BC-AP News Digest 3 a.m.

Here are the AP’s latest coverage plans, top stories and promotable content. All times EDT. For up-to-the minute information on AP’s coverage, visit Coverage Plan at https://newsroom.ap.org.

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TOP STORIES

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CAPITOL BREACH-MISINFORMATION ON TRIAL — Falsehoods about the election helped bring insurrectionists to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and now some who are facing criminal charges hope their claims of gullibility might save them or at least engender some sympathy. Lawyers for at least three defendants say they’ll blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, much of it pushed by then-President Donald Trump for misleading their clients. By David Klepper. SENT: 1,090 words, photos.

BIDEN-LEGISLATIVE TEAM — While President Joe Biden pitches his infrastructure plan to the American public, the real work of delivering his legislative agenda takes place behind the scenes. Biden’s 15-person legislative team is engaged in constant phone calls and Zoom meetings with lawmakers and their staff. By Alexandra Jaffe and Josh Boak. SENT: 1,390 words, photos.

CRITICAL-RACE-THEORY-STATES — Republican-controlled legislatures across the country are advancing measures to limit how students can be taught about race and racism. Democrats, teachers and racial justice scholars say the measures will have a chilling effect on educators. They also worry that students could be given a whitewashed version of the nation’s history. By Bryan Anderson. SENT: 1,100 words, photos. This story is the Sunday Spotlight

TULSA MASSACRE-POLICE-RESPONSE — There’s been undeniable progress in the relationship between the Tulsa police and the city’s Black community in the past 100 years. Then again, it’s hard to imagine it could have gotten worse. Complaints about police bias and a lack of enough minority officers remain. But the police chief is now a Black man from north Tulsa, the area that includes what once was America’s wealthiest Black business district. By Cliff Brunt. SENT: 1,200 words, photos. With: TULSA-MASSACRE-HISTORY’S IMPACT — The toll from the 1921 massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was horrific. A thriving Black community was gutted by a white mob. The nightmare cried out for attention, but the horror and violence visited upon Tulsa’s Black community didn’t become part of the American story. Instead, it was pushed down, unremembered and untaught until efforts decades later started bringing it into the light. By Deepti Hajela. SENT: 880 words, photos.

VIRUS OUTBREAK — Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting across much of Europe. That’s after second and third surges over the winter and spring claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and led to more rolling lockdowns, distance learning and overwhelmed intensive care units. Vaccination rates are accelerating, and with them, the promise of summer vacations. By Nicole Winfield, Frank Jordans and Colleen Barry. SENT: 1,110 words, photos. With VIRUS OUTBREAK-THE-LATEST.

CANADA-INDIGENOUS-SCHOOL-DEATHS — The remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school — one of the institutions that held children taken from families across the nation. SENT: 520 words, photos, video.

OBIT-BJ-THOMAS — B.J. Thomas, the Grammy-winning singer who enjoyed success on the pop, country and gospel charts with such hits as “I Just Can’t Help Believing,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” and “Hooked on a Feeling,” has died. He was 78. SENT: 1,000 words, photos.

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WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

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OBIT-GAVIN-MACLEOD — Gavin MacLeod, the veteran supporting actor who achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” before going on to even bigger fame as the cheerful Capt. Stubing on “The Love Boat,” has died. He was 90. SENT: 550 words, photos.

CHINA-SPACE-STATION — An automated spacecraft docked with China’s new space station Sunday carrying fuel and supplies for its future crew, the Chinese space agency announced. SENT: 180 words, photos.

MLB-2 MILLIONTH RUN — Josh Donaldson of the Minnesota Twins scored the 2 millionth run in Major League Baseball history on Saturday, trotting home in the first inning on a ground-rule double by Nelson Cruz against Kansas City. The Elias Sports Bureau confirmed Donaldson touched the plate for the milestone mark. SENT: 170 words, photo.

BRITAIN-BORIS JOHNSON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married Saturday in a small private ceremony in London, U.K. newspapers reported. SENT: 250 words, photos.

MICHAEL LEWIS-DAUGHTER-CRASH — “Moneyball” writer Michael Lewis and former MTV correspondent Tabitha Soren are mourning the death of their 19-year-old daughter. Dixie Lewis was killed Tuesday in a Northern California highway crash that also killed a friend. SENT: 340 words, photo.

CHINA-SPACE-STATION — China launches cargo rocket with supplies for space station. SENT: 190 words, photos.

BRITAIN-ROYALS — Duchess of Cambridge ‘hugely grateful’ for 1st vaccine dose. SENT: 160 words, photo.

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MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK

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VIRUS-OUTBREAK-VIETNAM — Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant that’s a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K., the Vietnamese health minister said. SENT: 400 words, photos.

VIRUS OUTBREAK-US — More states are lifting COVID-19 restrictions amid rising vaccination rates and falling caseloads. Massachusetts lifted its facemask requirement Saturday, a day after New Jersey, while New York City and Chicago reopened public beaches. Officials celebrated the relaxed rules, even as they urged unvaccinated Americans to get immunized. SENT: 510 words, photos.

VIRUS-OUTBREAK-FRANCE-TEST-CONCERT — Thousands of people, masked and tested for the coronavirus, packed inside a Paris arena for a concert as part of a public health experiment to prepare France to host big events again. SENT: 200 words, photos.

VIRUS-OUTBREAK-MIDEAST — Lebanon’s health authorities have launched a daylong COVID-19 vaccination “marathon” to speed up inoculations around the country, including areas where turnout has so far been low. SENT: 290 words.

VIRUS-OUTBREAK-CHINA — The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou shut down a neighborhood and ordered its residents to stay home for door-to-door coronavirus testing following an upsurge in infections that has rattled authorities. SENT: 300 words, photos.

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WASHINGTON/POLITICS

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IMMIGRATION-DEPORTEES — With President Joe Biden in office, advocates are pushing new campaigns and proposals to bring back immigrants they believe were unfairly deported from the U.S. One of them urges creating a centralized Department of Homeland Security office to consider requests from deported immigrants trying to reunite with their families in the United States. It’s a long shot: White House officials have never publicly mentioned the idea, and it doesn’t yet have a supporter in Congress. SENT: 970 words, photos.

VOTING BILLS-TEXAS — Texas Republicans dig in for a final weekend vote on some of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S., finalizing a sweeping bill that would eliminate drive-thru voting, reduce polling hours and limit Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. SENT: 820 words, photos.

CONGRESS-NEW-MEXICO — A special congressional election is checking the political pulse of politics across the Albuquerque metro area and a few outlying rural communities in one of the few House campaigns since President Joe Biden took office. SENT: 830 words, photo.

PRESCRIPTION-DRUGS-FLORIDA — The Biden administration is urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that could stand in the way of Florida and other states importing prescription drugs from Canada. SENT: 550 words, photos.

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NATIONAL

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BOY-KILLED-VEGAS — A mother and metro Las Vegas authorities misidentified an 8-year-old boy as a young homicide victim, police said after the boy, an older half-brother and their father were all found safe in Utah. SENT: 410 words, photo.

MARIJUANA-K-9-RETIREMENTS — Drug-sniffing police dogs from around Virginia are being forced into early retirement as the state prepares to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana on July 1. Virginia is following a trend in other states where legalization has led to K-9s being put out to pasture earlier than planned. SENT: 800 words, photos.

DEATH-PENALTY-SOUTH CAROLINA — Death penalty opponents have been making stops in South Carolina to speak out about why they feel the firing squad shouldn’t be used here. Earlier this month, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill forcing inmates to choose death by firing squad or electric chair, if lethal injection drugs aren’t available. SENT: 700 words, photos.

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INTERNATIONAL

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EGYPT-ANTIQUITIES-TOURISM — As some European countries re-open to international tourists, Egypt has already been trying for months to attract them to its archaeological sites and museums. SENT: 980 words, photos.

NEW ZEALAND-AUSTRALIA — Growing friction with China and how to reopen borders after the pandemic will be among the topics discussed by the leaders of Australia and New Zealand in their first face-to-face meeting since the coronavirus outbreak began. SENT: 335 words.

NEPAL-EVEREST — A retired attorney from Chicago who became the oldest American to scale Mount Everest, and a Hong Kong teacher who is now the fastest female climber of the world’s highest peak have returned safely from the mountain. SENT: 525 words, photos.

AFGHANISTAN — Afghan officials say a roadside bomb has struck a minivan full of university lecturers and students in Afghanistan’s northern Kapisa province, killing at least 4 people and wounding 11 others. SENT: 130 words, photo.

BELIZE-UK-POLICEMAN KILLED — The daughter-in-law of a politically influential British magnate is in custody in Belize, under investigation in the shooting death of a police superintendent. SENT: 280 words.

KENYA-SLAIN-AMERICAN — The family of an American investor of Somali origin whose body was found with torture wounds days after he went missing in Nairobi wants Kenya’s director of public prosecutions to run a separate investigation from one being done by police. SENT: 470 words, photos.

NIGERIA-STUDENTS RELEASED — Fourteen university students and staff abducted from their school in northwestern Nigeria have been released after spending more than a month in captivity. SENT: 170 words.

BELARUS PROTESTS — Belarusians distraught by an intensifying crackdown on political opposition in their homeland demonstrated against the country’s authoritarian president in the capital of neighboring Ukraine. SENT: 340 words, photos.

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SPORTS

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SOC--CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL — Chelsea won the Champions League for the second time Saturday, beating Manchester City 1-0 thanks to Kai Havertz’s first-half goal as Pep Guardiola’s overthinking proved costly again in the all-English final. SENT: 550 words, photos.

HKN--CLUTCH CAPTAINS — Captains are coming up clutch in the NHL playoffs: Patrice Bergeron (Bruins), Blake Wheeler (Jets), Steven Stamkos (Lightning), Gabriel Landeskog (Avalanche). The Islanders are doing their best without injured Anders Lee while the Maple Leafs are rallying around the absence of John Tavares. SENT: 1,020 words, photos.

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HOW TO REACH US

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