Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Flooded U.S. Air Force base underscores climate risk to security: experts

Flooding at a U.S. Air Force base in Nebraska that damaged buildings and forced the removal of a plane integral to the nation's nuclear attack response highlight the risks climate change poses to national security, experts said on Monday. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned whether humans cause climate change and has been angered by assessments from his military and intelligence agencies that say the phenomenon poses national security risks. Mike Pence to visit Nebraska amid deadly floods

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will visit Nebraska on Tuesday to survey the devastation left by floods in the Midwest which have killed at least four people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The floods, the result of last week's 'bomb cyclone,' a term used by meteorologists to describe the powerful winter hurricane, inundated stretches of Nebraska and Iowa along the Missouri River. It swamped homes, covering about a third of the U.S. Air Force Base that is home to the United States Strategic Command, and cut off road access to a nuclear power plant. Puerto Rico debt adjustment plan not 'realistic' in April: official

The executive director of Puerto Rico's federally created financial oversight board said on Monday that a plan to restructure the U.S. commonwealth's core government debt likely cannot be done by the end of April. An attorney for the board last week told a U.S. judge who is hearing Puerto Rico's bankruptcy cases that a draft plan was expected next month, according to local media reports. The curious case of tainted milk from a Maine dairy farm

For Maine dairy farmer Fred Stone, the discovery in 2016 that his cows were producing tainted milk has since brought financial ruin and threatened to shut down a century-old family business. Now state regulators and health experts are investigating whether the contamination could reflect a much broader problem for farms that used similar methods to fertilize their land. U.S. top court hands defeat to Hawaii B&B that spurned lesbian couple

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a defeat on Monday to a bed and breakfast owner in Hawaii who turned away a lesbian couple due to her Christian beliefs, but it could soon take up another major case on the conflict between gay and religious rights. The justices refused to hear an appeal by Phyllis Young, who runs the three-room Aloha Bed & Breakfast in Honolulu, of a lower court's ruling that she violated a Hawaii anti-discrimination law by refusing to rent a room to Diane Cervilli and Taeko Bufford in 2007. Far-flung job offers pose tough choices for GM Ohio workers

General Motors Co built the final Chevrolet Cruze small car at its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on March 6, despite demands from President Donald Trump, Ohio political leaders and the United Auto Workers union not to close the plant and leave nearly 1,500 workers laid off. Dina Mays, a 14-year veteran of Lordstown Assembly, was not at the plant for its last day. She had already moved on to her new workplace, GM's Toledo transmission plant, where the automaker builds 10-speed transmissions for popular pickup trucks. Alan Krueger, economic adviser to Obama and Clinton, takes own life at 58

Alan Krueger, a prominent Princeton University economics professor who advised U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, took his own life over the weekend, his family said in a statement on Monday. He was 58. The statement did not elaborate about the circumstances of Krueger's death, nor did the university when confirming it earlier in the day. University of Southern California says it may expel students linked to admissions cheating

The University of Southern California said it may expel students linked to the largest college-admissions cheating scandal in U.S. history after it completes a reviews of their records. The school said on Monday night that it has already "placed holds on the accounts of students who may be associated with the alleged admissions scheme," preventing them from registering for classes or acquiring transcripts. White police officer's homicide trial gets under way in Pittsburgh

In opening statements in a racially-charged Pittsburgh trial on Tuesday, a jury is expected to hear prosecutors argue that a white police officer acted unlawfully in the 2018 fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen who was running away from him. Officer Michael Rosfeld, 30, is charged with a single count of criminal homicide in the death of Antwon Rose, Jr., 17. The June 19 2018 shooting took place in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 11 miles (17.7 km) from downtown Pittsburgh, where the trial is being held. U.S. high court takes up sentencing appeal in 'D.C. Sniper' case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether a man serving life in prison over his role in a deadly 2002 shooting spree in the Washington area should be resentenced because he was only 17 years old at the time. The nine justices will hear an appeal filed by the state of Virginia objecting to a lower court's decision ordering that Lee Boyd Malvo's sentence of life in prison without parole in the so-called D.C. Sniper crimes be thrown out. If Malvo wins, he and other prison inmates in similar cases involving certain crimes committed by minors could receive more lenient sentences.