U.S. lawmakers grilled chief executives of AT&T and Time Warner about whether their proposed tie-up would benefit consumers and called for antitrust officials to closely scrutinize potential competitive harm from the deal.

At a hearing Wednesday, Republicans and Democrats questioned whether the merger will give AT&T the incentive to harm rival content distributors that compete with its DirecTV unit as well as entertainment producers that compete with Time Warner, which owns HBO and CNN.

“We have seen this plot before,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “Like a tired movie franchise, we can predict the ending before it begins.”Lawmakers are scrutinizing the $85.4 billion deal that would create a telecommunications and media empire that will own much of the programming it provides to subscribers of its wireless, internet and pay-TV services. AT&T serves 133 million U.S. wireless customers and 25 million video subscribers. While Congress doesn't decide whether the merger proceeds, it has oversight of the regulators that do.

Because AT&T is a distributor and Time Warner is a supplier of content, the deal doesn't raise the traditional competitive problems that come with combining direct competitors.

Starbucks unveils ambitious plans

Starbucks, looking to the future as its longtime CEO moves to other projects, plans to open 12,000 new locations within five years to boost its number of coffee shops worldwide by almost 50 percent.

The Seattle-based chain is also adding more food to its menu next year. And sometime in 2017, customers will be able to talk to the Starbucks app to order a latte or cookie instead of tapping their smartphones.

Starbucks outlined its five-year growth plans to investors Wednesday, about a week after it announced that Howard Schultz, who has built Starbucks into a global brand with 25,000 locations since first joining the company more than 30 years ago, would step down as CEO in April. October sees fewer job postings

U.S. employers posted fewer jobs in October than September, but openings are still at a healthy level that points to steady hiring ahead.

Job openings slipped 1.8 percent to 5.5 million, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Hiring also fell to just under 5.1 million.

While solid, the data weakened from September, suggesting that hiring is unlikely to accelerate beyond its current moderate pace any time soon. Growth has been sluggish for most of this year, though it picked up in the July-September quarter.

The data follow last week's jobs report, which showed that employers added 178,000 jobs, matching this year's average monthly gain.