Bill Chappell

U.S. Border Patrol agents found a toddler girl and her baby brother abandoned along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, this week, in what the local chief patrol agent calls a "heartbreaking" discovery. The agency released a photo of the children, who were taken into custody but did not require medical care.

Philip Morris International is buying British pharmaceutical firm Vectura in a deal that will see a company synonymous with Big Tobacco taking over a firm that makes asthma inhalers. The American Lung Association, Asthma UK and other health groups have spoken out against the takeover.

Gen. Mark Milley says he was conducting the duties of his office — not circumventing presidential authority — when he spoke to his Chinese counterpart shortly before last year's election, according to a statement the Pentagon issued Wednesday.

Milley's actions in the final months of former President Donald Trump's term made headlines this week after a new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was attempting to head off a potential armed conflict when he called Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng.

People applying to immigrate to the U.S. will have to show they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 as part of a required medical exam, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says. The new policy takes effect on Oct. 1.

The requirement includes an exception for children who are too young to receive the vaccine as well as for people with medical conditions that rule them out for the shot. It also outlines a waiver process for people who refuse to be vaccinated due to religious and other reasons.

The World Anti-Doping Agency will review its ban on cannabis, in what the agency says is a response to "requests from a number of stakeholders" in international athletics. But it's not clear when, or if, a change to the controversial policy might take effect: cannabis will remain forbidden for the 2022 athletic season.

Tropical Depression Nicholas has drenched the Houston metro area as the large storm creeps over southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. The system, which made landfall early Tuesday morning as a hurricane, is expected to drop another 5 to 10 inches of rain on a broad area from the northern Texas coast to the western Florida Panhandle through Thursday.

"Life-threatening flash flooding" is possible, particularly in urban areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

The famed Squaw Valley ski resort near Lake Tahoe is changing its name, after a long debate and input from Native American tribes. The leadership of the resort, which will now be known as Palisades Tahoe, says, "The old name was derogatory and offensive."

The California resort made the decision to change the name last summer, as many U.S. institutions and communities contemplated the legacy of centuries of racism. In recent decades, several other locations, in states from Minnesota to Oregon, have dropped the term from place names.

Hurricane Nicholas made landfall along the Texas coast early Tuesday morning, bringing with it heavy wind, rain and dangerous storm surge threats.

The Category 1 hurricane made landfall in Texas just before 2 a.m. ET along the Matagorda Peninsula, a strip of land just off the southeastern coast of Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center.