Exclusive: OpenAI Head of Youth and Families Lauren Jonas joins ‘Fox & Friends’ to discuss a new ChatGPT experience designed for teens with built-in safety protections and parental controls
https://youtu.be/OaBG-6jhrXs
7:06
EU facing food crisis
A huge slump in yields will lead to higher grocery bills for consumers, economists have warned
Published 18 Aug, 2026 19:02
Agricultural producers across the EU have warned of sharp drops in yields after Europe has been hit by successive heatwaves this summer. Economists have said the losses are likely to push food prices higher in the coming months.
June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which has warned of a “continued risk of heatwaves affecting much of Europe” through August and into September.
In France, one of the EU’s largest grain producers, groundwater reserves were severely depleted across much of the country by early August, according to the national geological survey.
Prince de Bretagne, a major growers’ cooperative in Brittany, warned last week of a “historic” vegetable crisis. It projected yield declines of 40% for peas, 60% for broccoli, and between 50% and 100% for artichokes this summer.
Eric Legras, president of Unilet, France’s leading association of canned and frozen vegetable producers, said severe heat had also hit northern and southwestern France, describing the crisis as “exceptional.”
Livestock farmers have meanwhile warned of a growing “forage production deficit” ahead of winter. France’s National Committee for the Promotion of Eggs has estimated that heatwaves have cut daily output by around one million eggs, while poultry farms have reported high mortality rates.
In northern Italy, home to one of Europe’s main rice-growing regions, water shortages have left some paddies “completely dead, burnt, with the rice dried out,” according to Coldiretti, the country’s largest farmers’ association.
Farmers in Spain have likewise reported considerable shortfalls in cereal yields, as well as cattle fodder deficits.
The German Farmers’ Association on Tuesday warned that grain production would be 7%, or 3.3 million tons, lower than last year. The worst-hit regions in the south of the country could potentially suffer total crop failures.
In neighboring Poland, business outlet Puls Biznesu predicted last month that persistent drought could force the country to become more reliant on food imports.
Analysts at Zurich Insurance Group and several European banks have estimated that the heatwaves could cost the EU between €50 billion and €180 billion.
https://www.rt.com/news/644377-eu-food-production-down-droughts/
Trump’s State Voter Rolls Push Wins Over More Appeals Judges (1)
Aug. 14, 2026, 4:55 PM EDT;
The full Sixth Circuit won’t revisit the Justice Department’s failed bid for Michigan’s unredacted voter rolls, though nine Republican appointees signaled some support for the Trump administration’s arguments.
Most of the 16 active judges on the right-leaning Cincinnati-based court voted not to rehear a decision by a majority on a three-judge panel in June. However, the decision not to rehear drew two written dissents,both of which took issue with the panel’s ruling that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) didn’t “come into … possession” of the state’s rolls as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1960.They also said the panel was wrong that the DOJ didn’t state a proper “basis” and “purpose” in its demand letters to Benson.
“Under the panel’s opinion, the Attorney General can get the underlying voting records, but he can’t get the list of registered voters,” wrote Judge Amul R. Thapar, appointed to the Sixth Circuit during President Donald Trump’s first term. “So he will have no way of knowing whether ineligible individuals are on the state’s voter rolls.”
“That gap will, in turn, hamper efforts to enforce federal laws aimed at limiting voter fraud and protecting the rights of eligible voters in our elections.”
The DOJ filed 31 lawsuits against numerous states and Washington, DC demanding each hand over its rolls, complete with sensitive voter information. Opponents of the Trump administration’s voting-related efforts say the lawsuits are among several methods the president is using to sow doubt ahead of November’s midterms as he continues to make baseless claims about election integrity.
The department has had no success in cases where courts have ruled; 22 trial judgeshave also sided against it, most recently in Nevada on Friday. With cases pending before several other appeals courts, the issue appears destined for the US Supreme Court.
Read More: DOJ Down Big, But Not Out Yet, in State Voter Rolls Quest
Voter Fraud Concerns
Prior to Friday, US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge John B. Nalbandian was the lone federal judge to voice support for the DOJ’s position. But eight additional judges sided or expressed a willingness to support the substance of Nalbandian’s dissent in the 2-1 June panel ruling.
Thapar’s dissent starts with a recitation of why the Civil Rights Act was needed at the height of segregation and cites problems with voter registrations revealed this year by officials in New Jersey and North Carolina, as well as the Department of Homeland Security.
“Voter fraud waters down every citizen’s right to vote by diluting legitimate ballots with illegitimate ones,” Thapar wrote.
The panel’s majority, he said, “risks turning these grave concerns into reality. How? By gutting one of the federal government’s most important tools to inspect states’ election records, ensure they comply with federal law, and thus protect the integrity of our elections.”
George W. Bush-appointed Judge Richard Allen Griffin wrote a separate dissent that also takes issue with both reasons the panel’s majority ruled against the DOJ.
“In sum, the majority asks the phrase to do more work than contemporaneous legal usage supports,” Griffin said. “It reads ‘come into his possession’ as though Congress had written ‘come into his possession from another’ or ‘received from outside the office.’ But Congress imposed no such limitation.”
Judge Eric E. Murphy, a Trump appointee, said in a concurrence that he likely would’ve aligned with Nalbandian on much of what he expressed in his dissent had Murphy also sat on the panel.
However, “now is not the proper time” for a full-court review, Murphy wrote, noting there is nothing stopping the DOJ from sending a new letter demanding individual voter records used to populate the state’s rolls.
“That path strikes me as more efficient than an en banc rehearing in which some 17 judges might spend more time parsing the meaning of the letters than the meaning of the law,” Murphy said, going on to list several reasons why it’s not time to rehear the case.
Judge Raymond M. Kethledge, a George W. Bush appointee, was the only Republican appointed judge to not sign onto at least one of the dissents or Murphy’s concurrence. None of the judges appointed by Democratic presidents voted to rehear the case or wrote separately.
Intervening defendants are represented by Elias Law Group LLP and Salvatore Prescott Porter & Porter PLLC.
The case is United States v. Benson, 6th Cir. en banc, No. 26-1225, 8/14/26.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/trumps-state-voter-rolls-push-wins-over-more-appellate-judges
CNN 8/18/2026
OpenAI introduces ‘ChatGPT for Teens’ experience amid scrutiny over child safety
OpenAI is rolling out a new “ChatGPT for Teens” experience that it says will provide additional safety protections for teen users.The move comes as OpenAI faces a string of lawsuits alleging that inappropriate conversations with ChatGPT contributed to the harm or deaths of young people.
The experience will bring together new tools and a number of youth safety protections that OpenAI has rolled out over the past year, the company said in a blog post Tuesday.
Those will include nudges for teen users to take a break if they’ve been active for 90 minutes within a three-hour window. OpenAI is also adding options for teens or parents to set “Quiet Hours” when ChatGPT is unavailable or “Study Hours” where ChatGPT’s study mode for learning will be on by default.
The company also said it has improved protections to prevent ChatGPT from expressing personal feelings toward a user.And it’s adding reminders that caution teens to think twice if they try to upload a private or sensitive image to the chatbot.
The new protections will apply “age-appropriate safeguards designed to reduce exposure to content that may be harmful or developmentally inappropriate,” the company said in its Tuesday blog post,” while preserving the ability to learn, create, and explore.”
Users who identify at sign-up that they are under 18 will be automatically placed into the protective settings. OpenAI also says it’s using AI to estimate users’ ages and will apply these protections to users who are suspected to be under 18 regardless of the birthdate in their profile.
Lauren Jonas, OpenAI’s head of youth and families, described ChatGPT for teens as a “dedicated, learning-focused experience for teens with additional protections and safeguards” in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
Nearly a third of American teens use AI chatbots daily, a Pew Research Center studypublished in December found.ChatGPT was by far the most popular AI chatbot in the survey, with more than half of those teens reporting having used it.
OpenAI has faced scrutiny over concerns that ChatGPT risks exposing young people to inappropriate content, exacerbating loneliness or inhibiting learning. The company has faced multiple lawsuits from families who allege that ChatGPT contributed to, or even encouraged, their child’s suicide. The company has pushed back on these allegations.
Last fall,OpenAI introduced controls that it said would let parents disable ChatGPT features like memory and chat history and receive notifications when the system detects “a moment of acute distress” during their child’s use of the chatbot. The company said on Tuesday that in the coming weeks, it will add alerts for parents related to eating disorders.
Since then, the company has continued to face claims that ChatGPT is responsible for harming young people.
Seven families of victims of a school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in April. They allege that ChatGPT was complicit in the injuries or deaths of their children because the shooter allegedly had extensive chatbot conversations related to gun violence. Altmanapologized to the families. In response to the lawsuit, the company said it had already strengthened its guardrails.
In June, the state of Florida sued OpenAI and Altman, claiming that they failed to address ChatGPT’s safety risks for minors. The lawsuit accused ChatGPT of helping mass shooters, encouraging suicide, causing “public humiliation” getting minors addicted to a tool with “no parental oversight” and causing users to lose “critical thinking skills.” OpenAI said at the time that it had “put in place industry leading protections and policies.”
Just last week, a Massachusetts district attorney charged a 17-year-old with two counts of murder in association with the deaths of his mother and brother. The teen had been engaged in conversations with ChatGPT about “theoretical ideas or fantasies regarding killing his family” in the lead-up to the incident, according to a news release from the DA’s office. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case.
OpenAI’s Jonas told CNN on Tuesday that “any one of these instances is too many.”
“Our safety work is never done,” she said. “This is 24/7, 365, a continuous effort to make sure that we’re getting teens the support they need in the moments they need it.”
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/08/18/tech/openai-chatgpt-for-teens
Disney sues Trump’s FCC over ‘retaliatory campaign’ against ABC 1/2
ByBrian Stelter, CNN
Updated: 12:20 PM EDT, Tue August 18, 2026
Disney is going to court to defend its ABC television stations from the Trump administration’s pressure campaign.
On Tuesday, the media company filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Trump’s FCC is violating its First Amendment rights.
The administration “has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason:it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the lawsuit filed in DC District Court alleges.
The legal action comes as the FCC investigates the ABC talk show “The View” and mounts an unusual challenge to the licenses held by ABC stations.
The stations fall under the FCC’s purview because they broadcast over the public airwaves.
FCC chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, has scrutinized Disney on several fronts, including DEI, short for diversity, equity, and inclusion.Carr has said that Disney might be committing “illegal DEI discrimination.”
Carr’s critics have said DEI is a laughable pretext for what’s really happening: A political pressure campaign led by President Trump.
The president has railed against ABC (and other networks) for years. He has repeatedly denounced the network’s reporters and argued for licenses to be revoked.
Last April, when conservatives expressed outrage over a controversial joke made by ABC late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel, Trump pressured ABC to fire Kimmel.
As ABC stood by Kimmel’s show, Carr ordered the network to file early-renewal paperwork for its station licenses,even though the eight licenses weren’t due for renewal for several years.
Carr asserted that the timing was a coincidence and the license review was related to his DEI probe. But it was widely viewed as a form of government retaliation for airing Kimmel’s show and resisting Trump’s pressure.
There are more than 200 ABC-affiliated stations across the US, but most are owned by other companies. Eight are owned by Disney directly, and those are the stations targeted by the FCC.
FCC licenses are renewed every eight years and are virtually never revoked. Until this year, the FCC had not filed an early-renewal order in decades.
But Carr has been determined to wield the FCC’s limited power in new and politically charged ways.
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/08/18/media/disney-abc-fcc-trump-lawsuit-the-view-retaliatory
2/2
Tuesday’s lawsuit specifically asks the court to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would stop Carr from moving forward with the license challenge. “This Court’s intervention is necessary to stop the Federal Communications Commission’s extraordinary assault on free speech,” the suit states.
The suit also asserts that Disney — a sprawling company better known for theme parks, Star Wars and ESPN than its local TV stations — did not go looking to pick a fight with the US government.
The company says it has come to court “reluctantly,” arguing there is “no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the administration’s demands.”
An FCC spokesperson responded: “The FCC has been examining claims that Disney engaged in illegal DEI discrimination for over a year. Disney is obviously very concerned about the FCC’s proceeding, as evidenced by their ongoing campaign of disinformation as well as their decision to ask a court to stop the FCC from further pursuing matters.”
Carr also opened a case against “The View” over an alleged violation of “equal-time,” invoking a rule that has rarely been enforced in recent years. “The View” often features outspoken critics of Trump.
Disney’s lawsuit says the FCC pressure has already affected what airs on the daytime talk show. Since the agency’s inquiry began, ABC says “The View” has become “more circumspect in booking political candidates” and has stopped considering several potential candidate bookings.
No political candidate has appeared on the show since February 2, Disney says in the complaint. The pressure has even affected which video clips make it to air: ABC says it has “chosen not to air clips” it otherwise would have used because they could count as candidate “appearances” and potentially be cited against ABC in the FCC’s ongoing review.
A wide range of First Amendment groups have denounced the action against ABC, while some conservative groups have defended Carr, arguing that the Trump administration is well within its rights. “It is not in the public interest for ABC to operate as an arm of the DNC,” Carr ally Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, said earlier this year.
Last week, Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro said in a CNBC interview that “our position on this is clear.”
When asked about the FCC threat, D’Amaro cited ABC’s “journalistic integrity” and said, “We’re not going to be told how to run that side of our business.”
D’Amaro added, “I like what we do. We tell incredible stories. I think we do it well. We do it around the world. And we’re going to stay committed to that.”
Tuesday’s lawsuit states that the pressure against ABC “has been deeply felt throughout the company.”
“The campaign is also calculated to operate in terrorem upon the rest of the industry:ABC is the visible target and suffers the most immediate harm, but the message is addressed to every broadcaster in the country, and the ultimate cost is borne by the press as a whole,” the suit alleges.
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/08/18/media/disney-abc-fcc-trump-lawsuit-the-view-retaliatory
UAE claims Iran fired two ballistic missiles at it
The alleged attack inflicted no damage, with both projectiles falling in water, according to Emirati officials
Published 18 Aug, 2026 17:02 | Updated
The UAE has accused Iran of firing two ballistic missiles at it on Tuesday, as the two-month window for US-Iran peace talks expired without a breakthrough.
The alleged incident was reported by the UAE Defense Ministry and the National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA). The agencies did not explicitly say whether the incoming missiles were shot down. The military stated that one of them fell inside the country’s territorial waters, while the second landed outside.
Iran has not publicly commented on the allegations. If confirmed, it would be the first reported Iranian missile attack on the UAE in several months. At the height of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Tehran repeatedly targeted the Gulf nation, accusing it of allowing US forces to use its territory to launch attacks.
The 60-day window set out in a US-Iranian memorandum for reaching a peace deal expired on Monday without a breakthrough. The two sides repeatedly exchanged strikes during the negotiating period, while shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz remained largely disrupted.
Earlier on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump confirmed that “no talks or conversations [were] going on, or scheduled” with Iran. “The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated,” he claimed.
Iran maintains that it controls maritime traffic through the waterway and has repeatedly signaled plans to impose permanent tolls for safe passage.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), reiterated the position on Tuesday, arguing that Washington’s failure to reopen the strait signaled “the post-American order in the Persian Gulf.”
“The gap between America’s inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and its claim to own it is greater than the 7,000-mile distance between Washington and the Strait itself,” Rezaei wrote on X.
https://www.rt.com/news/644382-iran-fires-ballistic-missiles/
Trans suspect sentenced in Bessent assassination attempt
Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson reports as the suspect is sentenced to 63 months in prison for attempting to assassinate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
1:31
https://youtu.be/OV0KCkYhz4g
Operation Economic Fury is taking precedence, expert says
A 'Special Report' panel discusses where the U.S.-Iran conflict stands after the memorandum of understanding officially concluded
8:30
https://youtu.be/izBlpwuxNyI
‘BONEHEADED STUPID’: Ex-detective RIPS DC Council push to withdraw National Guard
Former D.C. homicide detective Ted Williams discusses the Washington D.C. City Council’s request that governors withdraw National Guard troops on ‘Fox Report.
7:04
https://youtu.be/VAPNIu9LuFQ
Karl Rove SENDS WARNING to Texas GOP over Senate TOSS-UP (bush clan tool)
Fox News contributor Karl Rove joins 'America's Newsroom' to discuss shifting voter demographics and the impact of Democratic socialist candidates on Senate races.
8:56
https://youtu.be/fV9UkSKu5sY