North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed new guidelines for corporate mergers, took steps to disclose the junk fees charged by landlords and launched a crackdown on price-gouging in the food industry.

The announcements will be discussed as part of President Joe Biden’s scheduled meeting with the White House Competition Council, a group of officials established under a 2021 executive order.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea’s U.N. ambassador defended his country’s recent long-range missile launch in a rare appearance at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday where he also accused the United States of driving the situation in northeast Asia “to the brink of nuclear war.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel’s president speaks to Congress on Wednesday in an appearance aimed at demonstrating what he calls the “unbreakable bond” between Israel and the United States, despite U.S. concerns over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul and settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Isaac Herzog becomes the second Israeli president, after his father, Chaim Herzog, to address Congress. His speech will mark modern Israel’s celebration of its 75th year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Whistleblowers claiming the Justice Department improperly interfered with a yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden will testify before Congress on Wednesday as House Republicans accelerate their probes into the president and his family.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A target letter sent to Donald Trump suggests that a sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election is zeroing in on him after more than a year of interviews with top aides to the former president and state officials from across the country.

July 18 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's lawyers are due in court in Florida on Tuesday for a hearing in which a federal judge will begin to consider how to hold a trial of the former U.S. president on charges of mishandling classified documents without publicly exposing top secret information.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, was charged last month with unlawfully retaining national defense documents after he left office in 2021 and conspiring to obstruct government efforts to retrieve them.

WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - Movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is advising Joe Biden on his re-election campaign, says he sees opportunity in what many consider to be the U.S. President's biggest vulnerability in the 2024 presidential race - his age.

Biden, a Democrat who turned 80 in November, is already the oldest Oval Office occupant, and will be 86 before a second term ends.

Katzenberg, in a telephone interview, described Biden as "energetic" and "effective," and suggested Republican attacks on his age will backfire.

SAN SALVADOR, July 17 (Reuters) - Salvadoran police arrested more than a hundred Colombians for their alleged involvement in operating a microfinancing scheme that laundered money from drug running and gang activities, security officials said on Monday.

The criminal group reportedly made loans, using funds obtained illegally, to individuals and small businesses with 20% interest, according to the officials.

UNITED NATIONS, July 17 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said he regretted Russia's decision to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

"I deeply regret the decision by the Russian Federation to terminate the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, including the withdrawal of Russian security guarantees for navigation in the northwestern part of the Black Sea," Guterres said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Speaker Kevin McCarthy visited a natural gas drilling site in northeast Ohio to promote House Republicans’ plan to sharply increase domestic production of energy from fossil fuels last month, the signs of rising global temperatures could not be ignored. Smoke from Canadian wildfires hung in the air.

When the speaker was asked about climate change and forest fires, he was ready with a response: Plant a trillion trees.