Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including the Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled two reports detailing a broad range of interference and disinformation campaigns run on social media by online Russian-backed operatives; Onetime associates of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn were charged with acting as illegal agents of the Turkish government; A season of fierce protests in Europe has hit Hungary’s capital city Budapest, and more.

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National

1.) The Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled two reports Monday detailing a broad range of interference and disinformation campaigns run on social media by online Russian-backed operatives.

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House on Feb. 1, 2017.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

2.) Onetime associates of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn were charged Monday with acting as illegal agents of the Turkish government.

In this image made from video by PIX11, a person, center, leans against the robes of the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, as one of the police officers climbed up on a ladder to stand on a ledge nearby talking the climber into descending in New York, Wednesday, July 4, 2018. (PIX11 via AP)

3.) Wrapping up the one-day trial of a woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July, a federal judge found Congolese immigrant Patricia Okoumou guilty on all counts Monday.

FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, file photo, people cast their ballots ahead of the Nov. 6, general election at Jim Miller Park, in Marietta, Ga. Long lines, broken voting machines and poll worker confusion are all common at polling places across the country on Election Day. With more people voting early, some of these issues are already popping up in this year’s midterm election. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

4.) A little more than half of the voting-eligible population in the U.S. cast ballots in November’s midterm elections and an overwhelming majority of those people say their voting experience was hassle-free, the Pew Research Center reported Monday.

Maria Butina walks with Alexander Torshin on Sept. 7, 2012, while Torshin was a member of the Russian upper house of parliament in Moscow, Russia. When gun activist Maria Butina arrived in Washington in 2014 to network with the NRA, she was peddling a Russian gun-rights movement that was already dead. Fellow gun enthusiasts and arms industry officials describe the strange trajectory of her Russian gun-lobby project, which U.S. prosecutors say was a cover for a Russian influence campaign. Accused of working as a foreign agent, Butina faces a hearing on Sept. 10 in Washington. (AP Photo/Pavel Ptitsin)

5.) The public could learn more about the prosecution of Russian spy Maria Butina after a federal judge indicated Monday that she will soon revisit a September gag order.

Science

This is a reconstruction of the studied Daohugou pterosaur, with four different feather types over its head, neck, body, and wings, and a generally ginger-brown color. (Yuan Zhang)

6.) The origin of feathers occurred 70 million years earlier than previously thought, according to an international team of paleontologists.

International

7.) A season of fierce protests in Europe has hit Budapest, the capital of Hungary and seat of government of Viktor Orban, a far-right nationalist president who has openly slammed the European Union as a model of liberal democratic politics.

On Oct. 8, 2018, government opponents with signs reading "Constitution" protest an overhaul of the justice system and the forced early retirement of Supreme Court judges aged 65 and above, before the court's building in Warsaw, Poland. The European Union's top court ordered Poland on Oct. 19, 2018, to immediately suspend the politically charged legal change. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

8.) Following up on its October injunction, the European Court of Justice ruled Monday that Poland threatened “serious and irreparable damage to the EU legal order” by lowering the retirement age for Supreme Court judges to 65.

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