WASHINGTON (AP) — This week's Supreme Court decision ordering Alabama to redraw its congressional districts was seen by many minority lawmakers and voting rights activists as a stunning victory with the potential to become a major stepping stone for undoing political maps that dilute the strength of communities of color.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — For days, the Ukrainian teenager has waited in the attic, just down the street from the cemetery of her flooded town, marking time with her 83-year-old grandfather and two other elderly people and hoping for help to escape the deluge of a catastrophic dam collapse.

PARIS (AP) — France's president traveled Friday to the side of families traumatized by the savage stabbings of four very young children, all said to be in stable condition after emergency surgery, while investigators worked to unravel the motives of a Syrian man taken into custody.

BEIRUT (AP) — A little white pill has given Syrian President Bashar Assad powerful leverage with his Arab neighbors, who have been willing to bring him out of pariah status in hopes he will stop the flow of highly addictive Captagon amphetamines out of Syria.

With weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing across the U.S. and Canada from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia will possibly persist into the weekend.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine troops, police and rescue workers began forcibly evacuating residents near Mayon Volcano on Friday as its increasing unrest indicated a violent eruption of one of the country’s most active volcanoes is possible within weeks or days.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The FBI on Thursday arrested a businessman at the center of the scandal that led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's historic impeachment, a move that came amid new questions about the men’s dealings raised by financial records the Republican's lawyers made public to try to clear him of bribery allegations.

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Pat Robertson united tens of millions of evangelical Christians through the power of television and pushed them in a far more conservative direction with the personal touch of a folksy minister.

DEPTFORD, N.J. (AP) — Back in Mudville, when mighty Casey took an unheeded pitch for a strike, there went up a muffled roar: “`Kill him! Kill the umpire!' shouted someone on the stand."

Even in 1888, well before pitch clocks, $17 beers and instant replay, a common thread for the fans in baseball's most epic poem was how much they loved to threaten umpires.