Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight stories for today including nearly half of all eligible California residents are at least partly vaccinated; President Biden signed an executive order issuing tough new sanctions on Russia over the SolarWinds hack; The EU’s highest court upheld a bloc-wide ban on pulse fishing, and more.
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National
1.) President Joe Biden signed an executive order issuing tough new sanctions on Russia Thursday, officially identifying Russia as the perpetrator behind the hack of Texas-based company SolarWinds discovered in late 2020.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2021/04/AP21103551906601.jpg/w=1280)
2.) The prospects for alleviating the drought afflicting a large portion of the American West are not good, according to weather forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2021/04/USDrought04132021-scaled.jpg/w=1280)
Regional
3.) Greatly outpacing all other states in administering the Covid-19 vaccine, California Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday nearly half of all eligible residents are at least partly vaccinated.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2021/04/Newsom04152021.jpg/w=1122)
4.) Derek Chauvin’s defense attorney rested his case Thursday in the former Minneapolis police officer’s murder trial for the killing of George Floyd after Chauvin himself declined to testify, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incriminating testimony.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2021/04/AP21105533540493.jpg/w=1280)
5.) Two men convicted under New Jersey’s Anti-Terrorism Act for fire-bombing and vandalizing five Jewish houses of worship nearly a decade ago lost appellate challenges Thursday.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/127.0.0.1/2018/02/HITLER-BELL.jpg/w=1280)
6.) Body-camera video depicting a police shooting in Chicago that left a young teen dead was released to the public on Thursday.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2021/04/AP21105668169572.jpg/w=1280)
International
7.) Upholding a European Union-wide ban on pulse fishing Thursday, the bloc’s highest court dealt a major blow Thursday to a common fishing practice in the Netherlands where fish are dislodged from their seabeds and then scooped into nets via electrodes that cause muscle spasms.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/www.courthousenews.com/2020/11/thyborn-denmark.jpg/w=1280)
8.) A magistrate for Europe’s top court on Thursday sided with an outspoken Polish judge who accuses the country’s far-right government of seeking to capture the judiciary by harassing judges it doesn’t like and trying to kick them off the bench.
![](https://imagedelivery.net/wKQ19LTSBT0ARz08tkssqQ/127.0.0.1/2018/10/AP18292524988232.jpg/w=1280)
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