National News at a Glance

Trump Signs Spending Bill, Reversing Veto Threat and Avoiding Government Shutdown

President Donald Trump — hours after threatening to veto a $1.3 trillion spending bill and throwing the capital into turmoil — signed it into law Friday, yielding to advisers and Republican leaders who urged him against manufacturing a government shutdown crisis. Even as he signed the bill, the president seethed about being forced to swallow legislation that broadly repudiated his agenda. His stated reason was its lack of funding for his border wall, but that was only one disappointment in a measure that stopped deep cuts to foreign aid, the diplomatic corps and environmental programs; and thwarted a push to fund vouchers for private and parochial schools.

Justice Department Proposes Banning Bump Stocks, Setting Aside Its Own Recommendations

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the Justice Department was proposing to ban bump stocks through regulations rather than wait for Congress to act, a move that defies recommendations by federal law enforcement officials. The department said it was publishing for public comment a proposed rule “that would define ‘machine gun’ to include bump stock-type devices under federal law,” Sessions said in a statement. A bump stock ban would defy Justice Department officials, who have concluded they could not, under existing law, stop the sales of bump stocks, which let semi-automatic guns mimic automatic fire, and congressional action was needed. But Sessions said the department had worked around those concerns.

U.S. Charges 9 Iranians in Huge Theft of Intellectual Property

Nine Iranians stole secrets from U.S. government agencies, universities and companies in a yearslong cyberattack, federal law enforcement officials said Friday. The suspects worked as managers, contractors, associates and hackers for hire at the Mabna Institute, based in Iran, a contractor for the Iranian government working on behalf of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which benefited from the sensitive information obtained in the hacking, the officials said. The suspects live in Iran and will not be extradited; the United States and Iran have no diplomatic relations. Because of the indictment, the Iranians will not be able to travel abroad without risk of arrest.

Bolton Was Early Beneficiary of Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook Data

The political action committee founded by John R. Bolton, President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser, was one of the earliest customers of Cambridge Analytica, which it hired to develop psychological profiles of voters with data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook profiles, according to former Cambridge employees and company documents. Bolton’s super PAC spent nearly $1.2 million for “survey research,” a term campaigns use for polling, according to campaign finance records. But the contract broadly describes the services to be delivered by Cambridge as “behavioral microtargeting with psychographic messaging.” To do that, Cambridge used Facebook data, according to the documents and two former employees.

Austin Bomber Had a List of Other Potential Targets

Mark A. Conditt, who terrorized Austin, Texas, for nearly three weeks with a series of deadly bombings, left behind evidence of potential future targets before he killed himself Wednesday, a law enforcement official said Friday. Officials were examining these future targets as part of the investigation. The official declined to describe these targets in detail, but said they were a mix of locations that had no common thread linking them. On Friday, law enforcement officials said they were still evaluating evidence and leads from the public in an effort to build a timeline of the bomber’s activities. But they appeared to be learning little about Conditt’s motives.

Blaze Erupts Beneath a Harlem Movie Set, and a Firefighter Dies Rushing In

New York City firefighter Michael Davidson would be at the front of the hose line, leading the charge into a burning building. That’s where he was Thursday night, after his engine company arrived at a once-storied Harlem jazz club where a fire raged in the cellar. In recent weeks the former club had been transformed into a movie set. On the call, Davidson and his team went looking for the flames in the cellar. Conditions worsened and the team moved back. When they got out, Davidson was not with them. Other firefighters found him above the cellar. He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he died.