Meta settled the biggest child-safety case in tech history Wednesday, cutting a deal with a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general just five days after opening arguments in a federal jury trial in Oakland, California. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the agreement, according to the New York Times. The headline number, per CNBC: $16.7 billion.

But just how much they’ll pay is debatable: The attorneys general touted $17.1 billion, which folds in roughly $459 million tied to the separate Cambridge Analytica matter. Meta puts the total closer to $18 billion, including a separate $1 billion settlement with Texas, BBC reports. The money will be paid in annual installments over 10 years and, of course, Meta denied any wrongdoing.

About 70% goes to the 47 participating states. The remaining 30% is contingent—it only lands if YouTube and TikTok adopt similar changes and match the payments. Think of it as a bounty on the rest of the industry. CBS News pegs that contingent pot at around $5 billion.

The product changes are the real story. Facebook and Instagram get a default two-hour daily limit for teens, overnight blocks, muted notifications during school hours, hidden likes, age-verification measures and an option to turn off the algorithmic feed entirely.

School-district and personal-injury suits against Meta are still live, so the legal bill isn’t final. But what’s clear is that teens are about to get logged out at bedtime.

The last nationwide block on Trump’s mail-in voting order is gone. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston lifted her injunction Wednesday, clearing the Postal Service to apply its new rule to the November midterms. She moved after the Supreme Court vacated a related injunction Monday, 6-3, on procedural grounds. But neither decision touched whether the policy is actually legal.

The rule itself landed Aug. 21, a 95-page final version that requires states to submit every mail voter's name and address to a federal portal, along with unique barcodes. States also have to submit ballot-envelope designs for review. Mailings that don’t comply get rejected and returned.

Three challenges are still pending, including a new suit from 23 states and Washington, D.C., joined by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, CNBC reports. USPS had said it wouldn't apply any of this to 2026 unless both injunctions came off … and now both are off. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, and Election Day is Nov. 3, which gives election officials in all 50 states a compressed window to rebuild their ballot pipelines around a federal portal they’ve never used.

More progress in the fight against cancer: The FDA approved Rasonque on Wednesday, a once-daily pill from for adults with advanced pancreatic cancer who’ve already been through treatment. It cracks the mutated proteins that drive the disease that scientists spent decades calling “undruggable”.

In a 500-patient randomized trial, people taking the drug alone (not alongside chemo) lived a median 13.2 months, versus 6.7 months for those on chemotherapy. Roughly double. The agency cleared it more than six months ahead of its own deadline.

The only catch is the list price—$39,800 a month before insurance—and no one has said what patients actually pay, when the pill reaches pharmacies or whether insurers have committed to covering it. Researchers now want to test the same approach in lung, colorectal and other cancers. Which is the bigger story, eventually.