Reuters World News - Meta, birthright citizenship, Russia's North Korean missiles and Hollywood's win

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

A New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million for harming children, comparing its platforms to a toxic factory. Trump signs new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship. Anthony Fauci pleads the fifth over 100 times and a senator wants him prosecuted. North Korea ships missiles and personnel to Russia to strike Ukraine, exploiting a critical gap in Kyiv's air defences. And Hollywood breaks a box office record. Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Friday, August 7th. Today, Mehta is ordered to pay up for harming children with a New Mexico court, comparing its platforms to a toxic factory. Trump takes another swing at birthright citizenship. North Korea ships its missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine. And Hollywood breaks a box office record. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. A New Mexico court has dealt a major blow to Mehta, ordering the tech giant to pay more than half a billion dollars after finding the company liable for harming children's mental well-being and for failing to protect them from sexual exploitation. It follows a Reuters investigation which found chatbots could engage children in sexual conversations.

Meta says it invests heavily in protecting young people and plans to appeal the ruling. Here's Reuters legal news editor, Alexia Garim Falvi. The judge basically agreed that those harms were substantial enough to constitute what's called a public nuisance. He said that New Mexico is facing a teen mental health crisis affecting. public health and public safety, and that Mehta's platforms are a significant contributing cause of that crisis. In the ruling, he compared the effects of Mehta's products to essentially pollution from a factory, saying that the harms don't stay on the platforms, but spill over into the real world, affecting children, families, schools, hospitals, and law enforcement.

The court ordered Mehta to pay its fine into a fund to address some of the mental health harms caused and ordered changes to the apps themselves, including a 90-hour-per-month limit for children and teens. The judge only has jurisdiction over what happens in New Mexico, and the changes ordered are only for New Mexico. Netta during the trial had said that, you know, some of these changes could not be made in one state only, and that in fact, you know, it might have to pull out of a state. This decision kind of comes at a pivotal moment, His next week, Mehta, is set to face trial in federal court in Oakland, California. And that is a lawsuit brought by 29 states, alleging that the company designed its platforms,

also in a way to addict children and misled users about their safety. U.S. President Donald Trump has signed executive orders once again targeting birthright citizenship. The orders increase the list of people in. ineligible for citizenship and bans so-called birth tourism. It follows a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his earlier attempts to take aim at birthright citizenship more broadly. We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we're making adjustments. Our White House reporter Jacob Bogage explains who might be impacted.

President Trump signed two executive orders. looking to restrict birthright citizenship. And the first one goes after this thing called birth tourism, or what he alleges are pregnant women coming to the United States specifically to give birth, and then since their child would be a birthright citizen, they themselves would enjoy some of the benefits of American citizenship. That's very uncommon. And most of the time when people give birth in the United States,

it's coincidental. The second thing these orders do is attempt to create new categories of children who would not be eligible for U.S. citizenship, even if they were born in the United States. One is children who are born to foreign officials in the U.S. So if someone stationed at an embassy here, one is children who are born to invading armies in the United States. The other is terrorist groups, and President Trump has tried to classify narco-trafficking groups as terrorist groups as part of his immigration crackdown. Jacob says it's still unclear how these orders will be enforced. The Supreme Court already struck down one of President Trump's attempts to end birthright citizenship outright. How will these orders try to circumvent the Supreme Court's order?

They don't. They go right to the heart. heart of the Supreme Court's order and they try to use U.S. immigration law to suggest some things that the Supreme Court did not rule on. Expect these orders to get challenged immediately, and those challenges themselves could head to the Supreme Court as well. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has been discharged from a rehabilitation center and says he'll continue his recovery at home. The 84-year-old Kentucky Senator has been out of public view since mid-June, after a fall, left him briefly unconscious, and he later

developed pneumonia while hospitalized. Republican Senator Rand Paul has asked the Justice Department to prosecute Dr Anthony Fauci for refusing to answer questions about the COVID pandemic when he appeared before a Senate committee last week. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to speak more than a hundred times, but the path to prosecution is unclear. Paul is seeking to bypass a full Senate vote, a break with precedent, and voucher was pardoned by President Biden in 2025, which complicates any case against him. Reuters Global Health Editor Michelle Gershberg says it's unclear how much of this is about gathering new

information versus revisiting long-standing partisan disputes over COVID-era policies. The degree to which we're going to find out something new about the pandemic, is really not clear. But what we do see is a real, you know, sharp focus on one person who is involved in the U.S. pandemic response. When, as we know, there were many people both in the Trump administration at the time across U.S. states, global health officials, you know, different, you know, countries, health officials, you know, were all part of the decision-making process. And many of them actually pursued sort of policies that were similar to what the U.S. pursued at the time. A powerful North Korean missile unit is being deployed to Western Russia.

Ukraine's military agency says the unit could include 90 North Korean personnel, 120 ballistic missiles, and six launches to conduct strikes on Ukraine. Ukraine faces a significant shortage of high-end air defenses. Russia has tried to exploit that by using more ballistic missiles, which are particularly hard to shoot down. And as our Eastern Europe security reporter Tom Baumforth explains, this unit signals an expanded military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. Ukrainian military intelligence says North Korea has begun deploying around 90 missile personnel to Russia, based within an existing Russian unit, the 112 missile brigade in Western Russia's Varanja

region. The Ukrainians say that at least 40 of those ballistic missiles have already be supplied, and at least two of these North Korean missiles have already been fired at Ukraine. Ukraine is very short on the air defenses. It needs to repel those ballistic missiles, so Russia's tried to exploit that. The other thing that's important to bear in mind in this case is that Ukrainian weapons experts, they say that the North Korean missiles are particularly nasty because they carry a large warhead and have a larger range than the equivalent Russian missile, except they're often much less accurate. And just last week, in fact, one of the strikes that we saw

using the North Korean ballistic missile, in fact, killed six people when it collided with a residential home, according to Ukrainian authorities. Neither Russia nor North Korea have responded to requests for comment on this unit. The Houthis have attacked southern Saudi Arabia, injuring 11 civilians, including a child. The Kingdom is now warning that coordinated strikes on its energy infrastructure, ports and airports could be imminent,

with Iran-backed Iraqi militias also believed to be involved. And finally today, the movies are enjoying a win. The US box office saw its biggest opening weekend last week in history thanks to the one-two punch of Spider-Man, brand-new day, and The Odyssey. But that success is increasingly powered by higher ticket prices, not bigger audiences. Now, media editor Ed Lee explains. Tendents has been down since the pandemic, but when they do go to the theater,

they're willing to pay more for the films. IMAX, for example, is just a higher ticket cost. It's a better experience, they say. People are willing to pay for it. So I think it comes down to movies have to be a real experience for people to want to shell out the money. It used to be a cheaper form of entertainment, but it's actually not so much anymore. It's just becoming an increasingly expensive proposition.

And if you want to go, it has to be big. It has to be The Odyssey. It has to be Spider-Man. This is like the biggest summer that Hollywood has had in years, and it's an opportunity for these studios to sort of show, here's what we can do. At the same time, they're still fighting Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. So I think the Hollywood studios and the traditional media players,

what they're having to figure out, that they have to create something you can't get on the internet. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.