Top Eight

Your Thursday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

Top eight CNS stories for today including an attorney for a First Amendment group argued before a Seventh Circuit panel that the University of Illinois is stifling free speech on its campus; Europe’s gatekeepers for trademarks were told by the EU’s highest court they were wrong to deem a popular German film comedy’s title “Fack Ju Göhte” immoral; Witnesses said the government’s claims of an immigration crisis ring hollow during a House hearing on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and more.

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National

1.) For five generations, Nayda Alvarez’s family has owned the land where she has made a home in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. It’s nearly time for Alvarez, a teacher of 22 years, to retire there, but a battle for eminent domain being waged against her by the federal government has made that future uncertain.

2.) Warning of the proposal’s economic impacts, the head of the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying group says his organization is taking very seriously the prospect that a future Democratic president could ban or severely limit fracking in the U.S.

3.) A poll released Thursday shows Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders with a double-digit lead over his fellow Democratic presidential candidates in Wisconsin, indicating the front-runner’s recent surge extends to the crucial battleground state.

Regional

4.) An attorney for a First Amendment group argued before a Seventh Circuit panel Thursday that the University of Illinois is stifling free speech on its campus through a set of restrictive policies and investigation procedures.

5.) Hours after confirming the first community-spread case of coronavirus in the United States, officials in California said Thursday that while 33 residents have tested positive and over 8,000 are being monitored, public risk remains low.

International

6.) More than seven years after France sent thousands of troops to fight an insurgency against Mali’s central government in the impoverished sandy hinterlands of the Sahel in Africa, France has become embroiled in what increasingly looks like an endless and expanding Afghanistan-like war, experts say.

7.) Europe’s gatekeepers for trademarks were told on Thursday by the European Union’s highest court they were wrong to deem a popular German film comedy’s title “Fack Ju Göhte” immoral and therefore unfit for use as a label.

8.) Aphrodisiac supplements are not food, an adviser to Europe’s highest court said Thursday, in a case over retail sales tax and a Dutch sex shop.

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