Meta must pay $25 billion to New Mexico after a jury found the tech giant guilty of nearly 44 million violations of state consumer protection laws.

The largest fine to ever hit Meta came after New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez declined to join an $18 billion settlement Meta reached earlier this year with attorneys general in nearly all states.

In his opinion Wednesday, US district court judge Francis J. Mathew said there was no “bright line rule” for determining the appropriate penalty for Meta's repeated and willful deception of users since 2010 about their “control of data, third-party data misuse, misinformation, hate speech, and equal enforcement.”

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In 2015, all but two countries agreed to make an effort to keep global temperatures from reaching 1.5° C above pre-industrial readings. Since then, most of the world has largely treated what they signed on to as aspirational, and one of the largest emitters (the US) has alternately withdrawn and recommitted to the agreement. Meanwhile, the planet has responded as expected to steadily rising carbon emissions and appears to be practically at the 1.5° limit.

On Wednesday, for the first time, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) acknowledged that reality and conceded that the goal of keeping warming below 1.5° was no longer a viable one. Instead, its new goalposts focus on keeping both how long we exceed that limit and how much we exceed it by, at a minimum. Doing that will require both dramatic emissions cuts now and the removal of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the century is out.

Bowing to the inevitable

Depending on which baseline you use to establish pre-industrial temperatures, as well as which reconstruction of global temperatures you rely on, the world has either gotten very close to, or already exceeded, the 1.5° milestone. The current El Niño event, which appears exceptionally strong, will almost certainly mean that we've gone over it no matter which records you choose.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today warned broadcasters about airing "fake polls," amplifying one of the many complaints that President Trump has regularly made about the news media.

Carr's post on X said, "Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis... Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations."

Carr urged broadcasters to "provide their viewers with additional context and information about Polls they have covered." In fact, one small polling outfit was exposed as a hoax this week, and a similar incident occurred in August. News outlets have reported on these hoaxes, providing the very "context" that Carr said is needed.

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