Happy Thursday! The Dispatch’s softball team rides again tonight. Time to bring the thunder to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Overall life expectancy in the United States fell by one-and-a-half years in 2020 per new Centers for Disease Control data, the largest one-year decline since World War II.

• The United States and Germany announced an agreement yesterday that will allow the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany to be completed. The pipeline’s completion will strengthen Russia’s grip on the European energy market, allowing double the supply of Russian natural gas to be shipped westward via a route that bypasses Ukraine, which had urged the United States to impose sanctions preventing construction on the pipeline to finish.

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected two of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s five recommendations to serve on the January 6 select committee, prompting McCarthy to decry the committee as a “sham process” and withdraw all five nominations. Pelosi had said the appointment of Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan would impact “the integrity of the investigation.”