Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Polar vortex, Midwest floods, California fires: The U.S.'s wild 2019 weather

From a brutal polar vortex that froze much of the Midwest and East Coast in January to Hurricane Dorian that killed dozens in the Bahamas in September, Mother Nature dealt Americans a wild and deadly weather year in 2019. Weather events that made headlines this year included: U.S. Supreme Court justices lean toward insurers on $12 billion Obamacare claims

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared sympathetic to claims made by health insurers seeking $12 billion from the federal government under a program set up by the Obamacare law aimed at encouraging them to offer medical coverage to previously uninsured Americans. The justices considered a challenge by a group of insurers of a lower court's ruling that Congress had suspended the government's obligation to make such payments. The insurers have said that ruling constituted a "bait-and-switch" that would enable the government to withhold money the companies were promised. U.S. Attorney General Barr says FBI may have acted in 'bad faith' on Russia probe

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday he is still not fully convinced that the FBI acted without bias when it opened its 2016 investigation into possible links between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia. In his first interview since a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz faulting the FBI for missteps in how it sought to put a former Trump campaign adviser under surveillance, Barr said he still has doubts about the FBI's motives to pursue what he called a "baseless" investigation. U.S. interior immigration arrests fell despite Trump push

Non-border immigration arrests in the United States fell by 10 percent in the year to September from a year earlier, the latest U.S. data shows, a drop the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said was partly due to the diversion of the agency's resources to the border. The figures were included in an annual ICE enforcement report reviewed by Reuters and set to be released on Wednesday. Church nativity scene depicts Holy Family as caged refugees

A Methodist church in Southern California has turned a classic Christmas tradition - the Nativity scene depicting the birth of Jesus - into a statement about immigration by putting the Holy Family in cages. The United Methodist Church in Claremont, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, built the display last weekend to draw attention to the plight of migrants and refugees in the United States. Climate change hitting top U.S. fishery in the Arctic: NOAA

Climate change is causing chaos in the Bering Sea, home to one of America's largest fisheries, an example of how rising temperatures can rapidly change ecosystems important to the economy, U.S. federal government scientists said in a report on Tuesday. Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to decreases in sea ice, record warm temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea and the northward migration of fish species such as Pacific cod, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, said in its 2019 Arctic Report Card. Jersey City gunmen targeted Jewish grocery for the lethal attack: mayor

Police in the New York metropolitan area were put on high alert to protect Jewish neighborhoods after an hours-long gunbattle with two men around a Jersey City kosher market that killed six people, authorities said. The police shoot-out with two men armed with high-powered rifles erupted after midday on Tuesday in Jersey City, New Jersey's second-largest municipality directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The six dead included three civilians, one police officer, and both gunmen, authorities said. Texas to execute an inmate convicted of killing prison boot factory supervisor

Texas plans on Wednesday to execute a man convicted more than a decade ago of killing a prison boot factory supervisor by slitting his throat because he was upset he had to work as a janitor. Travis Runnels, 46, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville at 6 p.m. CST (0000 GMT) for the murder of 40-year-old Stanley Wiley. Exclusive: U.S. Army will fund rare piles of earth plant for weapons development

The U.S. Army plans to fund construction of rare earth processing facilities, part of an urgent push by Washington to secure domestic supply of the minerals used to make military weapons and electronics, according to a government document seen by Reuters. The move would mark the first financial investment by the U.S. military into commercial-scale rare piles of earth production since World War Two's Manhattan Project built the first atomic bomb. U.S. agency urges closing 'loophole' on tourist helicopter flights after fatal crash

U.S. safety regulators said the primary cause of a March 2018 helicopter crash that killed five tourists on a photo-shoot trip over New York City was the use of a supplemental harness tether system that triggered an engine failure. The National Transportation Safety Board said a front passenger's tether, which connected his supplemental harness to the helicopter, caught on the doors-off Airbus Helicopters AS350 aircraft's fuel shutoff lever, resulting in a loss of engine power at an altitude of 1,900 feet. The pilot, who survived, successfully ditched the helicopter into the East River.