Matthew S. Schwartz

Afghanistan's warring factions have officially begun what is likely to be a long and arduous process of negotiating a peaceful and prosperous future after nearly two decades of war.

Seven people were killed in a shooting at an illegal marijuana-growing operation in Southern California that local authorities say bears the hallmarks of organized crime.

Riverside County sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call Monday morning about an assault with a deadly weapon and shots fired. When they arrived at the large property in the remote mountain area of Aguanga, they found six people dead of gunshot wounds. A seventh person later died at a local hospital.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hospitalized in Berlin for several weeks after being poisoned, has been taken out of his medically induced coma.

Updated at 8:16 p.m. ET

At 121 degrees, Los Angeles County hit its highest temperature ever recorded this weekend, as the state swelters in a heat wave that has helped intensify the most devastating wildfire season California has experienced in years.

The record temperature was measured in Woodland Hills, northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

The weather was calm, the atmosphere festive. Which made it all the more surprising when several boats sank Saturday at an event put on by Trump supporters near Austin, Texas.

"Decorate your boats in patriotic colors and fly as many Trump flags as she can handle!" the Facebook page for the Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade encouraged. "Let's really make a statement!"

Firefighters in central California are searching for people stranded by a fast-moving fire that has already burned an estimated 45,000 acres. The Creek Fire started Friday evening and, fueled by timber and dry vegetation, quickly jumped the San Joaquin River and blocked evacuation routes.

India passed 4 million reported cases of COVID-19 on Saturday. Since July, India has had the third-highest number of confirmed cases of any country.

With 4,023,179 confirmed cases as of Saturday afternoon, India has almost as many as the second-highest country, Brazil. The U.S. still leads the world with 6.2 million total cases of the virus reported, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The Trump administration has instructed federal agencies to end racial sensitivity trainings that address topics like white privilege and critical race theory, calling them "divisive, anti-American propaganda."

In a letter to federal agencies Friday, the director of the Office of Management and Budget said the president recently became aware of the racial sensitivity programs, which encourage frank conversations about race in the workplace and discuss potential actions to combat systemic racism.

The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.S. continues to climb.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of Sunday there have been 175,651 lives lost to the virus and 5.64 million total cases. The death count rose by just over a thousand from the day before, the CDC reported.

Updated 3:25 a.m. ET Monday

Louisiana is bracing for what officials are warning will be a "one-two punch," as two major storm systems are expected to hit the state within 48 hours of each other.

Hurricane Marco, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm, had been gaining speed and strength as it crossed through the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected to make landfall Monday. On Sunday it was declared a Category 1 hurricane.

Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed, close to a million acres of land have been scorched and at least six people have died in one of the worst series of wildfires in California's history.

More than 13,700 firefighters are battling nearly two dozen major fires throughout the state, fire officials said Saturday. Five broad areas of the state are on fire, and the largest blazes remain mostly uncontained.

Spurred by concerns about delayed delivery of mail-in ballots, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling lawmakers back early from their August recess. She's calling for a vote on legislation that would block the U.S. Postal Service from making operational changes.

The speaker is planning a vote for later this week on the Delivering for America Act, introduced by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, which "prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020."

A Japanese cargo ship that ran aground in late July off the coast of Mauritius has broken in two.

Official U.S. Postal Service mailboxes being removed. High-speed mail sorting machines being taken out of service. Reduced hours for postal workers across the country.

Updated at 10 a.m. ET Sunday

At his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort on Saturday, President Trump signed four executive actions to provide economic relief amid the coronavirus pandemic. The actions amount to a stopgap measure, after failing to secure an agreement with Congress.

The three memorandums and one executive order call for extending some enhanced unemployment benefits, taking steps to stop evictions, continuing the suspension of student loan repayments and deferring payroll taxes.

While most children who catch the coronavirus have either no symptoms or mild ones, they are still at risk of developing "severe" symptoms requiring admission to an intensive care unit, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report released Friday.

Hispanic and Black children in particular were much more likely to require hospitalization for COVID-19, with Hispanic children about eight times as likely as white children to be hospitalized, while Black children were five times as likely.

Updated at 4:15 p.m. ET

A coronavirus vaccine could be ready for distribution by the end of the year, and distributed to Americans in 2021, the nation's top infectious disease specialist told lawmakers Friday.

While it typically takes years to develop vaccines, new technologies, the lack of bureaucratic red tape and the human body's robust immune response to COVID-19 have hastened the process, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

Julie Dimperio Holowach was laughing as she and her daughter paddled into the water Monday off the coast of Maine's Bailey Island.

Suddenly Holowach, who was wearing a black wetsuit, started flailing, witness Tom Whyte told The Boston Globe. Her daughter swam back to shore, dropped to her knees and screamed for help, he said.

The Midwest could be the next area to see a big surge in coronavirus cases, the top U.S. infectious disease specialist warned Tuesday. But there's still time to stop the upswing, he said, if states follow the national guidelines on reopening safely.

While the Southern United States has been seeing the fastest rise in cases, that now appears to be on the downswing, Fauci told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America.

As Hurricane Hanna barreled through the Atlantic Ocean this weekend, Texas and Mexico both braced for calamity, but it was Mexico that saw death.

Vietnamese officials thought they had the coronavirus under control. And for months, they were right. Through strict measures swiftly imposed, Vietnam had virtually eliminated the coronavirus within its borders by late April.

Now the virus seems to be spreading. As of Monday night in Vietnam, 11 new cases had been reported, bringing the country's total to 431 and sparking a litany of new virus control measures.

Protests raged in several cities across the country Saturday night over police brutality and systemic racism. Thousands of protesters descended on Seattle and Portland, where police in both cities declared the gatherings had become riots, and made dozens of arrests. And in Austin, police said someone in a car shot and killed a protester.

Austin

Shortly before 10 p.m. Saturday in downtown Austin, as hundreds were walking down a street, many with their fists raised above them, a car turned toward the protesters.

Updated at 5:00 p.m. ET

The body of John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge one last time on Sunday in what organizers described as "The Final Crossing," part of a multiday celebration of the life of the civil rights icon.

Lewis' flag-draped casket was pulled across the bridge by a pair of horses, as a crowd of onlookers gathered at the side of the road. It rolled atop a carpet of rose petals, as Lewis' family walked behind it.

Regis Philbin, the affable talk show host and a fixture of the small screen for decades, has died at 88.

"We are deeply saddened to share that our beloved Regis Philbin passed away last night of natural causes, one month shy of his 89th birthday," his family told NPR in a statement.

Rep. John Lewis is being remembered this weekend in multiple memorial services across the state of Alabama, where he was born. Lewis died this month after more than 30 years of service as a Democratic congressman from Georgia, where he was known as the "conscience of the Congress" for his tireless advocacy for economic and social justice.

In a harsh rebuke of America's treatment of refugees, a Canadian judge has ruled that an asylum treaty with the U.S. violates Canada's own charter of human rights, because it returns asylum-seekers to the U.S., where they are "immediately and automatically imprisoned" by U.S. authorities, often under inhumane conditions.

The alleged killer of the son of a New Jersey federal judge may also have been involved in the shooting death of a men's rights attorney in California earlier this month, news reports said Wednesday.

Attorney Marc Angelucci was killed July 11 in San Bernardino County. Just over a week later, a man dressed as a FedEx driver showed up at the home of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, shot and killed her son, 20, and wounded Salas' husband, who survived.

The U.S. and the U.K. have revised their diplomatic immunity rules, almost a year after the wife of a U.S. diplomat fled the country after allegedly killing a young man with her car.

The move, announced by U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, is aimed at making it more difficult for the families of some diplomats to claim immunity.

Harry Dunn, 19, was struck by a car and killed last August while riding a motorbike in Northamptonshire, in central England.

Despite impassioned pleas from attorneys, a Texas school district is refusing to change its grooming policy that led to the suspension of two Black students earlier this year.