Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Brits to prepare for the “strong possibility” that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union without a trade deal; A committee of FDA advisers voted to recommend Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use nationwide; A new survey shows the controversy over so-called designer babies becomes less pronounced when the same tools are used to fight disease or infertility, and more.

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National

1.) A committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted Thursday to recommend Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use nationwide to fight the pandemic that has killed nearly 300,000 Americans since March.

A pharmacist labels syringes in a clean room where doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be handled, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020, at Mount Sinai Queens hospital in New York. The hospital expects to receive doses once a vaccine gets the emergency green light by U.S. regulators. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

2.) A pastor who calls himself a “former homosexual” appeared unlikely Thursday to win a second chance at suing the website Vimeo for removing his posts about conversion therapy.

3.) The Supreme Court was mostly unanimous Thursday in throwing out a challenge to Delaware’s system of keeping the state’s judicial seats split between the nation’s two major political parties.

The U.S. Supreme Court. (Jack Rodgers/Courthouse News)

Regional

4.) Despite the glimmer of hope offered by the impending arrival of a vaccine, Ohio’s Covid-19 infection and death numbers continue to escalate after the Thanksgiving holiday, with more than 10,000 new cases reported on Wednesday alone.

Shoppers leave Walmart around 5:30 a.m. on Friday November 27, 2020, morning in Ashtabula Township, Ohio. John Kirk, pushing cart, and Diane Simms, second from right, decided to try the Black Friday experience but many shoppers sat out the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. (Warren Dillaway/The Star-Beacon via AP)

5.) The burdens presented by Wisconsin’s abortion laws were balanced against national precedent governing abortion access in federal court on Thursday as a bench trial for Planned Parenthood’s challenge to the laws came to a close.

Attorneys and U.S. District Judge William Conley are seen during closing arguments in a remote bench trial over Wisconsin abortion access on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020.

International

6.) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday warned Brits to prepare for the “strong possibility” that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union without a trade deal at the end of the year, an outcome likely to cause major disruptions and chaos.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands next to a Union flag prior to a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at EU headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. Leaders of Britain and the EU meet Wednesday for a dinner that could pave the way to a post-Brexit trade deal, or tip the two sides toward a chaotic economic rupture at the end of the month. (Olivier Hoslet, Pool via AP)

7.) Studying the appetite for gene editing around the world, Pew reported Thursday that the controversy over so-called designer babies becomes less pronounced when the same tools are used to fight disease or infertility.

Zhou Xiaoqin installs a fine glass pipette into a sperm injection microscope in preparation for injecting embryos with Cas9 protein and PCSK9 sgRNA at a lab in Shenzhen in southern China's Guandong province on Oct. 9, 2018. China has unveiled draft regulations on gene-editing and other new biomedical technologies it considers to be "high-risk." The measures follow claims in November 2018 by Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he helped make the world's first genetically-edited babies. That roiled the global science community and elicited widespread outcry over the procedure's ethical implications. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

8.) Three Irish women who say an outdated and controversial surgical procedure was performed on them without their consent during childbirth lost their legal battle before Europe’s top rights court Thursday.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. (Photo by CherryX from Wikipedia Commons via Courthouse News)

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