Scott Neuman

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.

Updated at 5:15 a.m. ET

Four astronauts aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Resilience have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above Earth, where they will stay until spring.

Updated at 10:30 a.m. ET

An extremely powerful Hurricane Iota has swirled into a Category 5 behemoth, with maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour, as it moves toward the Nicaraguan coast. The storm is expected to make landfall later Monday, just two weeks after the Central American country weathered Hurricane Eta.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been hospitalized for COVID-19 after testing positive for coronavirus earlier this week, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Zelenskiy announced Monday that he had become infected with the virus, saying he felt good and promising to self-isolate while continuing to work.

On Monday, Zelenskiy said he was running a temperature of 37.5 Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).

Britain and the European Union on Thursday condemned China's move to disqualify four pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong — an action that has led to the mass resignation of the opposition in the city's legislature.

The move follows the approval on Wednesday by China's National People's Congress Standing Committee of a resolution giving Hong Kong authorities the power to bypass local courts and summarily remove politicians seen as a threat to security.

Lucille Bridges, who in 1960 braved a gauntlet of threats and racist slurs to escort her daughter to a formerly all-white school in New Orleans in what became a symbol of opposition to segregation, has died at age 86.

Civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, who walked up the stairs of William Frantz Elementary School six decades ago to become its first Black student, announced her mother's death on Instagram late Tuesday. She included a photo showing mother and daughter holding hands as they exited the school, flanked by U.S. marshals.

After causing flooding in South Florida, Hurricane Eta was preparing to make landfall on the state's Gulf Coast, where it is expected to bring more rain and potentially dangerous storm surge.

At 10 a.m., Eta, located about 145 miles south-southwest of Tampa, had rebuilt into a Category 1 hurricane with sustained 75 mph winds. It was forecast to lose some strength before coming ashore on Florida's west coast as a tropical storm Thursday morning.

Hong Kong's opposition lawmakers are resigning en masse to protest the expulsion of four fellow pro-democracy legislators that Beijing deems secessionist.

The move comes after China's National People's Congress Standing Committee passed a resolution giving Hong Kong authorities the power to bypass local courts and summarily remove politicians seen as a threat to security. Four Hong Kong lawmakers who have supported the territory's pro-democracy movement — and were thus barred from running for reelection — were immediately unseated, as stipulated in the resolution.

Some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers are set to arrive in Nagorno-Karabakh to oversee a new cease-fire aimed at halting the heaviest fighting in decades between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians for control of the breakaway region.

Updated at 11 a.m. ET

A new Vatican report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct that spanned decades, shows that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were aware of the accusations against him.

Updated at 3:28 p.m. ET

Ben Carson, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has tested positive for the coronavirus, as has David Bossie, a longtime Trump ally and campaign aide.

The news comes days after several other top Trump administration officials were also found to be infected with the virus.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory.

Updated at 10:20 a.m. ET

President-elect Joe Biden named 13 health experts to his Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board on Monday, advancing his plans despite uncertainty over how much the Trump administration will cooperate amid its ongoing legal challenge to the election results. The coronavirus has spread at alarming rates in the U.S. in recent weeks.

Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET

Shortly after The Associated Press and multiple networks called the presidential election for former Vice President Joe Biden, President Trump released a statement claiming the election was "far from over," falsely accusing President-elect Biden of attempting to undermine the electoral process and vowing to take the election to the courts.

The U.S. recorded nearly 122,000 new daily coronavirus cases in data released Friday, a sharp uptick over the previous day that saw the country's first six-figure increase since the start of the pandemic.

According to Johns Hopkins University, 121,888 new confirmed cases were added to the count on Thursday, which now totals more than 9.6 million since the first case was diagnosed in the U.S. in January. On the same day, another 1,210 COVID-19 deaths were recorded. Almost 235,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since January.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, who fought in his country's 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia, has abruptly resigned after a Hague-based special court confirmed that he's been indicted on war crimes charges.

Speaking at a news conference in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, Thaci said he was stepping down "to protect the integrity of the state."

"I resign as of today," he told reporters on Thursday, urging calm and "political and civic unity."

The U.S. has reached another grim coronavirus milestone, surpassing 100,000 new confirmed cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic reached the country more than nine months ago.

The record 102,831 cases reported on Thursday by Johns Hopkins University tops the more than 99,321 cases set just days ago, on Oct. 30. The university reported 1,097 additional COVID-19 deaths for the same day.

Tropical Storm Eta, which hit Nicaragua's coast as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, continues dumping heavy rain on the region, washing out roads to remote communities and bringing life-threatening flash floods.

In its 10 a.m. ET advisory Wednesday, the U.S.-based National Hurricane Center placed the center of Eta about 135 miles north-northeast of the capital, Managua, with sustained winds of 50 mph. It was moving west at 7 mph and was expected to pick up speed later Wednesday.

Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET

While the United States is locked in limbo for the outcome of an election that President Trump has already labeled fraudulent and has threatened to challenge in court, the rest of the world is looking on with a mixture of uncertainty, concern and outright alarm.

World leaders have for the most part held back on weighing in on an election that is still America's to decide. However, media around the world, hoping to place a historic moment into context for readers, listeners and viewers, have been less reticent.

Updated at 8:00 a.m. ET Wednesday

Eta was downgraded to a tropical storm overnight but continues to lash Nicaragua with strong winds and heavy rain.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said there was "no alternative" to a new England-wide lockdown amid a spike in coronavirus cases that he warned could be "twice as bad" as anything seen in the spring.

Updated at 10:15 a.m. ET

As the U.S. grapples with a major spike in new coronavirus cases ahead of Election Day, President Trump is suggesting that he might fire the country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. The comments came at a late-night rally that spilled over into the small hours of Monday.

Speaking to supporters in Opa-Locka, Fla., the president expressed frustration with the media's coverage of COVID-19, saying that after Tuesday's election, "you won't hear too much about it."

Updated at 1:55 p.m. ET

Gunmen disguised as policemen stormed Kabul University in the Afghan capital in an hours-long assault on Monday, killing at least 19 people and wounding 22 more, including students who jumped out of windows to flee the attackers. It is the second attack on a learning center in Kabul in recent days, and comes amid a spike in violence across the country.

Carrying a "pistol-like" object and a fake bomb strapped to his abdomen, a Danish man serving a life sentence for the sexual assault and murder of a journalist aboard his homemade submarine, bluffed his way out of prison before police quickly recaptured him.

Updated at 9:00 a.m. ET

Researchers in Britain are preparing to start a controversial COVID-19 "human challenge" study in which dozens of healthy volunteers will be exposed to live coronavirus in an effort to speed up vaccine development.

Police in France raided numerous homes Monday in a sweep of suspects alleged to have offered online support for last week's beheading of a schoolteacher who had shown his students controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, the Interior Ministry said.

The raids come as thousands have poured into the streets in France to show solidarity in the wake of Friday's attack in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, where history teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was killed by a man later identified as an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen.