By Gram Slattery and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump warned of potential “death & destruction” if he faces criminal charges, hours after New York prosecutors probing his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels said they would not be intimidated.

The early Friday post on Trump’s Truth Social media site was the latest in a string of verbal attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg since last Saturday when Trump wrongly predicted he would be arrested three days later.

Trump falsely claims his defeat in 2020 was the result of fraud – a claim that inspired his followers to launch a deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying the election of Democratic President Joe Biden, who bested the Republican Trump by more than 7 million votes.

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” wrote Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Bragg’s office, in a letter to Republican committee chairmen in Congress on Thursday, challenged their standing to investigate his office and said Trump had “created a false expectation that he would be arrested” in his Saturday post.

The letter called the chairmen’s request for communications, documents and testimony an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”

Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received the money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

Trump has denied ever having an affair with Daniels, and has called the payment a “simple private transaction.” He has said he did not commit a crime and has called the investigation politically motivated.

The Manhattan grand jury probing Trump is not due to reconvene until next week.

In other cases, Georgia prosecutors are looking into Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat there, and a federal special counsel is investigating both his attempts to overturn his loss and the removal of classified documents from the White House after Trump left office.

On Saturday, Trump will hold a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, 30 years after a raid on the Branch Davidians religious sect there by federal agents resulted in 86 deaths, including four law-enforcement officers.

The event has become a symbol of government overreach for some and is a seminal moment for some right-wing extremist groups.

In an e-mail, a Trump campaign spokesperson said Waco was chosen because it is situated between several major population centers and has the infrastructure needed to host a large event.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Nathan Layne; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

By Gram Slattery and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump warned of potential “death & destruction” if he faces criminal charges, hours after New York prosecutors probing his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels said they would not be intimidated.

The early Friday post on Trump’s Truth Social media site was the latest in a string of verbal attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg since last Saturday when Trump wrongly predicted he would be arrested three days later.

Trump falsely claims his defeat in 2020 was the result of fraud – a claim that inspired his followers to launch a deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying the election of Democratic President Joe Biden, who bested the Republican Trump by more than 7 million votes.

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” wrote Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Bragg’s office, in a letter to Republican committee chairmen in Congress on Thursday, challenged their standing to investigate his office and said Trump had “created a false expectation that he would be arrested” in his Saturday post.

The letter called the chairmen’s request for communications, documents and testimony an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”

Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received the money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

Trump has denied ever having an affair with Daniels, and has called the payment a “simple private transaction.” He has said he did not commit a crime and has called the investigation politically motivated.

The Manhattan grand jury probing Trump is not due to reconvene until next week.

In other cases, Georgia prosecutors are looking into Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat there, and a federal special counsel is investigating both his attempts to overturn his loss and the removal of classified documents from the White House after Trump left office.

On Saturday, Trump will hold a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, 30 years after a raid on the Branch Davidians religious sect there by federal agents resulted in 86 deaths, including four law-enforcement officers.

The event has become a symbol of government overreach for some and is a seminal moment for some right-wing extremist groups.

In an e-mail, a Trump campaign spokesperson said Waco was chosen because it is situated between several major population centers and has the infrastructure needed to host a large event.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Nathan Layne; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.

The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain, 3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.

That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House.

They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.

The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries, has since returned to what it calls “controlled digital lending.”

It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows for the unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted works in some circumstances.

But Koeltl said there was nothing “transformative” about the Internet Archive’s digital book copies that would warrant “fair use” protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.

“Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse,” he wrote.

The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal, saying the ruling “holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.”

Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American Publishers, in a statement said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.

The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain, 3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.

That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House.

They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.

The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries, has since returned to what it calls “controlled digital lending.”

It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows for the unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted works in some circumstances.

But Koeltl said there was nothing “transformative” about the Internet Archive’s digital book copies that would warrant “fair use” protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.

“Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse,” he wrote.

The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal, saying the ruling “holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.”

Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American Publishers, in a statement said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.

The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain, 3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.

That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House.

They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.

The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries, has since returned to what it calls “controlled digital lending.”

It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows for the unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted works in some circumstances.

But Koeltl said there was nothing “transformative” about the Internet Archive’s digital book copies that would warrant “fair use” protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.

“Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse,” he wrote.

The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal, saying the ruling “holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.”

Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American Publishers, in a statement said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.

The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain, 3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.

That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House.

They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.

The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries, has since returned to what it calls “controlled digital lending.”

It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows for the unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted works in some circumstances.

But Koeltl said there was nothing “transformative” about the Internet Archive’s digital book copies that would warrant “fair use” protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.

“Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse,” he wrote.

The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal, saying the ruling “holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.”

Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American Publishers, in a statement said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.

The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain, 3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.

That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House.

They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.

The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries, has since returned to what it calls “controlled digital lending.”

It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows for the unlicensed use of others’ copyrighted works in some circumstances.

But Koeltl said there was nothing “transformative” about the Internet Archive’s digital book copies that would warrant “fair use” protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.

“Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse,” he wrote.

The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal, saying the ruling “holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.”

Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American Publishers, in a statement said the ruling “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)

(Reuters) – Two people were dead and nine missing after an explosion ripped through a chocolate factory in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on Friday, officials said.

The blast sent flames, smoke, dust and debris skyward, video of the moment captured by WTXF television showed.

“There are still rescue efforts under way at the scene,” West Reading Police Chief Wayne Holden said in a brief statement he read to reporters.

Images on WGAL television showed debris piled in the street with at least one fire still burning hours later.

The tragedy struck the R.M. Palmer Company, which says on its website it has been making candy since 1948, specializing in seasonal items for Easter, Halloween and Valentine’s Day. It employs 850 people.

The explosion destroyed Palmer’s building number two and damaged neighboring building one, Holden said.

The cause remained under investigation, although officials ruled out a continuing danger to the area, Holden said.

Besides the two dead and nine missing, several more people were injured, Holden said.

West Reading lies about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Philadelphia.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta;Editing by Michael Perry)

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -Two suspected undocumented immigrants suffocated to death aboard a freight train and 10 others in need of medical care were taken by helicopter or ambulance to hospital on Friday in south Texas, police said.

Officials in Uvlade, Texas, received an anonymous emergency 911 call advising them that numerous immigrants were suffocating inside a train, Uvalde police said in a statement. At least 15 immigrants needed immediate medical attention, police said.

U.S. Border Patrol officials were notified and able to stop the train just east of Knippa, Texas, in Uvalde County, police said. Officials closed U.S. Highway 90 temporarily to land the helicopters.

Federal investigators were looking into the possibility of human smuggling, investigators with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The tragedy occurred near the site of a more grave incident last year, when 53 migrants died in the back of a tractor trailer amid the sweltering heat during a smuggling attempt.

Dozens of migrants were packed into the back of a truck found on the outskirts of San Antonio on June 27.

Two Americans have been indicted in federal court in that case and could face the death penalty if convicted. Two Mexicans have been charged with lesser crimes.

“We are heartbroken to learn of yet another tragic incident of migrants taking the dangerous journey,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejando Mayorkas said on Twitter, vowing to work with local investigators to find those responsible.

“Smugglers are callous and only care about making a profit,” Mayorkas said.

Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez suspected the migrants were dehydrated due to the heat of the train cars during warm weather, KSAT television reported.

“It’s sad to see that so many undocumented immigrants were found in this condition, and two of them lost their lives. It’s heartbreaking,” KSAT quoted Rodriguez as saying.

The Union Pacific railroad would lead the investigation, Uvalde police said.

The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass, Texas, said on Twitter it was aware of the incident and in communication with U.S. officials to determine if any of the victims were Mexican.

Homeland Security had yet to determine the nationalities of the victims or whether any families or children were among them, a department official with knowledge of the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Knippa is about 72 miles (115 km) west of San Antonio and about 120 miles (190 km) from the Mexican border.

It is near the town of Uvalde, which was the scene of a mass shooting at an elementary school in May last year that killed 19 school children and two teachers.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Brad Brooks, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Leslie Adler, Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -Two suspected undocumented immigrants suffocated to death aboard a freight train and 10 others in need of medical care were taken by helicopter or ambulance to hospital on Friday in south Texas, police said.

Officials in Uvlade, Texas, received an anonymous emergency 911 call advising them that numerous immigrants were suffocating inside a train, Uvalde police said in a statement. At least 15 immigrants needed immediate medical attention, police said.

U.S. Border Patrol officials were notified and able to stop the train just east of Knippa, Texas, in Uvalde County, police said. Officials closed U.S. Highway 90 temporarily to land the helicopters.

Federal investigators were looking into the possibility of human smuggling, investigators with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The tragedy occurred near the site of a more grave incident last year, when 53 migrants died in the back of a tractor trailer amid the sweltering heat during a smuggling attempt.

Dozens of migrants were packed into the back of a truck found on the outskirts of San Antonio on June 27.

Two Americans have been indicted in federal court in that case and could face the death penalty if convicted. Two Mexicans have been charged with lesser crimes.

On Friday, Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez suspected the migrants were dehydrated due to the heat of the train cars during warm weather, KSAT television reported.

“It’s sad to see that so many undocumented immigrants were found in this condition, and two of them lost their lives. It’s heartbreaking,” KSAT quoted Rodriguez as saying.

The Union Pacific railroad would lead the investigation, Uvalde police said.

The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass, Texas, said on Twitter it was aware of the incident and in communication with U.S. officials to determine if any of the victims were Mexican.

Homeland Security had yet to determine the nationalities of the victims or whether any families or children were among them, a department official with knowledge of the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Knippa is about 72 miles (115 km) west of San Antonio and about 120 miles (190 km) from the Mexican border.

It is near the town of Uvalde, which was the scene of a mass shooting at an elementary school in May last year that killed 19 school children and two teachers.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Brad Brooks, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)