The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday, Oct. 22, edition that a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25-billion after a jury found it misled consumers by allowing a political consulting firm linked to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign to access data from millions of Facebook users without their consent (all figures U.S.). A Reuters dispatch to The Globe reports that Mexico Attorney-General Raul Torrez said it was one of the largest single state verdicts against a company in American history. "Facebook's wrongdoing -- over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public -- goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order after the verdict. He found that a penalty of more than $219-billion was warranted, based on state law, but he reduced the figure to $25-billion. In a statement, C.J. Mahoney, Meta's chief legal officer, said the company is confident it will win on appeal. Mr. Mahoney said: "This ruling, and the Attorney-General's approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico. At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say on-line."