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South Carolina’s Republican-majority Senate advanced a measure on Wednesday that would require the state to block new infrastructure to transport or process offshore oil and gas as state lawmakers fear the Interior Department will open the Atlantic coast to offshore drilling.

Republican State Senator Chip Campsen introduced a provision to the state budget that prohibits the state from approving any activity that would facilitate drilling offshore. This would effectively kill plans to drill off South Carolina’s coastline even if it is included in Interior’s Outer Continental Shelf leasing plan, which is due to be released in the coming weeks.

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Michael Avenatti, the high-profile lawyer known for his battles with U.S. President Donald Trump, was charged with 36 counts of fraud, tax evasion and other financial crimes in an indictment made public by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The indictment came about three weeks after Avenatti, who gained national fame for representing adult film star Stormy Daniels in her litigation against Trump, was arrested in New York on two separate criminal complaints filed by federal prosecutors in New York and California.

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The state of California filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking to force two federal agencies to provide data they used to justify rolling back landmark Obama-era vehicle emission standards, accusing the Trump administration of “willfully withholding” information.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Environmental Protection Agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking data and analysis backing their proposal to freeze federal vehicle emission standards at 2020 levels through 2026.

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Convicted sex offender Bill Cosby on Friday settled a federal defamation lawsuit brought by seven women who said the former actor and comedian sexually assaulted them and wrongly called them liars when they went public with their charges years later.

The settlement ends a court fight that predates the 81-year-old’s conviction a year ago for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, in 2004. Cosby is currently serving a 3- to 10-year sentence for that crime, though his lawyers plan an appeal.

He was the first celebrity convicted of sexual misconduct since the rise of the #MeToo movement, which cast a harsh light on widespread patterns of sexual harassment or abuse in multiple spheres of American life and ended the careers of dozens of powerful men in American media, politics and business.

Continue reading “Bill Cosby settles defamation lawsuit brought by seven women”

Twenty U.S. states have filed a motion to block President Donald Trump’s method of funding a border wall by diverting federal funds through a national emergency declaration, the New York state attorney general said on Friday.

“This wall is unnecessary, and an abuse of power that will take away resources that could be used to help Americans across our nation,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Twitter.

The states filed a lawsuit in February after Trump declared a national emergency to help build a border wall that was a signature of his 2016 campaign for president. The motion for a preliminary injunction to block Trump’s effort that was filed late Thursday formalised that request.

Trump’s order would allow him to spend money on the wall that Congress appropriated for other purposes. Congress declined to fulfil his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall this year.