Top Eight

Top eight CNS stories for today including President Donald Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn; The Trump campaign’s legal team disclosed that Rudy Giuliani isn’t certified to argue before the Third Circuit and needs special dispensation; A Dutch court set a February date for the long-awaited trial of four men accused of downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 six years ago, and more.

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National

1.) President Donald Trump has pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials.

2.) Blaming “Covid-19 complications” with the New York government, the Trump campaign’s legal team disclosed Wednesday that Rudy Giuliani isn’t certified to argue before the Third Circuit and needs special dispensation.

Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Thursday Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

3.) President Donald Trump faces an uncertain path in taking his election challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, but his bid to dramatically change the census will take center stage Monday at oral arguments.

FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2020, file photo, Lauri Dawn Kindness, left, helps a family participate in the U.S. Census as part of a campaign to increase Native American participation in the count, on the Crow Indian Reservation, in Lodge Grass, Montana. A complete count of Montana’s households could come with a big reward: a second seat in Congress and millions of federal dollars annually. But the 2020 census deadline remains in flux, making it uncertain if census takers will finish counting the vast, rural state. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

4.) Most experts agree President-elect Joe Biden will fulfill his campaign promise to stop building Donald Trump’s border wall. But only time will tell how the incoming administration will repair the damage — environmental, cultural and political — the wall’s already done.

A protected Saguaro cactus stands taller than the 30-foot steel bollard border wall erected by the Trump administration which cuts through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. (Photo courtesy Laiken Jordahl / Center for Biological Diversity)

Regional

5.) As hospitals across huge swaths of West Texas continue to be severely stressed by an influx of Covid-19 patients, state and local officials are pinning their hopes on a new antibody drug they say could prevent some people sickened with the disease from ever having to go to a hospital.

Medical workers use the mobile morgues near the El Paso Medical Examiner Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, as coronavirus cases spike in El Paso, Texas. County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said the county has requested four more trailers in addition to the six mobile morgues. (Briana Sanchez/The El Paso Times via AP)

6.) In a major about-face, the Trump administration denied a vital permit for a proposed gold and copper mining operation in Alaska on Wednesday — finding the project would spoil thousands of acres of wetlands and open waters in violation of the Clean Water Act.

The Nushagak River, draining into Bristol Bay in Alaska. (AlaskaTrekker via Wikipedia)

7.) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Wednesday it would decline to delist the Arctic subspecies of ringed seals from the Endangered Species Act listing, citing a lack of evidence the creatures have recovered.

International

8.) The long-awaited trial of four men accused of downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 six years ago will start in February, the District Court of The Hague ruled Wednesday.

FILE - In this Thursday, July 17, 2014 file photo, a man walks amongst the debris at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine. An international team of investigators building a criminal case against those responsible in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is set to announce progress in the probe on Wednesday June 19, 2019, nearly five years after the plane was blown out of the sky above conflict-torn eastern Ukraine. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky, File)

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