On Monday at midnight, the U.S. Congress remained deadlocked on passing this fiscal year’s budget, causing the federal government to partially shutdown starting on Tuesday. Many non-essential federal employees across a wide number of agencies have been furloughed, some to the point of complete cessation. The webpages of several of these agencies including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have been replaced with landing pages stating that the website cannot be maintained during the shutdown.

Ann Wolpert, MIT’s director of libraries since 1996, has died after a brief illness. She was 70 years old.

UNITED NATIONS — Countries all over the world, dictatorships and democracies alike, have in the past few years sought to tame — or plug entirely — that real-time fire hose of public opinion known as Twitter.