Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including the U.S. Supreme Court ruled fair-use doctrine supports Google engineers who copied at least ten of thousands of lines of code when they created the Android mobile operating system; The Massachusetts high court appeared likely to decide that the pandemic will give everyone additional time to file lawsuits for years to come; Minneapolis’ chief of police roundly condemned Derek Chauvin’s use of force against George Floyd, and more.

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National

1.) Fair-use doctrine supports Google engineers who copied at least ten of thousands of lines of code when they created the Android mobile operating system, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

2.) Increasing scientific evidence about coronavirus variants bring into focus the science behind virus mutation, and why some researchers argue for changing U.S. vaccine policy.

| Potential vaccine-induced evolution. a | Vaccination increases the transmission advantage of an escape variant compared with wild type (WT). Here, vaccine escape is complete, allowing the variant to replace the wild type in vaccinated hosts. b | If residual immune protection from vaccination slows the transmission of the variant, the variant cannot spread as readily in the vaccinated population, reducing prevalence and incidence. c | Within hosts, ‘intermediate’ immune pressure could in theory maximize the rate of adaptation. After two doses of vaccine, strong immune responses will likely inhibit viral replication and the emergence of escape mutations. Some have proposed that with just one dose, the rate of within-host adaptation could be high (triangle at top of the curve). We suggest that selection during COVID-19 infections is inefficient (triangle to lower right of curve). Adapted with permission from refs9,48, AAAS. (Image via Courthouse News)

3.) Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito balked Monday at their colleagues’ refusal to wade into a religious-discrimination case that could fortify the right to religious exercise.

A parishioner makes an offering after outdoor mass at St. Agnes, a Catholic church in San Diego, California, during the Covid-19 pandemic. (Courthouse News photo/Barbara Leonard)

4.) The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday snuffed out a ruling that said Donald Trump violated the First Amendment as president when he blocked users from interacting with his Twitter account.

President Donald Trump's Twitter feed as seen on an Apple iPad in 2019. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

Regional

5.) In a case that could have national implications, the Massachusetts high court appeared likely Monday to decide that the pandemic will give everyone additional time to file lawsuits for years to come.

An expanded jury box with socially-distanced seating and individual screens for each juror are seen in a courtroom at a Manhattan federal courthouse, Friday, March 12, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

6.) The second week of testimony in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial started slowly on Monday morning but ramped up when Minneapolis’ chief of police took the stand and roundly condemned the former officer’s treatment of George Floyd.

In this image from video, witness Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo testifies as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides Monday, April 5, 2021, in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. Chauvin is charged in the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd. (Court TV via AP, Pool)

7.) Florida officials kept evacuation orders in place on Monday for residents near a large wastewater pond over fears that its walls could collapse and send a 20-foot wall of water into nearby neighborhoods.

This aerial photo taken from an airplane shows a reservoir near the old Piney Point phosphate mine, Saturday, April 3, 2021 in Bradenton, Fla. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency Saturday after a significant leak at a large pond of wastewater threatened to flood roads and burst a system that stores polluted waters. The pond where the leak was discovered is at the old Piney Point phosphate mine, sitting in a stack of phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer that is radioactive. (Tiffany Tompkins/The Bradenton Herald via AP)

8.) Home insurer Farmers Insurance will pay $25 million to settle allegations it underpaid or denied over 1,000 earthquake damage claims in Oklahoma relating to a spike in seismic activity in the wake of fracking in the Woodford Shale.

A row of pumpjacks line the side of a road in Weld County, Colorado. (Amanda Pampuro/CNS)

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