North America

WASHINGTON, Mar 27 (NNN-XINHUA) – A nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of Minnesota was taken offline this week, after a new leak of radioactive water was discovered.

Xcel Energy, a U.S.-regulated energy company based in Minneapolis, said this week that, it began powering down its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant, “to allow it to more quickly perform the repairs needed to permanently resolve a leak of water containing tritium” at the facility.

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security worries about TikTok, alleging China's government had access to the short video app's user data.

In the United States, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden's administration legal authority to seek a ban. Devices owned by the U.S. government were recently banned from having the app installed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow was sitting in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s conference room at the Pentagon, listening to him make the case that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — China’s global campaign to win friends and influence policy has blossomed in a surprising place: Utah, a deeply religious and conservative state with few obvious ties to the world’s most powerful communist country.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Jim McKee is standing at the end of a line that snakes through five aisles of fiction inside the Books-A-Million store in Florida’s capital city.

He is smiling because in a matter of minutes, the book he’s holding will be signed by its author, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who McKee believes should be the nation’s next president. But as a former Donald Trump loyalist, the 44-year-old Tallahassee attorney almost whispers when he first says it out loud.

NEW YORK (AP) — North Carolina-based First Citizens will buy Silicon Valley Bank, the tech industry-focused financial institution that collapsed earlier this month, rattling the banking industry and sending shockwaves around the world.

The deal could reassure investors at a time of shaken confidence in banks, though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators had already taken extraordinary steps to head off a wider banking crisis by guaranteeing that depositors in SVB and another failed U.S. bank would be able to access all of their money.

ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) — A massive tornado obliterated the modest one-story home that Kimberly Berry shared with her two daughters in the Mississippi Delta flatlands, leaving only a foundation and some random belongings — a toppled refrigerator, a dresser and matching nightstand, a bag of Christmas decorations, some clothing.

During the storm Friday, Berry and her 12-year-old daughter huddled and prayed at a nearby church that was barely damaged, while her 25-year-old daughter survived in the hard-hit town of Rolling Fork, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) away.

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security worries about TikTok, alleging China's government had access to the short video app's user data.

In the United States, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden's administration legal authority to seek a ban. Devices owned by the U.S. government were recently banned from having the app installed.

WASHINGTON, March 25 (Xinhua) -- A nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of Minnesota was taken offline this week after a new leak of radioactive water was discovered.

Xcel Energy, a U.S.-regulated energy company based in Minneapolis, said this week that it would begin powering down its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant on Friday "to allow it to more quickly perform the repairs needed to permanently resolve a leak of water containing tritium" at the facility.

NEW YORK (AP) — The actor Jonathan Majors was arrested Saturday in New York on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment, authorities said.

New York City police said that Majors, star of the recently released “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” was involved in a domestic dispute with a 30-year-old woman. Police responded around 11 a.m. to a 911 call inside an apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.