By Sandee LaMotte, CNN

(CNN) — Common preservatives used to keep food safe and extend shelf life may be linked to a higher risk of several cancers and type 2 diabetes, according to two new studies from France.

“These are very important findings for preservatives that are not only widely used in the French and European markets, but also in the United States,” said senior author Mathilde Touvier, principal investigator of the NutriNet-Santé study used to conduct the research.

The NutriNet-Santé study, which began in 2009, compares over 170,000 participants’ web-based reports on diet and lifestyle with their medical data stored in the French national health care system.

“These are the two first studies in the world investigating the associations between exposure to these food additives and cancer and type 2 diabetes,” said Touvier, who is also the director of research at France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, “and so we must be very cautious about the message. Obviously, the results need to be confirmed.”

Despite those caveats, “the concern raised about preservatives is one more reason among many to emphasize the personal and public health importance of fresh, whole, minimally processed foods, mostly plants,” Dr. David Katz said in an email.

Katz, who was not involved in the study, is a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.

Cancer and preservatives

The cancer study, published Wednesday in The BMJ journal, closely examined the impact of 58 preservatives on some 105,000 people who were free of cancer in 2009 and were followed for up to 14 years. Only those who completed frequent 24-hour, brand-specific food questionnaires were included. People who ate the most preservative-laced food were compared with those who ate the least.

Researchers did a deep dive on 17 preservatives consumed by at least 10% of the participants and found 11 of those had no relationship with cancer. However, the six that were linked to cancer are considered GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe” in food by the US Food and Drug Administration. Those include sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, sorbates, potassium metabisulfite, acetates and acetic acid.

Sodium nitrite, a chemical salt commonly used in processed meats such as bacon, ham and deli meats, was associated with a 32% increase in the risk of prostate cancer. It’s cousin, potassium nitrate, was associated with a 22% higher risk of breast cancer and a 13% increase in all cancers. The World Health Organization has long considered processed meat as a carcinogen, with a direct link to colon cancer.

Sorbates, especially potassium sorbate, were associated with a 26% higher risk for breast cancer and a 14% increase in all types of cancers. These water-soluble salts are used in wine, baked goods, cheeses and sauces to prevent molds, yeast and some bacteria.

Potassium metabisulfite, often used in winemaking and brewing, was associated with a 20% in

By Max Saltman, CNN

(CNN) — Lee nuestra coberatura en español.

In the wee hours of Saturday, shortly after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured, blindfolded and taken to the United States, video emerged of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello surrounded by a group of armed men in Caracas.

Maduro’s abduction “was a criminal, terrorist attack against our people,” said Cabello, clad in a bulletproof vest and helmet. The sky was still dark, and the buzz of drones could be heard overhead.

“I ask people to stay calm,” Cabello continued. “Trust our leadership. Trust in our military and political leaders during the situation we’re facing.”

That morning, US Attorney General Pam Bondi released the unsealed US indictment against Maduro, accusing him of drug trafficking, among other offenses. Cabello’s name was the second on the indictment, just below Maduro’s. With Maduro in US custody, Cabello is arguably the most powerful Venezuelan official named in the superseding indictment.

“There’s essentially three centers of power in Venezuela right now,” said Brian Fonseca, a professor at Florida International University. “You have the Maduro center of gravity, which (acting president) Delcy Rodríguez is an extension of. You have (Vladimir) Padrino López, who is minister of defense. The third, arguably the most important, is Diosdado Cabello.”

A loyalist

Saturday’s indictment was not the first time the US had targeted Cabello. In 2018, the US Treasury sanctioned Cabello, his wife and his brother for “narcotics trafficking.”

Two years later, the US formally indicted him, putting a $10 million bounty on his head (since raised to $25 million) and charging that he was a key figure in the “Cartel de los Soles,” an alleged drug-trafficking network headed by figures within Venezuela’s government. For his part, Cabello has denied being a drug trafficker, calling the accusations a “big lie.”

Cabello, 62, is one of the last remaining regime officials from the late president Hugo Chávez’s old guard, a true believer in the cause who personally participated in Chávez’s failed coup in 1992.

“He was actually in the group of tanks that tried to ram their way into the presidential palace,” Elías Ferrer, director and founder of Orinoco Research, told CNN in November. “I think that gives us a good idea of who he is.”

Cabello helped Chávez build his political movement and eventually served as his vice president. During a brief, aborted anti-Chávez coup d’etat in 2002, Cabello even became president himself for a few hours before stepping aside to allow Chávez to return to power.

Appointed interior minister in 2024, Cabello now commands the state’s vast apparatus of internal repression. Rights advocates have accused Cabello’s Interior Ministry of stewarding a crackdown campaign as tensions rose with the United States in late 2025, including political kidnappings and disappearances.

In November, Ámbar Castillo denounced Cabello after the disappearance of her daughter Samanta, who vanished after police detained her at their family home in western Caracas.

“I hold Diosdado Cabello,

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Character.AI has agreed to settle multiple lawsuits alleging the artificial intelligence chatbot maker contributed to mental health crises and suicides among young people, including a case brought by Florida mother Megan Garcia.

The settlement marks the resolution to some of the first and most high-profile lawsuits related to the alleged harms to young people from AI chatbots.

A Wednesday court filing in Garcia’s case shows the agreement was reached with Character.AI, Character.AI founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and Google, who were also named as defendants in the case. The defendants have also settled four other cases in New York, Colorado and Texas, court documents show.

The terms of the settlements were not immediately available.

Matthew Bergman, a lawyer with the Social Media Victims Law Center who represented the plaintiffs in all five cases, declined to comment on the agreement. Character.AI also declined to comment. Google, which now employs both Shazeer and De Freitas, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Garcia raised alarms around the safety of AI chatbots for teens and children when she filed her lawsuit in October 2024. Her son, Sewell Setzer III, died seven months earlier by suicide after developing a deep relationship with Character.AI bots.

The suit alleged Character.AI failed to implement proper safety measures to prevent her son from developing an inappropriate relationship with a chatbot that caused him to withdraw from his family. It also claimed the platform did not adequately respond when Setzer began expressing thoughts of self-harm. He was messaging with the bot — which encouraged him to “come home” to it — in the moments before his death, according to court documents.

A wave of other lawsuits against Character.AI followed, alleging that its chatbots contributed to mental health issues among teens, exposed them to sexually explicit material and lacked adequate safeguards. OpenAI has also faced lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT contributed to young people’s suicides.

Both companies have since implemented a series of new safety measures and features, including for young users. Last fall, Character.AI said it would no longer allow users under the age of 18 to have back-and-forth conversations with its chatbots, acknowledging the “questions that have been raised about how teens do, and should, interact with this new technology.”

At least one online safety nonprofit has advised against the use of companion-like chatbots by children under the age of 18.

Still, with AI being promoted as a homework helper and through social media, nearly a third of US teenagers say they use chatbots daily. And 16% of those teens say they do so several times a day to “almost constantly,” according to a Pew Research Center study published in December.

Concerns around the use of chatbots aren’t limited to children. Users and mental health experts began warning last year of AI tools contributing to delusions or isolation among adults, too.

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. - Strong winds and cold temperatures are expected on Wednesday and Thursday.

High Wind Warnings and Wind Advisories are going in effect until Thursday evening.

A Freeze Watch has been issued for Ojai and parts of inland Santa Barbara County through Thursday morning with overnight lows near or below freezing.

A High Surf Advisory is also in effect until 9pm Friday with 15 ft waves possible north of Lompoc.

Warming begins Friday as we enter the high 60s for the weekend.

Santa Ana Winds will ramp up Friday and Saturday also, likely continuing into next week.

Low 70s arrive next week with sunshine.

The post Windy Thursday, freeze watch appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump issued a stark threat to defense contracting companies Wednesday, saying he would seek to limit stock buybacks and executive salaries unless they improve their delivery of weapons systems to the US military, hours before saying he’s decided to substantially increase the defense budget.

The pair of social media posts suggest that the Trump administration is aiming to squeeze the large defense contractors, or primes in industry parlance, while increasing defense spending to upwards of $1.5 trillion.

“While we make the best Military Equipment in the World (No other Country is even close!), Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment,” Trump said in a post. “This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!”

Trump said no executive should “be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars.”

The news reverberated through Wall Street immediately as stock for the five major defense firms — Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman — all began dropping.

But shortly before the markets closed, Trump followed the message about contractor restrictions with another saying that he has decided to increase the defense budget.

“I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,” he posted on social media.

Defense stocks, in turn, trended sharply upwards in after-hours trading, regaining much of their initial losses. It was not clear if a broader deal with Congress, which authorizes defense spending, has been reached. Trump attributed the ability to afford the increase to his tariff policies.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comments on more detail about the posts.

The issue of limiting stock buybacks, dividends and executive salaries has been in discussion in the White House for weeks, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, and had been expected to be announced via an executive order before Christmas. The plan was put on pause due to pushback by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others about the impact to the stock market, the source said.

The major defense firms and some smaller companies were notified that an announcement was coming Tuesday evening in a call with Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, the source familiar with the matter said, though what Feinberg relayed was far different from the president’s post on Wednesday. While Feinberg described the limits on stock buybacks and dividends as something that could be remediated and which would only occur if the companies did not deliver on their contracts, Trump’s post did not include those caveats.

It’s unclear how Trump intends to implement the restrictions on how defense contractors can spend their money. An executive order could still be imminent, though the source familiar with the matter thought the social media post could be an intimidation tactic to force the companies to the table for negotiations before finalizing anything.

If the restrictions were to be finalized and go forward, it would be an “extraordinary, unprecedented act of state capitalism” and an “intervention into the defense sector like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Steven Grundman, former deputy under secretary of defense for industrial affairs and currently the founder and principal of Grundman Advisory, told CNN.

“It is right on the pathway towards nationalizing prime contracting,” Grundman