US News Roundup: Chicago Public Schools to plug new budget hole with one-time measures; Trump administration schedules lease sale for Arctic Alaska lands

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

Bankrupt Puerto Rico eyes new debt policy, will pay holiday bonus

Puerto Rico would place restrictions on its future debt sales under proposed legislation that won praise on Tuesday from the bankrupt U.S. commonwealth's federally created financial oversight board. Puerto Rico's bankruptcy takes up the bulk of the island's $120 billion of debt and pension obligations and analysts have raised questions about the island's future market access due to the board's attempt to void some outstanding bonds.

Nine Americans killed in Mexican ambush, Trump urges joint war on drug cartels

Gunmen killed nine women and children in the bloodiest attack on Americans in Mexico for years, prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to offer to help the neighboring country wipe out drug cartels believed to be behind the ambush. All nine people killed in Monday's daytime attack at the border of Chihuahua and Sonora belonged to the Mexican-American LeBaron family, members of a breakaway Mormon community that settled in northern Mexico's hills and plains decades ago.

U.S. Congress, White House mull stop-gap funding bill to avoid government shutdowns

The U.S. Congress and the White House are discussing legislation to keep U.S. government agencies operating beyond Nov. 21 when existing funding expires, with an eye toward avoiding shutdowns as Democrats could be moving to impeach President Donald Trump, lawmakers and a White House official said on Tuesday. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, a Republican, told reporters that a range of dates were possible for the duration of the next stop-gap funding bill.

Florida county to revisit rejection of digital New York Times for libraries

Responding to a public furor, a Florida county board on Tuesday said it would revisit its decision to reject its library system's request for a digital subscription to the New York Times, whose reporting one member had called "fake news." The Oct. 24 decision by the Citrus County commissioners drew sharp opposition as well as national attention when it came to light in a local report late last week.

Chicago Public Schools to plug new budget hole with one-time measures

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) said on Tuesday it would use $134 million in one-time revenue and savings to cover additional spending in its current budget partly because of a tentative contract agreement with its teachers union that ended an 11-day strike. The third-largest U.S. public school system also said that increased labor costs in the coming years should be covered by growth in existing state and local revenue.

Trump administration schedules lease sale for Arctic Alaska lands

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it will be auctioning off nearly 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of land in Arctic Alaska for oil development next month, and it is promising much more territory will be open to development in the future. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that its annual oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska will be held on Dec. 11. The sale will be the 15th in a series of oil lease sales held by the BLM for that region on the western side of Alaska’s North Slope.

U.S. Justice Department to announce procurement collusion 'strike force'

The Justice Department is set to announce a strike force aimed at identifying and prosecuting companies that fix prices or collude to push up the cost of the billions of dollars worth of U.S. government purchases, according to a Justice Department official. The announcement of the task force, expected as early as Tuesday, follows the discovery that five South Korean companies colluded in delivering oil to U.S. military bases in the country.

U.S. government sees no evidence of hacking in Tuesday's elections

Voting in U.S. state and local elections on Tuesday showed no evidence of successful tampering by any foreign government, the Justice Department and six U.S. security agencies said. But Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries of the United States will seek to meddle in U.S. elections moving forward, including through social media manipulation and cyberattacks, the agencies said.

U.S. Supreme Court justices navigate video piracy case over Blackbeard's ship

U.S. Supreme Court justices struggled to navigate between the rights of states and individuals on Tuesday as they heard a documentary filmmaker's bid to revive his lawsuit against North Carolina officials he has accused of unlawfully pirating his footage of notorious English pirate Blackbeard's wrecked ship. The justices heard arguments in filmmaker Frederick Allen's appeal of a lower court's ruling that North Carolina could not be sued under federal law for allegedly infringing his copyrights on five videos and a photo of the salvage operation for the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship that went down in 1718.

Trump-Xi meeting in Iowa would be poignant reminder of better U.S.-China ties

U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion that he could sign a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Iowa has set off a flurry of excitement in Muscatine, Iowa, a city on the banks of the Mississippi River that has hosted Xi twice since 1985. Xi received a key to the 24,000-population city during his first visit, when he led an agricultural study group and stayed at the home of a local family. He also met and befriended then-governor Terry Branstad, who is now Trump's ambassador to Beijing.

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