Nightly Brief

Your Monday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including a think tank reported that gerrymandered electoral maps could help House Republicans weather the storm of a Democratic “blue wave” in this year’s U.S. midterms; The Federal Trade Commission said it will investigate Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal and a group of state attorneys general demanded answers about the company’s privacy-protection protocol; Remington Arms Co. filed for bankruptcy as gun sales slump, and more.

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National

1.) Undercutting predictions of a Democratic “blue wave” in this year’s U.S. midterms, a think tank reported Monday that gerrymandered electoral maps could help House Republicans weather the storm.

File - This Jan. 17, 2017, file photo shows a Facebook logo being displayed in a start-up companies gathering at Paris' Station F, in Paris. A former employee of a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm says it used algorithms that "took fake news to the next level" using data inappropriately obtained from Facebook. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

2.) The Cambridge Analytica scandal fallout continues to rain down on Facebook, with the Federal Trade Commission saying it will investigate and a group of state attorneys general demanding answers about the company’s privacy-protection protocol.

Remington rifle cartridges are displayed at a trade show in Las Vegas in 2013. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File)

3.) Remington Arms Co., the company that manufactured the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that was used in the Sandy Hook shooting, filed for bankruptcy Sunday as gun sales slump.

Amy Locane Bovenizer enters the courtroom to be sentenced on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013 in Somerville, N.J. Locane-Bovenizer, the former "Melrose Place" actress who was driving drunk when her SUV plowed into a car and killed a New Jersey woman has been sentenced to three years in prison. Locane-Bovenizer faced up to 10 years in prison after a jury in November convicted her of vehicular homicide in the 2010 death of 60-year-old Helene Seeman in Montgomery Township. The judge lowered the maximum sentence citing the hardship on Locane-Bovenizer's two children. One has a medical and mental disability. Locane-Bovenizer's blood-alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit when the crash occurred. (AP Photo/The Star-Ledger, Patti Sapone, Pool)

4.) The former “Melrose Place” actress who snuffed out a life while driving drunk in 2010 received so light a sentence that it was “a hair’s breath away from illegal,” a New Jersey appeals court ruled Friday.

Regional

West Angeles Cathedral sits in the backdrop of new construction on Metro’s Expo/Crenshaw rail line station which is set to open in 2019. The new station will feature retail shops and access to transit lines that will serve Los Angeles, Inglewood, El Segundo and portions of unincorporated Los Angeles County. (Martin Macias Jr./CNS)

5.) When the underground Expo/Crenshaw rail line opens in Los Angeles’ Southside next year, it will offer residents a quick and safe connection to LAX. But accompanying development plans have people concerned about the impact on an area “already strained by gentrification.”

6.) Reviving claims over a bathroom spy cam, a New Jersey appeals court ruled Friday that women who used the facilities at issue need not identify themselves in the footage to prove their case.

International

A lobster is pulled from crate in Kennebunkport, Maine, on June 12, 2015. China's hunger for American lobsters is helping keep prices high to U.S. consumers, but a tariff on the seafood does not appear imminent. Federal stats say China imported a record of more than 17.8 million pounds of lobster from America in 2017, eclipsing the previous record of about 14 million pounds in 2016. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, file)

7.) China’s hunger for American lobsters is helping keep prices high for U.S. consumers, but a tariff on the seafood does not appear imminent.

Three explosives disguised as rocks are on display in Yemen. Roadside bombs disguised as rocks in Yemen bear similarities to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacturing, a report released on March 26, 2018, by Conflict Armament Research alleges. The report comes comes as the West and United Nations researchers accuse Iran of supplying arms to Yemen’s Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who have held the country’s capital since September 2014. (Tim Michetti/Conflict Armament Research via AP)

8.) Roadside bombs disguised as rocks in Yemen bear similarities to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture, a watchdog group said on Monday.

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