Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Administration sees Washington, DC, area as ongoing virus problem area

It is proving hard to reduce the number of coronavirus cases in the Washington, DC area, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, even though the nation's capital is where the voices are loudest about the need for social distancing. The official, briefing White House reporters, said Washington and its metro area in Maryland and Virginia, as well as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, remain on a virus "plateau" without a sharp decline in cases. Widow of late John Glenn, first American to orbit Earth, dies at 100 of COVID-19

Annie Glenn, philanthropist and the widow of pioneering astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn, died at age 100 early on Tuesday at a Minnesota nursing home from complications of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, media reports said. Her late husband of 73 years, John Glenn, was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. He was one of the famed Mercury Seven astronauts immortalized in Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff," later made into a movie. Vaccine not only for rich, Cuomo says, and decries leadership by tweet

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that any vaccine to prevent the coronavirus should be distributed fairly without regard for wealth and called for U.S. crisis leadership based on competence and not Twitter posts. "You have to know what you are doing now - not just look like what you are doing, not just sound like what you are doing," Cuomo said without naming U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican who frequently attacks his critics on Twitter. Film star and Trump accuser Stormy Daniels returns as comic book hero

Adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose allegations of a onetime sexual liaison with U.S. President Donald Trump triggered a legal battle, is returning as a superhero in a series of comic books. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, will be releasing a fictional comic book series called "Stormy Daniels: Space Force" in the autumn with TidalWave Productions. NASA human spaceflight chief resigns ahead of launch

NASA's human spaceflight chief Doug Loverro has resigned, according to an internal memo seen by agency employees on Tuesday, just a week before the agency is scheduled to launch two astronauts into space from U.S. soil for the first time since 2011. The resignation capped Loverro's brief role at the agency overseeing future astronaut launches and landing humans on the moon by 2024. Two California border hospitals hit by surge in COVID-19 cases from Mexico

The only two hospitals in Southern California's rural Imperial County were forced to close their doors to new coronavirus patients on Tuesday, after admitting scores believed stricken with the virus from Mexico's nearby border town of Mexicali, officials said. The patients were U.S. citizens believed to live in Mexicali, capital of the Mexican state of Baja California, and had been turned away from hospitals overrun with coronavirus cases there, said Dr. Adolphe Edward, chief executive officer of the El Centro Regional Medical Center. Plaintiff in Roe v. Wade U.S. abortion case says she was paid to switch sides

Norma McCorvey, the woman known as "Jane Roe" in the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, said she was lying when she switched to support the anti-abortion movement, saying she had been paid to do so. In a new documentary, made before her death in 2017 and due to be broadcast on Friday, McCorvey makes what she calls a "deathbed confession." Trump signs order directing agencies to cut federal regulations

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing federal agencies to cut regulations, a move he said would help the economy recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Trump, who signed the order at a Cabinet meeting, said it instructed agencies to eliminate "unnecessary regulations that impede economic recovery." Trump defends his use of unproven treatment as prevention against coronavirus

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended taking a prescription malaria drug to try to ward off the novel coronavirus despite medical warnings about its use. "People are going to have to make up their own mind," Trump said about hydroxychloroquine during a visit to the U.S. Capitol. "I think it gives you an additional level of safety." Johnson & Johnson to stop selling talc-based baby powder in U.S. and Canada

Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday announced that it would stop selling its talc-based Johnson's Baby Powder in the United States and Canada, making the decision after a consumer products "portfolio reassessment related to COVID-19." The U.S. healthcare conglomerate said it would wind down sales of the product, which makes up about 0.5% of its U.S. consumer health business, in the coming months, but that retailers will continue to sell existing inventory.