“I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Sessions testified Tuesday that was still hazy on the details about what Mr. Papadopoulos had proposed.

But on one matter, he said his memory is clear: he said he shot down Mr. Papadopoulos’ idea of a Trump-Putin meet-up. And he said he told Mr. Papadopoulos that he was not authorized to represent the campaign in such discussions.

Mr. Sessions is in the hot seat over Russia — again.

Mr. Sessions has twice told lawmakers under oath that as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, he did not communicate with Russians to aid Mr. Trump’s candidacy, nor did he know of other members of the campaign who had.

His challenge on Tuesday will be to try to square those comments with recent revelations that at least one member of the campaign’s foreign policy council, which Mr. Sessions led, and another foreign policy adviser, had informed Mr. Sessions about their discussions with Russians at the time.

Mr. Sessions has already had his statements undercut once. After telling senators at his confirmation hearing in January that he had not had any contacts with Russians, it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held multiple meetings with a Russian ambassador during the campaign.

Now, Mr. Sessions must contend with comments he made last month, in another hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions told senators when asked whether he believed members of the campaign had communicated with Russians.

Democrats on the committee put Mr. Sessions on alert in a letter last week, saying that they would want clarification on “inconsistencies” between those statements and those of the two campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who have acknowledged having contact with Russians.

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“Under oath, knowing in advance that he would be asked about this subject, the Attorney General gave answers that were, at best, incomplete,” said Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the panel. “I hope the Attorney General can provide some clarification on this problem in his remarks today.”

The White House will have its eye on his performance.

The White House will be carefully watching Mr. Sessions’s performance. The attorney general has been in hot water with the president since he decided in March to recuse himself from all matters related to Russia, leaving him without control over the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

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Representative Robert Goodlatte, the committee’s Republican chairman, appeared to pile on when he said, “While I understand your decision to recuse yourself was an effort by you to do the right thing, I believe you, as a person of integrity, would have been impartial and fair in following the facts wherever they led.”

Any hiccups in Mr. Sessions’s testimony would most likely only make his problems at the White House worse.

Mr. Sessions will have to mind the partisan divide.

The House Judiciary Committee has a reputation as one of the most politically divided in Congress — and those differences are likely to be on plain display on Tuesday as both Republicans and Democrats wrestle with the sharp changes in policy at the Justice Department instituted under Mr. Sessions.

Republicans mostly approve of those changes.

“Under your leadership, the Justice Department has taken strides to mitigate the harms done in the prior Administration,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “I implore you to work with us to continue that trend.”

But Democrats will probably grill Mr. Sessions on the effects of curtailing the Obama-era enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, especially protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Republicans, on the other hand, are almost certain to press Mr. Sessions on the progress of investigations into potential leaks of classified information, which have tripled under his watch, and into the handling of the Hillary Clinton email case by the Obama Justice Department.

Debating a second special counsel

Republicans will be pleased that Mr. Sessions is coming with good news. On Monday, the Justice Department notified the committee that senior prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the Obama administration’s decision to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States. The department will also examine whether any donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to the approval.

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Republicans are investigating the matter themselves but have been clamoring for the department to get involved. On Tuesday, Mr. Goodlatte signaled his support but said again that he wanted the department to go farther and appoint a second special counsel. He also urged Mr. Sessions to let a special counsel investigate the Clinton email case.

“There are significant concerns that the partisanship of the F.B.I. and the department has weakened the ability of each to act objectively,” he said.

Democrats were incensed by the letter, which they said they did not receive. Mr. Conyers said the appointment of a new special counsel was merely to “cater to the President’s political needs.” He argued that there was not sufficient evidence to do so. And, he said, it smacked of “a banana republic.”

Then again, Mr. Sessions’s days at the department could be numbered.

The race to fill Mr. Sessions’s former Senate seat in Alabama has fallen into turmoil in recent days after five women accused the Republican nominee of misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Despite mounting accusations and calls by fellow Republicans, including the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, to step aside, the candidate, Roy S. Moore, has remained defiant.

That’s where Mr. Sessions comes in.

Two White House officials floated on Monday a scenario under consideration that would have Mr. Sessions either run for his old seat as a write-in candidate to challenge Mr. Moore or be appointed to it should Mr. Moore win and be immediately removed from office. Mr. McConnell is said to be supportive of the idea.

Though a long shot, the move could provide Republicans with a convenient — if awkward — solution to two issues: the prospect of Mr. Moore in the Senate and Mr. Trump’s frustration with Mr. Sessions. While Mr. Sessions remains extremely popular in the state, his relationship with Mr. Trump never really recovered after the attorney general’s recusal.

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General Electric Co.’s new boss is dramatically reshaping the company and slashing the dividend as he looks to pull the manufacturing icon out of one of the deepest slumps in its 125-year history. The moves failed to win over investors.

Chief Executive Officer John Flannery plans to narrow GE’s focus around power, aviation and health-care equipment while exiting businesses such as lighting and locomotives that have defined the company for decades. He’s also trimming the size of the board, revising the compensation program and chopping the quarterly dividend in half — only the second cut since the Great Depression.

The sweeping changes announced Monday underscore the severity of the challenges facing the new CEO, who is grappling with a stock that has lost $100 billion in market value this year. Plagued by poor cash flow amid slumping markets in power generation and oil-field equipment, GE is by far the biggest loser on the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year.

“Whether investors will consider these actions sufficient to form a bottom for the stock remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that the plan outlined today marks a new era for GE,” Deane Dray, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “That said, does it go far enough?”

The shares dropped 3.8 percent to $19.71 at 10:12 a.m. in New York after plunging as much as 7.3 percent, the biggest intraday decline in two years. GE fell 35 percent this year through Nov. 10.

Flannery already has made changes to top management, sought deep cost cuts and welcomed a representative of activist investor Trian Fund Management to GE’s board. Over the next two years, GE will explore options to exit its majority stake in Baker Hughes, a provider of oil-field equipment and services. GE’s lighting business traces its origins to the company’s formation by Thomas Edison.

“The GE of the future is going to be a more focused industrial company,” Flannery, who took over in August from Jeffrey Immelt, said in a presentation. “Soon we’re going to be proud of the performance.”

Flannery, who previously ran GE’s unit manufacturing medical scanners and other health equipment, said last month that the company would divest at least $20 billion of businesses.

Lowered Forecast

The moves follow a broad portfolio reshaping in recent years as Immelt sold most of GE’s finance and consumer operations. Still, the latest steps will keep most of the current company intact and stop short of the full-scale breakup some analysts have recently called for.

Earnings next year will be $1 to $1.07 a share, GE said. That represents a significant decline from the $2 target that management has been discussing for several years. The new outlook is closer to analysts’ expectations, which were $1.18 on average before Monday’s announcement, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The forecast became a point of contention this year as Immelt suggested in May that $2 a share would be tough to reach, a month after Trian, which has been one of GE’s largest shareholders since 2015, said it believed GE could exceed the target.

GE will shrink the size of its board to 12 from 18 directors amid criticism from some investors and analysts over the size. Of the remaining members, three will be new to the board, GE said.

Dividend Decision

The quarterly payout will drop 50 percent to 12 cents a share, the Boston-based company said in a statement Monday, in a move that will save about $4.2 billion a year. GE last reduced the dividend in 2009 as it struggled with fallout from the financial crisis.

“We understand the importance of this decision to our shareowners and we have not made it lightly,” Flannery said in the statement. “We are focused on driving total shareholder return and believe this is the right decision to align our dividend payout to cash flow generation.”

GE in October slashed its expectations for 2017 profit and cash flow as Flannery called the company’s performance “completely unacceptable.”

Investors have been bracing for a dividend cut as GE’s slide deepened in recent weeks. The payout had been recovering from a dramatic 68 percent cut in 2009, after Immelt for weeks had said the payout was safe. Immelt has called slashing the dividend “the worst day of my tenure as CEO.”

• The New York Times on Sunday published a detailed look
  at how the National Security Agency, the US’s largest and most
  secretive intelligence agency, had been deeply infiltrated over
  the past year.
• Expensive NSA cyberweapons are now for sale to hostile
  countries and have already been used in cyberattacks against
  the public.
• Now doubt surrounds the NSA, and experts wonder whether
  the agency can do its job at all.

Reuters

The National Security Agency, the US’s largest and most secretive
intelligence agency, has been deeply infiltrated by anonymous
hackers, as detailed in a New
York Times exposé published Sunday.

The NSA, which compiles massive troves of data on US citizens and
organizes cyberoffensives against the US’s enemies, was deeply
compromised by a group known as the Shadow Brokers, which has
made headlines in the past year in connection to the breach,
whose source remains unclear.

The group now posts cryptic, mocking messages pointed toward the
NSA as it sells the cyberweapons, created at huge cost to US
taxpayers, to any and all buyers, including US adversaries like
North Korea and Russia.

“It’s a disaster on multiple levels,” Jake Williams, a
cybersecurity expert who formerly worked on the NSA’s hacking
group, told The Times. “It’s embarrassing that the people
responsible for this have not been brought to justice.”

“These leaks have been incredibly damaging to our intelligence
and cybercapabilities,” Leon Panetta, the former director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, told The Times. “The fundamental
purpose of intelligence is to be able to effectively penetrate
our adversaries in order to gather vital intelligence. By its
very nature, that only works if secrecy is maintained and our
codes are protected.”

Furthermore, a wave of cybercrime has been linked to the release
of the NSA’s leaked cyberweapons.

Another NSA source who spoke with The Times described the attack
as being at least in part the NSA’s fault. The NSA has long
prioritized cyberoffense over securing its own systems, the
source said. As a result the US now essentially has to start over
on cyberinitiatives, Panetta said.

Read the full story at
The New York Times here.

Hundreds of people will gather in the tiny town of Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday to worship with surviving members of a local church where a shooting rampage left more than two dozen people dead.

Members of the First Baptist Church will hold a church service for the first time since a gunman opened fire inside the small church a week earlier in the worst mass shooting in Texas history.

Initial plans called for gathering at a community center could house a few dozen people. But when organizers realized about 500 people were planning to attend, the service was moved outside to a baseball park.

Church representatives also plan to eventually open a public memorial inside the church, where 26 empty chairs have been placed. Authorities have put the official death toll at 26 victims because one of the 25 people killed was pregnant. Church officials have said the building will likely be demolished.