Top Eight
Your Tuesday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight stories for today including a federal judge ordered a permanent injunction to end New York’s Covid-19 pandemic-related capacity limits for Orthodox Jewish synagogues; A team of international scientists convened to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus said it remains a mystery where the virus came from; Senators upheld the constitutionality of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, and more.
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National
1.) Faced with a $2.7 billion defamation suit, Fox News said in a Tuesday motion to dismiss that the First Amendment protects post-election reporting in which the electronic voting company Smartmatic was falsely accused of helping Democrats to steal the U.S. presidency.
2.) The CIA can reject a public records request seeking information on U.S. payments to Syrian rebel forces because a tweet from former President Trump didn’t officially acknowledge such records exist, the D.C. Circuit ruled.
3.) Senators upheld the constitutionality of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, but the vote largely along party lines suggests he will ultimately be acquitted again.
4.) Federal investigators said Tuesday the pilot flying the helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others likely became spatially unaware as he flew through low clouds and into a Southern California hillside.
Regional
5.) With the governor’s blessing, a Brooklyn federal judge ordered a permanent injunction Tuesday to end New York’s Covid-19 pandemic-related capacity limits for Orthodox Jewish synagogues.
6.) A Wisconsin pharmacist charged with attempting to spoil hundreds of doses of a coronavirus vaccine pleaded guilty to two tampering counts in Milwaukee federal court on Tuesday.
7.) Four years after the murder of 10-year-old Victoria Martens, a New Mexico judge dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the city of Albuquerque by her grandparents because they failed to notify the city before suing.
International
8.) A team of Chinese and international scientists convened by the World Health Organization to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus said Tuesday it remains a mystery where the virus came from, but they dismissed as “extremely unlikely” the theory that it escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.
