Your Friday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News
Top eight CNS stories for today including Europeans are experiencing an Easter weekend unlike any before as their hard-hit continent struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic; American small businesses have had trouble getting lending infusions the last two weeks; California is showing signs of flattening the curve and triumphing over Covid-19, and more.
Sign up for CNS Top Eight, a roundup of the day’s top stories delivered directly to your email Monday through Friday.
National
1.) Small businesses, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy, have had trouble getting lending infusions the last two weeks, as problems persist in the government’s lending program.
2.) Some 19 years ago, PPD Development – which has been awarded a $750,000 contract to develop a treatment protocol for expanded access to the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine – monitored a study for the antibiotic Ketek that one doctor was found to have defrauded with fabricated materials.
3.) America’s war against the novel coronavirus is not yet done, but House Democrats introduced a bill Friday to assess what the country did right and wrong in the global pandemic.
International
4.) With churches, parks, country lanes and boulevards eerily empty of people, Europeans are experiencing an Easter weekend unlike any before as their hard-hit continent struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
5.) With the global pandemic forcing people indoors and pausing industrial activity, cities are seeing the cleanest air in decades. Air pollution may return once the world recovers and urban centers are bustling again, but experts say another outcome is possible.
Regional
6.) Just over a month after the first confirmed case of community spread of the novel coronavirus in the nation, California is showing signs of flattening the curve — and triumphing over the global pandemic.
7.) Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed seven new gun restrictions into law Friday morning while offering amendments to two others, winning praise from activists aiming to limit access to firearms.
8.) As New York reels from successive record-high deaths related to the novel coronavirus, officials called it urgent Friday that the president employ the Defense Production Act to streamline testing.
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.