Your Wednesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight CNS stories for today including federal agents who have sparked violent clashes with peaceful protesters and assaulted journalists and legal observers in Portland for weeks will begin to leave the city; The First Circuit appeared reluctant to intervene against the government’s new policy of making arrests at courthouses; More than 200,000 Brazilians whose lives and businesses were upended by a massive dam failure in 2015 are asking a British court to hear their $6.3 billion case, and more.
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National
1.) Federal agents who have sparked violent clashes with peaceful protesters and assaulted journalists and legal observers in Portland, Oregon, for weeks will begin to leave the city this week under an agreement with the Trump administration unveiled Wednesday by Governor Kate Brown.
2.) U.S. courthouses have become points of vulnerability for undocumented immigrants thanks to the government’s new policy on making arrests there, but the First Circuit appeared reluctant Wednesday to intervene.
3.) In the sixth iteration of congressional oversight hearings and investigation into big tech companies and their threat to competition, a House Judiciary subcommittee grilled the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — the first instance each founder has testified before lawmakers simultaneously.
Regional
4.) Louie Gohmert, a Republican representing East Texas cities in the U.S. House of Representatives, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus after reportedly refusing to wear a face mask or socially distance on Capitol Hill.
5.) With trial still months away, taxpayers have paid more than a quarter-million dollars to a private law firm deputized by a federal judge to convict an environmental attorney of misdemeanors.
6.) Up for a seat on a federal court in the state, the solicitor general of Kansas defended his involvement Wednesday in cases taking conservative positions on funding for Planned Parenthood, voter ID laws and other contentious legal issues.
International
7.) Saying they can’t get justice in Brazil, more than 200,000 Brazilians whose lives and businesses were upended by a massive dam failure in 2015 are asking a British court to hear their $6.3 billion case against BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies.
8.) State-of-the-art imaging techniques and algorithms have allowed a team of scientists and art experts to peer beneath the layers of restorations covering a Renaissance masterpiece in a Belgian cathedral.
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