Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including an auditor found the California State Bar is failing to do an effective job of investigating and disciplining delinquent attorneys; President Joe Biden announced another round of judicial nominees to fill district court vacancies; El Salvador’s newly elected National Assembly marks a remarkable transition to a functioning democracy, and more.

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National

1.) The U.S. Senate approved, 89-2, $35 billion for upgrades to the nation’s aging water and wastewater infrastructure in addition to funding for grants servicing water lines in low-income communities.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2018, file photo, water contaminated with arsenic, lead and zinc flows from a pipe out of the Lee Mountain mine and into a holding pond near Rimini, Mont. President Joe Biden's $2.3 trillion plan to transform America’s infrastructure includes $16 billion to plug old oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines, a longtime priority for Western and rural lawmakers from both parties. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

2.) President Joe Biden is once again getting praise from progressive justice groups after announcing another round of judges he hopes will fill district court vacancies.

President Joe Biden speaks about COVID-19, on the North Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, April 27, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

3.) The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that notice of a nonresident’s removal hearing must be a single document — not two partially complete ones.

The empty courtroom is seen at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington as the justices prepare final decisions of the high court's term, Monday, June 24, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Regional

4.) The California State Bar’s failure to do an efficient or effective job of investigating and disciplining delinquent attorneys has allowed those who abuse the public trust to continue practicing law while their cases wend their way through the system, the state auditor found.

5.) The constitutionality of two Tennessee abortion regulations was debated before an appeals panel on Thursday, as the state seeks to reimpose a ban on selective abortions and those performed after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

6.) A Wisconsin judge on Thursday voided contracts between GOP state lawmakers and private attorneys in anticipation of a legal fight over redistricting on the basis that the lawmakers had no authority to hire the attorneys in the first place.

FILE - In this Jan. 4, 2021, file photo, Wisconsin Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, left, talks with Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, during the first 2021-22 legislative session in the Assembly Chambers at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has issued a new statewide mask order an hour after the Republican-controlled Legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. The Democrat Evers said in a video message Thursday that his priority is keeping people safe and that wearing a mask was the most basic way to do that. (Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File)

International

7.) When El Salvador’s newly elected National Assembly takes office on Saturday, it will constitute a remarkable transition, in a single generation, from one of the most murderous, corrupt governments in Central America to a functioning democracy. Yet you wouldn’t know it by listening to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Jasmin, 11, left, and Karin, 12, are growing up in a country whose major threats of violence come no longer from their own government, but from criminal gangs. They live in a village that was destroyed by the Salvadoran army’s scorched-earth campaigns of the 1980s, then repopulated after the 1992 peace accords — one of 87 such villages on the slopes of Guazapa Volcano. (Courthouse News photo)

8.) Europe’s highest court on Thursday said a bank created in 2014 to save Banco Espirito Santo, at the time Portugal’s second-largest bank, from collapse cannot be shielded from a lawsuit brought against Banco Espirito Santo by a woman who claimed she was given bad financial advice.

A woman walks by the entrance to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Oct. 5, 2015. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)

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