Ian Stewart

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen traveled to Texas and Arizona on Friday and Saturday, citing an "unprecedented" increase in the apprehensions of families and unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

"The system is clearly overwhelmed," Nielsen said in a statement. Nearly 50,000 family units were caught by the U.S. Border Patrol in October and November, according to Department of Homeland Security data, a fourfold increase over the same period last year.

Japan will withdraw from an international organization established to limit whale hunts in an apparent attempt to resume commercial whaling, according to Japanese media outlets.

Public broadcaster NHK reports that government officials informed ruling party lawmakers on Thursday. The Asahi Shimbun, citing unnamed sources, said a formal announcement was likely "within days."

In 1936, a strange-looking structure took shape at 49 Hopkins Ave. in San Francisco.

It was a modest building, but among the Victorian homes that are a staple of the city's architecture, it stood out. The Largent House, named after the family that commissioned it, had straight lines and a flat roof — hallmarks of architect Richard Neutra, who helped define the nascent modernist movement.

Residents of Falmouth, a coastal city in the far southwest corner of England, woke up Tuesday morning to an unusual sight. Instead of the open waters of the English Channel, they looked out and saw a 600-foot Russian cargo ship grounded just off Gyllyngvase Beach.

More than four millennia after being chiseled by Egyptian artisans, the intricate hieroglyphics and stone carvings of an ancient tomb have been uncovered.

Egyptian officials made the announcement Saturday at the site of the discovery in Saqqara, outside of Cairo, according to multiple media reports. Photographs of the tomb show a narrow doorway leading to a rectangular room, its walls covered with carved symbols, images and human forms. Particularly striking are their well-preserved colors – light yellows, rich blues and a reddish-brown skin tone.

President Trump called a Friday ruling striking down the Affordable Care Act "Great news for America!" Democratic lawmakers rushed to decry the decision, calling it "monstrous" and "harmful." And Republican lawmakers remained mostly quiet Saturday.

Come 2020, Memorial Day weekend in Washington, D.C., will be a whole lot quieter.

Rolling Thunder, the veterans advocacy group that organizes a massive annual motorcycle ride through the nation's capital, announced this week that the gathering in 2019 will be its last big rally.

The sound of thousands of motorcycles rumbling through the city has been a staple of the holiday weekend for decades.

At 9:48 p.m. on Thursday, Jose Jimenez became the 25th person to be executed in the United States in 2018.

Jimenez was convicted of a 1992 murder; his execution had originally been scheduled for August, but the Supreme Court of Florida issued a stay that was later lifted.

Jimenez' sentence, carried out by lethal injection, comes as a new report describes an ongoing decline of capital punishment in the U.S.