Your Friday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight stories for today including President Joe Biden visited Houston to meet with local leaders about the recovery from Winter Storm Uri; A panel of FDA experts voted unanimously in favor of approving Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use; A federal judge gave his final blessing to a $650 million deal to resolve claims that Facebook illegally collected and stored users’ facial data without consent, and more.
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National
1.) President Joe Biden visited Houston on Friday to meet with local leaders about the recovery from Winter Storm Uri and comfort residents struggling with basic necessities as a result of the natural disaster.
2.) A panel of Food and Drug Administration experts voted unanimously on Friday in favor of approving Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in American adults.
3.) The White House on Friday declassified its long-buried report that says Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved “and likely ordered” the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
4.) A woman accused of concealing her relationship with the Chinese military when she applied to work in the United States as a Stanford University researcher pleaded not guilty to visa fraud and obstruction of justice charges Friday.
Regional
5.) A federal judge gave his final blessing Friday to a $650 million deal to resolve claims that Facebook illegally collected and stored users’ facial data without consent, making it one of the largest privacy-related settlements in U.S. history.
6.) Fighting school rules that allow transgender girls to compete against other girls in high school sports, a group of current and former Connecticut track and field athletes argued in front of a federal judge on Friday.
International
7.) A Dutch appeals court has upheld a national curfew, saying the government is within its right to enforce a stay-at-home order between 9 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. under legislation designed for emergencies.
8.) The head of the World Health Organization on Friday urgently called on richer nations to support a global waiver on intellectual property rights to speed up the production of coronavirus vaccines and help people in poorer countries get inoculated.
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