US Domestic News Roundup: U.S. presidential hopeful Harris would spend $60 billion on historically black colleges; U.S. House approves subpoenas for Trump

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

U.S. Justice Department resumes use of death penalty, schedules five executions

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday reinstated a two-decades-long dormant policy allowing the federal government's use of capital punishment and immediately scheduled the executions for five death row federal inmates. "Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people's representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President," Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

In Roundup case, U.S. judge cuts $2 billion verdict against Bayer to $86 million

A California judge on Thursday reduced a $2 billion jury verdict, slashing the award for a couple who blamed Bayer AG's glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup for their cancer to $86.7 million. Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith of the California Superior Court in Oakland said the jury's billion-dollar punitive damages awards were excessive and unconstitutional but rejected Bayer's request to strike the punitive award outright.

U.S. presidential hopeful Harris would spend $60 billion on historically black colleges

Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris will unveil a plan on Friday to invest $60 billion in historically black colleges and universities if elected, the latest effort by the U.S. senator from California to reach out to black voters. She will also release a plan to spend $12 billion on entrepreneurship programs aimed at the black community, her campaign said.

U.S. House panel approves subpoenas for Trump officials' private emails

A Democratic-led congressional committee voted on Thursday to authorize subpoenas for official White House communications sent through private email and messaging services by senior officials in President Donald Trump's administration, deepening a probe into potential violations of government record-keeping laws. The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee voted 23-16 along party lines to allow its chairman, Elijah Cummings, to issue the subpoenas to White House officials including the Republican president's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Sixteen U.S. Marines arrested on suspicion of human trafficking

Sixteen U.S. Marines were arrested on Thursday at their base in Southern California on suspicion of drug-related offenses and the smuggling of undocumented migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. military officials said. The arrests at Camp Pendleton stemmed from a separate investigation of two other Marines arrested earlier this month on human trafficking charges filed by federal prosecutors in San Diego, a base spokesman said. No 'day in court':

U.S. deportation orders blindside some families

Carin, a 39-year-old subsistence farmer from Honduras, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her two sons late last year. They had fled after her political organizing led to threats of violence, she said, and intended to claim asylum. They were released on one condition: that they show up to immigration court when called.

In New York, a diverse, new group works the soil

Sporting a backward gray cap, studded earrings and a thin, head-to-toe layer of dirt, Layton Guenther took a break from the day's fieldwork to talk about their path from an upper-middle-class suburb to a Long Island, New York, farm. "Farming - for where I grew up - was a very unusual career choice," said Guenther, 32, who grew up in a New York City suburb and identifies as gender non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. But "everybody belongs on the land in their own way. None of us should feel alienated from it."

California judges overturn the death penalty for avowed white supremacist

The California Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death penalty conviction of an avowed white supremacist, saying the prosecutor cited inflammatory evidence to sway the jury, such as the defendant's neo-Nazi tattoos, court records showed. The court ruled unanimously to spare the life of Jeffrey Scott Young of San Diego, convicted over the killing of two parking lot employees during a robbery near the city's international airport in 1999, media said.

Four people shot dead, two wounded in Los Angeles shooting spree

Four people were shot dead and two wounded on Thursday in a shooting spree that spread across four three Los Angeles neighborhoods and touched off a 12-hour manhunt before police tackled and arrested an armed suspect. A Los Angeles police spokesman identified the suspect as Gerry Zaragoza, 26, and said he was held on pending murder charges in the shooting deaths of his father and brother, and the wounding of his mother with a gunshot. The spokesman did not identify the victims.

U.S. watchdog fines New York debt collectors more than $60 million

The U.S. consumer watchdog on Thursday said it had fined a group of New York-based debt-collection firms and their two owners more than $60 million to settle claims they inflated consumer debts and broke the law when attempting to collect the money. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) also said it had permanently barred the group of companies and their owners from acting as debt collectors, in a joint consent order with the New York Attorney General's office.