Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including Europe’s highest court slapped a $18.3 million fine on Spain for failing to adopt EU rules aimed at protecting personal data collected during police investigations; A Wisconsin-based clean energy group sued the state’s utilities regulator demanding rule changes to make it easier and cheaper for consumers to access renewable energies; The House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and more.

Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Sign up for the CNS Top Eight, a roundup of the day’s top stories delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday.

National

1.) The House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation on Thursday to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks about the Congress Equality Act, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

2.) Donald Trump’s accountants turned over his tax records, New York City’s top prosecutor said Thursday, only days after the Supreme Court rejected the former president’s latest delay tactic.

Former President Donald Trump looks out his window as his motorcade drives through West Palm Beach, Fla., on his way to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach after arriving from Washington aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Damon Higgins/The Palm Beach Post via AP)

Regional

3.) A Wisconsin-based clean energy group sued the state’s utilities regulator on Thursday demanding rule changes to make it easier and cheaper for Badger State consumers to access renewable energies in lieu of typical power sources.

4.) Regulators permanently banned fracking near the Delaware River on Thursday, holding that exploitation of regions like the Marcellus Shale, the nation’s largest gas field, poses too great a risk to other ecological resources.

This Feb. 10, 2021, photo shows the Philadelphia side of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge spanning the Delaware River. The Delaware River Basin Commission voted Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, to permanently ban natural gas drilling and fracking because it poses too great of a risk to the the river and its tributaries that supply drinking water to Philadelphia and half the population of New York City. The ban applies to two counties in Pennsylvania's northeastern tip that are part of the nation's largest gas field, the Marcellus Shale. (Matt Rourke/AP)

5.) One of the nation’s top energy executives says his company told Texas officials days in advance that a historic winter storm would lead to electricity shortages, but that the warning was met with a “lack of urgency.”

Witnesses testify as the Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources holds a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, in Austin, Texas. The hearings were the first in Texas since a blackout that was one of the worst in U.S. history, leaving more than 4 million customers without power and heat in subfreezing temperatures. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

International

6.) Europe’s highest court on Thursday slapped a $18.3 million fine on Spain for failing to adopt European Union rules aimed at protecting personal data collected during police investigations.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. (Molly Quell/Courthouse News)

7.) In a consolidated case involving a drug store clerk and a day care center employee, a magistrate for the European Union’s high court held that employers can ban Islamic headscarves on neutrality grounds.

8.) Dutch lawmakers became the first in Europe on Thursday to condemn what they called the genocide of the Uighur people, China’s Muslim minority, in a remote region of the country.

Xu Guixiang, a deputy spokesperson for the Xinjiang regional government, looks up near a slide showing a photo of Uighur infants during a press conference to refute accusations of genocide held in Beijing, China. The Chinese official on Monday denied Beijing has imposed coercive birth control measures among Muslim minority women, following an outcry over a tweet by the Chinese Embassy in Washington claiming that government polices had freed women of the Uighur ethnic group from being “baby-making machines.” (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Top Eight

Read the Top 8

Additional Reads