Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. U.S. safety agencies to investigate fatal Tesla crash in Florida

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said they are sending teams to investigate a fatal crash in Florida on Friday involving a Tesla Inc car and a semi-trailer. The two agencies are investigating several crashes involving the use of Tesla's driver assistance system Autopilot including a fatal crash in California in March 2018. NHTSA, the auto safety regulator, can demand a recall if it believes a defect poses an unreasonable risk, while the NTSB makes safety recommendations. Warmbier parents blast 'evil' North Korea regime after Trump praises Kim

The parents of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died after 17 months a North Korean prison, blamed Kim Jong Un's "evil regime" on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed the leader's claim not to have known how their son was treated. Warmbier's parents said they held off commenting during the second summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi, which was cut short on Thursday after the two sides failed to reach a deal for the reclusive communist nation to give up its nuclear weapons. Trump vows executive order requiring 'free speech' at colleges

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would soon sign an executive order requiring American universities and colleges to maintain "free speech" on campuses and threatened that schools not complying could lose federal research funds. Trump made his remarks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference after bringing to the stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was punched at the University of California, Berkeley, last month while recruiting students for a conservative group. SpaceX rocket with unmanned U.S. capsule blasts off for space station

A SpaceX rocket with an unmanned crew capsule blasted off on Saturday for the International Space Station, in a key milestone for Elon Musk's space company and NASA's long-delayed goal to resume human spaceflight from U.S. soil later this year. SpaceX's 16-foot-tall (4.9 meter) Crew Dragon capsule, atop a Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 2:49 a.m. (0749 GMT), carrying a test dummy nicknamed Ripley. Trump slams Mueller, mocks critics in fiery two-hour speech

President Donald Trump on Saturday attacked U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller ahead of his report on alleged Russia collusion by the Trump campaign in 2016 and said his political opponents were "trying to take me out with bullshit." In a speech that lasted more than two hours -- his longest since taking office two years ago -- Trump also vented about Democrats, a proposed "green new deal," illegal immigrants and criticism of his North Korea summit, while voicing optimism about his own re-election prospects in 2020. House panel demands Kushner clearance details from White House

A Democratic-led congressional panel on Friday demanded that the White House comply with requests for documents and witnesses for a probe into alleged security clearance abuses involving President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and others. After weeks of White House stonewalling, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, in a letter to the White House, said "I am now writing a final time to request your voluntary cooperation." Cummings panel has subpoena power. Bernie Sanders gets personal as he hits the 2020 campaign trail

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders showed a more personal side as he hit the 2020 campaign trail for the first time on Saturday, describing the struggles of his working class youth and how it helped shape his progressive politics. At a rally in Brooklyn, near the New York City neighborhood where he grew up in a small, rent-controlled apartment, Sanders contrasted his spare upbringing with Republican President Donald Trump's privileged youth as the son of a New York real estate developer. No charges for Sacramento police in killing of unarmed black man

Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against two police officers involved in the shooting death in Sacramento, California, of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was killed nearly a year ago, officials said on Saturday. Clark, 22, was gunned down on March 18, 2018, in his grandparents' backyard after police responded to a report that someone was breaking car windows. Police said the officers who shot Clark seven times feared he was holding a firearm, but that he had only a cellphone. Mountain lion strangled by Colorado man was orphaned cougar cub

The mountain lion strangled by a Colorado man after it attacked him on a jogging trail last month was a young cub, weighing no more than 40 pounds (18 kg) and likely orphaned but not starving, state wildlife officials said on Friday. The encounter between the young predator and Travis Kauffman garnered international headlines when authorities revealed that the 31-year-old man had not only survived a rare mountain lion attack but had suffocated the cat by stepping on its throat. Explainer: In Trump-Russia probe, when does collusion become a crime?

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller has pursued his investigation into Moscow's role in the 2016 U.S. election, legal experts have debated what sort of contacts between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia may have violated U.S. criminal law. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia used a scheme of hacking and propaganda to cause discord in the United States and harm Trump's Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Mueller's probe, with several Trump campaign figures already pleading guilty or being convicted, has documented numerous contacts between Russians and people close to the president.