Top eight today

Your Friday night briefing from the staff of Courthouse News

National

1.) American employers added only 235,000 jobs last month, a sign that hiring is slowing down amid a rise in Covid-19 infections driven by the delta variant.

2.) Jacob Anthony Chansley, who has called himself the “QAnon shaman,” pleaded guilty on Friday to felony obstruction of a congressional proceeding for his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

3.) A onetime voice of the Roman Catholic Church in the early days of mounting allegations of clergy sexual abuse, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick entered a Massachusetts courtroom Friday to face accusations that he sexually abused a teenage boy in the 1970s.

4.) Heading into the Labor Day weekend, a mediocre and disappointing jobs report caused Wall Street to pare back some of it earlier gains, but one of the U.S. indices managed to eke out a win.

Regional

5.) More Georgians are being hospitalized for Covid-19 than ever before, testing the limits of the state’s medical resources and putting extra strain on a health care system already strapped by a nursing shortage.

6.) Massachusetts litigants facing down deadlines can rest a little easier after a Friday morning ruling from the state’s Supreme Judicial Court adopting a broad interpretation of its own orders tolling civil statutes of limitations during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

7.) The second special legislative session called this summer by Texas Governor Greg Abbott came to an end Thursday evening with the Texas House and Senate formally adjourning.

International

8.) Military tanks, squadrons of police and miles of razor-wire fences are being deployed along the European Union's borders with Belarus to keep out an influx of immigrants and asylum seekers who are allegedly being unlawfully sent into the EU by Minsk in retaliation for sanctions.