Novartis paid Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen more than $1 million for work he was unable to do, company says  —  Drug giant Novartis paid President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen more than $1 million for work that he actually ended up being “unable” to do, the company said Wednesday.

New York Times slams AWOL Pompeo, then learns he was rescuing Americans  —  As the New York Times was bashing Mike Pompeo for being missing in action while President Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal, it turned out the secretary of state was busy rescuing three Americans who have been held captive in North Korea.

Top takeaways from the first big primary of 2018  —  Republicans can exhale now.  —  Convicted coal magnate Don Blankenship's surprise third-place finish in Tuesday's West Virginia GOP Senate primary sidestepped yet another debacle for the party after consecutive meltdowns in special elections in Alabama and Pennsylvania.

Hours into his new job, Trump's ambassador to Germany offends his hosts … BERLIN — For the past year, German officials have been urging their U.S. counterparts to send a new ambassador to Berlin.  But after finally receiving one, many may be having second thoughts.

‘She Should Have Fought Back.  Other People Did’: Inside Gina Haspel's Black Site … Ahead of her Senate reckoning, Gina Haspel's defenders in U.S. intelligence circles have adopted the fallback position that she'll be a check on Donald Trump as his CIA director.

FX Lands New York Times TV Series ‘The Weekly’  —  Hulu will stream episodes of the half-hour series, based on the Michael Barbaro-hosted podcast ‘The Daily,’ the day after their linear premiere.  —  FX has landed The New York Times' television news series, The Weekly.

Risk to intelligence source who aided Russia investigation at center of latest showdown between Nunes and Justice Dept.  —  Last Wednesday, senior FBI and national intelligence officials relayed an urgent message to the White House: Information being sought by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes …

NYC lunch spots are killing off the chopped salad  —  That staple of New York City lunch hour, the chopped salad, has been, well, chopped.  —  Just Salad, with 20 Manhattan locations, is the latest chain to do away with chopped-on-demand greens.  You'll just have to chew.

Trump makes it explicit: Negative coverage of him is fake coverage … A generous interpretation of President Trump's views on “fake” news is that he believes that media outlets are overly quick to be critical of his decisions and his administration.  In other words, he applies an overly broad term …

A Duke University VP Walked Into the Campus Joe Van Gogh, Heard a Rap Song, Demanded That the Employees Be Fired  —  On Monday, two employees of Duke University's Joe Van Gogh location had their contracts terminated after vice president for student affairs Larry Moneta and executive director …

Black student reported to YPD for napping in dormitory common room  —  Yale Police officers on Monday evening interrogated a black graduate student, Lolade Siyonbola GRD '19, for more than 15 minutes, after a white graduate student reported Siyonbola to the police for sleeping in the HGS common room.

Trump's latest shot at the press corps: ‘Take away credentials?’  —  How to keep up with all of Trump's lies  —  President Trump has mused privately during his nearly 16 months in office about revoking reporters' press credentials, according to multiple people familiar with his comments.

Big Donors Form New Alliance to Seize House From Republicans  —  Major Democratic donors in New York have discreetly formed a new political alliance to raise roughly $10 million that would be injected into as many as two dozen key House battlegrounds in an effort to wrest control of Congress from Republicans.

Mr. Drumpf, Your Newest Nightmare Is A Website Called ResistanceHole  —  Hey, Drumpf (a.k.a. President Donald Trump), don't get too cozy in the White House, because there is a new website that wants to kill you.  It's called ResistanceHole, and it's your new worst nightmare.

Mormon Church breaks all ties with Boy Scouts, ending 100-year relationship … The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday it will sever all ties with the Boy Scouts of America, ending a century-old tradition deeply ingrained in the religious life of Mormon boys.

Pretty Loud For Being So Silenced  —  Critics of the left aren't oppressed and they don't believe in “rational debate.”  —  Irony can be a difficult concept to grasp, but some hypothetical examples can illustrate it clearly.  It would be ironic, for instance, if people who claimed …

Ronan Farrow to Loyola Marymount's Class of 2018: ‘Trust that inner voice’  —  “I wish I could tell you I was confident.  That I was sure of myself.  That I didn't care,” Farrow said of reporting the hardest story of his life.  “But the real version was that I was heartbroken and scared …

CBO forecasts largest-ever monthly surplus as record tax receipts pour in  —  Record tax receipts will lead to the largest-ever monthly budget surplus for the federal government, congressional analysts said in a new report, as Americans hand over more money to Washington.

And for His Next Act, Ev Williams Will Fix the Internet  —  For years, Ev Williams was saddled with doubts.  —  As a co-founder of Blogger and Twitter and, more recently, as the chief executive of the digital publishing platform Medium, Mr. Williams transformed the way millions of people publish and consume information online.

When Everything Is Possible and Nothing Is True  —  Hannah Arendt proves indispensable in understanding the Trump era.  —  One of my favorite stories about Winston Churchill goes like this. … Unfortunately, the story is what we would now call fake news.