In the Nation

DETROIT - The United Auto Workers union won $5,000 signing bonuses for its workers and a promise to reopen an assembly plant in Tennessee as part of its tentative new contract with General Motors, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

In what is being viewed as a landmark deal, the union also preserved health care and pensions and improved profit-sharing for its roughly 48,000 members who work at GM. The UAW's tentative, four-year agreement with GM, announced late Friday, also opens the door for the automaker to bring back laid-off workers and move jobs back to the United States.

GM is the first of Detroit's Big Three to reach a deal with the union. Details of the agreement were being withheld until the union can inform members, who will vote on ratification over the next two weeks.

The union's president, Bob King, said in a statement that union members would get a larger share of the profits from GM's comeback from its federal bailout and bankruptcy in 2009. GM's lead negotiator, Cathy Clegg, said the agreement allows GM to continue adding jobs as it increases market share. - N.Y. Times News Service

NEW YORK - Northeastern states are facing a jack-o'-lantern shortage this Halloween after Hurricane Irene destroyed hundreds of pumpkin patches across the region, farmers say.

Wholesale prices have doubled in some places as farmers nurse their surviving pumpkin plants toward a late harvest. Some farmers are trying to buy pumpkins from other regions to cover orders.

"I think there's going to be an extreme shortage of pumpkins this year," said Darcy Pray, owner of Pray's Family Farms in Keeseville, in Upstate New York. "I've tried buying from people down in the Pennsylvania area, I've tried locally here, and I've tried reaching across the border to some farmers over in the Quebec area. There's just none around." Pray's entire crop, about 15,000 to 20,000 pumpkins, was washed into Lake Champlain.

A late harvest can be fatal to business because pumpkin sales plummet after Halloween. Wholesalers need to get pumpkins on the way to stores by mid-September.

- AP

NEW YORK - The former home of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton has reopened to the public after a four-year rehabilitation in which the two-century-old house was moved from a busy New York street to a Harlem park. The Hamilton Grange National Memorial was rededicated Saturday in St. Nicholas Park.

After fighting in the American Revolution and helping to establish the federal government, Hamilton built the house in 1802 on what was then a country estate. He lived there for two years before being killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.

Development of Manhattan's street grid forced the relocation of the house to a spot on Convent Avenue in 1889. The National Parks Service began moving the house to its current location in 2008 to give it a more historically appropriate setting. - AP