Jaclyn Diaz

The Justice Department rejected a request by Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks for legal protection in court against a lawsuit linking him to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Brooks, former President Donald Trump and others were sued by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., earlier this year. Swalwell alleges that Brooks and others named in the lawsuit helped incite a mob of Trump supporters on Jan. 6 during a pro-Trump rally.

Masks are again required for members of the House side of the U.S. Capitol amid a nationwide rise in coronavirus cases.

Under the reimplemented mandate, members, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, must wear a "well-fitted, medical grade, filtration face mask" in House office buildings, during meetings, and while in the House Chamber. Under the order from Dr. Brian Monahan, Congress's attending physician, the new rule doesn't effect members of the Senate.

The return of masks in the House comes a month after the requirement was first lifted for vaccinated members.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International says it will stop selling cigarettes in the United Kingdom within the next decade — including the company's iconic Marlboro brand.

"It will disappear," the company's CEO Jacek Olczak said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday. "The first choice for consumers is they should quit smoking. But if they don't, the second best choice is to let them switch to the better alternatives."

FirstEnergy Corp. has agreed to pay a $230 million fine for its central role in a bribery scheme — the goal of which was to get legislation passed that included a $1 billion bailout for two of its power plants in Ohio.

Federal prosecutors charged FirstEnergy, based in Akron, Ohio, with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud.

An Ohio man federal prosecutors say is an "incel" was charged in federal court this week with attempting a hate crime for his plot to kill women.

Tres Genco, 21, was arrested Wednesday and is also facing charges related to illegally possessing a machine gun, according to the Justice Department.

Organizers of this year's Olympics in Tokyo are putting a new meaning behind "look, but don't touch."

The Games are ordinarily a place where many young athletes mix, mingle and, naturally, get very close.

In summer 2032, the world's largest sporting event will head to Brisbane, Australia.

The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday in Tokyo that Australia will host the Summer Olympic games for the third time.

Brisbane will also host the Paralympic Games.

Adrian Schrinner, the lord mayor of Brisbane, said the effort to make Brisbane a host city began six years ago under his predecessor.

Americans desperate to leave the confines of their homes for a last-minute summer destination have a new option. Starting Aug. 9, Canada will reopen to fully-vaccinated Americans for non-essential travel after more than a year of closed borders between the two nations.

A month later, on Sept. 7, fully-vaccinated people from any country can travel to Canada for non-essential travel.

A devastating third wave of the coronavirus pandemic is hitting several countries in Southeast Asia as the delta variant takes hold in the region, leading to record levels of infections and death.

With Euro 2020 and the Stanley Cup in the books, the NBA Finals nearing an end, baseball past the All-Star break, and the Olympics a week away — sports are running full steam ahead, even as cases of COVID-19 tick up across the U.S.

Many stadiums and arenas in the U.S. have allowed fans to return at full capacity with many dropping mask requirements following a year of pandemic restrictions that prevented spectators and travel.

Plans for the Tokyo Olympics, which bring together athletes from around the world, are going ahead as scheduled next week.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a new bill into law Thursday barring police from lying to underage kids during interrogations.

Commonly used interrogation tactics, such as promising leniency or insinuating that incriminating evidence exists, are banned when questioning suspects younger than 18 under the new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1.

Nearly 23 million children around the world missed out on routine childhood vaccinations last year due to service disruptions from the pandemic, the World Health Organization and UNICEF report.

In a new analysis released Thursday that highlights data from around the world, the two organizations said immunization rates among children fell in many Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that the company is recalling five of its aerosol sunscreen products due to the discovery of trace amounts of benzene, a carcinogen, in some samples.

Pesky, oversize goldfish are causing problems in Minnesota.

Authorities in Burnsville, Minn., have urged residents and owners of pet goldfish not to dispose of the family pet in lakes and ponds. The city tweeted a warning that doing so has resulted in the takeover of one local lake by overgrown goldfish.

"They grow bigger than you think and contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants," authorities wrote on Twitter. "Groups of these large goldfish were recently found in Keller Lake."

Why did heavily armed men gun down the president of Haiti? Police say they killed four suspects in a tense hostage situation and arrested two others, but who the suspects are and their motivation remain a mystery.

Tropical Storm Elsa wreaked havoc around Florida and southeast Georgia this week, leaving at least one person dead and several others injured.

In Jacksonville, Fla., a possible tornado touched down Wednesday taking down power lines in the area. Crews worked through the night and into the early morning to restore power to residents.

A Washington, D.C., court has suspended the law license for Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's attorney, just weeks after New York similarly took action against him.

Giuliani's law license will remain suspended in the nation's capital pending the resolution of his case in New York, according to the District of Columbia appeals court.

More than 180 people were killed in shootings across the country over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive and reviewed by NPR.

By 11:30 p.m. on Monday, the Gun Violence Archive reported 189 people killed and 516 injured in shootings over the course of a 72-hour period starting Friday. In total, there were more than 540 shootings over the holiday weekend, the organization reported.

A stockpile of illegal fireworks detonated following attempts by the Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad to destroy the explosives. The force of the blast destroyed the department's armored truck, injured 17 people and required the evacuation of nearby homes.

The entire village of Lytton in Canada's province of British Columbia was evacuated after a wildfire quickly took over the small town Wednesday.

In his evacuation order, the village's mayor, Jan Polderman described "fire in the village of Lytton" that "threatened structures and the safety of residents." Roughly 250 people live in the town about 150 miles northeast of Vancouver.

Scores of deaths along the U.S. West Coast and in the Vancouver metro area in Canada are being blamed on an ongoing heat wave that has broken records.

Authorities said at least six deaths in Washington and Oregon could be due to the heat wave that began in the region on Friday.

More residents of the Champlain Towers South are suing their condo board, claiming that the association was aware of, or should've been aware of, major structural issues throughout the building but failed to fix them. This failure resulted in injuries and death as well as the loss of residents' homes and other property, the complaints allege.

The death toll in the partial collapse of the 12-story building has reached 12, with another 149 people unaccounted for.

Arguments in the trial of the Capital Gazette shooter began Tuesday — almost three years to the day since Jarrod Ramos opened fire in the newsroom of the Annapolis, Md., newspaper.

Five people died in the June 28, 2018, attack: John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. The mass shooting was the deadliest attack on a newsroom in modern U.S. history.

For 18 months, Sonia Doe faced humiliating strip searches in front of male guards. Male prisoners exposed themselves to her. She faced sexual harassment, discrimination and physical threats from corrections officers and inmates alike.

Doe, who is transgender, has lived her life publicly as a woman since 2003. Yet, Doe — a pseudonym used for her lawsuit — was transported to four different men's prisons across New Jersey from March 2018 to August 2019.

Throughout the weekend, rescue crews combed through the wreckage of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Fla.

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes Sunday on three targets in Syria and Iraq that the Pentagon said were used by Iranian-backed militias in the area.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement Sunday that the selected targets were weapons storage and operational facilities used by the militias to mount unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq.

An increase of coronavirus infections around the world is forcing some governments to reimplement lockdown measures to control the spread of the virus.

Assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the way to the site of the collapse of the 12-story residential condo in Surfside, Fla. President Joe Biden early Friday approved federal assistance to aid state and local response efforts.