National News

By Steve Friess DETROIT (Reuters) - A federal judge in Michigan halted on Monday the deportation of more than 1,400 Iraqi nationals from the United States, the latest legal victory for the Iraqi nationals facing deportation in a closely watched case. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith granted a preliminary injunction requested by American Civil Liberties Union lawyers, who argued the immigrants would face persecution in Iraq because they are considered ethnic and religious minorities there.

By Jim Forsyth SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The truck driver accused of smuggling at least 100 illegal immigrants inside a sweltering tractor-trailer, 10 of whom died, has said he was unaware of the human cargo he was hauling until he took a rest stop in Texas, court papers showed on Monday. James Bradley Jr., 60, told investigators he was caught by surprise when he opened the trailer doors outside a Walmart store in San Antonio, only to be knocked down by a group of "Spanish" people pouring out of the rig, according to the criminal complaint filed in the case.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator John McCain, who has been recuperating in Arizona after being diagnosed with brain cancer, will return to Washington for a vote on healthcare reform on Tuesday, his office said in a statement on Monday. "Senator McCain looks forward to returning to the United States Senate tomorrow to continue working on important legislation, including health care reform, the National Defense Authorization Act, and new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea," the statement said. (Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Writing by Eric Beech; editing by Diane Craft)

By Jim Forsyth SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The man accused of smuggling at least 100 illegal immigrants inside a sweltering tractor-trailer, 10 of whom died, has said he was unaware of the human cargo he was hauling until he took a rest stop in Texas, court papers showed on Monday. James Bradley Jr., 60, was arrested on Sunday after police said they discovered dozens of undocumented Mexican and Guatemalan nationals, some unconscious in the back of the truck, others staggering around the vehicle in the parking lot of a Walmart store in San Antonio. Authorities called to the scene found the bodies of eight illegal immigrants, along with 30 to 40 others who survived the ordeal but were suffering from dehydration and heat stroke, some of them as young as 15.

President Donald Trump made a last-ditch plea to U.S. Senate Republicans on Monday to "do the right thing" and fulfill seven years of campaign promises to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. The Senate will vote on Tuesday on whether to open debate on an overhaul of the law, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promising an open amendment process and a "robust" debate. "To every member of the Senate I say this: The American people have waited long enough.

A woman who once reported her fiance missing after his kayak capsized on a frigid Hudson River pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide on Monday, admitting she pulled the plug on his kayak so it would fill with water, prosecutors said. Angelika Graswald, 37, also admitted that she knew he was not wearing a life vest or wet suit and that the locking clip to his paddle was missing, putting her husband-to-be in grave danger, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler's office said in a statement. The body of Vincent Viafore, 46, was eventually recovered from the river near the site of the incident, about 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City.

Shkreli's statement to U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto came after jurors had been dismissed for the day in the middle of testimony from U.S. prosecutors' last witness in the case, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who investigated Shkreli. Shkreli, 34, outraged patients and U.S. lawmakers by raising the price of the anti-infection drug Daraprim to $750 a pill, from $13.50, in 2015, when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Wells Fargo & Co has asked judges in New York and New Jersey to require a lawyer representing a former employee to immediately return reams of client information the bank mistakenly sent to the attorney, a bank spokeswoman said on Monday. In response to a New Jersey court case involving a dispute between ex-Wells Fargo employee Gary Sinderbrand and his brother who also worked there, the bank disclosed tens of thousands of client names, Social Security numbers, account balances and more, a lawyer for Sinderbrand wrote in a letter to the court.

John Booker Jr., 22, of Topeka, pleaded guilty in February to plotting the April 2015 attack on Army personnel at Fort Riley, Kansas, and aiding the Islamic State fight against the United States, the Justice Department said in a statement. Booker was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of attempted destruction of government property by fire or explosion.

Obdulia Sanchez, 18, of Stockton, was booked into the Merced County Jail for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs causing injury and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. The California Highway Patrol said in a statement that she was driving two 14-year-old girls on Friday near Los Banos, California, around 6:40 p.m. Merced County Sheriff Deputy Daryl Allen confirmed that the girl who died, Jacqueline Sanchez, was the driver's sister.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Monday that various options for a healthcare bill will be discussed at a policy lunch on Tuesday prior to the first procedural vote. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said he did not expect Senator John McCain, who is recuperating from surgery in his home state of Arizona, to return to Washington in time for Tuesday's healthcare vote. (Reporting by Richard Cowan and Amanda Becker; Writing by Eric Beech)

Real estate scion Robert Durst, whose ties to three slayings were portrayed in the HBO series "The Jinx," kicked a man in the face without provocation in 1981, breaking a bone, the man testified on Monday ahead of a highly anticipated murder trial. Los Angeles county prosecutors have accused Durst of first-degree murder, saying he shot to death his friend Susan Berman, a writer and the daughter of an organized crime figure, in Los Angeles in 2000 because of what she knew about the unsolved disappearance and presumed slaying of his wife Kathleen. Durst, 74, has pleaded not guilty to Berman's murder and was never charged with killing his wife.

A surveillance camera at a house next door captured the incident on Sunday morning in West Virginia's capital, Charleston, Lieutenant Steve Cooper of the Charleston Police Department told West Virginia Metro News. Victim Rachele Jarrett, 44, was in "grave" critical condition, Cooper said.

The U.S. Senate will vote Tuesday on whether to open debate on a healthcare bill, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor. The only way the Senate can actually consider ways to overhaul healthcare law is by opening a debate in the chamber said McConnell, a Republican. "That means voting to begin the open amendment process.

By Emily Flitter NEW YORK (Reuters) - A group of 11 Democratic state prosecutors sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to force it to implement rules designed to prevent chemical spills and other industrial accidents at facilities such as refineries and fertilizer plants, according to a federal court filing. The attorneys general of Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington asked the U.S. Appeals Court, District of Columbia Circuit to vacate a two-year delay on the rules' effective date the EPA imposed in June. The set of regulations, called the Chemical Accident Safety Rule, would require industrial facilities to take new steps to prevent accidents and also to conduct more robust examinations of the causes of accidents that do occur.

The biggest U.S. wildfire torched buildings and parched grassland forcing evacuations in eastern Montana while California firefighters gained ground on a massive blaze near Yosemite National Park on Monday, authorities said. The two-blaze Lodgepole Complex in Montana, the biggest wildfire in the United States currently, was only 5 percent contained on Monday after racing through 226,000 acres (91,500 hectares) of timber, brush and range land near the Missouri River, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.

By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts police do not have the authority to detain illegal immigrants solely to buy time for federal law enforcement officials to take them into custody, the state's top court ruled on Monday. The decision amounts to a rejection of requests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for courts and law enforcement agencies to hold illegal immigrants, who are facing civil deportation orders, in custody for up to 48 hours after their cases are resolved. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that doing so amounts to a fresh arrest of the person that is not authorized by state law, in the first such ruling to apply to an entire state, according to Massachusetts' attorney general.

A Wall Street lawyer arrested in 2013 after he stopped on the sidewalk to talk with Occupy Wall Street protesters cannot seek damages from New York City and its police for false arrest and imprisonment, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. By a 3-0 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said police acted reasonably in arresting Stephen Kass, an environmental lawyer at Carter Ledyard & Milburn who was 73 at the time, in downtown Manhattan, and did not violate his First Amendment free speech rights.

The parents of Charlie Gard tearfully gave up their legal battle to keep their terminally ill baby alive on Monday, saying his condition had deteriorated too far for any possible recovery, in a case they said had touched the world. "Charlie did have a real chance of getting better. Charlie has a rare genetic condition causing progressive muscle weakness and brain damage and his parents had sought to send him to the United States to undergo therapy, in a campaign backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Pope Francis.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on immigrants, whom he said were taking jobs from U.S. citizens, and signed an executive order in April calling for a review of the H-1B program. The visa allows foreigners with certain skills to work temporarily in the United States. On April 3, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suspended "premium processing" of the visas for up to six months.