Updated at 3:26 p.m. ET

Facebook said on Monday it has given Congress thousands of ads linked with Russian influence operations in the United States and is tightening its policies to make such interference more difficult.

“Many [of the ads] appear to amplify racial and social divisions,” it said.

The social media giant confirmed that it discovered the ad sales earlier this year and gave copies to Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Facebook had shown the ads to congressional investigators but not turned them over. After complaints by the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the company decided to give them up after all.

“We are sharing these ads with Congress because we want to do our part to help investigators gain a deeper understanding of Russian interference in the US political system and explain those activities to the public,” said a statement by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy.

The leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, which are investigating Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, have complained that Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms haven’t cooperated as much with their investigations as they wish.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., acknowledged receipt of the ads on Monday but said there are still important unanswered questions about the social media campaigns.

“As we fully examine these ads in the coming days, we will be particularly interested in understanding their full reach, in particular to determine what groups and individuals were most heavily targeted and why,” he said.

Schiff said he hopes to release a “representative sampling” of the ads Facebook has turned over as soon as possible.

And both panels want to schedule open hearings with representatives of the companies this month or next, although Facebook and Twitter haven’t said whether they’ll participate.

Representatives from Twitter visited Capitol Hill last week to brief investigators on their findings, but at least one leader wasn’t satisfied: Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., called the session “frankly inadequate.”

Meanwhile, the use of social networks in influence operations continues apace.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed that his company will change the policies that made possible some of the influence operations that he, Congress and Robert Mueller are investigating.

To that end, Kaplan said on Monday that the company was rolling out tweaks: Facebook plans to show users more information about the ads they’re seeing, including other messages the buyer is running that target other users.

It also says it plans to better enforce restrictions on “improper” material, require more documentation from buyers of election ads and collaborate with its competitors.

The next milestone in this story could take place on Wednesday, when Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Warner are scheduled to convene a joint news conference in Washington, D.C.

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It has become a social media sensation and even led to a run on glue sales. We’re talking slime — and not the green liquid Nickelodeon famously dumps on celebrities. And for many young people on YouTube, Instagram and Etsy, it’s a moneymaker.

Of the more than 5 million posts on Instagram tagged with #slime, most depict brightly colored stuff filled with glitter and pigments of all kinds. So the slime of today is far more viscous and elaborate than that green liquid on Nickelodeon. Slime has become so popular that the American Chemical Society recently published a fact sheet about it including a detailed scientific explanation for how the magic happens.

This gooey DIY toy is taking the Internet by storm, mostly in the form of Instagram videos showing only a set of hands squishing and stretching various types of slime.

Slime is also popular among YouTubers. In June, The New York Times did a profile on Karina Garcia, one of a handful of influencers considered to have started the trend. Known as the “slime queen,” Garcia has just over 6 million subscribers and makes as much as $200,000 a month from sponsorships on her various slime recipe videos.

Garcia’s is just one of hundreds of YouTube and Instagram accounts that have capitalized on the growing slime trend.

Many young slime lovers are also selling their slime online, on platforms like Etsy. These entrepreneurs, often as young as 10 or 11, are making thousands of dollars each month to put toward college or invest back into their slime business.

The owner of the Instagram page “slime.jewel“, an account with over 500,000 followers, says that when she started making videos last year she never imagined she would be making money off slime. “It was initially driven by passion to create,” says slime.jewel, who declined to give her real name. But when profits started rolling in she began investing in scents and glitters, which only increased her profits further.

Searches for slime on Etsy have soared since last October, the Timesreported, citing the company. The popular and often viral Instagram slime videos serve as marketing for individually owned slime businesses. Most slime batches sell for between $5 and $10, but range up to $25 for the largest batches. Thousands of Etsy shops sell slimes ranging from “Fruit Salad Clear Slime” to “Strawberry Champagne Metallic Slime.” These slimes are often brightly colored, and are filled with creative add-ins like Styrofoam balls and plastic beads that give slimes different textures and different sounds when played with.

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Fruit Salad Clear Slime by BriditHandmade on Etsy

BriditHandmade/Etsy
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BriditHandmade/Etsy

Strawberry Champagne Metallic Slime by SlimethatSizzles on Etsy

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Slime that Sizzles/Etsy

The crackling, popping, and squishing noises associated with slime videos have earned slime a spot on the short list of another growing Internet trend, popular among adults. Along with whispering, scratching and tapping noises, and clips of Bob Ross (famous for his TV show The Joy Of Painting), slime videos have been identified as a common trigger of ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

ASMR, a term coined in 2010 on a Facebook group, refers to a sensation defined as “a combination of positive feelings, relaxation and a distinct, static-like tingling sensation on the skin,” according to one of a very few peer-reviewed studies on ASMR. The same study found that, although not all people experience ASMR, of those participants who did, 98 percent agreed that they used ASMR largely as an opportunity for relaxation. “I can only describe what I started feeling as an extremely relaxed trance like state, that I didn’t want to end,” one study participant said.

Emma Barratt, one of the authors of that ASMR study, confirms that slime videos fit well into the list of ASMR triggers. “Something about the predictable way in which these materials are moving or being manipulated can bring about the same sort of flow-like feeling created by ASMR videos,” she says. Barratt says the rise of the use of slime videos for ASMR “might be a useful avenue in helping us further untangle just what stimuli are needed to have an effective ASMR trigger.”

The growing popularity of the slime trend has created glue shortages in many craft stores around the country as kids and adults alike buy up bottles in bulk.

Elmer’s said it experienced a 50 percent jump in sales in December as a direct result of the slime trend. Subsequently, Elmer’s has been capitalizing on the slime trend, launching a new television commercial featuring “kid-friendly” recipes to make slime.

This “kid-friendly” aspect comes in the wake of concerns over the safety of slime. The most basic slime recipe consists of a PVA based glue (for most consumers that is Elmer’s), water and borax. A traditional slime recipe calls for the borax to be safely diluted in water, but when this laundry additive is touched directly it can lead to painful chemical burns. Although few kids have actually been hurt by the slime-making process, Elmer’s chooses only to post borax-free slime recipes, featuring alternatives like baking soda and contact lens solution.

Elmer’s has had a team of researchers and chemists focused on fueling the slime craze since it picked up major traction in the beginning of 2017, says Caitlin Watkins, a public relations manager at Newell Brands, which owns Elmer’s. “At this point, everyone who touches the business has made slime,” she says. “R&D experts have made it, marketing folks have made it, legal teams — even our CEO has made slime.”

According to Google Trends, searches for the word “slime” peaked at the beginning of August, but the general upward trend for the past year implies that the slime craze is far from over.

Ema Sagner is the NPR Treasury and Risk Management intern.

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In one of Megyn Kelly’s first episodes as the newest, brightest star on NBC’s Today show, a crewman audibly swore as he accidentally wandered into the path of the camera’s live gaze. And yet his meaningless misstep was far from the week’s most awkward moment.

In the space of just a few days, Kelly managed to alienate two celebrity guests — one of whom is a star in a sister NBC show. Otherwise, Kelly relentlessly pumped the network’s shows and leveraged human interest segments as vehicles for promoting corporate sponsors, and sought to stress her role as a working mom.

It’s fundamentally unfair to evaluate a show with any finality based on its first few episodes. Yet one should be able to get a sense of where it thinks it is headed. At the moment, the show is a bit of a jumble because of the profound transformation the host is attempting to make in the public eye.

There’s no reason why Kelly cannot ultimately evolve from cable news inquisitor to morning show companion. And her initial ratings have been adequate, though far from spectacular. Yet it’s not precisely clear yet why the audience will feel compelled to make it a habit to tune in.

Morning show hosts are typically ingratiating confidants, blending newsy segments, celebrity interviews and more personal obsessions. They tend to appeal to female viewers, and women of color often represent a disproportionate slice of the audience.

Kelly made her mark as the keenly focused former attorney drilling down on political matters on Fox News’s prime time. As a rule, Fox tends to drum empathy out of its biggest stars, except when useful for ideological or partisan purposes. Kelly tended to play to the right-leaning home team, but that said, she showed notable flashes of independence, especially when it involved matters of gender.

In August 2015, Kelly burst into total national consciousness with her tough-minded questioning of a presidential candidate at a Republican primary debate. Her question included this pungent lead-in: “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals …”

That candidate turned his ire on her for months — and is now president.

Kelly left for NBC and has been eager to proclaim a new chapter and to shed Fox News, where she alleged she had been harassed by the channel’s founder, the late Roger Ailes. (He had been privately advising Donald Trump during the primaries from his offices at Fox.)

In fact, Kelly recently declared she wanted to be done with politics. Yet it can be hard to draw clean lines, as we’ve just learned from White House attacks on NFL players’ protests over episodes of police brutality toward black citizens. (Kelly told an audience member that she felt, as an attorney, both the players and the White House should have the First Amendment right to say what they thought.)

NBC brought over Kelly with great fanfare and a big payday, reportedly well in excess of $15 million a year. She’s also fronting a Sunday night newsmagazine meant to compete with CBS’ 60 Minutes.

The appeal of the job, however, is found in her new plum role on NBC’s Today show franchise. She is now host of its 9 a.m. hour. This week, her first episodes duly whipped up her audiences for NBC’s Saturday Night Live, Will & Grace and the newest installation in the Law & Order juggernaut. The true-crime miniseries focuses on the Menendez brothers, who made national headlines for killing their parents a generation ago. Kelly gamely conducted a phone interview with one of the brothers from the prison in which he resides and asked whether he experiences joy in his life.

Not all her interviewees this week experienced joy.

Hollywood stars Jane Fonda and Robert Redford joined Kelly to talk about their new movie. It was, for once, not an NBC corporate promotion, just an old-fashioned celebrity interview. Given the longtime liberal activism of each of the actors, Fox News would have been unlikely to approve such a booking. And Kelly stayed away from politics. She seemed to be trying to connect as a professional woman, starting by praising Fonda: “You’ve been an example to everyone in how to age beautifully and with strength.”

And then it went off the rails, as Kelly inquired about Fonda’s plastic surgery: “I read that you said you felt you’re not proud to admit you’ve had work done. Why not?”

Fonda shot back, “We really want to talk about that?”

The audience laughed, but it masked a withering look from Fonda. Fonda later told Entertainment Tonight Canada that she was a little shocked by the question — wrong time, wrong place.

Will & Grace star Debra Messing told a fan on Instagram she regretted participating in interviews on Kelly’s show, because of Kelly’s joke that a superfan had become gay after watching the gay-themed show.

Let’s not overlook the elephant in the room.

Ghosts of Fox News and its ideology hover over Kelly. That heritage is in some way part of her appeal to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack. He is mindful of sister station MSNBC’s liberal leanings and wanted to ensure that red state America would feel comfortable watching NBC News’ most profitable program.

Yet in TV, as in Faulkner, the past is never quite dead.

Kelly infamously insisted both Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were white.

And she found other ways to play to Fox’s die-hard viewers. In 2010, she devoted hours of coverage to the threat posed by a tiny black hate group over voter intimidation that did not appear to intimidate any voters.

When Trump attacked her over the August 2015 debate, she became a lightning rod for criticism by conservatives, too. Now both sides are smacking her down for various elements of the week. Liberals snarked online over what they contend was a gaffe for her remarks on the Will & Grace fan. A conservative site founded by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, The Daily Caller, denounced her for being insufficiently impressed with America’s progress on gender equity. (Rather than a political stance, Kelly’s remarks came off as an effort to connect with her predominantly female audience.)

From a television standpoint, however, the questions involve authenticity, connection and the logic of the show itself.

“It’s been very exciting. It has been educational. I have been so delighted at the media response — no,” Kelly said, stopping herself as the audience laughed. “But the viewer response has been awesome.”

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