Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Ex-actress says Weinstein promised her movie deal in exchange for threesome

An actress-turned-costume designer told jurors in the Weinstein rape trial on Wednesday the former Hollywood producer promised her a movie deal if she had three-way sex with him and his assistant. The designer, Dawn Dunning, and another accuser who took the stand Wednesday, Tarale Wulff, are not among the women Weinstein is charged with assaulting. But they are two of the three women prosecutors are calling to bolster their case against the former producer by trying to provide evidence of his motives or methods. Dylann Roof appeals death sentence for massacre at South Carolina black church

Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black people at a South Carolina church in 2015, has appealed his conviction and death sentence, with lawyers arguing he was too mentally ill to stand trial or represent himself at sentencing. "Roof's crime was tragic, but this Court can have no confidence in the jury's verdict," says his appeal, filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Trump impeachment trial nears end of initial phase in Senate

The U.S. Senate is expected to wrap up the initial phase of President Donald Trump's impeachment trial before turning on Friday to the explosive question of whether to call witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton. Republicans who control the Senate said there was a chance the trial could end on Friday with Trump's acquittal, leaving him in office and rendering moot the articles of impeachment Democrats approved in the House of Representatives in December. New York Guardian Angels patrol a Jewish neighborhood on edge

On a windy January night in Brooklyn, a young Jewish woman wary of rising anti-Semitism in her city threw a man who had confronted her to the sidewalk. It was Ariana Gold's first night of training with the Guardian Angels, a volunteer neighborhood patrol group that has started patrolling the borough's Crown Heights section, where attacks against ultra-orthodox Jews have risen in recent months. Man convicted of killing ex-wife, boyfriend executed in Georgia

A man convicted more than two decades ago of shooting and killing his ex-wife's boyfriend and then bludgeoning her to death with the shotgun he used was executed by lethal injection in Georgia on Wednesday. Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, was declared dead at 9:05 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, the state's Department of Corrections said in a statement. Lance was convicted 21 years ago of killing his former wife, Sabrina "Joy" Lance, and her boyfriend, Dwight "Butch" Wood, in Jackson County. Chesapeake Energy oil-well fire kills one, injures three in Texas

One Texas oil worker was killed and three others hospitalized on Wednesday when a Chesapeake Energy Corp well caught fire during service work, a spokesman for the company said. The workers were at a site in Burleson County, about 75 miles (120 km) east of Austin when a blow-out, or high pressure release, led to the blaze, according to local media. Names of the victims were not immediately available. At trial, U.S. says Avenatti's greed fueled Nike extortion; defense says tenacity is no crime

Michael Avenatti was bent on a big payday when he demanded millions of dollars for himself from Nike Inc, a federal prosecutor told jurors on Wednesday in his opening argument at the extortion trial of the celebrity lawyer and prominent critic of U.S. President Donald Trump. But a lawyer for Avenatti countered that the request was simply part of negotiations on behalf of Avenatti's client, Gary Franklin, a basketball coach in a Nike-sponsored youth basketball league, and that Avenatti could not be held criminally liable. U.S. evacuees from China placed on 72-hour 'hold' at California military base for medical evaluation

Nearly 200 Americans airlifted from China in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak arrived on Wednesday at a U.S. military base in California, where they will remain isolated for at least 72 hours of medical evaluation, public health officials said. The group, mostly U.S. diplomats and their families, were evacuated from Wuhan at the epicenter of the outbreak aboard a U.S. government-chartered cargo jet that stopped to refuel in Alaska on Tuesday night before flying on to March Air Reserve Base, about 60 miles (97 km) east of Los Angeles. Explainer: Inside the plans for Trump's expanded travel ban

U.S. President Donald Trump said he plans to expand his travel ban to bar people from several additional countries, a move that could again reignite questions about whether the policy discriminates against Muslims. Trump said during a visit to Davos, Switzerland, last week that his administration planned to add "a couple of countries" to the ban, but did not give further details. Nike faces SEC probe over illicit payment claim: Bloomberg

A lawyer for Michael Avenatti told a jury that Nike Inc was being probed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over claims that it made illicit payments to elite youth basketball players, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The SEC investigation on Nike was confirmed by Scott Wilson, a former lawyer who represented Nike, on the witness stand, Bloomberg said.