The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced Wednesday that it is ending the publication of its popular World Factbook reference manual after more than 60 years, according to a post on the agency's website. The announcement, made on February 4, 2026, offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions, according to ABC News.
First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies, ABC News reported.
In other news, the White House shared a quote from "The Sopranos" character Tony Soprano amid reports that President Donald Trump plans to install a new statue of Christopher Columbus, Fox News reported. The Washington Post reported that Trump is "planning to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds, according to three people with knowledge of the pending move." This comes five years after statues of Christopher Columbus were toppled and vandalized across America.
Meanwhile, the FBI announced the arrest of 55 people Wednesday morning in a sweeping takedown of a major Georgia-based drug trafficking ring accused of flooding U.S. streets with fentanyl, according to Fox News. Officials said the organization, which was linked to a Chinese supplier, was responsible for distributing large quantities of deadly narcotics throughout Georgia and beyond in what they called Operation Powder Island. Investigators also identified at least one suspect who was allegedly communicating with an overseas supplier based in China, highlighting the role of Chinese suppliers in the fentanyl crisis.
President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China had a lengthy phone call on Wednesday during which the two leaders discussed a wide range of issues including Iran, the war in Ukraine and soybeans ahead of Mr. Trump’s visit to China this spring, the New York Times reported. But the call, which Mr. Trump enthusiastically described as "excellent and long and thorough," included a warning from Mr. Xi about the future of Taiwan. The call lasted almost two hours, according to people familiar with it.
In other news from the Trump administration, a week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming, the New York Times reported. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s efforts to slow and sometimes revoke federal approvals for wind and solar projects. A key environmental review of Jackalope by the Interior Department was stalled for months, and the project is now effectively dead. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide. While Mr. Trump’s attacks on offshore wind have been highly visible, his administration has also been hobbling solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying approvals.
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