A senior State Department official told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that in May, he was directed during a meeting organized by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to "lay low" when it came to Ukraine policy, as it was now being handled by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters.

The official, George Kent, is the deputy assistant secretary responsible for Ukraine. Connolly said Kent testified that he was ordered to focus on the other countries in his portfolio because Perry, Sondland, and Volker — who called themselves the "three amigos" — were taking over for career diplomats on Ukraine. Kent said the meeting was held on May 23, just a few days after Marie Yovanovitch was removed from her position as ambassador to Ukraine and two months before President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked him to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

Last week, Yovanovitch testified before lawmakers that Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was behind the campaign to get her recalled. Documents the State Department inspector general sent to Congress earlier this month show that Kent first said in March that he believed Yovanovitch was the subject of a "classic disinformation campaign," The Washington Post reports, and he wanted his superiors to stand up for her. Catherine Garcia

Apple and Google are teaming up in a "rare partnership" that could help inform people if they've come into contact with someone who later tests positive for COVID-19, Time reports.

The companies are calling their nifty new program Contact Tracing, and both have stressed that the service is voluntary and will require users to explicitly opt-in. Using Bluetooth on the phones of consenting users, Contact Tracing would automatically track mobile devices and take note of who you come into close proximity with while you're out and about. It would then allow users who test positive for coronavirus to alert the phones of anyone who'd come near enough to them during a 14-day period to potentially have contracted the disease.

If everyone who used an Apple or Google device were to opt in to the program, some 3 billion users, or one third of the world's population, would be able to know if they'd been near another Contact Tracing user who was contagious. Health experts say a large-scale global contact tracing project of this sort will be especially important as governments begin to ease coronavirus restrictions, because such technology can potentially prevent further outbreaks and lockdowns. Such measures, in fact, are already being taken in certain countries, including South Korea.

Others, though, are critical of such a massive project that involves tracking users' locations and sharing, albeit anonymously, their health information. "The sheer amount of information made available by tracing apps will be tantalizing for power-hungry governments and data-hungry corporations to monopolize," cautioned The Atlantic recently. "A tracing app made necessary by the pandemic cannot become an indefinite surveillance system run by some occult government agency." Jeva Lange

Scammers take no days off — not even during a pandemic.

Consumers have filed over 15,000 complaints claiming nearly $12 million in losses from COVID-19 related scams, according to a Federal Trade Commission report.

More than half of the losses were reported in the first nine days of April, Business Insider reports, indicating a startling shift as the coronavirus crisis continues to spread around the globe. Should the current rate of fraudulent claims continue, Americans could reportedly lose more than $100 million by July.

The FTC's report shows California had the highest amount of claims with over 1,700, followed by Florida with 1,057. Travel and vacation scams were the most commonly reported type, followed by online shopping and text message scams.

As the new coronavirus has spread, complaints of price gouging have increased along with it, forcing retailers to come out against the practice and leading some state governments to take action.

It's anyone's guess when the pandemic will lighten up and the economy will reopen, and given the current state of panic and uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the next several months could be especially fertile ground for fraudsters. Marianne Dodson

Poor unfortunate souls who are stuck in quarantine will want to be prepared for The Disney Family Singalong, a one-hour special event coming to ABC. Ryan Seacrest will host the medley, Deadline reports, with celebrities like Christina Aguilera, Kristin Chenoweth, Luke Evans, and Michael Bublé set to go from zero to hero with at-home performances of their favorite Disney tunes.

You'll only need the bare necessities to follow along in your own living room, since the Singalong is going to include "an animated character to guide the on-screen lyrics." Expect to hear all the songs you love from movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Frozen, High School Musical, Moana, and more. You can even stay one jump ahead and start studying up now — off to work you go!

Otherwise, a guy like you (or a friend like me) can catch the event on April 16 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Jeva Lange

President Trump has officially abandoned his grand reopening plan for the U.S.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was first spiking in the U.S. a few weeks ago, Trump seemed firm on having the U.S. "open" again come Easter. Pretty much every expert out there warned Easter was far too soon to end social distancing in the U.S., but Trump remained firm on his self-proposed miracle — until in his official Easter message on Friday, where he made no mention of reopening the U.S. or really of the coronavirus at all.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence stood by in the White House on Friday as Bishop Harry Jackson delivered a holiday blessing, and then the president briefly relayed a message of his own. Trump thanked "everyone in our country and beyond," and said "184 countries ... are fighting this enemy and we pray for them all," not actually naming what he was thanking them for or what that enemy was.

ABC News did ask Trump whether he'd tell churches to remain closed through the holiday, but that reporter was told there would be no questions until the White House's daily coronavirus briefing. Some churches are bucking social distancing calls, and in some states, they've been exempted from coronavirus regulations altogether. Kathryn Krawczyk

Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi has died at the age of 82 after a battle with terminal lung cancer, the Japanese press reported Friday. Obayashi is best known for his 1977 cult horror film House, or Hausu, which has been described as "one of the most 'terrible' films ever made" and "le cinéma du WTF?!" Despite the dreadful reviews from critics, though, House was a hit and a box office success in Japan, and it continues to be shown frequently on the American midnight movie circuit.

Yet Obayashi is more than just House. He made over 40 movies during the course of his life, including most recently Labyrinth of Cinema in 2019, which, like much of his work, was preoccupied with the horrors of war. "Utopian as it may seem, [Obayashi] is determined to continue the trail of peace Kurosawa has set out on and pass it on to the next batch of directors," Japan Times wrote in 2017.

Obayashi firmly believed in the power of cinema. "Movies are not weak," he told The Associated Press last October. "Movies express freedom." Jeva Lange

As COVID-19 spreads throughout the city, New York has seen ridership on its MTA system drop by more than 90 percent. But trains and buses are still running, and that's led to 50 MTA workers contracting and dying from the new coronavirus so far, MTA Chairman Pat Foye said Friday.

So far, nearly 1,900 MTA workers have tested positive for the new coronavirus, and the number of quarantined workers recently hit a peak of 6,000. A total of 50 MTA employees have died of the disease; they're dying at a much higher rate than the rest of the city. Most of those workers who'd died had worked on the city's buses and subways.

To combat disease spread, the MTA is now taking the temperature of everyone who reports to work and sending those with a fever back home. About 1,800 MTA workers who'd self-quarantined after potential exposure to the virus have since returned to work, Foye added. But staffing shortages have still caused over 800 subway delays and led to 40 percent of trips being canceled in a single day, per The New York Times.

Ridership is dramatically down across the entire MTA system, Foye also said. Subway ridership has fallen 93 percent since the coronavirus crisis began, Long Island Railroad traffic has plunged 97 percent, and Metro-North commuter rail has seen ridership drop 95 percent. That resulting deep dive in revenue will surely be a problem for the aging transit system that was struggling to stay afloat even before a global pandemic hit. Kathryn Krawczyk