US Round-up: US returns $505 million, US court upholds, Puerto Rico open

But Puerto Rico's recovery from last year’s Hurricane Maria has been a “mixed bag,” Rossello told Reuters on Thursday, acknowledging that the bankrupt U.S. territory while improving, is far from out of the woods.

U.S. returns $505 million to victims of giant payday lending scheme

U.S. authorities said on Thursday they were mailing more than $505 million of refund checks to nearly 1.18 million people who were victimized in a massive payday lending scheme run by former race car driver and convicted racketeer Scott Tucker. The payout announced by the Federal Trade Commission, which is working with the Department of Justice, stemmed from a $1.27 billion civil judgment that the FTC won in September 2016 against Tucker, who ran AMG Services Inc, and some of his companies.

U.S. court upholds Louisiana restriction on abortion clinics

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday upheld a Louisiana provision that requires doctors who perform abortions in the state to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. In a 2-1 ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the judges said the Louisiana provision was different than one in Texas that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because it would not put an undue burden on women.

Exclusive: Puerto Rico open for tourists despite 'mixed-bag' recovery - governor

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello flew to New York this week on a mission: persuade potential tourists that the hurricane-ravaged island was ready for their return. But Puerto Rico's recovery from last year's Hurricane Maria has been a "mixed bag," Rossello told Reuters on Thursday, acknowledging that the bankrupt U.S. territory while improving, is far from out of the woods.

With tears and anger, Trump court pick denies sex assault allegation

Fighting to salvage his U.S. Supreme Court nomination, Brett Kavanaugh angrily and tearfully denied on Thursday a university professor's accusation that he sexually assaulted her 36 years ago and complained about a "political hit" after she told a dramatic Senate hearing she was "100 percent certain" he did it. Christine Blasey Ford, her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen by President Donald Trump for a lifetime job on the top U.S. court. Ford told the committee she feared Kavanaugh would rape and accidentally kill her during the alleged assault when both were high school students in Maryland.

Waterways rise in South Carolina, residents told to leave

Authorities urged thousands of people to leave their homes around the city of Georgetown, South Carolina as water dumped by long-departed Hurricane Florence surged down rivers and threatened to bring devastating floods. Water levels were still rising early on Tuesday, said emergency services there, more than a week after the storm first made landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast and killed 46 people mostly in North Carolina.

Outside attorney walks difficult line at Senate's Kavanaugh hearing

Rachel Mitchell had a difficult mission as the lawyer hired by Republican senators to question the woman accusing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault: test her memory but treat her respectfully. At a dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, Mitchell walked that fine line with accuser Christine Blasey Ford, but produced only mixed results and conceded the difficulty of the challenge before her.

U.S. Supreme Court denies last-minute Texas death row appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute appeal on Thursday and cleared the path for Texas to execute a man convicted of kidnapping a woman and choking her to death while driving. Lawyers for the inmate, Daniel Acker, 46, argued he did not murder Marquetta George, his girlfriend. They said she died after jumping out of a moving vehicle and that he was convicted due to faulty forensic evidence.

Broad losses, scant insurance coverage for storm-hit Puerto Rico firms: Fed report

Only a tiny fraction of small businesses in Puerto Rico was fully insured for losses arising from last year's Hurricane Maria, which hit revenue or raised costs for more than three-quarters of them, according to a Federal Reserve report on Thursday. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which surveyed more than 400 small businesses, found that some 63 percent of them had insurance in September last year, when Maria, the most powerful storm in almost a century, battered the Caribbean island.

Man deported six times charged with murder in California bludgeonings

A man who police said fled to California from Texas after being questioned in the disappearance of two relatives was charged on Wednesday in Los Angeles with bludgeoning eight men, three fatally, in a string of attacks aimed mostly at homeless victims. Ramon Alberto Escobar, 47, an El Salvador native and convicted burglar who has been repeatedly deported from the United States, was arrested on Monday after he allegedly clubbed a sleeping man in the head with bolt-cutters in the ocean-front city of Santa Monica, authorities said.

Kavanaugh's fellow Yalies transfixed by Senate hearing

In a crowded lounge at Yale Law School, cheers erupted when the middle-aged woman on the TV screen told a Senate panel that she had no doubt that Brett Kavanaugh, the Yale graduate nominated to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her when they were teens. Like millions of Americans who tuned into the hearings, the young lawyers-in-training gathered on the New Haven campus hung on every word of the testimony, keenly aware of what the spectacle that was unfolding in Washington would mean for the political direction of the country for years to come.