North America

SAN SALVADOR, Feb 24 (Reuters) - El Salvador's government moved thousands of suspected gang members to a newly opened "mega prison" on Friday, the latest step in a controversial crackdown on crime that has caused the Central American nation's prison population to soar.

"This will be their new home, where they won't be able to do any more harm to the population," President Nayib Bukele wrote on Twitter.

Around 2,000 accused gang members were moved to the 40,000-person-capacity prison, considered to be the largest in the Americas, early Friday morning.

NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks fell on Friday as a hotter-than-expected inflation report rattled Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 336.99 points, or 1.02 percent, to 32,816.92. The S&P 500 sank 42.28 points, or 1.05 percent, to 3,970.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 195.46 points, or 1.69 percent, to 11,394.94.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- More than 100,000 homes and businesses across California were left in the dark early Friday as a heavy winter storm continued lashing the most populous state in the United States.

According to PowerOutage.US, a website that tracks, records and aggregates power outages across the country and updates its data every 10 minutes, about 116,000 California customers were without electricity as of 10:00 a.m. local time Friday.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called for preventing further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and giving peace "a chance."

"We must prevent further escalation," he told a Security Council high-level meeting on Ukraine, which was convened on the first anniversary of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and attended by about 30 foreign ministers and diplomats.

"We must all encourage every meaningful effort to end the bloodshed and, at long last, give peace a chance," said Guterres.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An appeals court has struck down a federal fisheries management rule requiring operators of privately owned charter boats in the Gulf of Mexico to equip their vessels with tracking devices, a victory for a group of Louisiana and Florida charter operators who challenged the rule in a 2020 lawsuit.

Thursday’s ruling by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed a lower court decision upholding the regulation, which had been developed to help regulators keep track of the amount of fish caught on recreational charter vessels.

BOSTON (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. John Olver, a Democrat who represented western Massachusetts communities for more than two decades in Congress, has died. He was 86.

Olver served in both the Massachusetts House and Senate before winning a 1991 special election for the Congressional seat left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Silvio O. Conte.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina business magnate has been indicted again on federal criminal charges, this time on accusations that he conspired to skim large amounts of money from his insurance companies, then lied about it to regulators to hide the scheme with two co-conspirators.

A 13-count grand jury indictment in Charlotte was filed Thursday against Greg E. Lindberg of Durham, whom federal prosecutors allege has defrauded thousands of policyholders, news outlets reported.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Three defendants from an extended family arrested in a 2018 law enforcement raid on a ramshackle desert encampment rejected compromise offers from prosecutors to resolve kidnapping, terrorism and weapons charges in proceedings Friday at U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — At age 9, T’yonna Major excelled at her school work and in gymnastics, shown flexing her arms after competitions with newly won medals around her neck in photos her proud dad posted on social media.

“She was a light to everyone that knew her,” the girl’s father, Tokiyo Major, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe, where he has asked for donations to help pay for his daughter’s funeral. “She was everything to us.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first combination test for flu and C OVID-19 that can be used at home, giving consumers an easy way to determine if a runny nose is caused by either disease.

The Lucira COVID-19 & Flu Home test, which can be purchased without a prescription, uses self-collected nasal swab samples and delivers results in about 30 minutes, the agency said.