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A lawsuit filed by families of the Uvalde school shooting victims alleging Instagram allowed gun manufacturers to promote firearms to minors should be thrown out, lawyers for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, argued Tuesday.Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.The families sued Meta in Los Angeles in May 2024, saying the social media platform failed to enforce its own rules forbidding firearms advertisements aimed at minors. The families, who were present at last month’s hearing, did not appear in court, with a lawyer citing the back-to-school season. Many plaintiffs attended the hearing virtually, he said.In one ad posted on Instagram, the Georgia-based gunmaker Daniel Defense shows Santa Claus holding an assault rifle. In another post by the same company, a rifle leans against a refrigerator, with the caption: “Let’s normalize kitchen Daniels. What Daniels do you use to protect your kitchen and home?”The lawsuit alleges those posts are marketed toward minors. The Uvalde gunman opened an online account with Daniel Defense before his 18th birthday and purchased the rifle as soon as he could, according to the lawsuit. He also owned various Instagram accounts and had an “obsessive relationship” with the platform, at times opening the app more than 100 times a day, plaintiffs’ lawyers found in an analysis of the shooter’s phone. Plaintiffs say minors can access gun content on Instagram Meta attorney Kristin Linsley argued that the families provided no proof that minors, including the Uvalde gunman, even read the Daniel Defense posts on Instagram. She also said the posts didn’t violate Meta’s policies because they weren’t direct advertisements and did not include links to purchase any products.Katie Mesner-Hage, representing the victims’ families, said the defense’s claim is “fundamentally unfair,” as the plaintiffs don’t have access to Meta data that would indicate whether the shooter encountered those posts. She added that if the content had landed on the shooter’s feed, as the plaintiffs allege, then Meta “not only knew about it, they designed the system so it would be delivered to him.”“They knew more about him than anyone else on the planet,” she said.Linsley said content advertising firearms for sale on Instagram is allowed if posted by “brick-and-motor and online retailers,” but visibility of those posts was restricted for minors under Meta’s advertising policies from the end of 2021 to October 2022.“This is not a playbook for how to violate the rules. This is actually what the rules are,” Linsley said.The plaintiff’s team, however, showed a fake profile they created for a 17-year-old boy earlier this month, through which they were able to search Daniel Defense’s Instagram account and see a post that included a picture of a gun, as well as a link to the gun manufacturer’s website.When the link was clicked, the gun-maker’s website opened, and the team was able to select a firearm and add it to their cart, all within Instagram’s app an experiment that refutes Meta’s assertion that posts relating to firearms aren’t visible to users under 21, Mesner-Hage said.Linsley said in her rebuttal that the experiment was done this year and not in 2021 to 2022, which is when the policy she described was in effect.The families have also sued Daniel Defense and video game company Activision, which produces “Call of Duty.” Case hinges on social media’s responsibility for content creation Linsley said the Communications Decency Act allows social media platforms to moderate content without being treated as publishers of that content.“The only response a company can have is to not have these kinds of rules at all,” Linsley said. “It just gets you down a rabbit hole very quickly.”Mesner-Hage argued Meta is not protected by the act because social media platforms don’t just host speech, but help curate it through its algorithms. Daniel Defense, she said, didn’t have to pay for ads to get free access to Meta’s analytical data through its business account on Instagram. That data shows the company which age bracket and gender engaged most with a specific post.“Daniel Defense is not on Instagram to make friends. They’re on there to promote their product,” Mesner-Hage said. “It’s not a paid advertisement, but I would struggle to describe this as anything other than an advertisement.”The lawsuit alleges that firearm companies tweaked their online marketing to comply with Meta’s policies, including by avoiding the words “buy” or “sell” and not providing links to purchase, and that the social media company did not protect users against such strategies.Last month, lawyers for Activision also argued that legal proceedings against them should be thrown out, saying the families allegations are barred by the First Amendment. The families alleged that the war-themed video game Call of Duty trained and conditioned the Uvalde gunman to orchestrate his attack.Lawyers for the plaintiffs asked the judge to allow them to amend their lawsuit with the new information they presented Tuesday before ruling on the defense’s motion. The defense claimed that was unnecessary, as the case would not have merit even with the amendments.The judge has yet to rule on Activision’s motion and did not immediately rule on the Meta case. Itzel Luna, Associated Press
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. This week, Zillow economists published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home pricesas measured by the Zillow Home Value Indexwill rise 0.4% between July 2025 and July 2026. Heading into 2025, Zillows 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%. However, in recent months, Zillow has stopped issuing downward revisionsand this revised 12-month outlook of +0.4% actually represents an upward adjustment. Home value appreciation is nearly flat at the national average, rising just +0.2% over the past year. Lower rates and low price growth have slightly improved affordability; monthly mortgage costs are down $19 over the past year, but the typical payment is still nearly $1,000 per month higher than before the pandemic, wrote Zillow economists this week. Zillow added that: Affordability and access is gradually improving where builders have been able to keep up with demand, showing why building more homes is so critical. Metros where price corrections are steepest are among those with the largest increase in inventory compared to before the pandemic. All of these metros except Miami rank among the top 10 for home building permits from 2020 to 2024. When demand for homes surged, builders were able to respond fastest in areas with fewer land-use restrictions. That gave buyers more options and sellers more homes to move into, freeing up existing supply. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase between July 2025 and July 2026 to occur in these 15 areas: Atlantic City, NJ 4.3% Torrington, CT 4.1% Saginaw, MI 3.8% Kingston, NY 3.8% Pottsville, PA 3.8% Rockford, IL 3.6% Concord, NH 3.6% Knoxville, TN 3.4% New Haven, CT 3.4% Norwich, CT 3.4% Hartford, CT 3.2% Fayetteville, AR 3.1% Hilton Head Island, SC 3.0% Vineland, NJ 3.0% Barnstable Town, MA 2.9% Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price decline between July 2025 and July 2026 to occur in these 15 areas: Houma, LA -8.6% Lake Charles, LA -8.2% Alexandria, LA -6.6% Lafayette, LA -6.2% New Orleans, LA -5.8% Shreveport, LA -5.7% Beaumont, TX -5.3% San Francisco, CA -4.1% Corpus Christi, TX -3.8% Santa Rosa, CA -3.7% Monroe, LA -3.7% Odessa, TX -3.7% Austin, TX -3.5% Chico, CA -3.4% Texarkana, TX -3.3% Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price growth looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sun Belt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market weakness right now. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}();
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They are the hurricanes of legend, the bowling balls that cross the entire Atlantic Ocean, menaced ships of yore and make the long, curved lines on the hurricane charts.Cape Verde storms, named for the group of islands about 450 miles (725 kilometers) off the west coast of Africa, typically form from clusters of thunderstorms that move off the continent and into the Atlantic.With thousands of miles of ocean water above the 80-degree Fahrenheit (27-degree Celsius) temperature needed to fuel hurricanes, Cape Verde storms are some of the most dangerous that threaten North America. About 85% of all major hurricanes Category 3 and higher start out there, according to the National Hurricane Center.“They are the media stars and certainly get a lot of attention because you can track them for a long time,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections.But they also are a rare threat. Less than one out of every 10 of the storms crash into the U.S. The rest either fall apart or are curved out to sea by the north and east steering winds that normally prevail over the Atlantic. Now is the time to turn to the east Conditions need to be just right for Cape Verde storms to form and grow, keeping them mostly confined to August and September.Hurricane Erin is a Cape Verde storm. The National Hurricane Center is watching two more clusters of storms to the east of Erin that could develop into tropical storms.But the atmosphere is too complex to know how strong those storms can be if they develop or whether any of them will threaten the U.S. Forecasters begin to lose confidence in their ability to predict the future of any specific storms more than a week out. It takes at least 10 days for a potential hurricane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Warm weather and light winds help Cape Verde storms grow Cape Verde storms start over Africa where the hot dry air in the Sahara and the hot humid air over the Gulf of Guinea clash and create clusters of thunderstorms that move off the continent.The warm water is the first ingredient. Hurricanes also thrive with light winds above them that won’t blow the thunderstorms away from the center.“They are the strongest because they have the most time to develop. The other storms can crash into land too early,” Masters said.)Researchers have spent the past several years studying the ocean and atmosphere in the far eastern Atlantic to get a better idea of why some storms form and some don’t.In recent years, scientists have realized that dry air and dust from the Sahara in Africa blown into the Atlantic from the east can lessen the high humidity hurricanes need and inhibit their development. The dust can travel all the way across the ocean and settle on cars and windows on the U.S. East Coast.“They travel about a mile above the surface, the winds are very strong, and the air is dry and hot. That’s a trifecta that suppresses hurricane activity,” Jason Dunion, a scientist at the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies told the university. 1 or 2 hurricanes a year are Cape Verde storms Some years may not see a Cape Verde storm at all. Some can see as many as four or five. But on average about one or two hurricanes a year are classified as Cape Verde storms, according to the National Hurricane Center.And they aren’t the only storms to hit the U.S. The Weather Channel analyzed hurricanes since 1995 and found only nine of the 60 that struck the U.S. were the ones that track all the way across the Atlantic. The storms you remember The list of famous Cape Verde hurricanes has a lot of overlap with the list of the most memorable, powerful and deadliest hurricanes.There is the 1900 Galveston Hurricane that killed about 8,000 people in Texas and the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane that killed 2,500 in Florida. In more recent times, hurricanes Donna in 1960 in Florida, Hugo in 1989 in South Carolina, Andrew in 1992 in Florida, Ivan in Grand Cayman, Alabama and Florida in 2004, Ike in Texas in 2008, Irma in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Florida in 2017 and Florence in North Carolina in 2018 were all Cape Verde storms. Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press
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