Scott Neuman

Updated at 7:06 p.m. ET

The Trump administration has cleared the way to open the country's largest national forest to more development and logging.

In a revised environmental impact study made public on Friday, the Department of Agriculture recommends granting a "full exemption" for the Tongass National Forest, which covers some 25,000 square miles in southeastern Alaska.

A Seattle police officer seen on video posted to social media earlier this week walking his bike over the head of a protester lying on the ground has been suspended while authorities investigate the incident.

Police in France are investigating whether terrorism was the motive for an attack that seriously wounded two people near the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo's former Paris offices, where a dozen people were gunned down by Islamist extremists in 2015.

Authorities say they have arrested two people in connection with the assault, which reportedly involved a sharp object that one witness described as a hatchet.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is still recovering from nerve agent poisoning widely seen as the work of Kremlin agents, has had his bank accounts frozen and his apartment "seized" in a civil case, according to his spokesperson.

Navalny was released from Berlin's Charité hospital on Wednesday after undergoing more than a month of treatment. He had his assets seized on Aug. 27 as he lie in a coma, said the opposition leader's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh.

The seizure came in connection with a long-running libel case filed.

Several Dutch celebrities are being heavily criticized after announcing they would no longer take part in public efforts to combat COVID-19 and for their apparent support of a conspiracy theory suggesting that the government is using fear of the virus to control the population.

With the hashtag #ikdoenietmeermee ("I no longer participate"), the musicians and influencers, led by 21-year-old rapper and model Famke Louise, posted videos to social media saying they were opting out of campaigns to promote social distancing and the use of face masks.

California will phase out the sale of all gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 in a bid to lead the U.S. in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging the state's drivers to switch to electric cars.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday that amounts to the most aggressive clean-car policy in the United States. Although it bans the sale of new gas cars and trucks after the 15-year deadline, it will still allow such vehicles to be owned and sold on the used-car market.

In a secret ceremony, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in for a sixth term Wednesday in the capital amid nationwide protests and international outrage over his August reelection in a vote widely viewed as fraudulent.

State media announced that Lukashenko, who has held on to power for more than a quarter-century, took the oath of office during a ceremony at Independence Palace in Minsk that was attended by several hundred government officials.

Updated at 12:50 p.m. ET

In a speech Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump once again sought to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic and called on Beijing to be punished for its handling of the disease, which has killed nearly 1 million people worldwide – a fifth of them in the United States.

The family of a 53-year-old Black man shot and killed by a National Guard soldier during protests this summer in Louisville, Ky., is filing a wrongful death lawsuit in the case.

David "Ya Ya" McAtee was killed just after midnight on June 1 by a single bullet to the chest while he stood in the doorway of his barbecue stand in the city's West End as police and National Guard troops enforcing a curfew converged on a crowd nearby. Investigators say the lethal shot was fired by a Guard soldier, who has not been publicly identified.

A second crew member has been found alive from a ship carrying livestock that capsized and sank during a typhoon off the southern coast of Japan. But another storm expected to hit the area over the weekend is likely to hamper the search for 40 other people still missing.

The Gulf Livestock 1, a 450-foot ship with a cargo of some 5,800 cows en route from New Zealand to China, issued a distress call early Wednesday Japan time near the island of Amami Oshima, north of Okinawa. The ship's "mayday" was sent from an area affected by Typhoon Maysak, a powerful Category 4 storm.

A ship carrying more than 40 crew members and some 6,000 head of cattle has disappeared off the coast of Japan after capsizing in typhoon-lashed seas, according to a crew member who so far is the only known survivor.

The Gulf Livestock 1, en route from New Zealand to China, issued a distress call early Wednesday from a position west of Japan's Amami Oshima island.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive for coronavirus, according to a spokeswoman.

Berlusconi, 83, will continue working in isolation at his home in Arcore, near Milan, his staff said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The commander of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison where thousands of people were executed and tortured during the communist regime's brutal rule over Cambodia in the 1970s, has died at age 77.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch, was serving life in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity when he died early Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the tribunal that found him guilty in 2010.

He had been ill for years, and the spokesman provided no details on the cause of death.

The Trump administration says the U.S. will not participate in a global push to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, in part because the effort is led by the World Health Organization, which the White House describes as "corrupt" and has accused of initially aiding China in covering up the scope of the pandemic.

Five and a half years after Islamist extremists gunned down a dozen people in an attack on the offices of the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper announced Tuesday that it will reprint cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that apparently sparked the attack.

An editorial to accompany the cartoons, set to come out Wednesday to coincide with the start of a trial related to the attack, said the paper's staff "will never lie down."

Updated at 1:30 p.m. ET

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a five-month extension to measures aimed at preventing millions of tenants from being thrown out of housing for missing rent due to hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3088 into law late Monday after last-minute wrangling in the California Legislature that tried to balance the demands of both landlord and tenant advocacy groups.

A federal appeals court has declined to order a criminal case against Michael Flynn dismissed. Instead, it ruled Monday that a judge can hear arguments about the Justice Department's motivations for dropping the case against President Trump's former national security adviser.

The 8-2 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, keeps alive a Department of Justice case that Attorney General William Barr had ordered dropped in May. The court also refused to remove U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has been overseeing the case.

Updated at 1:15 p.m. ET

Fewer than eight months ago, the U.S. had yet to experience its first confirmed case of a deadly disease that was sweeping through China and threatening to go global. Today, more than 6 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus and some 183,000 have died from it, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

The police chief in Kenosha, Wis., and the state's attorney general declined on Friday to dispute claims by the family of Jacob Blake — the man shot multiple times by a police officer last weekend — that he was being handcuffed to his hospital bed.

Speaking to NPR's All Things Considered, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said he could not confirm Blake's condition, nor whether he had been paralyzed by his injuries.

Updated at 5:48 p.m. ET

Law enforcement officials in Kenosha, Wis., are pushing back on suggestions that police showed deference to white vigilantes at Black Lives Matter protests following the fatal shooting last Tuesday of two demonstrators, allegedly by a an armed teen.

At a Friday afternoon news conference, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis said that the failure of authorities to stop the shooting suspect, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who was seen carrying an AR-15-style rifle prior to the shooting, did not show a lapse in judgement.

Hurricane Laura, which hit the coast of Louisiana early Thursday as a Category 4 storm packing winds of 150 mph, is one of the most powerful storms in decades to hit the area.

How does it compare to other Gulf Coast hurricanes? That depends on how you define the question and how far back you go. Using 1900 as a starting point, here's a look at some of the most intense and destructive hurricanes in the last 120 years.

Most intense

Hurricane Laura, one of the most powerful storms to hit Louisiana in living memory, left destruction and misery in its wake, with debris from homes and businesses scattered about, flooded streets, uprooted lampposts and at least one death. Authorities warn there could be more damage yet to be discovered.

Hours after the storm passed the Louisiana coastline, high winds and rain persisted, preventing authorities from checking for survivors.

Updated at 8:30 a.m. ET

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has announced that she will step down from her post at the end of the month.

Conway, whose official title is counselor to the president, is known for her tenacious defense of administration policy in frequent appearances on cable television. She is one of President Trump's longest-serving aides.

In a statement on Sunday, she cited a need to "devote more time to family matters."

Heavy seasonal rainfall, which has caused the worst flooding in decades across China's interior, forced officials at the Three Gorges Dam on Wednesday to open all 10 spillways for the first-time ever in an effort to control rising water on a reservoir along the Yangtze River.

Since June, China has been battling a series of devastating floods, stretching from the country's southwestern interior to its east coast. Officials are calling it the worst since 1981, with estimates of $25 billion worth of damage and the displacement of millions of people.

Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET

The European Union on Wednesday said it does not recognize the results of Belarus' Aug. 9 presidential election, calling the poll fraudulent and promising to sanction individuals responsible for the violence that has followed.

"These elections were neither free nor fair and did not meet international standards," Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said at the end of an emergency summit on Belarus held by teleconference.

Updated at 6:12 p.m. ET

The head of the National Organization for Women will step down following allegations of racist behavior and a toxic work environment at the country's largest feminist organization.

Toni Van Pelt, who has been NOW's president for three years, cited health concerns in an email to staff late Sunday for why she will leave the post on Aug. 28.

Urging countries to join a global vaccine agreement, the head of the World Health Organization on Tuesday reiterated concerns that, once developed, drugs to prevent COVID-19 might be hoarded by some countries at the expense of others.

Speaking in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a call to avoid "vaccine nationalism" by joining the COVAX Global Vaccines Facility – a pact aimed at ensuring access to such drugs around the world.

The embattled Belarus government came under increasing pressure Tuesday as demonstrations sparked by a disputed presidential election showed signs of expanding, with more factory workers joining the protests and hundreds of people gathering outside a jail where the husband of the country's main opposition figure is being held.

The protests began after the Aug. 9 polls in which President Alexander Lukashenko — who has kept a tight rein on the country for more than a quarter-century — claimed a sixth consecutive term amid widespread accusations of massive election fraud.

Crowds gathered in the Spanish capital over the weekend to protest an expanded requirement for them to wear protective masks in public as the government tries to combat a sudden resurgence of coronavirus infections.

The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, vowed Monday to cling tightly to power as many factory workers walked off their jobs and joined with hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters demanding his immediate resignation.

Lukashenko, who had flown by helicopter to a factory in Minsk in hopes of rallying support, was instead met with chants of "Leave!"

Speaking to workers, he vowed to "never cave in to pressure."