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By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, Associated Press Business Writer

Pura Scents is recalling more than 850,000 diffusers because some magnets may detach and cause a possible ingestion hazard to children.

The company is recalling about 851,400 Pura 4 Smart Home Fragrance Diffusers with detachable covers. It said an additional 1,100 were sold in Canada.

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Pura Scents said that the magnets on the inside cover of the product can detach, posing an ingestion hazard to children. When high-powered magnets are swallowed, the ingested magnets can attract each other, or other metal objects, and become lodged in the digestive system. This can result in perforations, twisting or blockage of the intestines, infection, blood poisoning and death. read more

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s accelerating shift into artificial intelligence helped propel its corporate parent to another quarter of solid growth while a crackdown on its internet empire looms in the background.

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The results released Wednesday for the April-June period provided the latest sign that Google is deftly navigating the technological landscape’s tilt toward AI while still capitalizing on well-worn techniques that have made it the internet’s main gateway for the past quarter century. read more

By BERNARD CONDON

NEW YORK (AP) — The fallout from Elon Musk’s plunge into politics a year ago is still hammering his Tesla business as both sales and profits dropped sharply again in the latest quarter.

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The car company that has faced boycotts for months said Wednesday that revenue dropped 12% and profits slumped 16% in the three months through June as buyers continued to stay away.

“The perception of Elon Musk, its chief executive, has rubbed the sheen right out of what once was a darling and soaring automotive brand,” wrote Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee in an email. Tesla is “a toxic brand that is inseparable from its leader.” read more

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

Instagram parent company Meta has introduced new safety features aimed at protecting teens who use its platforms, including information about accounts that message them and an option to block and report accounts with one tap.

The company also announced Wednesday that it has removed thousands of accounts that were leaving sexualized comments or requesting sexual images from adult-run accounts of kids under 13. Of these, 135,000 were commenting and another 500,000 were linked to accounts that “interacted inappropriately,” Meta said in a blog post.

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By JOSH BOAK and ALEXA ST. JOHN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. automakers are concerned about President Donald Trump’s agreement to tariff Japanese vehicles at 15%, saying they will face steeper import taxes on steel, aluminum and parts than their competitors.

“We need to review all the details of the agreement, but this is a deal that will charge lower tariffs on Japanese autos with no U.S. content,” said Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the Big 3 American automakers, General Motors, Ford and Jeep-maker Stellantis.

Blunt said in an interview the U.S. companies and workers “definitely are at a disadvantage” because they face a 50% tariff on steel and aluminum and a 25% tariff on parts and finished vehicles, with some exceptions for products covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that went into effect in 2020.

The domestic automaker reaction reveals the challenge of enforcing policies across the world economy, showing that for all of Trump’s promises there can be genuine tradeoffs from policy choices that risk serious blowback in politically important states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, where automaking is both a source of income and of identity. read more