ABOARD THE SEABIRD (AP) — As dozens of African migrants traversed the Mediterranean Sea on a flimsy white rubber boat, a small aircraft circling 1,000 feet above closely monitored their attempt to reach Europe.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans on Saturday night closed in on redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs.

Today in History

MIAMI (AP) — Venezuela’s government said Saturday it would halt negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the U.S. of a close ally of President Nicolás Maduro who prosecutors believe could be the most significant witness ever about corruption in the South American…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — New York real estate heir Robert Durst, who days ago was sentenced in a two-decade-old murder case, has been hospitalized after contracting COVID-19, his lawyer said Saturday,

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An 11th-hour deal was reached Saturday, averting a strike of film and television crews that would have seen some 60,000 behind-the-scenes workers walk off their jobs and would have frozen productions in Hollywood and across the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After their 16-year-old daughter died in a car crash, David and Wendy Mills wondered whether she would be alive if federal rules on rear seat belt warnings had been issued on time.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Eric M. Smith, who was 13 when he killed a 4-year-old boy with a rock in western New York, has been granted parole, corrections officials said on Saturday.

HOUSTON (AP) — A man with an AR-15-style rifle ambushed three constable deputies outside a Houston bar early Saturday, killing one and leaving two others wounded, authorities in Texas said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Mask rules, vaccination mandates and business shutdowns have all landed in the courts during the COVID-19 outbreak, confronting judges with questions of science and government authority. Now they are increasingly being asked to weigh in on the deworming drug ivermectin.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Framed by the Capitol, President Joe Biden paid tribute Saturday to fallen law enforcement officers and honored those who fought off the Jan. 6 insurrection at that very site by declaring “because of you, democracy survived.”

LEIGH-ON-SEA, England (AP) — David Amess was a man of the people, a hard-working British lawmaker who had no grand political ambitions beyond serving those who had elected him for nigh-on 40 years.

ORANGE, Calif. (AP) — Hillary and Chelsea Clinton arrived Saturday morning at the Southern California hospital where Bill Clinton is recovering after being treated for an infection.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — On a scorching afternoon in South Texas, Sonia Lambert looked out at an open-air canal that carries mud-green water from the Rio Grande to nearby towns and farmland, losing much of it to evaporation and seepage along the way.

The name alone — “the surgery" — evokes a place where help is sought and given. British lawmaker David Amess, like others, hosted his all-are-welcome surgeries regularly, meeting the voters he represented with a smile and a ready ear for whatever concerns, problems, gripes and hopes they mig…

An obstacle to large-scale bitcoin mining is finding enough cheap energy to run the huge, power-gobbling computer arrays that create and transact cryptocurrency. One mining operation in central New York came up with a novel solution that has alarmed environmentalists. It uses its own power plant.

HELSINKI (AP) — Norway on Saturday announced it will hold an independent investigation into the actions of police and security agencies following a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and injured three others. Police have been criticized for reacting too slowly to contain the massac…

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — When Donald Trump rallied Republicans this past week to vote for Glenn Youngkin for governor in Virginia, the former president called in to a gathering of die-hard supporters. That may be the closest he gets to campaigning in the most closely watched election of 2021.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s daily death toll from COVID-19 has exceeded 1,000 for the first time as the country faces a sustained wave of rising infections.

BOSTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Ken Weyler was known around the New Hampshire Statehouse for dismissing the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines and opposing tens of millions of dollars in federal funds to promote vaccinations.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft named Lucy rocketed into the sky with diamonds Saturday morning on a 12-year quest to explore eight asteroids.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Like other ranchers across the country, Rusty Kemp for years grumbled about rock-bottom prices paid for the cattle he raised in central Nebraska, even as the cost of beef at grocery stores kept climbing.

Removing the flipping obscenities from license plates on Maine's roads and highways isn't going to happen overnight, even though a law banning such profanities in a state where such regulation has been unusually lax goes into effect Monday.

Even in the depths of the pandemic -- even when the world locked down, leaving billions isolated and desolated -- there were those who danced.

MOSCOW — Russia’s daily death toll from COVID-19 has exceeded 1,000 for the first time as the country faces a sustained wave of rising infections.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — President Joe Biden says he would prefer to cut the duration of programs in his big social services and climate change package rather than eliminate some entirely, as Democrats struggle to win support from moderates by trimming what had been a $3.5 trillion proposal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly a year out of the White House, Donald Trump continues to circle the Republican Party, commanding attention and influence as he ponders another run for the presidency.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Netflix said Friday that it had fired an employee for disclosing confidential financial information about what it paid for Dave Chappelle’s comedy special “The Closer," which some condemned as being transphobic.

Today in History

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection has moved aggressively against Trump adviser Steve Bannon, swiftly scheduling a vote to recommend criminal contempt charges against the former White House aide after he defied a subpoena.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Defense Department said Friday that it is committed to offering condolence payments to relatives of the 10 people who were killed in an errant U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday he would prefer to cut the duration of programs in his big social services and climate change package rather than eliminate some entirely, as Democrats struggle to win support from moderates by trimming what had been a $3.5 trillion proposal.

MAINE — Opponents of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers in Maine filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after being dealt another legal defeat on Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Al Wolf is used to clearing one or two snakes from under houses but recently was called by a woman who said she had seen rattlesnakes scurry under her Northern California house and was surprised to find more than 90 rattlesnakes getting ready to hibernate.

HENRICO, Va. (AP) — First lady Jill Biden campaigned Friday for Democrats in governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey, saying "this election will set a course for a year from now” during her first political trip of her husband's presidency.

LEIGH-ON-SEA, England (AP) — A long-serving member of Parliament was stabbed to death Friday during a meeting with constituents at a church in England, in what police said was a terrorist incident. A 25-year-old man was arrested in connection with the attack, which united Britain's fractious…