Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Two jail guards for Jeffrey Epstein charged with cover-up in his suicide

Two jail officers falsified records to cover up their failure to check in on accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the hours before the financier killed himself, U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday. According to an indictment, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas fell asleep and surfed the internet instead of monitoring Epstein, who was found unresponsive on Aug. 10 in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. An autopsy concluded that Epstein hanged himself. FBI wishes it had acted quicker as China stole intellectual property

The FBI wished it had taken swifter action as Beijing recruited U.S.-based researchers to transfer intellectual property from American laboratories, a senior official at the agency said on Tuesday during Senate testimony. China has repeatedly insisted Washington has exaggerated the problem for political reasons, and asked for a response to the FBI's comments, a Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday that "Cold War mentalities" should be discarded. Sondland, Trump's informal Ukraine connection, faces impeachment hearing

U.S. diplomat Gordon Sondland has told two different stories to lawmakers leading the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, he is certain to face sharp questions about which one is right. The wealthy hotel entrepreneur who serves as U.S. ambassador to the European Union could be the most crucial witness yet in a week of televised hearings that have laid bare the misgivings of U.S. officials about Trump's dealings in Ukraine. Pence visit to Wisconsin launches focus on three battleground states

Vice President Mike Pence will begin a push on Wednesday to bolster President Donald Trump's position in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three states that Trump won narrowly in 2016 and probably must win again to secure a second term in 2020. Pence will travel to northeastern Wisconsin on Wednesday to visit shipbuilder Marinette Marine to talk up the trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada that Trump negotiated, but which has yet to receive congressional approval. California's PG&E customers face new round of mass outages

Power supply to about 150,000 California homes and businesses is expected to be shut off on Wednesday, in the latest precautionary outage planned by utility giant PG&E against wildfire risks posed by extremely dry, windy weather. Late on Tuesday, the company said it would go forward with the shutoffs from 9 a.m., with some customers likely to be unaffected until late afternoon. Why Gordon Sondland is key witness in Trump impeachment hearings

The U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, will on Wednesday become the first witness with a direct line of communication to President Donald Trump to testify in public to the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry. Sondland spoke to Trump half a dozen times from mid-July to mid-September, according to the testimony of other witnesses, and could shed light on whether Trump abused his power by making U.S. security aid to Ukraine contingent on Kiev's agreement to investigate Burisma, an energy company on which Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President and political rival Joe Biden, had served as a board member. Navy could remove Gallagher from SEALs, even after Trump intervention

A U.S. Navy SEAL whose rank was recently restored by President Donald Trump following a court-martial is now facing a bid by Navy brass to remove him from the SEALs, U.S. officials and his lawyer told Reuters on Tuesday. Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, 40, was accused of committing war crimes while deployed to Mosul in Iraq in 2017. After rise in Iowa polls, Buttigieg in spotlight at U.S. Democratic presidential debate

Democratic White House contender Pete Buttigieg, who has climbed into the lead in recent polls in Iowa, will get his turn in the spotlight on Wednesday when 10 of the top candidates for the party's presidential nomination meet in a debate in Atlanta. The fifth debate in the race to pick a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election will also likely feature another clash over the best approach to expand health insurance coverage, with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren under pressure to defend her Medicare for All plan. Healthcare tangles in Democratic White House race could carry risk in 2020, polls show

A trio of polls released ahead of Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate showed a majority of Americans support Medicare for All, but offered conflicting signals about whether the proposed healthcare overhaul could hurt the party in the November 2020 general election. As with the previous four debates, Wednesday's televised clash in Atlanta is likely to be dominated by the intra-party battle over how best to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Americans. Apple starts construction of new campus in Texas

Apple Inc said on Wednesday it had started construction of a new campus in Austin, Texas, beside its existing facility where it makes the new MacBook Pro laptops. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is set to give a tour of the Texas factory to U.S. President Donald Trump later on Wednesday.