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Top Eight

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.

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.

Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters hold their phones aloft on Monday, July 20, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Federal officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s largest city, hailed by President Donald Trump but done without local consent, are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis — one that could escalate as weeks of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged, unidentified agents outside Portland’s U.S. courthouse. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

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.

Protesters brave the cold on Dec. 7, 2017, to rally against a surge of immigration arrests being carried out in New York City courthouses. (AMANDA OTTAWAY, Courthouse News Service)

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.

In this April 11, 2018, file photo Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pauses while testifying before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Federal regulators are fining Facebook $5 billion for privacy violations and instituting new oversight and restrictions on its business. But they are only holding Zuckerberg personally responsible in a limited fashion. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

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.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, studies notes during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the oversight of the Department of Justice on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, July 28, 2020 in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)

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. 

Steven Donziger poses for a photo in Lower Manhattan in 2013. (Photo by ADAM KLASFELD/Courthouse News Service)

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.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Courthouse News photo/Jack Rodgers)

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.

The village of Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, after the 2015 dam collapse. (Photo via Senado Federal/Wikipedia Commons)

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.

In this Friday, April 24, 2020 photo provided by the Alfred Wegener Insitute shows the German Arctic research vessel Polarstern in the ice next to a research camp in the Arctic region. Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean Research says the expedition ship RV Polarstern will leave its position in the high Arctic for three weeks to rendezvous with two vessels bringing fresh supplies and crew. (Manuel Ernst/Alfred-Wegner-Institut via AP)
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