gshc2020.com

During ⁠opening statements in a seven-week ​trial in state court, the state’s lawyers said Meta researchers repeatedly flagged teenagers’ compulsive use of the platform – leading to eating disorders, depression and self-harm. But despite those warnings, Meta did not ⁠disable features such as autoplay, notifications and infinite scroll which, the lawyers said, were designed to keep teens on Instagram as long as possible and increase the number of ads they viewed.

An attorney for Meta countered the company has been transparent ⁠about the risks teens face on Instagram and the amount of dangerous content it finds. The company works hard to find problems and fix them, the attorney said.

Tennessee’s lawsuit is one of 42 cases brought against Meta by individual states across the US. It comes after the company suffered a damaging loss in New Mexico in March, where a jury found the company liable for harming children and ordered it to pay $375m in civil penalties. It also comes as thousands of other lawsuits have been filed against Meta and other social media companies by families, school districts and state attorneys general.

The lawsuit in Tennessee, filed by attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti’s office, seeks financial penalties ‌and a court order directing Instagram to modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to teens’ mental health.

If the jury finds ‌Meta liable, the trial will enter a second phase where the judge will decide damages.

During the opening statements, Tom Cartmell, a lawyer for the state, said Instagram triggers dopamine hits that promote addiction and that has a particularly strong impact on the brains of kids.

Cartmell also showed the jury an internal document from 2017 in which Meta product managers wrote that features such as notifications and infinite scroll “are inherently at odds with well-being” and said that the company needed to warn ​the public.

“This warning never came,” Cartmell said.

Kevin Huff, a lawyer for Meta, said documents such as those Cartmell cited are proof that the company is searching for problems on its platforms, so it can improve them. The company has developed tools to help limit problematic use of Instagram, Huff said, and seeks to empower teachers and parents to help keep teens safe.

“We think the evidence will show that Meta is doing its part and empowering others to ​do their part, because protecting teens online is a ​shared responsibility,” Huff said. “It takes a village.”

The next lawsuit over social media addiction and harm to children is slated to go to trial next month in Oakland, California. It will be the first federal trial against the social media companies, including Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap, and was brought by attorneys general from 29 states. %!s()

Countries like Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea – which rely on Middle East oil for up to 90% of their imports – are working to secure supplies after Yemen’s Houthis launched a blockade of Saudi Arabian shipping passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait, which forms the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

Many countries in Asia are still reeling from Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz in March, which forced governments across the region to compete for increasingly dwindling supplies of Middle Eastern crude oil.

“They’re scraping at the bottom of the barrel in terms of global reserve capacity … there’s very little inventory now,” says Ahmed Helal, from the Asia Group thinktank.

Japan – along with neighbouring countries – is already spending billions on fuel subsidies to keep the cost of petroleum down, hitting government budgets hard. ⁠After the announcement from the Houthis, some like South Korea were quick to extend those fuel ​tax cuts.

Meanwhile, the spike in the cost of imports has led to a rise in inflation, piling pressure on the governments of regional giants such as Japan and Indonesia.

Now, the threat to Red Sea shipping is set to increase the pressure. In March, Saudi Arabia responded to the closure of the strait of Hormuz by rerouting oil exports from the gulf on the country’s east coast, to the west coast port of Yanbu in the Red Sea which now handles more than 70% of Riyadh’s crude oil exports.

That proved to be a lifeline for many Asian nations, like China – which is the largest buyer of Saudi oil – and India, Japan and South Korea, which follow close behind.

Some Japanese and South Korean refiners are reportedly seeking to circumvent the Houthi threat by rerouting cargos north through the Suez canal, to the Mediterranean and around Africa. But this lengthy detour comes with huge costs.

A VLCC, the largest size of oil tanker, is too big to pass through the Suez canal fully loaded, meaning cargos would need to unload up to half of their oil in the Red Sea, have it transported through Egypt’s Sumed pipeline to the Mediterranean coast, where they would then pick it up after transiting through the canal, adding costs and logistical complications to the journey.

Rerouting the oil via the Mediterranean and around the Cape of Good Hope would also more than double the voyage time for most Asian importers, further adding to freight and fuel costs.

For now, it’s a cost many may be willing to incur. The Houthis targeted at least two Saudi oil tankers exiting the Red Sea last week and launched attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure this week. The number of vessels transiting through Bab ⁠al-Mandab has fallen to the lowest level in months, with international shipping apparently paralysed by the Houthi threat.

“Changing behaviour by tankers tells us that they are ⁠taking the ​threats seriously,” says Matt Smith, a commodity research director at Kpler, a market tracker.

Insurers have responded in kind, with war risk premiums paid by tankers reportedly doubling in the last week, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of a voyage.

Those costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers in Asia, who are already reeling from the energy shock imposed by the US-Iran war.

“Businesses are going to have to close. You might have attempts to reduce consumption at peak hours. And you might have, in some extreme cases, higher risk of default,” says Helal.

A vulnerability exposed

After transits through the strait of Hormuz slowed to a halt in March, many countries in Asia rushed to mitigate the effects of the disruption. Coal-fired power plants blazed back into use, a four-day working week was imposed in Sri Lanka, while staff in Vietnam were urged to work from home. But now, resources and patience are running low.

The Houthi threat has inspired the Philippines, India and South Korea to all bolster their strategic reserves of oil and gas. Meanwhile across the region, the crisis has added a renewed urgency to the renewables transition.

But with no short-term solutions, Asian importers are reportedly looking farther afield for supplies, with Russia once again likely to benefit from chaos in the Middle East.

Earlier this year Japan and South Korea reportedly bought Russian oil for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in ‌2022. In the past week, Reuters reported that Chinese refiner ramped up purchases ⁠of sanctioned Russian crude oil to counter the latest disruptions.

The disruption and chaos points to a truth that experts say governments in Asia have ignored for too long: their energy systems remain far too vulnerable.

Helal predicts this crisis will force many governments to reckon with their supply chains and their capacity to store strategic reserves.

But for now, they simply have to secure supplies, he says, because “there’s very little in the tank for them to draw on.” %!s()

“Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists,” according to Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represents her.

Saar began her career in design and shifted to art at the age of 35. She continued to make art into her 90s. Saar grew up in Pasadena and was part of a community of Black artists in nearby Altadena; she often cited Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers as an early source of inspiration.

Throughout her career, Saar combed flea markets and yard sales for discarded objects showing how consumer culture depicted Black Americans.

“My work has to do with recycling,” she told a documentary crew in the 1970s, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Each item I collect has a certain energy from its previous function that carries over into its new use.”

She is perhaps best known for her 1972 revolutionary reimagination of Aunt Jemima, the image once used to market a pancake mix and syrup brand founded at the tail-end of the 19th century. Aunt Jemima was based on “mammy” images that depicted enslaved Black women as contented domestic servants. Saar’s Liberation of Aunt Jemima holds a rifle in her left hand, and a grenade wedged between her right arm and chest.

Quaker Oats retired the Aunt Jemima image in 2021.

Saar work also used natural materials gathered from travels around the world exploring the African diaspora and spirituality.

“Wherever I go, I say, ‘What’s the alternative religion?’ because every country has it,” she said in a 2021 interview with the Guardian. “There are lots of other people that believe in magic and they have their own religion, and I was just really interested in what they did and what their ceremonies were, but mostly what the visual images would be.”

Saar taught and mentored a generation of Black artists, including the painter Kerry James Marshall. Saar has long been considered a leading figure of the west coast arts landscape.

In spring 2026, Saar was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. %!s()

Sonder is back. Sort of.

TravelAI, a Canadian AI travel company, announced Monday it purchased the Sonder brand and relaunched Sonder.com. The deal did not include Sonder properties or its operating business.

Sonder, which operated boutique hotels and short-term rentals, filed for bankruptcy and shuttered its operations in November after hotel giant Marriott International abruptly ended its partnership with the Airbnb rival. Guests were forced to vacate properties mid-stay, while employees were left without jobs overnight.

Despite the chaotic ending to a travel company valued at $2.2 billion in 2021, TravelAI said the Sonder name still carries weight with travelers — and in search results.

"There is a large percentage of travelers who still search for Sonder every month who were unaware of the issues from last November," John Lyotier, CEO and founder of TravelAI, told Business Insider. "What they remember is that they had a great travel experience."

The new Sonder will not operate properties or take reservations. Instead, it will operate as an AI-powered, curated list of urban stays, including boutique hotels, apartments, and homes, and will send users to third-party sites to book, like Vrbo, Expedia, and Booking.com.

Lyotier said TravelAI is trying to capitalize on the "search equity and residual traffic" to Sonder.com to give travelers the same kinds of quality, unique stays that they expected at Sonder properties.

Properties featured on the site meet what TravelAI calls the "Sonder Bar." TravelAI's system bases its curation on reviews, ratings, photos, neighborhood characteristics, and features identified in former Sonder properties.

Of the 10 million properties TravelAI can curate from its partner sites, only about 5% meet the Sonder Bar, Lyotier said.

While he declined to share what TravelAI paid for the Sonder brand and website, he said it was a "good value," that the payback will be measured in "months, not years," and that he has a target of $100 million in bookings via Sonder.com in the first year. As of Monday afternoon, Lyotier said the platform had already generated bookings. The company receives a commission when customers click through and book.

TravelAI has acquired several travel brands over the past several years, including Casai.com, OwnerDirect.com, and Smarttours.com. Sonder is its highest-profile brand acquisition to date, Lyotier said.

Through the Sonder acquisition, Lyotier said TravelAI is also hoping to draw attention to the bigger-picture AI travel technologies it's working on.

That includes Sonder Concierge, a beta tool that recommends properties based on what it learns about an individual traveler's preferences. TravelAI also launched an AI memory tool last month, Traveler.md, that's designed to make those preferences usable across different travel sites and AI assistants.

With relaunching Sonder.com, Lyotier said the company will need to communicate to customers that it's not the same brand that booted them out of hotels and left them stranded on vacation last fall.

"That's a challenge we'll have — making sure that the former customers understand that we are not that old Sonder."

Read next

Kelsey Vlamis

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.Popular storiesDisaster on Denali: Inside a 1,000-foot fall on America's highest peakThrifting is more popular than ever. It's also never been worse.Rolex wouldn't service the vintage watch my mom inherited. Watchmakers say it happens all the time.A tiny, invasive bug and the climate crisis are changing how guitars are made, and shifting the course of music historyThe tourism free-for-all is overGovernment-run boarding schools were founded to 'civilize' Native Americans. Hundreds of dead children remain buried in the schoolyard graves.Meet the Texas minister who helps fly dozens of women to New Mexico every month to get abortionsPeople are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but the air pollution is so bad, it's forcing many to stay insideInside Kabul: An aid worker reveals the devastating chaos that erupted during the US exit from Afghanistan

• Travel
• Artificial Intelligence

Dario Amodei is clearing the air on open-weight AI models.

The Anthropic CEO on Monday pushed back against claims that his AI startup wants Washington to ban open-weight AI models and said that critics have misunderstood the company's position.

"Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don't regard such bans as a useful measure, but let me state it clearly so that there is no doubt: Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models," Amodei wrote in his blog post.

"Open-weights models that don't have dangerous capabilities are a public good," Amodie added.

Rather than banning open models, Amodei said in his blog post that policymakers should focus on preventing advanced AI chips from reaching authoritarian governments, cracking down on industrial-scale AI "distillation" used to copy frontier models

The clarification comes after a Senate proposal sparked fears that Washington could move to restrict open-weight AI models. In response, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Google, OpenAI, and dozens of other companies signed a letter urging lawmakers not to pursue broad limits, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emerging as one of the industry's most outspoken advocates for open-weight AI.

Anthropic declined to sign, fueling speculation that it wants to ban open-weight models to protect its business.

Amodei's post also sharpened one of the biggest fault lines in the AI industry's debate over open-weight models. While he agreed the industry should increase competition and give customers greater control, he rejected the argument that making model weights public inherently makes AI safer.

"I don't agree with the letter's assertions that open-weights models necessarily make it easier to develop safeguards or that broad access to capabilities necessarily helps defenders more than attackers," he wrote, adding that capable models could quickly weaponize pandemic-level viruses, but developing defense could take years.

"It seems at least as likely to me that the opposite will be true," Amodei added.

Read next

Katherine Li

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

• Anthropic
• AI
• Artificial Intelligence
• More