Environment

Wikileaks has published details of what it says are wide-ranging hacking tools used by the CIA.

The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux computers as well as internet routers.

Some of the software is reported to have been developed in-house, but the UK's MI5 agency is said to have helped build a spyware attack for Samsung TVs.

A spokesman for the CIA would not confirm the details.

Vancouver's Trump International Hotel and Tower will be one of the first Trump-branded properties to open since the US president's inauguration.

Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump will attend the grand opening of the hotel.

Two separate protest rallies are planned for the event.

The hotel and condominium tower developer has been under pressure for months to drop the Trump name from the project.

After hearing from a company whose CEO was a campaign contributor, a congressional aide to Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services nominee repeatedly pushed a federal agency to remove a critical study from its website.

Rachel Maddow reports on how a restructuring of the Voice Of American broadcast network means that Donald Trump has the unique opportunity to staff a state-run media operation broadcasting inside the United States. 

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/retooled-voa-set-to-be-trump-ru...

Writing on Facebook, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich relayed a conversation with a former GOP member of Congress who claims current members of the House are playing along with President Donald Trump for now but will dump him at the first possible moment.

And that’s just the short-term effects.

The Congressional Budget Office just issued a report on the likely effects of a Republican effort to repeal Obamacare immediately but keep some elements of the coverage expansion in place for two years.

So much for economic populism.

Big business and congressional Republicans salivate at the idea of gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Now, President-elect Donald Trump is moving toward what they’ve long wanted: a weak agency that sides with financial predators over consumers.

Americans are optimistic about the communities they live in—but not their nation. Why?

Quantifying the government’s reluctance to fund science studying guns.