Scott Neuman

The owner of British Airways is calling for digital health passes for passengers as a step toward getting airlines back in the sky after devastating losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is warning of a coup after the army issued a scathing statement faulting his leadership and demanding he step down following a conflict last year with Azerbaijan that resulted in a significant loss of territory claimed by ethnic Armenians.

Amnesty International says it no longer considers jailed Russian anti-Kremlin activist Alexei Navalny a "prisoner of conscience," citing past comments he's made that "reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred."

Chinese pharmaceutical makers are seeking market approval from Beijing for two new coronavirus vaccines – one that has shown 72% efficacy and another 69% efficacy in human Phase III trials.

The separate announcements on Wednesday come from Sinopharm for its second vaccine after the state-run company's first was approved for distribution in December, and from CanSino Biologics, Inc. (CanSinoBIO), for its first vaccine.

A man escaped North Korea last week by swimming several kilometers before coming ashore in the South, where he managed to evade border guards for more than six hours, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Malaysia has returned nearly 1,200 migrants from Myanmar in defiance of a court order and appeals from human rights groups to halt the process.

The Myanmar nationals were bused in from around the country and loaded onto three navy ships sent to retrieve them by Myanmar's ruling junta, which seized power in a coup earlier this month.

The action followed a stay issued by the Kuala Lumpur High Court putting the deportation stay of the 1,086 refugees on hold pending a Wednesday hearing.

Malaysia maintains that the deportees were detained for immigration offenses.

After traveling nearly 300 million miles and surviving a heart-stopping 7-minute descent to the surface of Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover is preparing to get down to the real science – looking for signs of ancient life on the red planet.

On Thursday, Perseverance shed its "cruise stage" and began a blistering 12,000 mph drop to the Martian surface.

Chicago police showed "confusion and lack of coordination" in their response to last summer's protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, according to a new watchdog report, which said officers frequently did not understand who was in charge or how to handle sometimes violent demonstrators.

Nearly a half-million Texans are without electricity for a third-straight day as the effects from historic winter storms that have blasted the state and many other parts of the country this week are still being felt.

And more severe weather is ahead for many of the same areas already hit hardest, with 100 million people in the path of the latest storm forecast to bring freezing rain and snow from the Plains to the East Coast on Thursday.

It's been a long journey for Perseverance, NASA's latest Mars rover, and it's about to get very real very quickly.

Perseverance, a six-wheeled, SUV-sized vehicle with the most sophisticated robotic astrobiology lab ever launched and an experimental aerial drone aboard, is at the heart of the Mars 2020 mission. It blasted off in July on a 293-million-mile journey.

Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since the Feb. 1 coup that toppled her government, is facing new charges that might see her held indefinitely without trial.

Suu Kyi was initially accused of importing unregistered walkie-talkies, a charge widely viewed as a pretext for her arrest as the country's military junta consolidated power.

Updated 8:05 p.m. ET

Heavy snowfall and frigid temperatures across the U.S. have kept winter storm warnings in effect from Washington state to the Great Lakes into northern New England and a large section of the South that includes Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

It's also left more than four million customers without power across the United States, including three million in Texas alone.

Russia said Friday that it is prepared to cut ties with the European Union if the bloc slaps economic sanctions on the Kremlin in retaliation for the detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked in an interview on the Russian YouTube channel Solovyov Live whether Moscow is moving toward severing ties with the EU.

Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET

Amid "growing reports and photographic evidence" that live ammunition is being used against anti-junta protesters in Myanmar, a United Nations human rights investigator is calling on the Security Council to consider sanctions against the country's coup leaders.

Thomas Andrews' remarks at a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva come a day after the U.S. imposed its own sanctions on the generals who overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1.

Updated at 2:51 p.m. ET

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on 10 current and retired top-ranking leaders in Myanmar's military following a coup earlier this month that toppled the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her government's decision to extend a COVID-19 lockdown into March, as she issued a stark warning that new strains of the coronavirus "may destroy any success" already achieved in keeping the pandemic in check.

The president of the European Commission admitted to mistakes Wednesday in the bloc's approach to inoculating its 447 million people against COVID-19, acknowledging that it was late to approve a vaccine and that officials held unrealistic expectations about how quickly one could be deployed.

As a result, "We are still not where we want to be," Ursula von der Leyen told European Parliament lawmakers in Brussels.

China's space agency, fresh off a successful sample-return mission to the moon, announced Wednesday that an ambitious rover mission it launched in July had reached orbit around Mars.

"China's Tianwen 1 robotic probe entered Martian orbit on Wednesday night after a lengthy interplanetary voyage, becoming the first Chinese spacecraft to reach the red planet," the state-run China Daily reported, citing the China National Space Administration.

A faulty engine throttle may have contributed to the crash of an Indonesian jetliner last month that killed all 62 people aboard, the country's air accident investigative agency said Wednesday.

Pilots aboard the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 struggled to keep the plane airborne just after takeoff from Jakarta on Jan. 9. Within minutes, they lost control, and the airliner nosed into the Java Sea.

While the U.S. Senate began its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, local lawmakers in the town of Palm Beach, Fla., also gathered to consider the former president's fate – specifically, whether to let him live full-time at his sprawling private club, Mar-a-Lago.

In a presentation at the council, John Marion, who represents Trump, argued that the former president meets the definition of a "bona fide" employee of the swanky club, and therefore can legally reside there.

In an apparent signal to Beijing, the U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that a pair of carrier strike groups were conducting exercises in the South China Sea.

The move — a show of strength apparently meant to signal the new administration's determination to stand firm against China's steady encroachment in the strategic waterway — comes just days after the destroyer USS John S. McCain conducted operations in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the region claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Updated Jan. 19 at 12:42 a.m. ET

Authorities have arrested a woman who the FBI says may have stolen a laptop computer or hard drive from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the Capitol riot earlier this month. The bureau says it is investigating whether she planned to funnel the device to Russia's foreign intelligence agency.

Simon & Schuster says it has decided not to publish a forthcoming book by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, citing the lawmaker's role in fomenting this week's "disturbing [and] deadly insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol.

Hawley quickly fired back at the publisher, calling the move "Orwellian" and an "assault on the First Amendment."

Updated at 4:10 a.m. ET

Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy analyst who spent three decades in prison after pleading guilty to spying for the Israelis, has arrived in Israel a month after the U.S. Justice Department declined to extend his parole.

Pollard and his wife, Esther, landed early Wednesday at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv aboard a private jet owned by Sheldon Adelson, a major backer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Federal health officials are likely to shorten their recommendation for how long people should quarantine to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus from the current 14 days to as few as seven.

Mexico has become the fourth country to cross the 100,000 threshold for confirmed COVID-19 deaths, joining the U.S., Brazil and India.

Mexico's director of epidemiology, José Luis Alomía Zegarra, made the announcement late Thursday. He said there have been 100,104 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Mexico since the first case was detected there in February.

Thailand's prime minister has vowed to use all available laws to quash protests calling for his ouster, after parliament rejected key demands of the demonstrators by rejecting a motion to revamp the country's constitution and overhaul the monarchy.

Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army chief who seized power in a bloodless coup six years ago, issued a statement on Thursday, addressing months of increasing unrest in the capital, Bangkok, led by students demanding a more freer and more open society.

Updated at 4:55 p.m. ET

After 20 months on the tarmac following two fatal crashes, Boeing's troubled 737 Max airliner has been given the green light to resume passenger flights, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday.

As hospitals in Iowa fill up with COVID-19 patients amid a major surge in cases in recent weeks, Gov. Kim Reynolds, who once dismissed coronavirus restrictions as "feel-good" measures, has abruptly reversed course, issuing the state's first mask mandate.