What happened
Meta has agreed to an $18 billion (£13.2 billion) settlement with 42 US states over allegations that it failed to protect children from the addictive effects of Facebook and Instagram. The agreement will also bring significant new restrictions: children will be prevented from using the apps overnight, notifications will be disabled during school hours, daily use will be capped at two hours and stronger age checks will target under-13s.

Who said what
Meta defended the mid-trial settlement as a model for the wider industry. The social media giant’s chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney urged rivals to “follow Meta’s lead”.

Tech is facing it its “Big Tobacco” moment, said James Titcomb in The Telegraph. And yet the $18 billion settlement “could be seen as a let-off for the company, at least financially” given that the agreement is less than a 10th of the $200 billion that state prosecutors said they were seeking.

It is also notable that Meta did not change position on its long-held denial that its platforms harm children, said Clare Duffy on CNN, and “did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement”.

What next?
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and other major social media companies continue to face hundreds of lawsuits from individuals, families and school districts alleging that their platforms have caused addiction and harm among children. If Meta loses more of these cases it could face further financial penalties, although the company continues to reject the allegations.

What happened
The story of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her criminal ex-husband Peter Murrell will be told in a new Channel 5 drama.

“To Nicola, Love Peter” will explore the couple’s relationship over the 12-year period that Murrell was diverting funds from the SNP while he was the chief executive – splashing it on items like his £124,500 motorhome, a Jaguar SUV and Montblanc pens. Murrell was jailed this year after admitting to embezzling £400,000.

Who said what
“This is an epic tale of Shakespearean proportions,” said Channel 5 boss Ben Frow. It is “an extraordinary tale of power, envy, deception and greed”.

The forthcoming drama “continues a trend by Channel 5 to dramatise the stories of high-profile individuals such as Huw Edwards and Kate McCann”, said The Guardian.

What next?
Making the announcement at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Frow said a casting hunt was under way for the role of Sturgeon and joked that Meghan Markle could be a candidate. This “was illustrated with a mocked-up photo on the screen behind him of how she might look playing the former Scottish leader, along with other potential contenders such as Zendaya and Nicole Kidman”, added The Guardian.

The frozen landscape of Antarctica is holding a dangerous metal. The continent is releasing higher levels of mercury into the Southern Ocean and marine ecosystem because of climate change, and the toxic metal is accumulating in the region’s wildlife, causing health problems in the food chain. This flow of mercury has also reached the commercial fishing industry, potentially risking poisoning in humans.

Mercury accumulation in Antarctica, specifically on the Antarctic Peninsula, has “doubled relative to the global shelf average and risen sharply since industrialisation”, said a study published in PNAS. The increase is “driven not only by atmospheric deposition, but also by climate-warming-induced ice melt and erosion that remobilise legacy mercury stored on land”. Essentially, climate change “acts as an amplifier of mercury cycling”, study co-author Maodian Liu, an environmental scientist at Peking University, told science site Eos.

Polar warming and ice melt are now “turning Antarctica’s cryosphere from a mercury sink into an active secondary pollution source, with important implications for future mercury risk in polar oceans and ecosystems”, said the study.

Mercury “reaches Antarctica through the atmosphere, travelling from sources such as coal plants and mining operations to settle on Antarctic ice and the Southern Ocean”, added Eos. As the metal “accumulates in sediment, it can transform into methylmercury, a more toxic form that more readily accumulates in living organisms”.

Methylmercury “enters and travels through the Antarctic food web, taken up by plankton, then krill, fish, seabirds and marine mammals”, said Eos. The toxin can “harm animals’ neurology, behavior, growth and reproduction”.