With the State Department facing continued questions over the treatment of Marie Yovanovitch before she was recalled as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not say on Friday whether he owed the career diplomat an apology.

"I've defended every single person on this team," Pompeo said in an interview with NPR. "I've done what's right for every single person on this team."

Eight U.S. troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) arrived in the U.S. on Friday, according to Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.

Updated at 2:39 p.m. ET

A massive industrial explosion in northwest Houston early Friday killed two people, left a business in ruins, knocked homes off their foundations and sent debris flying for about half a mile.

The predawn blast at a building belonging to Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, which provides industrial services such as thermal spray coatings, could be felt more than 30 miles away, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference.

Updated at 6:34 p.m. ET

A second person in the United States has been infected with a dangerous new coronavirus that is spreading in China, U.S. health officials announced Friday.

A woman in her 60s got infected with the virus while traveling in the Wuhan, China, area in late December and became ill after returning home to Chicago Jan. 13, according to officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois and Chicago health departments.

Updated at 4:45 p.m. ET

As thousands of anti-abortion rights activists prepared to march in Washington, D.C., on Friday, President Trump was there to rally his base.

"They are coming after me, because I am fighting for you," Trump told the crowd, without directly mentioning the impeachment trial underway in the Senate. "And we are fighting for those who have no voice."

"And we will win," Trump added, "because we know how to win."

At six years old, Jerry Morrison is already shooting for the stars.

"I want to live on another planet," Jerry told his uncle, Joey Jefferson, at StoryCorps in November. "There's so much sights to see: nebulas, hot Jupiters and supernova remnants. They look so beautiful."

Jefferson, 29, also fell in love with space at an early age. It started with a wind-up space shuttle toy his mother gave him when he was a kid. Today he's a mission operations engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, where he commanded the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn.

Updated at 5:30 a.m. ET

The State Department has rejected a request from London to hand over a U.S. diplomat's wife who fled the U.K. last year after she was involved in a head-on car crash that killed a young British man.

According to local police, Anne Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road when she hit 19-year-old Harry Dunn, riding a motorbike, on Aug. 27 in Northamptonshire, in central England.

A State Department spokesperson, who called it a "tragic" accident, said Sacoolas had "immunity from criminal jurisdiction."

Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET

Former billionaire and pharmaceutical executive John Kapoor has been sentenced to five years and six months in prison. His sentencing is the culmination of a months-long criminal trial in Boston's Moakley U.S. Courthouse that resulted in the first successful prosecution of pharmaceutical executives tied to the opioid epidemic.

Jim Lehrer, the veteran journalist and writer known for his steady, low-key presence in the often noisy world of TV news, died Thursday. He co-founded PBS' NewsHour and won numerous honors — including Peabody and Emmy awards and a National Humanities Medal — in a career that spanned some 50 years.