Australia's prime minister urged European leaders on Tuesday to adopt tougher border control measures in the wake of the feared drowning of as many as 900 asylum seekers whose boat capsized off the coast of Libya.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose government implemented a strict policy of turning back asylum seekers' boats in a bid to discourage them from trying to reach Australia, called the latest Mediterranean crisis a "terrible, terrible tragedy" and suggested Europe follow Australia's lead to ensure it's not repeated.

An upstate New York woman has taken on the post-winter pothole problem in her hometown by filling in the eyesores with pansies.

After months of severe weather left the streets of Schenectady pocked with pavement craters and city public works crews scrambling to fix them, some residents began filling in the holes themselves.

A 38-year-old woman's quest to find her birth mother ended in a surprising place - the company where she works.

WKBN-TV in Youngstown reports http://bit.ly/1ztZr15 that La-Sonya Mitchell-Clark requested records that were made available recently by the Ohio Department of Health. She learned her mother's name is Francine Simmons. She looked her up on Facebook and saw that she worked at InfoCision, the teleservices company where she works.

The New England Aquarium wants its endangered African penguins to get a little steamy.

Aquarium experts are playing matchmaker behind the scenes to encourage eight pairs of African penguins to breed more chicks.

In Puerto Rico's misty, bamboo-studded mountains, elementary school students are studying a nearly extinct language, beating on drums and growing native crops like cassava and sweet potato as they learn about the indigenous people who lived on the island before Christopher Columbus.

The children in four towns in the island's southeast corner play a ceremonial ball game that was called batey by the native Tainos, who were all but wiped out during colonial times. The boys and girls also learn words from the local Arawak language, which was in part rebuilt with help from linguists, and still exists in varying forms among other native groups in the hemisphere.

Ringo Starr was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a little help from one of his famous friends.

The mop-topped drummer who kept the beat for the Beatles, Starr was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist on Saturday night during a ceremony jammed with scintillating performances and touching moments.

Ford showed off its new Taurus and Nissan unveiled a midsize sedan and a SUV designed for China on Monday at a Shanghai Auto Show that highlighted rising competition from lower-priced Chinese auto brands.

Competition in China is intensifying as economic growth slows and more manufacturers pile into the world's biggest auto market by number of vehicles sold. Global automakers are spending heavily to appeal to Chinese tastes and local brands are rolling out lower-cost version of SUVs and other popular vehicles.

Cuba's efforts to sustain the critically endangered Cuban crocodile are getting a boost from Sweden, home to a pair of reptiles that Fidel Castro gave to a Soviet cosmonaut four decades ago.

A Stockholm zoo on Sunday is sending 10 of the couple's children to Cuba, where they will be placed in quarantine and eventually released into the Zapata Swamp, said Jonas Wahlstrom, the zookeeper who raised them.

California almonds are becoming one of the world's favorite snacks and creating a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for agricultural investors. But the crop extracts a staggering price from the land, consuming more water than all the showering, dish-washing and other indoor household water use of California's 39 million people.

As California enters its fourth year of drought and imposes the first mandatory statewide water cutbacks on cities and towns, the $6.5 billion almond crop is helping drive a sharp debate about water use, agricultural interests and how both affect the state's giant economy.

Five years after the worst U.S. offshore oil spill, the industry is working on drilling even further into the risky depths beneath the Gulf of Mexico to tap massive deposits once thought unreachable.

But critics say energy companies haven't developed the corresponding safety measures to prevent another disaster or contain one if it happens — a sign, environmentalists say, that the lessons of BP's spill were short-lived.