US Domestic News Roundup: NY grand jury votes not to indict police officers; Urban states come out ahead and more

California to enforce net neutrality after judge rejects challenge by internet providers California should soon implement its landmark net neutrality law under a judge's ruling on Tuesday, nearly three years after the state legislature enacted the measure, the state attorney general's office said.

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

New York grand jury votes not to indict police officers for Daniel Prude death

A grand jury in New York state voted not to indict police officers for the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died of asphyxiation while in police custody in March 2020 in the upstate city of Rochester, state Attorney General Letitia James said on Tuesday. Prude's family obtained body-worn camera footage of Prude's death that showed him naked in a dark, snowy street. A mesh "spit hood" was placed over his head after he told officers he had contracted the novel coronavirus. The video also shows Prude, apparently in the middle of a mental health crisis, being restrained against the ground by police.

Analysis: Urban states come out ahead, rural states get less in Biden's COVID-19 relief bill

The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package now making its way through the U.S. Congress would provide $350 billion to help pandemic-hit state and local governments balance their budgets, more than twice the amount lawmakers approved last year. But not every state comes out ahead: urban, Democratic-led states like Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts that took drastic steps to stop the coronavirus' spread would get about three times as much money per person as they did in the package passed at the beginning of the health crisis in March.

California to enforce net neutrality after judge rejects challenge by internet providers

California should soon implement its landmark net neutrality law under a judge's ruling on Tuesday, nearly three years after the state legislature enacted the measure, the state attorney general's office said. U.S. Judge John Mendez for the Eastern District of California said in an oral ruling he would not block the law from taking effect as four telecom and broadband industry groups sought, his office confirmed. California's 2018 law barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes.

U.S. House plans vote on COVID-19 aid bill on Friday

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Friday on legislation to provide $1.9 trillion in new coronavirus relief, Representative Steny Hoyer, the chamber's No. 2 Democrat, said. "The American people strongly support this bill, and we are moving swiftly to see it enacted into law," Hoyer said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Ahmaud Arbery's mother files civil rights lawsuit on anniversary of his death

The mother of Ahmaud Arbery filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Tuesday against the three men accused of killing her son, a Black man who was chased down and shot dead as he jogged through his Georgia neighborhood. The $1 million suit, filed by Wanda Cooper on the anniversary of her son's death, also names police and other officials who did not initially bring charges in the case. It alleges the killing was racially motivated, stating that the defendants "were motivated to deprive Ahmaud Arbery of equal protection of the law and his rights by bias, animus, (and) discrimination."

Biden trade czar Tai eagerly awaited in Washington and Brussels

Katherine Tai, President Joe Biden's pick to revamp U.S. trade policy to focus on workers and "ordinary Americans" over corporations, will get a chance to explain what that will mean in practice at her confirmation hearing on Thursday. Tai's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee has been anxiously awaited for months by industry, U.S. trading partners from Beijing to Brussels, labor groups and lawmakers - all in a long queue to lobby Tai as soon as she is confirmed.

Congress to weigh reforms to U.S. Postal Service over finance woes

A panel of the U.S. House of Representatives will hear testimony on Wednesday from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and other officials as lawmakers consider significant reforms to tackle the precarious finances of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Delays in paychecks and other mail deliveries by USPS gained attention this summer as a record number of voters mailed in ballots to elect a new president.

Over 3.4 million Texans still facing disrupted water supplies, authorities say

A little over 3.4 million people in Texas in 204 counties still had issues with their water supply as of Tuesday evening, compared to over 7.9 million people a day earlier, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) said. A deadly winter storm caused widespread blackouts last week across Texas, a state unaccustomed to extreme cold, killing at least two dozen people and knocking out power to more than 4 million people at its peak.

Wife of Mexican drug kingpin 'El Chapo' held in jail on U.S. charges of helping him run cartel

A U.S. judge on Tuesday ordered Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, to be detained on charges she conspired with her husband to run a multibillion dollar drug enterprise while he was behind bars. The arrest of Coronel, 31, at Dulles International Airport near Washington on Monday was the highest-profile U.S. capture of a Mexican on drug charges since former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos was detained in October.

Republican-backed voting curbs set for U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny

Fresh off an election in which former President Donald Trump made false claims of fraud, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ponder the legality of a restriction on early voting in Arizona that his fellow Republicans argued was needed to combat fraud. The Republican-backed law, spurred in part by a video purportedly showing voter fraud that courts later deemed misleading, made it a crime to provide another person's completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers.