The 47-50 vote came as Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins sided with Democratic senators to preserve a filibuster of Judy Shelton's confirmation. Two other Republicans missed the vote.

One week ago, on November 10, a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement was signed by the president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia, ending six weeks of warfare over disputed territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. It is estimated that thousands of fighters and more than a hundred civilians were killed in the fierce conflict. Nagorno-Karabakh—officially part of Azerbaijan, but controlled by ethnic Armenians—broke away from Azerbaijan in a six-year-long war that ended in 1994, but was never completely resolved. In September of this year, simmering conflicts broke out into war once again, with each side blaming the other for escalations. The new ceasefire agreement cedes control of large areas of disputed territory back to Azerbaijan, and places 2,000 Russian soldiers in the area to act as peacekeepers. As the handover date approached last weekend, some villagers set their own homes on fire before fleeing to Armenia.

Social media users have been sharing posts which allege that the U.S. military raided the offices of electronic voting company Scytl in Germany to seize their servers for evidence of manipulation in the 2020 U.S. elections. However, Scytl said in a statement that the U.S. army has not seized anything from them and they do not have offices in Germany.

Donald Trump’s presidency could only ever have ended one way, but there was still a certain flubby majesty to how it happened. As the outcome of the election became clearer and more irrefutable—as the votes were counted in the maddening, analog, rather inspiringly effective way that votes are counted, and as cities and towns across the country erupted into giddy street celebrations after the election was called decisively for Biden—Trump and his campaign began a wild-eyed public speedrun through the stages of grief. The end of election week unfolded like the booming grand finale of a fireworks program, albeit with every explosion replaced with skeins of bizarrely punctuated and wholly untrue social media posts, rafts of clammy lawsuits, and stilted press conferences in which Trump’s inner circle blinked rapidly and spoke in vague and heated terms about all the many serious things they’d soon be looking into very strongly.

Acting Pentagon chief Christopher Miller said Tuesday that the United States will reduce its military presence in Afghanistan to 2,500 troops and 2,500 troops in Iraq by Jan. 15. The United States has approximately 4,500 troops currently in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 in Iraq. “This decision by the president is based on continuous engagement with his national security cabinet over the past several months including ongoing discussions with me and my colleagues across the United States government,” Miller said at the Pentagon. “And just this morning, I spoke with key leaders in Congress as well as our allies and partners abroad to update them on these plans in light of our shared approach,” Miller said, adding that he spoke with NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg and Afghanistan’s President Ghani on Tuesday. “We went in together, we adjust together and when the time is right, we will leave together,” Miller said.

Amazon is entering the pharmacy business with a new offering called Amazon Pharmacy, allowing customers in the United States to order prescription medications for home delivery, including free delivery for Amazon Prime members.

The game of musical chairs among lawyers pursuing President Donald Trump’s court challenges to the election results continued on Monday evening, as the campaign tried to replace the entire team handling the campaign’s federal lawsuit seeking to block certification of Pennsylvania’s results. A court filing said Marc Scaringi, a Harrisburg, Pa., attorney, conservative talk radio host and former Senate candidate, was taking over the case. The move came just hours before a potentially make-or-break court hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon on motions by Pennsylvania state and county officials to dismiss the lawsuit.

North Dakota’s coronavirus mortality rate is the highest of any U.S. state or country, according to an analysis of data from last week conducted by the Federation of American Scientists. The analysis, first reported by HuffPost, shows that North Dakota has a rate of 18.2 deaths per 1 million people. South Dakota, meanwhile, has 17.4 deaths per million, the third-worst rate in the world. The states have a total population of under 2 million.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has helped oversee a string of failed court challenges to President Trump’s defeat in the election, asked the president’s campaign to pay him $20,000 a day for his legal work, multiple people briefed on the matter said. The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much, and it is unclear how much Mr. Giuliani will ultimately be compensated. Since Mr. Giuliani took over management of the legal effort, Mr. Trump has suffered a series of defeats in court and lawyers handling some of the remaining cases have dropped out. A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated attorneys anywhere.

In its recent programming, Netflix is pioneering a genre of television that you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy. [Everyone on earth rushing to point out this isn't new. -ed.]

After ~3,000 write cycles to its eMMC NAND flash memory, complete failure occurs.

Joe Biden wants to reach 100% clean energy by 2035. But activists are worried he'll choose Ernest Moniz for Energy secretary.

President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration. Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.

Work by Jason Richwine has generated controversy

In the accountability-free zone in the Capitol, nobody has managed to challenge those responsible for the disappointing electoral result.

Hurricane Iota will bring potentially catastrophic rainfall flooding, mudslides, storm surge and damaging winds for the second time in two weeks to parts of Central America still recovering from Hurricane Eta in early November. Late Monday morning, Iota became only the second Category 5 hurricane on record in November and the record latest-in-season hurricane ever to reach that intensity in the Atlantic Basin.

Hannah Quinn and Blake Davis are on trial for the murder of Jett McKee after a botched robbery at their Forest Lodge granny flat in August 2018. Police allege Ms Quinn tackled the 30-year-old to the ground on Hereford Street before Mr Davis cracked his skull with a samurai sword.

President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday. A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Wednesday that Iran’s uranium stockpile was now 12 times larger than permitted under the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump abandoned in 2018. The agency also noted that Iran had not allowed it access to another suspected site where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.

Leprosy is an ancient ailment, but surprisingly little is known about where and when it emerged, or how exactly it spreads. The disease—and the terrible stigma it carries—once afflicted millions of people across the globe. But after a combination of antibiotics became standard therapy in the 1980s, cases plummeted and scientific interest waned. The difficulty of studying leprosy adds to the lack of interest, says co-author Charlotte Avanzi, a microbiologist at Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins. The bacteria that cause the disease, Mycobacterium leprae and the recently discovered M. lepromatosis, cannot be cultured in cells in the lab. The only way to multiply the pathogen is to inject it into armadillos or into the footpads of mice.

Mississippians should plan “to have very small Thanksgiving gatherings” with only nuclear family members this year to stay safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and other public health officials warned on Friday. “You’re going to have a lot of sick folks who caught (COVID-19) during Thanksgiving. We know this is the perfect milieu, having young folks and old folks and folks with chronic illness around the table—and then death,” Dobbs said during a sober Mississippi State Medical Association Zoom meeting with fellow physicians on Nov. 12. The state’s top health official urged even Mississippians who are having small holiday gatherings to observe 6 feet of social distancing and to hold the gatherings outdoors, where the chance of transmission is lower. “We don’t really want to see Mamaw at Thanksgiving and bury her by Christmas,” MSMA President Dr. Mark Horne said during the meeting, concurring with the state health officer. “We’re going to see some of that. It’s going to happen,” Dobbs replied. Horne agreed. “It’s going to happen. You’re going to say hi at Thanksgiving, it’s so nice to see you, and you’re either going to be visiting her by Facetime in the ICU or planning a small funeral by Christmas,” the MSMA president said.