Matthew S. Schwartz

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is facing international pressure to step down after elections widely seen as rigged, ordered the country's vast border with Brazil to be closed. The move will make it harder for aid groups to get emergency food and medicine into the country.

The U.S. and some other countries have recognized Juan Guaidó, the parliamentary opposition leader, as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Guaidó is embracing the support and has promised to bring in emergency aid to help the poor country.

Updated at 4:34 p.m. ET

The Trump administration is changing the number of American troops that will remain in Syria.

Approximately 400 troops will stay there, a senior administration official has told NPR. That's double the number announced Thursday night by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

Updated Friday at 6:52 p.m. ET

The father of an Alabama woman who traveled to Syria and became the bride of an Islamic State fighter is suing the Trump administration to allow her return, after the president said she would be barred from entering the United States.

A fire raced through the capital of Bangladesh on Wednesday night, killing at least 70 people and injuring dozens.

Fire officials say the blaze began in a partly residential four-story building in Dhaka as most people were sleeping.

In the days after Superstorm Sandy soaked the East Coast, New York City Department of Transportation workers cataloged the damage to the agency's fleet of vehicles. That information was handed over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would give the city enough money to replace the damaged vehicles with new ones.

Only one problem: Many of those vehicles were damaged before Sandy hit. Some hadn't been operational in years and had been marked for salvage long before the storm.

Finding that a Texas court hadn't followed its instructions, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that a Texas man who killed a store clerk during a botched robbery attempt "is a person with intellectual disability" and therefore cannot be put to death.

Russia's foreign intelligence service has asked a court to continue holding former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been detained since December on suspicion of spying.

A court in Moscow had wanted to hold Whelan until Feb. 28, but Russia's Foreign Security Service, or FSB, wants Whelan detained through May 28, the Interfax news agency said, according to Reuters.

The British woman who moved from London to Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State won't be able to return to England, British officials say. A lawyer for the family says 19-year-old Shamima Begum's citizenship is being revoked — an action that could render her stateless.

George Mendonsa, the Navy sailor whose passionate kiss in Times Square symbolized a nation's exuberance over the end of World War II, has died. He was 95.

The photographer never got the name of the sailor, but Mendonsa claimed it was him, and many experts who analyzed his facial structure came to the same conclusion.

Updated Tuesday at 4:27 p.m. ET

Teachers spent only a few hours striking before West Virginia's House of Delegates effectively killed a new bill that would pave the way for charter schools and private school vouchers in a state that relies primarily on public education.

Cheers came from the rooms in the Capitol where teachers on strike had assembled, and Fred Albert, president of West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Associated Press, "It was very clear today that the House heard our voice."

Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman sentenced to 21 months behind bars after he sent explicit photos of himself to an underage girl, has been released from prison.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 54-year-old Weiner is now in the custody of a New York residential re-entry management office — also known as a halfway house. He's scheduled to be released on May 14.

If Congress votes to disapprove President Trump's declaration of a national emergency, Trump is prepared to veto it, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said on Sunday.

A Myanmar court sentenced two men to death Friday for killing U Ko Ni, a well-known adviser to the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi and one of Myanmar's best known advocates for democracy.

The 65-year-old lawyer was waiting for a taxi at the Yangon airport in January 2017 when he was shot in the head, reports say, while he was holding his grandchild. The gunman, U Kyi Lin, went on to kill a cabdriver who tried to intervene. Both the shooter and an accomplice were sentenced to death. Two other accomplices got prison sentences, The Associated Press reported.

As 31-year-old Travis Kauffman thrashed at the bottom of a gully, wrestling with a mountain lion that wouldn't let go of his wrist, the Colorado man realized it might be his last day alive.

"Well, this would be a pretty crappy way to die," Kauffman remembers thinking. He told Luke Runyon of member station KUNC about it in his first sit-down media interview. "It very much turned into a full-on fight for survival."

Updated at 8:55 a.m. ET

A private detective agency hired by the diocese that oversees Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School says there's no evidence that the school's students instigated a conflict with a Native American man near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last month.

Eric Gerard McGinnis was not supposed to have a gun. After a violent altercation with his girlfriend, a Texas judge barred him in 2015 from possessing a firearm. A year later, McGinnis tried to buy a gun anyway, but the purchase wouldn't go through after a background check revealed the court order.

Thirteen same-sex couples have filed a lawsuit in Japan arguing that the country's rejection of same-sex marriage violates their constitutional rights. It's the first such lawsuit in the country, Japan Times reports.

European aerospace behemoth Airbus has announced it will stop building its A380 superjumbo jet after the plane's biggest customer, Dubai-based Emirates Airline, cut its order by 39 planes.

The National Butterfly Center, in danger of losing access to most of its wildlife nature preserve along the Rio Grande, is asking a court to stop federal officials from building a border wall across its land.

Updated at 2:40 p.m. ET

A wire fox terrier named King has taken the crown at the 143rd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. He's the 15th wire fox terrier to win best in show.

Conrad Roy III was having second thoughts.

The 18-year-old had been planning to kill himself, to sit inside his truck while it filled with carbon monoxide, but he wasn't sure if he could go through with it. In a series of insistent text messages, his 17-year-old girlfriend convinced him to follow through.

"You can't think about it. You just have to do it," Michelle Carter wrote. And, after he got out of his truck, she allegedly told him in a phone call to "get back in."

The Trump administration was within its rights to waive dozens of environmental laws to fast track some border construction projects in southern California, a federal appeals court has ruled.

More than 10,000 special education students will be "extremely impacted" by the Denver teacher strike, a new class action lawsuit alleges. The suit, brought on behalf of the students against the school district — on the first day of the strike — argues that without trained teachers and caregivers, the students will be put in jeopardy.

Denver schoolteachers are going on strike over how their base pay is calculated. The teachers union and the school district failed to reach an agreement after more than a year of negotiations.

It is the first teachers strike for the city in a quarter-century, and it affects about 71,000 students across 147 schools, Colorado Public Radio reports.

Republican Congressman Walter Jones, who represented North Carolina for 24 years, died Sunday after complications from a fall. He had just turned 76.

Death Row inmate Domineque Ray hoped that when he took his final breath, he could find comfort in the presence of his Muslim spiritual adviser. But the Alabama prison where Ray was awaiting execution wouldn't allow it. Prison officials would only allow their own Christian chaplain to offer the prisoner solace from inside the execution chamber. They said it would be a security risk to let someone into the room who wasn't an employee of the state's corrections department.

Updated at 10:40 p.m. ET on Friday

The long-term care facility in Arizona where an incapacitated woman was raped and later gave birth will not close, despite a decision by Hacienda HealthCare's board of directors, which was announced Thursday.

Instead, the board agreed late Friday to accept voluntary regulation by the Arizona Department of Health Services, according to a spokesman for Gov. Doug Ducey.

We've come a long way from the yellow smiley face.

The humble emoji, originally a set of basic symbols designed to add visual flair to text-based messages, has become a way for people to express their identity. And with the latest crop of tiny icons, smartphones around the world are about to become much more inclusive.

Pacific Gas & Electric could shut off power to more than 5 million customers when extreme weather conditions are ripe for wildfires to break out, the company said Wednesday. It's an expansion of the company's previous power shutoff program, which only let the company turn off power to about half a million customers.

Key West voted late Tuesday to ban the sale of sunscreens containing certain chemicals linked to coral reef bleaching. The ban is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2021.