By MATTHEW PERRONE

U.S. health regulators on Wednesday sent warning letters to 18 websites selling counterfeit or unapproved versions of Botox and similar injectable drugs commonly used to smooth wrinkles.

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The Food and Drug Administration said it was taking action after receiving reports of injuries in connection with the products, including toxic side effects.

Botox is a diluted, purified form of botulinum, one of the most toxic substances in the world. The ingredient works by temporarily blocking nerve signals and causing muscles to relax. While most famously approved for cosmetic use, Botox is also approved in the U.S. for a number of medical conditions, including muscle spasms, eye disorders and migraines.

The FDA warning letters mostly went to cosmetic websites. In each case, the FDA said the companies were offering unofficial or mislabeled versions of Botox-like drugs that haven’t been approved by the agency. In addition to the original drug, introduced by Allergan in 1989, the FDA has approved several competing versions.

FDA-approved Botox drugs carry the agency’s most serious warning, a boxed label alerting doctors and patients that the medications can cause serious or life-threatening side effects.

In rare cases, the toxin can spread beyond the injection site to other parts of the body, paralyzing or weakening muscles needed for breathing and swallowing. Signs of botulism include difficulty swallowing or breathing, slurred speech and muscle weakness. Those symptoms can occur several hours after an injection.

In a press release Wednesday, the FDA said patients should only receive the drugs from health professionals who are licensed and trained to administer them. Patients experiencing signs of botulism should “seek immediate medical care,” the agency noted.

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.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

Google Maps is heading in a new direction with artificial intelligence sitting in the passenger’s seat.

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Fueled by Google’s Gemini AI technology, the world’s most popular navigation app will become a more conversational companion as part of a redesign announced Wednesday.

The hands-free experience is meant to turn Google Maps into something more like an insightful passenger able to direct a driver to a destination while also providing nearby recommendations on places to eat, shop or sightsee, when asked for the advice.

“No fumbling required — now you can just ask,” Google promised in a blog post about the app makeover.

The AI features are also supposed to enable Google Maps to be more precise by calling out landmarks to denote the place to make a turn instead of relying on distance notifications.

AI chatbots, like Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have sometimes lapsed into periods of making things up — known as “hallucinations” in tech speak — but Google is promising that built-in safeguards will prevent Maps from accidentally sending drivers down the wrong road.

All the information that Gemini is drawing upon will be culled from the roughly 250 million places stored in Google Maps’ database of reviews accumulated during the past 20 years.

Google Maps’ new AI capabilities will be rolling out to both Apple’s iPhone and Android mobile devices.

That will give Google’s Gemini a massive audience to impress — or disappoint — with its AI prowess, given the navigation app is used by more than 2 billion people around the world. Besides making it even more indispensable, Google is hoping the AI features will turn into a showcase that help gives Gemini a competitive edge against ChatGPT.

Prodded by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google has been steadily rolling out more of its own technology designed to ensure its products continue to evolve with the upheaval being unleashed by AI. The changes have included an overhaul of Google’s ubiquitous search engine that has de-emphasized a listing of relevant web links in its results and increasingly highlighted AI overviews and conversational responses provided through an AI mode.

By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block a new U.S. House map that California voters decisively approved at the ballot.

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Proposition 50, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. The lawsuit claims the map-makers illegally used race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters, and asks the court to block the new boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The lawsuit was filed by The Dhillon Law Group, the California-based firm started by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now an assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The map is designed to favor one race of California voters over others,” Mike Columbo, whose plaintiffs include a state Republican lawmaker and 18 other voters, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This violates the 14th Amendment, guarantee of equal protection under the law, and the right under the 15th Amendment.”

Newsom’s office said on a social media post that the state hasn’t reviewed the lawsuit but is confident the challenge will fail.

“Good luck, losers,” the post reads.

It’s unclear whether a three-judge panel convened to hear such cases would grant a temporary restraining order before December 19, the date when candidates can start collecting voters’ signatures to lower the costs of their filing fee. It’s essentially the first step in officially running in the 2026 midterm elections. Columbo said he’s hoping to get a decision in the upcoming weeks.

Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits in California to block Democrats’ plan with little success so far.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Video game maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive settlement” with Google that could end its 5-year-old legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps.

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Epic and Google revealed the settlement agreement in a joint legal document they filed in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday.

They said it “would allow the parties to put their disputes aside while making Android a more vibrant and competitive platform for users and developers.”

Epic, which makes the hit online game Fortnite, won a victory over the summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly. The unanimous ruling cleared the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shake-up that’s designed to give consumers more choices. Google took another hit in October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to protect it from the judge’s required app store makeover.

The specific terms of the settlement agreement remain under seal and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies broadly outlined some of their agreements in their joint filing.

They said the settlement closely follows Donato’s October 2024 ruling ordering Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition. That included a provision that will require its app store to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones, if they so desire.

Google had hoped to void those changes with an appeal, but the ruling issued in July by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a legal blow for the tech giant, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials affecting different pillars of its internet empire.

Epic Games filed lawsuits targeting Google’s Play Store as well as Apple’s iPhone app store in 2020 in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions. The settlement agreement proposed Tuesday calls for Google to limit those payments to between 9% and 20%, depending on the transaction.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called the settlement an “awesome proposal” in a social media post. Sameer Samat, president of Google’s Android division, said it will “focus on expanding developer choice and flexibility, lowering fees, and encouraging more competition all while keeping users safe.” Google had previously complained that Donato’s forcing of more app store competition posed security concerns. A hearing is set for Thursday.