Author: completebodyneeds

Florida’s attorney general this week rejected the $18 billion settlement with Meta, calling it too soft on the social media giant formerly known as Facebook. Florida will pursue its own litigation against Meta. “The payouts to the states are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement, according to Reuters and other news services. “We’ll see them at trial.” The only other state that wasn’t part of the deal is New Mexico, Reuters reported. New Mexico secured almost $1 billion in payouts after winning…

A new study drawing on telematics data confirms that far more drivers are using cellphones in the lead-up to crashes than is reflected in police reports, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The data, derived from driver-enrolled safe-driving apps, show that cellphone use prior to crashes is undercounted in police reports by a factor of at least 7. “It’s widely accepted that police reports often fail to capture the role of cellphones in crashes. Many smartphone functions are hard for a witness to see, and drivers are reluctant to admit being distracted,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “Telematics…

Meta’s move to restrict teenagers’ use of social media in the U.S. shows companies have tools to better protect young people online, Australian officials said on Thursday, while in the Philippines, an official said the U.S. company had pledged to boost protection there too. Meta’s up to $18 billion settlement with nearly all U.S. states over social media harm to teenagers has opened a new front in a global government fight to protect children and curb addiction to platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Governments around the world are trying to curb children’s access to harmful online content, including a…

Six months after US-Israeli strikes disrupted Middle Eastern fossil fuel production and turned the Strait of Hormuz into a naval battleground, the world is getting a fuller picture of how the Iran war has reshaped the economics of energy. A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil-fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging. Global fossil fuel importers have paid more than $330 billion in extra costs — an amount equal to Finland’s 2025 gross domestic product — since the war…

A merchant ship caught fire and sank off the coast of Romania in the Black Sea on Thursday evening, likely after being hit, Romanian President Nicusor Dan and authorities said. The Romanian Border Police on Friday confirmed the fire on board a commercial ship sailing through Romania’s exclusive economic zone, but did not provide a cause. Black Sea shipping and port facilities have been targeted repeatedly since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, with the pace of attacks escalating in 2026. “The ship was hit… it seems to have sunk,” Dan told journalists during a news conference in…

Artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic PBC, along with more than 100 other tech and financial services organizations, warned that businesses and governments must do more to prepare for and defend against AI-enabled hacks. In an open letter Thursday, the AI startups, along with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and others, called for organizations, governments and technology and AI companies to focus on making cyber defense “an immediate leadership priority” and to fix existing weaknesses in their own software. The letter also asks cybersecurity companies to help defend against “AI-enabled attacks” and says governments should coordinate communication between themselves and…

Kalshi Inc. has entered a partnership with The Weather Company to bolster the data it uses to settle contracts in rapidly growing weather and climate prediction markets. The prediction platform is seeking to establish market-implied probabilities as another source of weather information, while promoting the contracts as a tool for companies to manage risk. Under the deal announced Thursday, The Weather Company also plans to add Kalshi’s real-time weather probabilities for some users of its weather.com website and mobile app. Weather betting has boomed on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, where individual traders and meteorological experts put money behind…

This article is part of a sponsored series by Vertafore. Over the past year, artificial intelligence has quietly moved from experimentation to everyday business operations. Companies have formalized their AI use for everything from drafting client communications, automating workflows, analyzing financial data, supporting hiring decisions, and accelerating customer service. In addition, companies may not even realize how deeply AI is embedded in the software they use every day. At the same time, insurance carriers are rethinking how those risks are covered. Policy language around AI exposure is evolving quickly. New exclusions are emerging. Specialty products are entering the market. And…

A New Hampshire man faces multiple charges after police say he stole a rescue truck from one of the first responder agencies responding to his burning home in Dalton. At approximately 3:50 a.m. on August 25, State Troopers were responding to assist members of Dalton Fire & Rescue with a house fire in Dalton when they learned that the owner of the home, identified as Nestor Roman II, had stolen a Whitefield Fire & Rescue vehicle. Police said Roman then drove the stolen vehicle east on Faraway Road. While driving the stolen rescue vehicle, Roman struck another Whitefield Fire &…

More than a dozen corporate executives have been recruited by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to serve on a new business advisory council, as the democratic socialist leader seeks to improve his relations with a business community wary of his progressive views on the economy. Among those joining the group, which is expected to meet with Mamdani on a quarterly basis, are Robert Wolf, the former chairman and chief executive of UBS Americas, Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of the yogurt maker Chobani, and Priscilla Sims Brown, the president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank. Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York,…