Top U.S. Postal Service officials will testify before Congress next week amid increasing scrutiny of changes at the agency that Democrats worry may hinder the elections in November. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Chairman of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors Robert Duncan agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Aug. 24, Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., announced Monday. 

Gov. Pete Ricketts, during a rally Saturday, signed into law a bill banning a method of second-trimester abortion in Nebraska. He also announced that he vetoed a bill that would ban discrimination against Black people based on their naturally curly hair.

Two of Peter Nygard's sons launched a new lawsuit filed Sunday, saying their fashion executive father set them up to be raped by his girlfriend — a "known sex worker" — when they were teens. Nygard, 79, is a Winnipeg-based clothing manufacturer. His companies, in the past, were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Dozens of women have recently come forward alleging he raped them.

In brief remarks to Netroots Nation, Biden directly asked his party's more liberal voters for their support.

I'm looking for a new computer monitor. And so, with a sparkling lack of original thought, I type Amazon into my browser and search for monitors. I get a sinking feeling when I visit Amazon these days. First, I have a sense of guilt about handing over cash to them (or, more accurately, buying with one click. I don’t even feel the money leave me). Amazon has become retail fast food: easy, convenient, bad for you, bad for the people that work there, and bad for the planet. But where else am I going to buy a monitor? You can’t even buy the model I’m looking at from the manufacturer’s site. They offer a list of retailers, but that list consists of one option: Amazon. More than that, I get this sinking feeling because finding things on Amazon, when you don’t know exactly what you want, is hard. I struggle to get a sense of which are good, which are overpriced, and which are drop-shipped from AliExpress to fund someone’s Tim Ferris-esque four-day workweek. Everything is either exploitatively expensive or suspiciously cheap. It doesn’t help that monitor model numbers look like automatically generated passwords. They are a jumble of random numbers and letters. Should I buy 328P6VUBREB? Customers also liked EW3270U. Each of these requires a separate piece of research off Amazon. When eventually I settle upon a monitor, I return to Amazon, enter the random characters that represent it, only to find it currently unavailable. Amazon suggests an equally opaque set of random characters and so the cycle begins again.

First-time bond issuers are rushing into India’s debt market as unprecedented stimulus steps reduce borrowing costs to the cheapest since 2005. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. and Wipro Enterprises Pvt., part of Indian software tycoon Azim Premji’s empire, are among 91 maiden rupee-note sellers so far this year. That’s a rebound from 2019, when investors’ risk aversion amid a credit crunch led to only 61 firms making their bond-market debut in the same period.

It took a 33-year-old Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but 26-year-old Thomas Rosete needed just five minutes to create the Mosquito Flag.

A Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper accused of ripping a face mask off a bystander filming a traffic stop has been terminated.  A THP spokesman confirmed Trooper Harvey Briggs' termination Friday evening after an internal investigation by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. Briggs was found to have violated a department policy and was terminated for unprofessional conduct.  The firing comes after Briggs, a 22-year employee of the agency, was placed on leave after a video surfaced of an altercation with a bystander. A video posted by Andrew Golden shows him filming a traffic stop by troopers at the Capitol Monday evening. On the video, Briggs warned Golden not to impede on the stop.

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WWMT) — Members of the Proud Boys group moved through western Michigan on Saturday. The group originally planned to hold a rally in Arcadia Creek Festival Place in Kalamazoo, an outdoor area and event space. After hundreds of counterprotesters and police arrived at the location, the group began to move through the city.

ATLANTA, Ga. (CNN/WSB) — A group with white supremacist ties and counter-protesters faced off in Georgia today at Stone Mountain. Police from multiple agencies and the Georgia National Guard were on scene. Stone Mountain park officials say a group called the Three Percenters out of Alabama applied for a permit. It was denied because of violence surrounding past protests. No other group was given a permit. But people still showed up on Saturday. So far, no word on any arrests or injuries from the protest — however, there were some altercations caught on camera.

The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, has postponed the country's general election by a month amid a spike in coronavirus cases. The vote was due to take place on 19 September but will now be held on 17 October instead. Ms Ardern said on Monday that the new date would allow parties "to plan around the range of circumstances we will be campaigning under". Earlier this week, the country's largest city went back into lockdown. "This decision gives all parties time over the next nine weeks to campaign and the Electoral Commission enough time to ensure an election can go ahead," Ms Ardern said, adding that she had "absolutely no intention" of allowing any further delays to the vote. The opposition National Party has argued the election should be delayed as restrictions on campaigning mean Ms Ardern had an unfair advantage.

Attorney generals of six states are looking into possibly suing the Trump administration to stop any changes or funding problems that might affect the upcoming 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post. Two of those states–North Carolina, and Pennsylvania–backed then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The other four–Massachusetts, Minnesota, Virginia, and Washington state–sided with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The AGs of all six states are Democrats. They plan on announcing legal action early this week, according to sources cited by the Post.

Caught on video on Sunday, a boat sank on the Willamette River after waves overtook it and filled it with water. This all happened on the north side of the Burnside Bridge, according to the woman who shot the video. It shows a family jumping overboard as their boat takes on water. They can be heard calling out for help as they tread in the river.

Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would look at the issue of giving a pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden disclosed highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013. He revealed the news covertly to the Guardian after he fled to Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow to avoid extradition back to America. He currently lives in Russia. Snowden’s revelations of the extent of American communications surveillance caused a major domestic and international scandal and triggered an intense debate over government eavesdropping. To many civil liberties advocate Snowden became a hero, but to others he is seen as a traitor. At a press conference on Saturday Trump said he did not know much about the case and heard powerful arguments for and against a pardon. He then added that he would look into the matter.

No Uber and Lyft rides in California? After a judge rejected the companies’ effort to delay an order that they classify drivers as employees, it seems inevitable. Uber and Lyft have until August 20th to comply with the order. But the companies have said they will need to go dark in the Golden State in order to retool their business. The judges may not have the last word. Uber and Lyft are counting on California’s notoriously mercurial voters to help them circumvent AB5, which went into effect in January and makes it more difficult for companies to use independent contractors. Uber and Lyft built their respective businesses on the concept of using freelance drivers who aren’t eligible for traditional benefits like health insurance and paid leave. Earlier this year, the companies, along with DoorDash, raised nearly $100 million to place a question on the November ballot. They succeeded, and this fall, voters will be asked to permanently classify ride-hailing drivers as independent contractors. The measure, called Proposition 22, also directs the companies to adopt certain labor and wage policies that fall short of traditional employment.

This doesn’t sound like a man who’s going to go quietly. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko warned protesters Monday that he will not give in to their demands for a new presidential election—unless they assassinate him. Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the capital city of Minsk over the weekend to protest against the disputed elections held earlier this month. Protesters have been infuriated by alleged poll-rigging and police violence at the ensuing protests, but Lukashenko has defied any suggestion that the vote could be re-run. “We held elections already. Until you kill me, there will be no other elections,” he was quoted by Belarusian media as saying during a visit to a tractor plant Monday morning. “You should never expect me to do something under pressure... They [new elections] won’t happen.”

If you didn’t know any better you’d think that literally every active indie rock band was, in fact, a power pop band. It’s a genre that has, within the last half decade at least, acquired some cachet in critical circles—which is strange to me considering it is the dorkiest fucking style of guitar music ever. It’s often used interchangeably with “pop punk” and in concert with “emo”—and while some of that cross-pollination might exist now, power pop’s origins are notably distinct. My best guess is that starry-eyed critics default to “power pop” when they detect some formalist sensibility they 1) can’t accurately identify because they lack the frame of reference or 2)

There are fears for the endangered black-tailed dusky antechinus after the 2019 Gold Coast bushfires with none caught in sampling traps during winter field trips.

To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works. Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.

During a pandemic, opioid overdoses don't stop — but in police stations in Texas and Indiana, naloxone use does. One Indiana police department suspended use of the lifesaving medication on March 19. In April, a Texas police department refused to accept a donation of the medication that would have equipped every single officer in the department. Before COVID-19, 130 Americans a day were dying due to overdoses naloxone could have prevented. The drug, which reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, is carried by law enforcement officers and first responders across the US. But during the pandemic, some police chiefs are refusing to accept or administer the drug as they restrict the amount of physical contact their officers should have with other people, since the coronavirus is spread by person-to-person contact.