Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including President Joe Biden visited Houston to meet with local leaders about the recovery from Winter Storm Uri; A panel of FDA experts voted unanimously in favor of approving Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use; A federal judge gave his final blessing to a $650 million deal to resolve claims that Facebook illegally collected and stored users’ facial data without consent, and more.

Your Friday 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.) President Joe Biden visited Houston on Friday to meet with local leaders about the recovery from Winter Storm Uri and comfort residents struggling with basic necessities as a result of the natural disaster.

President Joe Biden talks with a volunteer at the Houston Food Bank, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, in Houston. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

2.) A panel of Food and Drug Administration experts voted unanimously on Friday in favor of approving Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in American adults.

This Dec. 2, 2020 photo provided by Johnson & Johnson shows vials of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. The nation is poised to get a third vaccine against COVID-19, but health officials are concerned that at first glance the Johnson & Johnson shot may not be seen as equal to other options from Pfizer and Moderna. (Johnson & Johnson via AP)

3.) The White House on Friday declassified its long-buried report that says Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved “and likely ordered” the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, right, offers his condolences to Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz upon the death of on his brother Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, at Prince Sultan palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011. Prince Sultan died Saturday while undergoing treatment for an illness in New York. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

4.) A woman accused of concealing her relationship with the Chinese military when she applied to work in the United States as a Stanford University researcher pleaded not guilty to visa fraud and obstruction of justice charges Friday.

In this Sept. 16, 2018, photo, American flags are displayed together with Chinese flags on top of a trishaw in Beijing. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Regional

5.) A federal judge gave his final blessing Friday to a $650 million deal to resolve claims that Facebook illegally collected and stored users’ facial data without consent, making it one of the largest privacy-related settlements in U.S. history.

FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2018, file photo, a Facebook start page is shown on a smartphone in Surfside, Fla. Facebook says a bug in its anti-spam system is blocking the publication of links to news stories about the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

6.) Fighting school rules that allow transgender girls to compete against other girls in high school sports, a group of current and former Connecticut track and field athletes argued in front of a federal judge on Friday.

Chelsea Mitchell speaks at a February press conference outside the Connecticut Capitol building announcing a federal lawsuit challenging the state's transgender athletics policy, which allows students to compete regardless of whether they are the same biological sex. (Courthouse News photo/Christine Stuart)

International

7.) A Dutch appeals court has upheld a national curfew, saying the government is within its right to enforce a stay-at-home order between 9 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. under legislation designed for emergencies.

Demonstrators hold umbrellas reading "Freedom" and "Love" as several hundreds of people protested against the coronavirus lockdown and curfew in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

8.) The head of the World Health Organization on Friday urgently called on richer nations to support a global waiver on intellectual property rights to speed up the production of coronavirus vaccines and help people in poorer countries get inoculated.

A shipment of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the COVAX Facility arrives in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Friday Feb. 26, 2021. Ivory Coast is the second country in the world after Ghana to receive vaccines acquired through the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative with a delivery of 504,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India. (AP Photo/ Diomande Ble Blonde)

Top Eight

Read the Top 8

Additional Reads