National News at a Glance

House Republicans Release Secret Memo Accusing Russia Investigators of Bias

House Republicans released a politically charged memo Friday that accused FBI and Justice Department leaders of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser suspected of being an agent of Russia. The memo alarmed national security officials and outraged Democrats, who accused the Republicans of misrepresenting sensitive government information through omissions and inaccuracies. President Donald Trump declassified it over the objections of the FBI, which had expressed “grave concerns” over its accuracy. The 3 1/2-page memo, written by Republican congressional aides, criticized information used by law enforcement officials in their application for a warrant to wiretap Carter Page.

Arizona Man Is Charged With Making Armor-Piercing Bullets Found in Las Vegas Gunman’s Room

An ammunition dealer named a person of interest in connection with the Las Vegas mass shooting was charged in a Nevada federal court Friday with manufacturing armor-piercing bullets. The charges came on the same day that the dealer, Douglas Haig, held a news conference to say he was innocent and had only briefly met the gunman, Stephen Paddock, when Paddock bought 720 rounds of ammunition from him in September. Investigators said they had found Haig’s fingerprints on unfired armor-piercing ammunition inside the hotel room Paddock used as his shooting perch. Haig, 55, did not have the license needed to manufacture such ammunition, according to the charges filed by federal authorities.

Trump’s Vision for Vocational Education Gets a Tepid Reception

President Donald Trump’s calls this week for more vocational schools have received a lukewarm reception from the higher education community, including from the educators who teach in the programs he is championing. The president first raised expanding vocational education in his State of the Union address Tuesday as a workforce development strategy. Policy experts and organizations that advocate the trade programs — which for more than a decade have been recognized as career and technical education, or CTE — took issue with the president’s antiquated characterization of a sector of higher education that has expanded beyond laborers who are not cut out for academia.

McFarland Withdraws Her Nomination to Be Ambassador to Singapore

K.T. McFarland, who was a deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and then was picked to serve as ambassador to Singapore, withdrew her nomination Friday after it had stalled in the Senate. McFarland’s nomination had become embroiled in the controversy over the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, with some senators left wondering if she had answered questions deceptively when asked if she knew of discussions between Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and a Russian ambassador. Senate Republicans could have approved her nomination unilaterally, but the fact that it was never brought to a vote suggested that she had made even some of them uneasy.

Cellphones Are Still Safe for Humans, Researchers Say

Do cellphones cause cancer? Two government studies released Friday, one in rats and one in mice, suggest that if there is any risk, it is small, health officials said. Safety questions about cellphones have drawn intense interest and debate as the devices became integral to most people’s lives. These two studies on the effects of the type of radiation the phones emit, conducted over 10 years and costing $25 million, are considered the most extensive to date. In male rats, the studies linked heart tumors to high exposure. But that problem did not occur in female rats, or any mice.

U.S. Imposes Arms Ban on South Sudan as Civil War Grinds On

The United States banned the export of weapons and defense services to South Sudan on Friday in a reflection of the Trump administration’s growing frustration over that nation’s grinding civil war. The United States does not sell weapons to the country, but the announcement Friday was the first step in a broader effort to cut off weapons to a conflict that has put 1.5 million people on the brink of starvation. Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said the administration would soon resume a push begun under President Barack Obama for the U.N. Security Council to impose a global arms ban against South Sudan.

Flu Patients Arrive in Droves, and a Hospital Rolls Out the ‘Surge Tent’

By mid-January, the flu season at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was bad enough to justify dragging out the “surge tent.” The structure in the parking lot — an inflatable military-style hospital ward — is outfitted with cots, oxygen tanks and heart monitors. Used mostly as a holding area for walk-in patients who need monitoring, the extra space lowers the risk of infections in the main waiting room when the coughing and sneezing is at its worst. Some 325 patients walked into the ER on Monday — “the record, as far as I can recall,” said Dr. Andrew C. Miller, who runs the emergency department.