By David Shepardson and Hilary Russ WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Starbucks' former Chief Executive Howard Schultz defended himself and the coffee chain against allegations of 'union busting' at a U.S. Senate committee hearing in Washington on Wednesday. The Seattle-based company has previously denied allegations that it illegally fired pro-union baristas or spied on workers as hundreds of U.S. stores organized unions starting in late 2021. It also says it did not violate federal labor law by offering some new benefits – including higher wages, student loan repayment tools, and a savings account program – only to non-unionized stores, as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has alleged.

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By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) – The events underlying Donald Trump's indictment in New York – hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with him – took place nearly seven years ago. But any potential trial is still at minimum more than a year away, legal experts said, raising the possibility that the former U.S. president could face a jury in a Manhattan courtroom during or even after the 2024 presidential campaign, as he seeks a return to the White House.

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(Reuters) – The death toll from a violent storm that whipped up tornadoes in the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States rose to at least 29 over the weekend, according to officials and media reports. In Memphis, Tennessee, two children and an adult were found dead on Saturday after the storm's heavy winds knocked trees onto several houses, according to the Memphis Police Department. In Tennessee's McNairy County, officials reported that an additional two people had died, having reported seven deaths earlier on Saturday, according to local media.

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By Karen Freifeld and Rich McKay NEW YORK/PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) -Donald Trump, the ex-president and frontrunner for the Republican 2024 nomination, flew into New York City on Monday for an historic court appearance to face charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn star. With New York taking security precautions and the mayor telling potential 'rabble-rousers' to behave, Trump was due to surrender at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office on Tuesday and will likely be fingerprinted prior to appearing before a judge for an arraignment where he will plead not guilty.

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(Reuters) -The University of Oklahoma said late on Friday that its Norman campus was safe and no threat had been found after police investigated a suspected shooting on the premises. University officials said on social media a comprehensive search had been conducted and no danger was detected and authorities issued an 'all clear' notification. 'There is no threat to campus. Alert has been canceled,' the university said on Twitter. Earlier on Friday, the school implemented a shelter-in-place protocol after a report of an active shooter at the Van Fleet Oval, a central location on the campus.

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(Reuters) – A Canadian Pacific freight train derailed and caught fire in Maine on Saturday, causing minor injuries to three rail employees. 'A total of three locomotive engines and six rail cars carrying lumber and electrical wiring derailed into a wooded area, where they caught fire and started a small forest fire,' Maine's Forest Department said in a statement to Reuters. Additional rail cars transporting hazardous materials did not derail, it said, adding that these hazardous materials are 'not at risk' of leaking and catching fire.

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By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Republicans will try to agree on a plan to lift the federal $31.4 trillion debt ceiling and cut government spending when Congress returns this week, after being stymied for months by Democratic President Joe Biden's demands they do so without conditions. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a Monday speech at the New York Stock Exchange will lay out the conditions Republicans want Democrats to agree to in exchange for movement on the debt ceiling.

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(This July 13 story has been corrected to fix the spelling of ‘Kalpana Kotagal' in paragraph 2) By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed President Joe Biden's nominee to the agency that enforces workplace bias laws, giving Democrats a majority on the five-member panel that would allow it to enforce pro-worker polices backed by his administration. The Democrat-led Senate voted 49-47 along party lines on Thursday to confirm civil rights lawyer Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at prominent plaintiffs' law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, to a vacancy on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

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(Reuters) – Tropical Depression Don has strengthened into a Tropical Storm in the central Atlantic on Monday and is forecast to turn southward within the next day or so, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest advisory. The storm, located about 735 miles (1,180 km) west of the Azores, is packing maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour (65 km per hour), the Miami based forecaster said. (Reporting by Arundhati Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) Brought to you by www.

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By Steve Gorman and Gabriella Borter LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Thousands of Los Angeles-area hotel workers went on strike on Sunday demanding pay hikes and improved benefits in a region where high housing costs make it difficult for low-wage earners to live close to where they hold jobs, union officials said. Unite Here Local 11, which represents 15,000 workers at more than 60 major hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, declared the strike a day after the workers' contract expired. It marks one of the largest strikes to hit the U.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A white powder found inside the White House late on Sunday, which led to the temporary closure of part of the presidential complex, was identified by Washington fire department as cocaine, the Washington Post reported. The Secret Service confirmed to Reuters that an 'unknown item' had been found that led to part of the White House being closed, but referred other questions to the fire department, which declined to comment. 'On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service Uniformed Division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,' a Secret Service spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

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By Rich McKay (Reuters) – The man who sold a fatal fentanyl-laced bag of heroin to actor Michael K. Williams, who played the shotgun-toting drug dealer Omar Little in the HBO crime drama 'The Wire,' was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison, according to court records. Carlos Macci, 72, was part of a four-man crew selling drugs from Brooklyn, and he sold the lethal dose to Williams, federal prosecutors said in court documents. Prosecutors had asked for a longer sentence of 48 months. 'For decades the defendant has been selling deadly narcotics: heroin and now heroin laced with fentanyl,' they wrote in court papers.

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(Reuters) – A fire broke out at Dow's Plaquemine chemical facility in Louisiana, the U.S. chemical maker said in a statement late on Friday. Everyone at the facility was accounted for and the fire was being managed by the company's Emergency Operations Center, Dow Louisiana said in a statement posted on Facebook, adding that they were in contact with officials. Explosions at the facility in Iberville Parish shook homes in the nearby state capital, Baton Rouge, WAFB TV reported. Plant officials said they were still working to assess the cause of the incident, which began around 9:15 p.

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By Sharon Bernstein and Julia Harte (Reuters) -Iowa's Republican-controlled state House of Representatives passed a bill in a special session on Tuesday banning abortions as soon as fetal cardiac activity can be detected, after around six weeks of pregnancy and before most women know they are pregnant. The ban is expected to swiftly pass the state Senate and be signed into law by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, who called the special session after the Midwestern state's Supreme Court on June 16 blocked a similar measure passed in 2018 from going into effect.

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By Joseph Ax (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors flagged a threatening social media post from Donald Trump in a late-night court filing on Friday, arguing that it suggests he might intimidate witnesses by improperly disclosing confidential evidence received from the government. On his Truth Social site, the former president wrote, 'IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!' on Friday afternoon, a day after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he orchestrated a criminal conspiracy to try to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

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By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried used money he stole from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange to make than $100 million in political campaign contributions before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Monday. An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from. 'He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow,' the indictment said.

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By Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel BOSTON (Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former senior executive at the private equity firm TPG Capital for participating in a vast U.S. college admissions fraud scheme by paying $50,000 to rig his son's college entrance exam results. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston rejected William McGlashan's argument that the indictment against him should have been dismissed because inflated ACT test scores cannot support the wire fraud charge underlying his conviction.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Hurricane Hilary was barreling towards Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Saturday, a U.S. government agency said, warning that catastrophic and life-threatening flooding was likely on the peninsula and U.S. Southwest. The hurricane already was disrupting flights and baseball games in the United States. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the hurricane was weakening on its path to the west-central coast of the peninsula this evening. It predicted it would lose more strength and turn into a tropical storm as it heads towards southern California during the day and evening on Sunday.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Hurricane Hilary hurtled towards Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Saturday, a U.S. government agency said, blanketing the region with heavy rain amid warnings of catastrophic and life-threatening flooding on the peninsula and the U.S. Southwest. One man died in the Baja California Sur state when a family of five was swept away into the sea while crossing a stream, according to a Mexican official, who also shared images of flooded and roads that were swept away in the area.

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By Ted Hesson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday ruled against a program offering deportation relief and work permits to immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as 'Dreamers,' despite an attempt by President Joe Biden's administration to bolster the program's standing with a new regulation. The decision by Texas-based U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen deals a fresh setback to the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and its 579,000 enrollees and other immigrants who might have hoped to be approved.

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DETROIT (AP) — About 146,000 U.S. auto workers are set to go on strike this week if General Motors, Ford and Stellantis fail to meet their demands for big pay raises and the restoration of concessions the workers made years ago when the companies were in financial trouble. Shawn Fain, the combative president of the United Auto Workers union, has threatened to strike any of the three companies that hasn't reached an agreement by the time its contract with the union expires at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time Thursday.

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MERSIN, Turkey (Reuters) – A team of rescuers are ready to start moving an American cave explorer trapped more than 1,000 metres (3,280.84 ft) underground in southern Turkey and will have him out 'within several days,' Mersin Governor Ali Hamza Pehlivan said on Saturday. Mark Dickey, 40, was on an international exploration mission in the Morca cave in Mersin province's Taurus mountains when he began suffering from gastrointestinal bleeding at a depth of 1,040 metres. More than 150 rescuers from Turkey and other nations have been working to save him from the country's third deepest cave.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House Correspondents' Association dinner — known for its fun albeit ferocious jabs at Washington — took a more solemn tone this year as President Joe Biden acknowledged the several American journalists under siege in authoritarian countries around the world. 'We are here to send a message to the country and, quite frankly, to the world: The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar, of a free society, not the enemy,' Biden said in his speech. The president and first lady Jill Biden, upon arriving at the Washington Hilton on Saturday, met privately with the parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich , who has been imprisoned in Russia since March.

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By Sharon Bernstein (Reuters) – Abortion rights supporters expressed relief on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court preserved access to a widely used abortion pill but warned of a long fight ahead as a legal challenge to the medication continues. The move by the court to halt new restrictions on the drug set by lower courts was welcome news less than a year after its conservative majority upended U.S. abortion access by overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide.

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By Jack Queen (Reuters) – Fox News on Tuesday disposed of one legal threat with its $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but the network still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic USA, over its coverage of debunked election-rigging claims. Dominion accused Fox and its parent company Fox Corp of ruining its business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against then-president Donald Trump, a Republican.

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By Lisa Richwine and Dawn Chmielewski LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Thousands of film and television writers will go on strike starting Tuesday, throwing Hollywood into turmoil as the entertainment business grapples with seismic changes triggered by the global streaming TV boom. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) called its first work stoppage in 15 years after failing to reach an agreement for higher pay from studios such as Walt Disney Co and Netflix Inc. The last strike lasted 100 days and cost the California economy more than $2 billion.

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By Idrees Ali and Ted Hesson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden's administration will temporarily send 1,500 additional troops to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in preparation for a possible rise in illegal immigration when COVID-19 border restrictions lift later this month. The 90-day deployment of active-duty troops will supplement the work of the U.S. Border Patrol but not carry out law enforcement duties, Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement.

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By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration does not plan to extend a July 1 deadline for airlines to upgrade airplane altimeters, the measuring instruments that are crucial for bad-weather landings, to address potential interference from 5G wireless technology, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. Buttigieg in a call on Tuesday told airlines that the deadline will not be moved. He said airlines had made progress, but urged them to work aggressively to continue retrofitting airplanes, the Transportation Department said.

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By Daniel Trotta (Reuters) – An autopsy showed Tyre Nichols had a legal amount of alcohol and a trace amount of marijuana in his blood when Memphis police beat the Black man to death after a traffic stop in January, ABC News reported on Wednesday, undermining police claims that Nichols was high. Nichols' death provoked widespread outrage after police video showed officers beating and kicking Nichols, 29, as he cried out for his mother near his family home in Tennessee. Five police officers, all Black, have been charged with second-degree murder.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden said on Friday he was not yet ready to invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid the United States defaulting on its debts as early as June 1, comments which for the first time suggested he has not ruled out the option. 'I've not gotten there yet,' Biden said in an interview with MSNBC when asked about the possibility of invoking the amendment. The divided U.S. Congress is running out of time to raise the federal government's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, with the Treasury Department warning it could be unable to pay its bills as soon as June 1.

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