US Domestic News Roundup: Stormy Daniels lawsuit against Trump, Colorado wildlife

After a chaotic day, Rosenstein stays in the job but will meet with Trump

President Donald Trump and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election, will meet on Thursday to discuss whether Rosenstein will stay in his job. Rosenstein had spent the weekend contemplating whether he should resign after a New York Times report last week said he had suggested secretly recording Trump in 2017, a source told Reuters.

U.S. judge suggests he may dismiss Stormy Daniels lawsuit against Trump

President Donald Trump likely had a free-speech right to make a Twitter comment disputing allegations by adult film actress Stormy Daniels, a federal judge said on Monday, indicating he was inclined to dismiss her defamation lawsuit against Trump. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and who has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, sued the president for defamation in April in federal court over the tweet.

Suspect arrested in the bludgeoning of seven California men, three of them fatal

A man who fled to California from Texas after being questioned in the disappearance of two Houston relatives has been arrested on suspicion of committing seven bludgeoning attacks, three of them fatal, in the Los Angeles area this month, police said on Tuesday. Ramon Escobar, 47, faces three counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder in a case investigators in Los Angeles and the adjacent beachfront city of Santa Monica are preparing to present to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, police said.

Trump calls allegations against his court nominee a 'con game'

President Donald Trump, fighting to shore up his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in a divided Senate, on Tuesday called sexual misconduct allegations against the judge "a con game being played by the Democrats." Trump's escalation in his rhetoric defending Kavanaugh came as the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee announced the hiring of a woman lawyer who is "an expert sex crimes prosecutor" to question one of the nominee's accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, at a high-stakes hearing scheduled on Thursday.

Investors at Smith & Wesson parent support call for a gun safety report

Investors at American Outdoor Brands Corp approved a call for the gun maker to produce a safety report, officials said during its annual meeting on Tuesday, marking the second win for religious activist shareholders focused on firearms makers after a series of mass shootings in the United States. The resolution, approved over the company's objections, asks its board to report by February on its efforts to monitor gun violence, to research and produce safer guns, and for an assessment of reputational and financial risks.

Waterways rise in South Carolina, residents told to leave

Authorities urged thousands of people to leave their homes around the city of Georgetown, South Carolina as water dumped by long-departed Hurricane Florence surged down rivers and threatened to bring devastating floods. Water levels were still rising early on Tuesday, said emergency services there, more than a week after the storm first made landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast and killed 46 people mostly in North Carolina.

The man who served in U.S. Army Reserves accused of being an agent for China

A Chinese citizen was arrested in Chicago on Tuesday on charges that he covertly worked for a high-ranking Chinese intelligence official to help try and recruit engineers and scientists, including some who worked as U.S. defense contractors, the Justice Department said. Ji Chaoqun, 27, first came to the United States in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and in 2016 enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves.

Colorado wildlife refuge at the old nuclear plant is open - for now

Less than two miles (3 km) from where triggers for thermonuclear weapons were once manufactured and against the backdrop of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a bull elk bugles as he defends his harem of cows from rival males. "It's rutting season and this is mating behavior," said David Lucas of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and manager of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Denver.

Ex-U.S. NSA employee sentenced to prison for exposing secrets

A former U.S. National Security Agency employee was sentenced in a federal court in Baltimore on Tuesday to 5-1/2 years in prison, after pleading guilty last December to illegally taking classified information outside the spy agency, the U.S. Justice Department said. Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, of Ellicott City, Maryland, removed documents that contained classified national defense information and kept them at his home without authorization, the department said in a statement.

Bill Cosby, in cuffs, imprisoned for up to 10 years for sexual assault

Bill Cosby was marched out of court in shackles on Tuesday after a judge branded him a "predator" and sentenced him to between three and 10 years in prison for sexual assault, capping the downfall of the once-beloved comedian known as "America's Dad." Cosby, 81, was found guilty in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for the drugging and sexual assault of his one-time friend Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.

(With inputs from Reuters)