Top Eight

Your Friday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top eight CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump is exhibiting mild symptoms of Covid-19 after he and the first lady tested positive; Employers added back just 661,000 jobs to the U.S. economy while unemployment dropped slightly to 7.9%; The EU said it is imposing targeted sanctions on Belarus for its brutal crackdown on protests, and more.

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National

1.) President Donald Trump is said to be in good spirits Friday but is exhibiting mild symptoms of Covid-19, hours after it was revealed that he and First Lady Melania Trump have joined over 7 million Americans who have contracted the coronavirus.  

2.) Employers added back just 661,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in September while unemployment dropped slightly to 7.9%, the highest recorded jobless rate heading into a presidential election.

3.) The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments over the constitutionality of an Arizona law restricting who can deliver ballots for voters unable to leave their homes during an election.

Regional

4.) With the California bar exam just days away, California Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye rejected a bid from more than a dozen law school deans to drop remote proctoring and make the test open-book. 

5.) Civil rights groups and two absentee voters claim in a lawsuit filed late Thursday that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order limiting absentee ballot drop-off sites to only one per county amounts to last-minute voter suppression that targets vulnerable and minority voters. 

6.) With enduring slogans like “It’s the Water” and “Since 1896”, it’s hard to blame drinkers for assuming Olympia beer came from mountain water like the tranquil river featured on the beer’s cans — and not California tap water. At least that’s how a federal judge sees it. 

International

7.) Faced with an array of foreign policy troubles at their borders, European Union leaders on Friday turned to a now-familiar – but potentially ineffective – weapon of choice: sanctions.

8.) Hundreds of artistic rock carvings by indigenous Australians have been documented for the first time, and their depictions of macropods, ceremonial events and human-animal interactions 9,000 years ago point to our species’ continuing connections with wildlife, researchers said in a study released Thursday. 

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