As prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi battle regulators in court, Senate Democrats are urging the CFTC to avoid weighing in, escalating a broader fight over the burgeoning industry. Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, is leading the group of lawmakers urging the CFTC to stay out of state prediction market lawsuits. A group of 23 Democratic US senators sent a letter Friday to the top federal regulator overseeing prediction markets, urging the agency to avoid weighing in on pending court cases over the legality of offerings on the platforms tied to "sports, war, and other prohibited events." Prediction markets, which sell contracts tied to the outcome of real-world developments, have exploded in popularity over the past year, attracting an increasingly mainstream fanbase eager to wager on everything from geopolitical conflicts to fashion choices to the Super Bowl. As they expanded, the platforms have become a magnet for ethical and legal controversies.

Landmark cases on social media's impact on children begin this week in US Two lawsuits accusing the world's largest social media companies of harming children begin this week, marking the first legal efforts to hold companies like Meta responsible for the effects their products have on young users. Opening arguments began today in a case brought by New Mexico's attorney general's office, which alleges that Meta failed to protect children from sexually explicit material. A separate case in Los Angeles, which accuses Meta and the Google-owned YouTube of deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive for children, is set to begin later this week. The New Mexico and California lawsuits are the first of a wave of 40 lawsuits filed by state attorneys general around the US against Meta, specifically, that allege that the social media giant is harming the mental health of young Americans. In the opening argument in the New Mexico case, which was first filed in 2023, prosecutors told jurors on Monday that Meta - Facebook and Instagram's parent company - had failed to disclose its platforms' harmful effects on kids.

Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? We hear a lot about how AI is accelerating drug discovery. But the number of drugs approved by the FDA has remained constant through the AI revolution, at around 50 per year. "The biggest problem in bringing new medicine to patients hasn't been drug discovery for a long time," says Ben Liu, the founder and CEO of Formation Bio, an AI company working in the biotech space.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. A body-worn camera shows the perspective of LAPD officers when arresting a suspect. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . LAPD officials are proposing changes to the department's data retention policy, seeking to purge millions of old records.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Residents confront ICE agents on Atlantic Blvd. in the city of Bell in June. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . SACRAMENTO -- Amid a national uproar over the recent killing of a Minnesota man by immigration agents, the California Senate on Tuesday approved proposed legislation that would make it easier to sue law enforcement officials suspected of violating an individual's constitutional rights.

Google has agreed to pay $68m (£51m) to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly listened to people's private conversations through their phones. Users accused Google Assistant - a virtual assistant present on many Android devices - of recording private conversations after it was inadvertently triggered on their devices. They claimed the recordings were then shared with advertisers in order to send them targeted advertising. The BBC has contacted Google for comment. But in a filing seeking to settle the case, it denied wrongdoing and said it was seeking to avoid litigation.

Are ICE agents trained to use'deadly force' and evade lawsuits? In the weeks since United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, another ICE agent shot a Latino man in the leg, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Good's killing and the subsequent shooting have ignited a wave of calls and queries about whether ICE officers can be prosecuted. But the shootings in Minnesota are not outliers, and the history of ICE shootings shows that holding officers to account has been next to impossible. I know, because I investigated the agency's practices, obtaining documents that reveal how it operates and how its officers are trained to shield themselves from scrutiny and lawsuits.

Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? What to Know: Musk v. Altman Two artificial intelligence heavyweights will face off in court this spring, in a case that could have far-reaching outcomes for the future of AI. A judge ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman, Microsoft, and other OpenAI co-founders can proceed to a jury trial, dismissing OpenAI's attempts to get the case thrown out. The lawsuit relates to the early days of OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit that was funded by around $38 million in donations from Musk.

Large language models don't "learn"--they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry. O n Tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models--OpenAI's GPT, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, and xAI's Grok--have stored large portions of some of the books they've been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books. In fact, when prompted strategically by researchers, Claude delivered the near-complete text of,,, and, in addition to thousands of words from books including and .

Character.AI and Google settle with families in teen suicide and self-harm lawsuits In one case, a 14-year-old bonded with a Daenerys Targaryen chatbot before taking his own life. Character.AI lets you create and share custom chatbots. Character.AI and Google have reportedly agreed to settle multiple lawsuits regarding teen suicide and self-harm. According to, the victims' families and the companies are working to finalize the settlement terms. The families of several teens sued the companies in Florida, Colorado, Texas and New York. The Orlando, FL, lawsuit was filed by the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, who used a Character.AI chatbot tailored after Daenerys Targaryen.