US News Roundup: Parenting book author gets prison for U.S. college admissions scam; Forecast points to deepening Illinois budget deficit

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

Thousands could be hit by PG&E's latest planned power cutoffs

Thousands of homes and businesses in California could find themselves in the dark as Pacific Gas & Electric said it will shut off power in parts of 17 counties for up to two days, as a preventive measure against wildfires. The company said it was tracking a "dry, offshore wind event" that might impact its service area on Wednesday and Thursday and needed to turn off the electricity as a safety measure.

Striking Chicago teachers march through morning rush hour traffic

Thousands of striking Chicago teachers marched through the city's downtown on Wednesday to demand smaller class sizes and more support staff, in the second-longest walkout by U.S. public school teachers in recent history. The third-largest U.S. public school system canceled classes for the fifth straight day for 300,000 students, who have been out of school and without after-hours activities since the system's 25,000 teachers went on strike on Thursday.

Curbing wild horse, burro herds on U.S. public lands to cost $5 billion: official

Reducing the tens of thousands of wild horses and burros on public lands to a level that is better for both the animals and their habitat will cost U.S. taxpayers $5 billion and take 15 years, a Trump administration official said on Wednesday. On a conference call with reporters, U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Acting Director William Perry Pendley said the 88,000 wild horses and burros on federal lands were destroying rangelands, encroaching on the habitats of other species and costing taxpayers $81 million a year to manage.

Parenting book author gets prison for U.S. college admissions scam

A marketing executive who authored a parenting advice book was sentenced on Wednesday to three weeks in prison for taking part in a vast U.S. college admissions cheating and fraud scheme in order to help her son gain an unfair advantage. Jane Buckingham, 51, received less than the six-month prison term that federal prosecutors in Boston sought after she admitted to paying $50,000 to have a corrupt test proctor secretly take the ACT college entrance exam on her son's behalf.

California 'veered' out of its lane in climate pact with Quebec: U.S. lawsuit

The United States on Wednesday sued California for entering a climate agreement with Canada's Quebec province, saying the state had no right to conduct foreign policy, in the latest feud between the Trump administration and the state. President Donald Trump's administration argued in the lawsuit that California's 2013 agreement to link its emission-trading program - the centerpiece of its climate change policy - to Quebec's violates the constitution, which prohibits states from making treaties or pacts with foreign powers.

Democrats set December impeachment target, but obstacles abound

Democratic lawmakers hope to complete their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump by year's end and are coalescing around two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction, lawmakers and aides told Reuters. But some Democrats fear that a costly distraction may be the looming battle between the Republican Trump and Congress over funding the government when money runs out for many federal operations on Nov. 21, Democratic aides said.

U.S. FAA must restore 'public confidence' in plane certification -inspector general

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must work to restore "public confidence" in aircraft certification efforts after two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes, the U.S. Transportation Department's inspector general said on Wednesday in a public report. The long-standing practice of delegating certification tasks to aircraft manufacturers has come under criticism from lawmakers and others after the two crashes in October 2018 in Indonesia and March 2019 in Ethiopia, which killed 346 people.

U.S. FDA says carcinogen not found in alternatives of Zantac and its generics

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday that alternatives to popular heartburn drug Zantac and its generic versions, known chemically as ranitidine, have not been found to contain the probable cancer-causing impurity that ranitidine has been linked to. (http://bit.ly/2oYJ1Vz) U.S. retailers Walmart Inc, CVS Health Corp Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Rite Aid Corp have all removed Zantac off their shelves after some drugs containing its key ingredient ranitidine were found to have traces of the impurity, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA).

U.S. attorney general calls for counseling, intervention to prevent mass shootings

U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday announced a new effort to prevent mass shootings through court-ordered counseling and supervision of potentially violent individuals. The effort, announced in a memo to federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials, follows dozens of deadly mass shootings in the United States this year, including a massacre of 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and another just one day later in Dayton, Ohio, in which nine people were killed.

Forecast points to deepening Illinois budget deficit

Illinois' budget deficit will top $3 billion and its pile of overdue bills will hit a new record high by fiscal 2025 if the state's "unsustainable" tax structure remains in place, according to a five-year forecast released on Wednesday by the governor's budget office. The economic and fiscal policy report said the state's general fund deficit is projected to steadily grow over five years to $3.2 billion with the unpaid bill backlog ballooning to $19.2 billion. It also showed annual pension contributions climbing to $9.65 billion in fiscal 2025 from $8.1 billion in the current fiscal year.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)