Colin Dwyer

The Trump administration says it will designate Yemen's Houthi movement a terrorist organization, in a move that has elicited consternation from international aid organizations and authorities.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. wants to "deter further malign activity by the Iranian regime" that backs the Houthis.

The designation is set to take effect on Jan. 19 — the day before Trump leaves office and President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

Senate investigators have heaped criticism on both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, finding a series of failures and improprieties during the review process that put the troubled Boeing 737 Max jetliner in the sky.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation laid out the fatal missteps in a scathing report issued Friday.

Updated at 12:10 p.m. ET

Since news of the SolarWinds hack surfaced nearly a week ago, high-ranking Trump administration officials had remained largely silent about the cyberattack that involved at least half a dozen federal agencies. On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke that silence, becoming the most prominent administration official to blame Russia for the attack.

Health care workers across the U.S. are getting a new arrow in their quiver.

More than 300 schoolchildren have safely walked free, according to Nigerian officials, roughly a week after their mass abduction in the northern state of Katsina.

For about six years, the ghost of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino has haunted the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., its lingering vastness vacant of life.

But not for long: The skyline highlight-cum-eyesore is scheduled for demolition late next month, and the city is offering you the opportunity to bring it down with your own bare hands — sort of.

Updated at 10:20 a.m. ET

In his marathon year-end news conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin projected confidence and defiance on a range of issues — and vehemently denied government involvement in the recent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

On Thursday, Putin appeared during the latest iteration of a Q-and-A that regularly tops four hours, which he has led for nearly two decades running.

Nearly six years after Islamist extremists led attacks on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market, a French court has convicted 14 people as their accomplices. The ruling handed down Wednesday found the defendants guilty on a variety of charges, ranging from membership in a criminal network to complicity in the shocking assault on the satirical publication in early 2015.

Just half a year after climate activists won a big legal victory in the U.K. effectively blocking plans for a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport on environmental grounds, the country's highest court has turned the tables once more.

Now that federal regulators have authorized one COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the U.S. — and appear close to authorizing another — it seems Americans are growing less reluctant about receiving an inoculation themselves. The Kaiser Family Foundation, or KFF, released a poll Tuesday showing a significant leap in the number of people saying they definitely or probably would get vaccinated.

The holiday season is upon us, and usually that means packed shopping malls and kisses beneath the mistletoe, long-distance travel and big family festivities — just about everything, in other words, that could make an already dire pandemic even worse. So officials in multiple European countries, caught between a yule log and a hard place, are imposing a new wave of strict coronavirus lockdowns.

Updated at 12:50 p.m. ET

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized a COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, federal officials are mobilizing behind a vast effort to distribute the vaccine as soon as possible. Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said Saturday that distribution of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine has begun.

For weeks, President Trump's push to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has soldiered on despite an ever-lengthening string of legal defeats. But that effort, already sputtering, now appears all but exhausted after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected Texas' challenge to President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

Federal officials have authorized emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech in a landmark decision that promises to alter the fight against the coronavirus radically in the United States.

The Food and Drug Administration released its letter to Pfizer granting the authorization Friday evening.

Jimmy Lai, the prominent Hong Kong media mogul and democracy activist, has been charged with endangering national security by colluding with a foreign country. The charge handed down Friday makes Lai, publisher of the China-skeptic Apple Daily tabloid, the most prominent individual yet charged under a controversial law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong earlier this year.

It has been more than eight decades since Spain's fascist dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, took possession of the Pazo de Meirás during the civil war that brought him to power.

Since then, the palace in the northwest region of Galicia has served as an opulent summer retreat — first for the dictator himself, then for his family after Franco's death roughly 45 years ago.

Not anymore.

Canadian health officials have authorized use of the country's first COVID-19 vaccine. Health Canada announced the move Wednesday, saying a "thorough, independent review of the evidence" determined that the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech meets the "stringent safety, efficacy and quality requirements for use in Canada."

If popular culture has taught us anything about the holidays, it's that this is a season of reunions: a time when people conquer great distances and lengthy separations just to be together again. Usually, though, such stories involve cross-country trips — not the orbits of the two largest planets in our solar system.

This year is different.

Former Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who spent three decades representing Maryland in the Senate, has died in Baltimore at the age of 87.

His son, Rep. John Sarbanes, did not disclose a cause of death in his brief statement announcing the news, noting only that his father "passed away peacefully" on Sunday evening.

The world's highest peak just grew a couple of feet overnight — on paper, at least.

On Tuesday, after years of fraught discussion and surveying work, China and Nepal announced a revision to the elevation of Mount Everest: Officials say the summit now stands precisely at 8,848.86 meters, or 29,031.69 feet above sea level.

That makes the official measurement more than 2 feet taller than the consensus had it on Monday.

The Trump administration is planning to draw down U.S. troops in Somalia by early 2021. In a statement released Friday, the Pentagon explained that "the majority" of the roughly 700 soldiers currently stationed in the country will be reassigned to positions in neighboring countries in East Africa.

Updated at 5:05 p.m. ET

A Japanese space capsule ferrying sample material from an asteroid — the bounty from a six-year mission spanning billions of miles — made its triumphant return to Earth this weekend.

The small capsule that had detached from the Hayabusa2 space probe landed in the vicinity of the town of Woomera, in the Australian Outback, early Sunday Japan time. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, which spearheaded the mission, said a helicopter found the capsule in the planned landing area.

Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai was charged with fraud and denied bail Thursday, ensuring that one of the region's loudest pro-democracy voices will be behind bars until at least spring. On Thursday a Hong Kong court, finding that he was a flight risk, ordered him to stay in custody until his next hearing, currently expected in April.

Updated at 12:50 p.m. ET

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its guidelines for people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus. Now, instead of the standard 14-day quarantine it has been recommending, the CDC says that potential exposure warrants a quarantine of 10 or seven days, depending on one's test results and symptoms.

If individuals do not develop symptoms, they need only quarantine for 10 days; if they test negative, that period can be reduced to just one week.

After weeks of bloody conflict in the northernmost reaches of Ethiopia, international aid groups have obtained access to its war-torn region of Tigray. The United Nations said Wednesday that it has reached a deal with Ethiopia's government, which opens the door to humanitarian groups seeking to help civilians caught in the internecine fighting.

One day after the assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, the country's leaders have made clear they intend to retaliate for a slaying they blame on Israel.

In separate statements delivered Saturday, both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani threatened an aggressive response to the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday

A partial recount in Wisconsin concluded Sunday with President-elect Joe Biden's winning margin over President Trump increasing by 87 total votes.