Top Biden administration officials met Friday with port operators ahead of a possible strike at East and Gulf coast ports, with a union contract expiring after Monday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, told members of the United States Maritime Alliance that they should be at the table with the union and negotiating ahead of the contract expiring. That’s according to a White House official who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Administration officials have delivered a similar message to the union this week.

The White House is trying to encourage the alliance, which represents port operators and shipping carriers, to reach what both sides would consider to be a fair agreement with the International Longshoremen’s Association. There is the possibility of a strike once the contract lapses, with unionized workers objecting to the addition of new technologies to U.S. ports that they say could ultimately cause job losses.

President Joe Biden’s team does not see a potential strike as necessarily disruptive to the economy in the short term, since retail inventories have increased as companies planned for the contract dispute. The federal government also has additional tools to monitor supply chains that it lacked during the COVID-19 pandemic when long wait times at ports and higher shipping costs pushed up inflation.

Adams pleads not guilty to bribery charges

A muted but defiant Mayor Eric Adams, in back-to-back appearances inside a federal courthouse in Manhattan and outside its granite facade Friday, professed his innocence of criminal charges including bribery and fraud and stood by as his lawyer railed against the evidence in a case that threatens to topple his embattled administration.

“I am not guilty, Your Honor,” Adams said at his midday arraignment before Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker in a 26th-floor courtroom in lower Manhattan as reporters looked on from the gallery and via livestreams in several overflow courtrooms.

The indictment against Adams, a 57-page description by prosecutors of free, or heavily discounted, overseas trips and illegal campaign contributions from Turkey in return for political favors, has upended New York City’s political landscape. The will-he-or-won’t-he questions about whether Adams would resign seemed to overshadow even the upcoming presidential election as a tumultuous week in the city drew to a close.

At around the same time, federal and state agents seized the phone of the mayor’s chief adviser and perhaps closest ally, Ingrid P. Lewis-Martin.

U.S. indicts Iranians in Trump hack

A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted three members of a cyberespionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard for mounting a wide-ranging attack targeting politicians, officials and journalists that led to the hacking of the Trump campaign.

The Iranians unleashed a barrage of malicious emails to a wide array of targets in recent years, but in 2024 began focusing on undermining former President Donald Trump, whom they regard as their most implacable enemy, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.

The attacks were “part of Iran’s continuing efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and unlawfully acquire information related to former and current U.S. officials,” prosecutors wrote.

The indictment, while expected, highlighted the heightened threat posed by hostile international actors — Iran, Russia and China chief among them — using cyberattacks in hopes of disrupting the U.S. election and intimidating domestic dissidents abroad.

Kentucky sues Express Scripts over opioids

Kentucky’s attorney general has sued Express Scripts, claiming the big pharmacy benefit manager was at the center of an opioid dispensing chain that fueled a deadly addiction crisis still haunting his state.

The lawsuit Attorney General Russell Coleman filed this week in state court claims St. Louis-based Express Scripts and its affiliated organizations colluded with opioid manufacturers in deceptive marketing schemes to increase sales of the addictive drugs.

The result was an epidemic of “overdose and death caused by an oversupply of opioids flooding communities from powerful corporations who sought to profit at the expense of the public,” the suit says.

Express Scripts responded Friday that it has long worked to combat opioid overuse and abuse and will “vigorously contest these baseless allegations in court.”

Arrested pastor can sue local police

The police officers who arrested a Black pastor while he watered his neighbor’s plants can be sued, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, reversing a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the pastor’s lawsuit.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the three officers who arrested Michael Jennings in Childersburg, Alabama, lacked probable cause for the arrest and are therefore not shielded by qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability while performing their duties as long as their actions don’t violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.

Jennings was arrested in May 2022 after a white neighbor reported him to police as he was watering his friend’s garden while they were out of town. The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID. Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was “Pastor Jennings” and that he lived across the street.

Combs hit with another sex abuse lawsuit

Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with new sexual assault allegations Friday as a woman filed a lawsuit in New York saying she was repeatedly raped and drugged at the music mogul’s homes and became pregnant after one of the encounters.

It’s the latest of several similar lawsuits by women against Combs, who also was arrested last week on a federal sex trafficking indictment.

The lawsuit was filed against Combs, his companies and several associates and seeks undisclosed damages for physical injuries, severe emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety and other harms. A lawyer for Combs, his company and one of his representatives did not immediately return emails seeking comment.

The woman in the latest lawsuit, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, accuses Combs of sexually assaulting her while she was unconscious from drugs, and it alleges Combs and his acquaintances recorded sexual encounters without her permission. She says that she met Combs overseas in fall 2020 and that the assaults and harassment continued through July this year.

Shooting of man with dementia probed

An Alabama police officer is being investigated for allegedly shooting and killing a 68-year-old man with dementia after his family called for help on Sunday, according to authorities and the family’s lawyer.

A Muscle Shoals police officer fatally shot Ronald Parrish at around 5 p.m. Sunday, according to a statement from the police department.

Tyler Mann, an attorney for Parrish’s family, told The Associated Press on Friday that Parrish had dementia and was experiencing an episode of extreme paranoia. Mann said Parrish’s wife called her two sons and then eventually emergency responders to help de-escalate.

A statement released Thursday from the Muscle Shoals Police Department said that three police officers encountered Parrish in his kitchen holding a steak knife after arriving at his residence. The statement said that body-camera footage shows the officers asking the man approximately 102 times for about eight minutes to put the knife down.

—From news services