Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech announced they will supply the U.S. with an additional 100 million doses of its vaccine for Covid-19 by next summer; President Donald Trump made good on his vow to veto the 2021 national defense spending bill; The Second Circuit ruled the government need not release statistics on guns used in suicides or attempted suicides, and more.

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National

1.) Ramping up production, drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech announced Wednesday that they will supply the United States with an additional 100 million doses of its vaccine for Covid-19 by July of next year.

Dry ice is poured into a box containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as it is prepared to be shipped at the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo manufacturing plant in Portage, Mich., Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, Pool)

2.) The U.S. government need not release statistics on guns used in suicides or attempted suicides, the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday, reversing what had been a victory for gun-regulation advocates.

The above bar graph depicts the number of NFA firearms processed from applications captured in the NFRTR by Fiscal Year from FY 2005 to FY 2020. (ATF graph via Courthouse News)

3.) President Donald Trump made good on his vow Wednesday to veto the 2021 national defense spending bill, queuing up a showdown in Congress where a supermajority of both the House and Senate could override him.

A Marine stands outside the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, signifying the President is in the Oval Office, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

4.) Accusing the government of scapegoating her to make up for its aborted prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell told a federal judge Wednesday that her relationship with the late pedophile is no reason to deny her bail.

In this July 2, 2020, file photo, Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Regional

5.) A 1974 Ohio law that criminalizes possession of a firearm while intoxicated does not violate the Second Amendment and can be enforced against citizens in their own homes, a divided state high court ruled Wednesday.

Handguns are displayed at the Smith & Wesson booth at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)

6.) On top of over $2 million in damages a court ordered he and his anti-abortion cohorts to pay last year for secretly recording abortion providers, David Daleiden and his associates were hit with another $13.6 million bill for Planned Parenthood’s legal costs this week.

Science

7.) In a research effort four decades in the making, experts have constructed a comprehensive picture on the health of the bunchgrass prairie, one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America.

Bison resting in prairie grass at the National Bison Range in Montana. (Courthouse News photo / David Reese)

8.) Nine thousand years ago, a Mediterranean tsunami as much as 150 feet high swept across the spot where the ancient settlement of Tel Dor in northwest Israel would later be built.

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