Nightly Brief

Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top CNS stories for today including the Senate Judiciary Committee approving five nominees to federal district courts across the country; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray coming under intense questioning about the agency’s conduct during the 2016 presidential campaign; five people are killed in a shooting at the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland; New York's highest court backs health agencies for mandating that children who attend New York City-regulated or school-based programs get a flu shot; wild horse advocates sue Bureau of Land Management over a plan to remove wild horses from tracts of land in rural Nevada; a new study finds climate change could drive mason bees in the American Southwest to extinction as the global average temperature continues to rise; the EU's highest court hands athletic apparel company Puma a victory in its trademark fight with a German manufacturer, and more.

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National

1.) The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved five nominees to federal district courts across the country, but Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz, continued to block a vote on nominees for the Third and 11th circuits as a protest against a number of White House policies.

2.) Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray came under intense questioning Thursday about the agency’s conduct during the 2016 presidential campaign during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

3.) Five people were killed and several others were gravely injured Thursday in a shooting at the offices of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. The alleged shooter has been taken into custody, police said.

4.) In what Attorney General Jeff Session called the biggest health care fraud enforcement action in U.S. history, the Justice Department said Thursday that it charged 601 people in dozens of cases involving opioid prescriptions.

Regional

5.) The state’s highest court backed New York City health agencies on Thursday for mandating that children who attend city-regulated or school-based programs get a flu shot.

6.) A government transparency watchdog claims in court that Minnesota has refused to hand over a copy of its unsuccessful proposal for Amazon’s second corporate headquarters.

Science

8.) Climate change could drive mason bees in the American Southwest to extinction as the global average temperature continues to rise, according to a new study of the bee’s nests.

9.) In the future, there will be new technologies that have not been conceived of today, but humans must still step up efforts toward zero-emissions standards or face difficult consequences from climate change, according to a paper by scientists from a variety of fields.

International

10.) Corrado Rodio walks outside the thick stone walls of his family’s ancient olive oil mill and farmstead, the Masseria Brancati, and strolls over to a 2,000-year-old olive tree at the farm’s entrance. “It was planted by the Romans,” he says. But will it survive a catastrophic disease that’s spread north and now is only a few miles away from Rodio’s farm? Rodio doesn’t think his trees will be spared.

11.) A world leader in gold mining recorded its 21st death this year because the South African company puts profits ahead of safety, Sibanye Gold Limited shareholders said Thursday in a federal class action.

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