest: honoring what it called Palestinian resistance and channeling grief over the conflict into political action.

“The genocide in Palestine has not slowed down, and neither should we,” SJP said.

The group’s language quickly triggered a backlash online, with critics accusing the organizers of showing insensitivity on the anniversary of the Hamas attack.

“This is depraved,” one commenter wrote in response to the announcement on Instagram.

“Looking forward to counterprotesting these bored, uninformed, cosplaying jihadists,” Jon Ronsen wrote.

Another commenter said: “You’re gonna make a lot of noise and get a lot of attention, but victorious? I don’t think Israel will fall because of a bunch of barbarians and their Looney Tunes supporters.”

The California Post has contacted SJP at UCLA for additional comment about the planned demonstration and the criticism it has received.

The Post also sought comment from Jewish groups on campus, including Bruins for Israel and UCLA Hillel, along with Jewish student leaders. They declined to comment on the upcoming protest.

The Oct. 7 anniversary is especially sensitive at UCLA, where tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war have repeatedly led to protests, counterprotests and confrontations.

Last year, about 70 people took part in an anniversary march across campus. Approximately 25 police officers and university personnel were present as the demonstration began.

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Participants carried Palestinian flags and a coffin-shaped object while chanting “Free Palestine,” “Intifada” and “Israel is a terrorist state.”

Protesters also pulled a wagon loaded with red flowers through campus. At the conclusion of the march, they placed paper red poppies inside the coffin-shaped object.

The anniversary has also previously prompted competing demonstrations at UCLA.

On Oct. 7, 2024, about 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched across campus, while roughly 200 Bruins for Israel supporters participated in a silent walk.

Earlier that day, organizers displayed 1,200 flags on campus to represent those killed in the Hamas attack. At least one person was observed kicking the flags.

In 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators also established an encampment at UCLA’s Royce Quad as protests over Israel’s war in Gaza intensified.

The unrest has since become the subject of a major federal legal battle.

In May, the Justice Department sued the University of California, alleging UCLA was deliberately indifferent to discrimination and harassment targeting Jewish and Israeli students, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The DOJ pointed specifically to the April 2024 encampment, alleging Jewish and Israeli students were assaulted, excluded from parts of campus and denied educational opportunities.

UCLA has strongly disputed the federal government’s characterization of its response and says it has introduced significant reforms to campus safety and protest policies.

The university was also hit with a temporary suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants in 2025 amid Trump administration allegations of antisemitism and bias. UCLA said grants suspended by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy were later reinstated.

Just last week, the University of California escalated its legal fight with Washington, asking a federal judge to dismiss the DOJ’s lawsuit and branding the government’s case “political coercion.”

UC is also fighting a federal demand for repayment of more than $2 billion in UCLA research grants.

Wednesday’s demonstration comes as the bitter divide over Israel and Gaza on American college campuses enters its fourth year.

A Delta Air Lines passenger jet collided Tuesday with an Air Canada aircraft that was being towed to its gate shortly after landing at Los Angeles International Airport, the airlines said.

Delta Flight 7, which was scheduled to depart for Tokyo with 275 passengers and 15 crew members aboard, struck the Air Canada jet with its left wingtip, a Delta spokesperson told News Media. No injuries were initially reported.

“While taxiing at Los Angeles International Airport, a Delta aircraft made contact with an Air Canada aircraft,” Delta said in a statement. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people, and we apologize to our customers for the experience and delay in their travel.”

Air Canada Flight AC785 had recently arrived in Los Angeles from Toronto when it was being towed to its gate, the airline told News Media.

“An aircraft operated by another airline made contact with its tail,” Air Canada said. “There are no reported injuries. The Air Canada aircraft will be taken out of service for inspection and repairs.”

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A video posted online by TMZ appeared to show a visible gash on one of the Air Canada aircraft’s wings.

No injuries were reported, the airline said. Delta maintenance crews and airport teams were examining the Airbus A350-900, while the airline worked to accommodate passengers and assess its “recovery options.”

Delta said it would cooperate with the National Transportation Safety Board, which will investigate the incident.

In March, a regional Air Canada plane collided with a Port Authority airport vehicle at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport. The crash destroyed the aircraft’s front section, killed two pilots and injured dozens of people.

This story is breaking. Please check back for updates.

Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress celebrated for classic films such as North by Northwest and On the Waterfront, has died at the age of 102.

A spokesperson for Saint said she died on Tuesday from natural causes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her film debut in 1954’s On the Waterfront, in which she starred opposite screen legend Marlon Brando.

Over the course of her long career, Saint also received a Primetime Emmy Award and earned nominations for a Golden Globe and two BAFTA Awards.

Alongside Brando and Cary Grant, her co-star in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller North by Northwest, Saint appeared with a remarkable roster of leading men, including Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, James Garner and Bob Hope.

Although she continued acting into the 2010s, Saint remains best known for the landmark films she made during the 1950s—particularly Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront and her celebrated collaboration with Hitchcock on North by Northwest.

Saint made her feature-film debut in On the Waterfront, starring Brando as Terry Malloy, a former boxer who becomes a longshoreman after a local mob boss pressures him to lose a match.

After Terry witnesses the mobster’s henchmen murder a dock worker to stop him from testifying in a corruption investigation, he must choose between speaking out and remaining silent so he can keep his job.

Saint played Edie, the murdered dock worker’s sister, who urges Terry to testify before the commission.

For her first screen role, Saint won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and received a nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for Most Promising Newcomer.

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Her immediate success in Hollywood brought a succession of leading roles—and paychecks far greater than the $7,500 she earned for On the Waterfront.

The actress also demonstrated her comic talent when she followed On the Waterfront with That Certain Feeling in 1956, appearing opposite comedian Bob Hope.

The following year, Saint took on another very different role in the Civil War drama Raintree County, which also featured her lifelong friends Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

Saint further tested the boundaries of Hollywood censorship under the Production Code with the 1957 addiction drama A Hatful of Rain. The performance earned her another BAFTA nomination, this time for Best Foreign Actress.

Saint’s other defining film arrived near the end of the 1950s, when Alfred Hitchcock cast her as his latest glamorous blonde opposite Cary Grant in the comic spy thriller North by Northwest.

The film, a more ambitious return to Hitchcock’s early-career thrillers about a ‘wrong man’ who is swept up into espionage against his will, starred Grant as an ad executive who is mistaken for a spy by a dangerous group of international criminals.

Saint played a nuanced role as the apparent femme fatale and arm candy of the villain (played by James Mason), but she’s later revealed to be a double agent working behind the scenes for a US intelligence agency. 

The breezy film was a hit with critics and audiences alike, becoming one of the best-regarded movies Saint, Grant and Hitchcock ever made. 

A new Congressional Research Service assessment says the United States has lost or suffered damage to at least 81 military aircraft since the war in Iran began, with the total value of those losses estimated at up to $3.3 billion.

Among the aircraft affected are some of the US military’s most sophisticated platforms, including an F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter and 12 F-15E Strike Eagle jets that were either damaged or destroyed.

Three F-15Es, each valued at more than $30 million, were brought down in a friendly-fire incident over Kuwait on March 2. A fourth was shot down over Iran the following month.

Eight additional F-15Es suffered minor damage during Iranian airstrikes on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base on September 9 and 10.

The damaged fighters have since been repaired and returned to operational service, according to the report.

The report also details the loss of at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, each estimated to cost between $30 million and $50 million.

The losses reduced the Air Force’s Reaper fleet to 135 aircraft, a general told the Senate in May. The drones are used for both intelligence-gathering missions and precision missile strikes.

According to the Air Force Times, the service is expected to maintain at least 189 deployable MQ-9 Reapers at any given time.

Follow The Post’s coverage of the war in Iran:

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The Congressional Research Service analysis also recorded damage to an F-35A, a fifth-generation fighter valued at more than $92 million, after the aircraft came under Iranian fire on March 19.

Another major loss was a $270 million E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft. The aging plane, built on the Boeing 707 airframe, remains a key part of the US military’s airborne monitoring capabilities.

The Air Force had 32 E-3 Sentry aircraft in service as of 2015.

The United States also lost an A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft in April, while a second A-10 was damaged during the September assault on the Jordanian base.

Total list of US aircraft lost or damaged in Iran war:

Last month, US Central Command estimated that the total cost of the war in Iran grew to $43.6 billion — a $5 billion increase from August.

Weapons costs also jumped by more than $6 billion in just over a month, from $21.7 billion listed in the latest Congressional Budget Office report to $28.1 billion in US Central Command’s estimate.

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.