Last year, the Chinese wife of a Pakistani man traveled back home to China with their two children. She wanted to introduce her younger boy, 18 months old, to her mom.

But after she landed in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, she was detained, says her husband, a doctor named Rehman. His wife is a Uighur Muslim, a member of a minority group that has been targeted in a Chinese crackdown.

Security officials left their sons at their grandmother's house. Weeks later, they returned and took away the older boy, age 6.

Maxine Waters of California is known as a partisan firebrand who gives as good as she gets, especially where President Trump is concerned.

Now, with Democrats assuming control of the House in January, the California Democrat is about to become more visible than ever before, with the power to slow down an important part of Trump's agenda and even shine a light on his company's finances.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., is expected to rule Thursday on CNN's lawsuit seeking immediate restoration of Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta's press pass.

Earlier this week, CNN sued President Trump and other White House officials, contending that they acted unconstitutionally when they stripped Acosta of his press credentials, known as a "hard pass." The network is seeking a temporary restraining order while the case plays out.

Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, heard two hours of argument late Wednesday.

The Florida recount saga enters a new chapter today. Maybe.

The state's 67 counties are supposed to complete machine recounts for the governor, Senate, and agriculture commissioner races by 3 p.m. ET. But Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who is about 12,000 votes behind Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the Senate race, has asked a federal judge to push that deadline back so every county can complete its second tally of ballots.

One heavily-populated county has already indicated it will almost certainly miss the deadline if it isn't changed.

The Trump administration has already written the opening chapters of what could be its most enduring legacy: the makeup of the federal courts.

In partnership with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Trump White House has secured lifetime appointments for 29 appeals court judges and 53 district court judges. That's not to mention two Supreme Court nominees.

Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels in her legal battles with President Trump, was arrested Wednesday following allegations of domestic violence, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Avenatti, who has denied the allegations, was booked Wednesday afternoon for a felony domestic violence charge, after police took a report on Tuesday of the alleged incident. He was released on $50,000 bail.

We've used a lot of words in 2018, so it's no surprise that there is more than one "word of the year." Oxford Dictionaries' judgment is that "toxic" illuminates something about this year.

Oxford Dictionaries says it found a 45 percent increase in look-ups of toxic and it was used in so many situations that "the sheer scope of its application, as found by our research, made toxic the stand-out choice for the Word of the Year title."