Top Eight

Top eight stories for today including President Joe Biden unleashed a torrent of new incentives to keep vaccination rates up and Covid-19 muzzled; A federal judge dismissed Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against a Texas city’s voter-approved abortion ban; The International Criminal Court refused to release a former Sudanese militia leader charged with war crimes in the Darfur conflict, and more.

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National

1.) Declaring June a “national month of action,” President Joe Biden on Wednesday unleashed a torrent of new incentives to keep vaccination rates up and Covid-19 muzzled as the country careens toward the July 4 goal set by the White House of getting at least one shot into 70% of all U.S. adults.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Cuyahoga Community College Metropolitan Campus, Thursday, May 27, 2021, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

2.) Showing the receipts for one of the Trump administration’s many gifts to Big Oil, three environmental nonprofits brought a federal complaint Wednesday over a government entity’s recent effort to exempt itself from public meetings law.

A pump jack is pictured near Imperial, Texas in 2017. (Travis Bubenik/Courthouse News)

3.) Federal investigators released a report Wednesday describing an alcoholic Arkansas pathologist’s thousands of errors that harmed hundreds of Veterans Affairs hospital patients, causing more than a dozen deaths.

In this Aug. 17, 2019 file photo provided by the Washington County, Arkansas Sheriff's Department, Robert Levy is pictured in a booking photo. Levy, a pathologist fired from an Arkansas veterans hospital after officials said he had been impaired while on duty has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of three patients who authorities say he misdiagnosed and whose records he later altered to conceal his mistakes. (Washington County Sheriff's Department via AP, File)

Regional

4.) A federal judge dismissed Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against the city of Lubbock’s voter-approved abortion ban for a lack of jurisdiction, punting to Texas state courts to take up the matter.

Downtown Lubbock, Texas. (Redraiderengineer/Wikipedia Commons via Courthouse News)

5.) In arguments before the entire Sixth Circuit on Wednesday, Tennessee cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent and claimed its mandatory waiting period for abortions should not have been struck down by a federal judge.

Protesters on both sides of the abortion issue gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Jan. 19, 2018, during the March for Life. (Susan Walsh/AP)

6.) Virginia Democrats pick their statewide candidates for the 2021 elections in a primary next week, and final fundraising numbers released Wednesday morning offer some insight into the crowded field.

FILE - In this March 1, 2020, file photo, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe walks up to the stage as he prepares to introduce Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden during a campaign rally in Norfolk, Va. McAuliffe is trying to get his old job back and is set to announce a formal bid for governor Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020, in Richmond, according to a McAuliffe aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about the campaign. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

7.) A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Wednesday ordered former congresswoman Katie Hill to pay The Daily Mail $104,747.75 in attorney fees for defending themselves in court after they published her nude photos in 2019.

Katie Hill, then a Democratic Party candidate from California's 25th Congressional district, talks to a reporter on Nov. 6, 2018, after voting in her hometown of Agua Dulce, Calif. She won the election, flipping a traditional GOP stronghold. Now, U.S. Rep. Hill, D-Calif., has apologized to friends and supporters for engaging in an inappropriate affair with a campaign staffer, but she still let down Susan Slates, a fellow Democrat, who said she was "disappointed," but quickly jumped to Hill's defense, saying anything she did pales in comparison to what's she's witnessed under President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

International

8.) Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court have rejected for a second time a request to release a former Sudanese Janjaweed militia leader charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict.

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