North America

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.

Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, the holding company for Facebook and Instagram, were disclosed in court documents filed late Thursday. It will still need to be approved by a judge in a San Francisco federal court hearing set for March.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) — A teenager was killed during a shooting at the Mall of America on Friday that sent frightened customers at the nation’s largest shopping center racing into a lockdown just before the holiday weekend, police said.

Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said the victim was a 19-year-old man. A bystander’s jacket was also grazed by a bullet during the shooting at the mall’s Nordstrom location.

ATLANTA (AP) — A special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia appears to be wrapping up its work, but many questions remain.

The investigation is one of several that could result in criminal charges against the former president as he asks voters to return him to the White House in 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 117th Congress opened with the unfathomable Jan. 6, 2021, mob siege of the Capitol and is closing with unprecedented federal criminal referrals of the former president over the insurrection — all while conducting one of the most consequential legislative sessions in recent memory.

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — A wild winter storm continued to envelop much of the United States on Saturday, bringing blinding blizzards, freezing rain, flooding and life-threatening cold that created mayhem for those traveling for the Christmas holiday.

The storm that arrived earlier in the week downed power lines, littered highways with piles of cars in deadly accidents and led to mass flight cancellations.

WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed the Defense Authorization Act, but he voiced concerns about several of its provisions, including one that he said could hamper the administration's prosecution of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

"I urge the Congress to eliminate these restrictions as soon as possible," Biden said in a statement, referring to a provision barring the use of funds to transfer certain detainees into the United States.

WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Friday began debate on a $1.66 trillion government funding bill, with Republican leader Kevin McCarthy railing against the measure funding all federal agencies through Sept. 30.

Passage of the Senate-approved measure, which also dispatches more emergency aid to Ukraine, in the House would send it to President Joe Biden to sign into law before a midnight Friday (0500 GMT Saturday) deadline when temporary funds would expire.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Over 200 million people, or roughly 60 percent of the U.S. population, are under some form of winter weather warnings or advisories across the United States, said the National Weather Service (NWS) on Thursday.

"A tremendously impactful winter storm will continue to affect large portions of the nation late this week and going into the holiday weekend," said the NWS Weather Prediction Center on Thursday evening.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Thursday that the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has taken delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster its forces as it fights side-by-side with Russian troops in Ukraine.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said U.S. intelligence officials determined that North Korea completed an initial arms shipment that included rockets and missiles last month.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Hairdresser Grisel Garcés survived a harrowing, four-month journey from her native Venezuela through tropical jungles, migrant detention centers in southern Mexico and then jolting railcar rides north toward the U.S. border.