Top Eight

Top eight CNS stories for today including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Philadelphia followed state law with its protocol for letting election observers watch ballot counting; President-elect Joe Biden announced additions to his administration; California is clearly failing in its fight to cure a much-ballyhooed housing crisis, and more.

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National

1.) Handing a loss to the Trump campaign, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 Tuesday that Philadelphia followed state law with its protocol for letting election observers watch ballot counting.

Workers prepare mail-in ballots for counting at the convention center in Lancaster, Pa., on Nov. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

2.) President-elect Joe Biden announced additions to his administration Tuesday morning as his transition team filled senior positions with veterans from his presidential campaign.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden arrives with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to speak Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

3.) Nearly two weeks after bringing a superseding indictment in an already massive doping prosecution of racehorse trainers and veterinarians, federal prosecutors told a judge Tuesday more charges and more defendants could be in store.

FILE - In this April 7, 2018, file photo, Justify, ridden by Mike Smith, gallops past Bolt d'Oro, left, with jockey Javier Castellano, during the Santa Anita Derby horse race at Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif. Justify won the race, and Bolt d'Oro came in second. The New York Times says Justify won the 2018 Triple Crown after a failed postrace drug test at Santa Anita that could have kept the horse out of the Kentucky Derby. The newspaper reported Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2019, that Bob Baffert-trained Justify tested positive for the drug scopolamine after winning the Santa Anita Derby. Justify went on to win the Derby and took the Preakness and Belmont stakes to complete the Triple Crown. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Regional

4.) Faced with unrelenting homelessness and cost-of-living problems in a state where the average home costs nearly $600,000, California is clearly failing in its fight to cure a much-ballyhooed housing crisis.

In this Monday, Sept. 3, 2018, photo, three men play basketball at a park in front of newly built homes in Salinas, Calif. Salinas is an affordable location compared to Silicon Valley, where median home prices are about $1 million, but with a less-wealthy population and a median home price that has ballooned to about $550,000 it's one of the least affordable places in America. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

5.) Montana started out as a poster child for the novel coronavirus, with super-low positivity rates and an unburdened health care system. Then the restrictions were lifted.

Sykes Market in Kalispell, Montana, is one of five businesses sued by the Montana Department of Health and Human Services to force compliance with Gov. Steve Bullock’s mask mandate. A state court judge denied the state's request for an injunction, finding no evidence the businesses were at fault. (Courthouse News photo / David Reese)

6.) An attorney for California residents who were denied permits to protest coronavirus public health orders at the state capitol told a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday his clients’ appeal isn’t moot just because the protest ban has been lifted.

The California Capitol building in Sacramento. (William Dotinga/Courthouse News)

7.) The high-profile prosecution of a decades-old Wisconsin murder case was resurrected by the state high court on Tuesday as the justices scrutinized whether a dead wife’s letter blaming her husband for her murder can be used as evidence against him.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court room at the state Capitol building. (Photo via Royalbroil/Wikipedia)

International

8.) Shortly after the Pentagon announced a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, the Iraqi military reported on Tuesday that four rockets struck near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Dozens of Iraqi Shiite militia supporters are seen outside the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2019. An angry mob smashed a door and stormed inside the compound Tuesday following deadly U.S. military airstrikes on Sunday against the Kataeb Hezbollah militia in Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Qassim Abdul-Zahra)

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