By Rocio Munoz, Max Saltman, CNN

(CNN) — China’s Embassy in the US shared an AI-generated video poking fun at US President Donald Trump’s Shield of the Americas Summit on Wednesday, days after Trump took the stage at the Florida event to warn about “hostile foreign influence” in Latin America.

The video, published by the Chinese embassy on its X account and produced by the state news agency Xinhua News Agency, is titled “Shield of the Americas, or shackles of the Americas?”

The 18-second animation shows a bald eagle dressed in a suit presiding over a meeting of white doves that appear to represent Latin American countries.

The eagle presses a red button that initially deploys an atomic bomb blast before promising to “keep everyone safe” with a large red, white and blue shield. However, the shield soon turns into a cage that traps the frightened doves, while the Eagle says: “Relax, sometimes security comes with a little control.”

CNN contacted the US State Department for comment on the video and is awaiting a response.

The video, released days after a meeting that brought together right-wing and center-right leaders from 12 Latin American countries, seems to question the proposal presented by Trump during the summit: the creation of a “regional military coalition.”

Although the summit was mainly presented as a security initiative, Trump also took the opportunity to warn about China’s growing presence in the region, as part of a broader plan by his administration to reaffirm the United States’ “preeminence” over the Western Hemisphere.

“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere,” the administration declared in November 2025 while unveiling the “Trump Corollary” to the centuries-old Monroe Doctrine.

But while James Monroe ordered Europe to stay away from the Americas, Trump is keen on shooing China away. In his inaugural address in 2025, Trump claimed falsely that China is “operating” the Panama Canal.

In fact, a Hong Kong-based company owned two key terminals on either end of the canal at the time. Last month, Panama’s high court ruled the arrangement illegal, a decision Beijing decried as “truly shameful and pathetic.”

The ruling notwithstanding, Trump continues to raise the issue in public. At the summit, the president said that the US “will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere – that includes the Panama canal.”

For decades, Beijing has expanded its commercial, financial, and infrastructure ties in the region.

In recent years, China has become one of the main trading partners for several Latin American economies and has financed large strategic projects.

One of the most recent examples is the “mega-port of Chancay in Peru,” inaugurated in 2024 with support from the Chinese shipping giant COSCO Shipping, which significantly reduces maritime transport times between South America and Asia.

Trade growth also reflects this closer relationship. Between January and November 2025, Chinese exports to Latin America increased by 9.3% compared to the same period in 2024, according to China’s General Administration of Customs.

Even countries politically close to Washington maintain strong economic ties with China. In Argentina, for example, imports from China exceeded US$16 billion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 57.1%, despite President Javier Milei being considered one of Trump’s staunchest allies in the region.

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By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — Buzzfeed, the digital media company that took the mid-2010s by storm, said on Thursday it has “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a business.

In an earnings report released Thursday, Buzzfeed said it has engaged in “strategic conversations” about relieving its liquidity issues.

“We believe there is a gap between the value of our individual assets and our market capitalization that suggests significant unrecognized upside,” founder and CEO Jonah Peretti said.

The company was $165 million in debt three years ago; that’s been slashed by more than 65%, Buzzfeed said. But Matt Omer, Buzzfeed’s chief financial officer, said the company is still burdened by legacy commitments. Alongside its namesake, Buzzfeed also owns news site Huffpost and online food network Tasty.

“We’re exploring strategic options to complete the work we started years ago and position the Company to operate profitably on a sustainable basis,” Omer said in the earnings statement.

Peretti gave a hint of what that could look like in the statement: “In 2026, our focus is demonstrating the value of our brands, Studio IP, and new AI apps to the market.”

In 2025, Buzzfeed had a net loss of $57.3 million, according to its earning report. The company noted it did not have enough resources to fund its cash obligations for the next year.

The decline of Buzzfeed’s digital empire, synonymous with viral videos and online quizzes, has been playing out since its IPO in 2021.

Two years later, in 2023, Peretti announced that the Pulitzer-prize winning Buzzfeed News would shut down.

Buzzfeed has gone through several rounds of layoffs and cost-cutting measures, and it sold Complex Networks in 2024.

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The post Buzzfeed has ‘substantial doubt’ it can stay in business appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. - Offshore winds continue through Friday morning before onshore winds and slight cooling arrives Friday evening through Saturday.

Mostly 80s with a few high 70s can be expected across all coastal areas.

Scattered cloud coverage is possible in our area Friday afternoon through Saturday morning.

Clearing returns late Saturday through Sunday, as temperatures rise a bit into early next week.

Heat Advisories are in effect locally until this Friday night and are being planned for Tuesday through Thursday of next week.

We are dry from rain chances through the end of March.

The post Hot Friday, cooler Saturday appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN

(CNN) — During California’s worst dry spell in the past 1,200 years, some populations of wildflowers defied the odds to survive the ordeal. Researchers say they now believe these flowers relied on a type of rapid genetic evolution — the first time such a phenomenon has been documented in the wild.

The dry spell happened between 2012 and 2015, and killed more than 100 million trees. It was a particularly brutal period during an ongoing megadrought that began in 2000 and which has been made worse by climate change. Even though the drought killed plants that are normally drought-resistant, the scarlet monkeyflower, a bright red wildflower that thrives in wet areas, and along creek beds and springs, showed remarkable resilience.

A team of researchers spent eight years studying 55 populations of the wildflower, whose scientific name is Mimulus cardinalis, by keeping track of its numbers in the wild and sequencing the flowers’ genomes to reveal genetic shifts.

“We were able to show that these populations across the range in California were declining due to this extreme drought, and we found evidence of a rapid evolution across the genome,” said Daniel Anstett, an assistant professor at the School of Integrative Plant Science of Cornell University and first author of a study on the findings, which published Thursday in the journal Science. “And then we were able to relate a metric of this evolution to the ability of these populations to recover and to not go extinct.”

While the entire species was not at risk of extinction, individual flower populations likely were, suffering declines of up to 90% compared to peak population sizes. It took about two to three years for these populations to rebound, according to Anstett.

This rapid comeback is a process biologists call evolutionary rescue, which happens when a species is able to recover from the threat of extinction by an external factor such as a drought, Anstett explained. “Evolutionary rescue occurs when the few individuals that are left have the right genetic makeup to do better than the ones that died, so they do well or thrive within these new conditions, so the population inches back from extinction,” he said.

Evolutionary rescue has been demonstrated in lab settings but researchers only had partial observations of it in the wild before: in cancer resistance in Tasmanian devils and adaptation to pollution in killifish. However, these studies did not provide full evidence that the process was taking place.

This study, Anstett said, offers rigorous evidence that evolution happened and it led to a demographic recovery. “We had a lot of information about the wildflowers’ demography and the genes, so that provided more ironclad information that ultimately evolutionary rescue was happening.”

A great indicator of drought

The scarlet monkeyflower is a perennial herb, meaning it regrows each season from the same roots. It’s pollinated by hummingbirds and can grow up to 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

“This plant is found in streams in California, Baja California and Southern Oregon that are often seeps of water that seasonally flow through habitat,” said Anstett. “It really requires that flowing water to complete its life cycle and then be able to grow all the way up to seed,

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Before the era of streaming services, TGIF and Must-See TV reigned supreme. In the 1990s, networks like ABC and NBC stocked up on comedies and realistic dramas, while relative newcomer Fox had its own arsenal of groundbreaking shows. Even cable networks like HBO and Cartoon Network started upping the ante with quality programming, marking a turning point in television history. Viewers had more options than ever to get their entertainment fix.

Stacker compiled data on all 1990s TV shows in English with over 7,500 votes on the Internet Movie Database and ranked the top 100 according to IMDb user score (as of February 2023), with ties broken by vote count.

Do you remember the cop show that introduced (partial) nudity and crude language to prime-time TV? Or the Nickelodeon show that launched the career of a future cast member of “Saturday Night Live”? How about the NBC crime drama that has had more spinoffs than there are presidents on Mount Rushmore? We include those shows and more, plus transcendent British comedies, genre-bending cartoons, and the sketch show that birthed the careers of many of the top comedians of the ’90s. Each slide features a hodgepodge of information like notable cast and crew, accolades won, the show’s legacy, and other interesting tidbits.

It is a testament to the power of ’90s TV that many of the shows on the list, while still holding up on their own, are being revived for newer generations. A long-awaited continuation of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” got a pilot order from Hulu in February 2025 and found its new vampire slayer with the casting of Ryan Kiera Armstrong in May. Hulu also revived the beloved ’90s animated sitcom “King of the Hill,” which premiered on the streamer with its 14th season in August 2025. And a “7th Heaven” reboot is reportedly in development as of May 2025, with original series star Jessica Biel set to serve as executive producer.

In other words, if you’re missing your favorite ’90s TV series, you might not need to wait long for a follow-up. In the meantime, though, continue reading to see if your top picks made the list.

You may also like: 50 best TV shows of all time

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#15. Frasier