Meta is halting teens’ access to artificial intelligence characters, at least temporarily, the company said in a blog post Friday.

Meta Platforms Inc., which own Instagram and WhatsApp, said that starting in the “coming weeks,” teens will no longer be able to access AI characters “until the updated experience is ready”

This applies to anyone who gave Meta a birthday that makes them a minor, as well as “people who claim to be adults but who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology.”

The move comes the week before Meta — along with TikTok and Google’s YouTube — is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles over its apps’ harms to children.

Teens will still be able to access Meta’s AI assistant, just not the characters.

Other companies have also banned teens from AI chatbots amid growing concerns about the effects of artificial intelligence conversations on children. Character.AI announced its ban last fall. That company is facing several lawsuits over child safety, including by the mother of a teenager who says the company’s chatbots pushed her teenage son to kill himself.

By JONEL ALECCIA

Powdered whole milk used to make ByHeart infant formula could be a source of contamination that led to an outbreak of botulism that has sickened dozens of babies, U.S. health officials indicated Friday.

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Testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found the type of bacteria that can cause the illness in two samples linked to the formula, officials said.

The agency found that bacteria in an unopened can of formula matched a sample from a sick baby — and it also matched contamination detected in samples of organic whole milk powder used to make ByHeart formula and collected and tested by the company.

FDA testing also found contamination in a sample of whole milk powder supplied to ByHeart — and it matched the germ in a finished sample of the company’s formula.

The findings are not conclusive, and the investigation continues “to determine the source of the contamination,” the agency said in a statement.

A ByHeart official said the finding helps shed light on what has become a “watershed moment” for the company.

“We are focused on the root cause and our responsibility to act on what we’ve learned to help create a safer future for ByHeart and infant formula,” said Dr. Devon Kuehn, ByHeart’s chief scientific and medical officer.

Neither FDA nor ByHeart named the supplier of the powdered whole milk.

At this time, there is no indication of a broader problem in the infant formula supply, the FDA said.

New York-based ByHeart has been at the center of a food poisoning outbreak that has sickened 51 babies in 19 states since December 2023. The problem was identified in November after officials with the California program that supplies the sole treatment for infant botulism detected a surge in cases in babies who consumed ByHeart formula.

No new cases in the outbreak have been identified since mid-December, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

ByHeart initially recalled two lots of formula, but it expanded the recall to all products days later. Federal health officials later said they could not rule out contamination of all products made since the company launched in March 2022.

That followed company testing, announced in November, that found six of 36 samples of formula from three different lots contained the dangerous type of bacteria that causes infant botulism.

Illnesses caused by botulism bacteria in infant formula are rare, and the size and scope of the ByHeart outbreak is unprecedented, food safety experts said.

Some formula companies do test raw materials and finished formula for evidence of the contamination, but such testing should be required, said Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.

“FDA has not announced a plan to do testing, and that’s what we really want to see them do,” she said.

Even if the contamination was traced to a milk supplier, the company remains responsible for the harm caused by its product, said Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who represents more than 30 families of babies who fell ill.

“Just because they are able to point the finger at dried powder as the ingredient that may have been contaminated, it doesn’t take any of the legal or moral responsibility away from ByHeart,” Marler said.

ByHeart, which accounted for about 1% of the U.S. infant formula market, previously sold about 200,000 cans of the product per month. It was marketed as an option close to human breast milk, one that used “organic, grass-fed whole milk.” Parents of babies sickened in the outbreak said they chose the formula, which cost about $42 per can, because of its touted health benefits.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

MADRID (AP) — Spanish state prosecutors said Friday they were shelving an initial investigation into accusations of sexual assault by Julio Iglesias in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic after concluding that Spain’s National Court lacked jurisdiction to judge the matter.

Earlier this month, Spanish prosecutors had opened an investigation studying allegations that the 82-year-old Grammy-winning global singing star had sexually assaulted two former employees at his residences in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

Iglesias denied the accusations, writing on social media that: “With deep sorrow, I respond to the accusations made by two people who previously worked at my home. I deny having abused, coerced or disrespected any woman. These accusations are absolutely false and cause me great sadness.”

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An email seeking comment sent to a Florida attorney whose website says Iglesias is among his clients was not immediately answered.

The two women had presented a complaint to the Spanish court earlier this month, according to Women’s Link Worldwide, a nongovernmental organization that represents them. The group said that the women were accusing Iglesias of “crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity such as sexual harassment” and of “human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and servitude.”

The women also said Iglesias regularly checked their cellphones, barred them from leaving his house and demanded that they work up to 16 hours a day, with no contract or days off.

When the complaint was filed in Spain, the organization said it had not reached out to authorities in the Bahamas or the Dominican Republic and didn’t know whether investigations had begun in those Caribbean nations.

Iglesias has been among the world’s most successful singers in the decades since his 1969 debut album, “Yo Canto.” He has sold more than 300 million records in more than a dozen languages.

After making his start in Spain, Iglesias won immense popularity in the U.S. and wider world in the 1970s and 1980s, partly due to duets with U.S. artists including Willie Nelson and Diana Ross.

He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and in 1988 won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Performance for his album “Un Hombre Solo.”

He’s also the father of pop star Enrique Iglesias.

By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press

Vice President JD Vance on Friday encouraged anti-abortion activists to “take heart in how far we’ve come” on the quest to limit the practice, listing the Trump administration’s accomplishments including an expansion of a ban on U.S. foreign aid for groups supporting abortion services.

“There is still much road ahead to travel together,” Vance told attendees at the annual March for Life demonstration, which draws tens of thousands of people annually to Washington. Attendees rallied on the National Mall before heading to the Supreme Court.

Vance, a Republican, has spent years passionately advocating for Americans to have more children. He repeatedly expressed alarm about declining birth rates as he launched his political career in 2021 with a successful bid for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, and as vice president he has continued on that mission.

“I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance said in addressing last year’s March for Life.

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Earlier this week, Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, announced in a social media post they are expecting a son, their fourth child, in late July.

“Let the record show, you have a vice president who practices what he preaches,” Vance said Friday.

Vance cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, calling it “the most important Supreme Court decision of my lifetime.” He said President Donald Trump’s leadership and appointment of conservative jurists “put a definitive end to the tyranny of judicial rule on the question of human life.”

He also lauded the “historic expansion of the Mexico City policy,” the broadening of a ban on U.S. foreign aid for groups supporting abortion services, to include assistance going to international and domestic organizations and agencies that promote gender identity as well as diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“We believe that every country in the world has the duty to protect life,” Vance said, to a sea of supporters waving signs reading “Choose Life,” “Make More Babies” and “I am the Pro-Life Generation.”

“It’s not our job as the United States of America to promote radical gender ideology,” he said. “It’s our job to promote families and human flourishing.”

From the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV — the first U.S.-born pope — sent a message of support to participants in the march.

“I would encourage you, especially the young people, to continue striving to ensure that life is respected in all of its stages,” Leo wrote in a letter shown on a video at the march. “May Jesus, who promised to be with us always, accompany you today as you courageously and peacefully march on behalf of unborn children.”

On Thursday, an official said the Trump administration was implementing new rules, halting foreign assistance from going not only to groups that provide abortion as a method of family planning but also to those that advocate “gender ideology” and DEI. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the rules’ publication in the Federal Register on Friday.

First established under President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, the policy was rescinded by subsequent Democratic administrations and was reinstated in Trump’s first term.

With its origins in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that nationally enshrined federal protection for abortion rights, the March for Life developed an entrenched presence among conservatives arguing against abortion. In 2017, Trump addressed the march by video, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to make live remarks. Three years later, he attended the event in person, further cementing its role in conservative politics.

In a video address to this year’s crowd, Trump recounted his administration’s “unprecedented strides to protect innocent life and support the institution of the family like never before,” enumerating his appointment of “judges and justices who believed in interpreting the Constitution as written” and “reflecting on the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Since the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe, the march has become more celebratory, with organizers relishing a state-by-state fight in legislatures around the country and urging a continued fight until abortion is eliminated.

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.