Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield instructed staff to delete an email from a Trump political appointee seeking control over the agency’s scientific reports on the pandemic, a senior CDC official told congressional investigators this week. Redfield’s apparent instruction was revealed in a Monday closed-door interview with the House subcommittee probing the White House's coronavirus response, which includes the Trump administration’s interference at the federal public health agency. It came following an Aug. 8 email sent by Paul Alexander, who was then the scientific adviser to Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo, aiming to water down the CDC’s famed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports to align with President Donald Trump’s efforts to downplay the virus.

Authorities released the results after receiving authorization from Hinch's next of kin, officials said. Hinch, 71, was elected speaker last week as he presided over an outdoor session of the House on the University of New Hampshire campus. He died on Wednesday. Hinch had been facing questions about cases of the coronavirus that arose within the Republican caucus after a mass gathering in Manchester last month and his plans to try to return to in-person committee work and House sessions next year.

The party included a tour of the White House’s vaunted holiday decor followed by a self-guided tour at Blair House, where a person tested positive for coronavirus in the past week.

At 94, the author of a North Dakota restaurant review that became an internet sensation is still at work. In the pandemic, though, she’s had to make a few changes.

"Telephone Tales,” a collection of stories by the Italian children’s writer Gianni Rodari (1920-80), contains a piece called “The War of the Bells,” which begins, “Once upon a time, there was a war—a great and terrible war—in which vast numbers of soldiers died on both sides. We were on this side and our enemies were on the other, and we shot at each other day and night, but the war went on so long that finally, there was no more bronze to make cannons.” That didn’t stop “our” general. He ordered the army to melt down all the church bells in the land and recast them, together, to make a single cannon: "Just one, but one big enough to win the whole war with a single shot. It took a hundred thousand cranes to lift that cannon; it took ninety-seven trains to transport it to the front. The Mega General rubbed his hands together in delight and said, “When my cannon fires, our enemies will run away all the way to the moon.” The great moment arrived. The super cannon was aimed at the enemy. We’d all stuffed cotton wads into our ears. . . . An artilleryman pushed a button. Suddenly, from one end of the front to the other, came the gigantic sound of pealing bells: Ding! Dong! Bong! We took the cotton out of our ears to be able to hear it more clearly."

Stickers with swastikas and the words "We are everywhere" were found on Tuesday at the memorial in Boise, Idaho. Police are investigating.

Backed by Donald Trump, Operation Underground Railroad has flourished in the age of QAnon. But not all of its stories hold up to scrutiny.

The chamber reported the numbers a week after Rudy Giuliani testified in Lansing and just days after he tested positive for Covid-19.

In audio obtained by The Intercept, Biden was unenthusiastic about executive action and warned against police reform before Georgia’s Senate runoffs.

FBI agents will have to defend claims they improperly retaliated against Muslim Americans after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to nix the suit.

While Congress continues to dither over distributing another stimulus check to members of the American public during a pandemic that has stuttered the economy and left many unemployed and unable to meet the cost of their basic needs, it’s become increasingly clear that the Paycheck Protection Program—ostensibly meant to support workers in small businesses—has been a site for all kinds of scamming.

I mean, I guess they are better than their opponents, maybe.

Having declared victory in its war on Backpage and sex work, the liberal-conservative coalition has pivoted to porn.

After a Russian Secret Service officer died by suicide inside the Kremlin last month, Meduza special correspondent Maxim Solopov started looking into the psychological resilience of security officials. In the process, he uncovered a company supplying Russia’s intelligence services, police, and military with “Multipsychometers” — “psychodiagnostic hardware and software systems” developed at a research institute run by the Soviet Union’s Strategic Missile Forces in the 1980s. As it turns out, an entrepreneur who now lives in Moscow’s ritzy Rublevka suburb managed to build a successful business off this piece of psychotechnology — thanks to some good connections in the Russian Defense Ministry and security agencies. ... The DIP Center’s flagship product for the intelligence services and law enforcement agencies is the “Multipsychometer” psychodiagnostic system — a computer equipped with a special software and the following basic hardware accessories: “a specialized psychodiagnostic keyboard, a unit for psychomotor tests, a joystick-type analogue manipulator, a foot pedal, [and] headphones.” The “psychodiagnostic keyboard” looks like a regular one that’s had all its keys removed except for the arrow and the number buttons. For mass testing, the manufacturer offers a version of the “Multipsychometer” system complete with a printer and scanner, which can be used to print tests on forms and processes the results automatically (all you have to do is load the results back into the system). The programs for the psychodiagnostic systems contain a library with several hundred tests designed to identify psychiatric problems, depression, and workplace conflicts, as well as assess the psychological resilience of test subjects. On the company’s website, prices for the base model “Multipsychometer” start at 183,000 rubles ($2,485). Publicly available government contracts show that one of the fully optioned models (complete with a steering wheel and pedals) costs up to 300,000 rubles ($4,074). According to the business database Spark-Interfax, the DIP Center, which employs 16 people, had its highest earnings in 2015 — 100 million rubles in revenue ($1.36 million). But in 2019, revenues fell to 21 million rubles (about $285,000) and the company showed a loss. The software, patents, and trademarks used by the DIP Center — in other words, all of the intellectual property for the psychodiagnostic systems — belong to a software supply company called Innovative Psychotechnologies. The company’s main owner, according to Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is the former co-owner and founder of the DIP Center, 58-year-old Vladimir Burlakov. Though he comes from the city of Zlatoust in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, Burlakov now lives in Gorky-2, a luxury settlement in Moscow’s Rublevka suburb, located along the Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. Customers listed on the Innovative Psychotechnologies website include the Russian Investigative Committee, Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, and Russian Railways (RZD), as well as the Moscow and St. Petersburg subway systems. This company also has many letters of gratitude from high-ranking security officials, including certificates from Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin and former Internal Troops Commander Viktor Zolotov, who now heads the Russian National Guard. The company proudly proclaims that “more than a milin specialists” have been tested using its methodologies. A former DIP Center employee told Meduza that each deal with the security forces on the sale of psychodiagnostic systems brought Burlakov “at least 200 percent profits.” Apparently, the businessman also liked to boast about his great connections in government agencies. “How far upwards his connections extend I don’t know, maybe it’s more bluff than reality,” Meduza’s source said. Burlakov himself did not respond to Meduza’s interview request. Spokespeople for his company, Innovative Psychotechnologies, warned our correspondent that he is unlikely to talk to the press.

Women involved in a massage-parlor prostitution sting involving Robert Kraft were ordered to pay fines last week - months after all charges were dropped against the New England Patriots owner. Four women, Kraft, and 24 other men were charged last year when state prosecutors said the men engaged in sex acts with employees at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa and Massage in Jupiter, Florida.

Flint has taken important steps toward resolving the lead contamination crisis that made the impoverished Michigan city a symbol of the drinking water problems that plague many U.S. communities.

On Wednesday morning, a suspect walked into the Teamsters building on Indiana and Division carrying a device that he claimed was a bomb.

A sheriff's deputy working for a fugitive task force shot and killed a Black man trying to enter his own home in Columbus, Ohio, last week in a case that is now being investigated by federal authorities.

Going viral was nice. But it didn’t appear to actually move persuadable voters in swing states.

Older lawmakers’ foibles and infirmities are coming under new scrutiny, violating an unspoken culture of complicity and coverup.