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Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Kroger rolls out digital shelf tags — as Walmart fights back against ‘surge pricing’ claims

Another grocery giant is following in Walmart’s footsteps, hitting shoppers where it hurts — their wallets.

Walmart recently found another way to nickel-and-dime shoppers before they even get to the checkout, as back in December, the retail giant revealed it would add dynamic pricing to its store shelves.

Also known as surge pricing, the controversial practice is where businesses constantly adjust prices on their products in real-time with the use of digital price tags. The changes are based on market conditions like demand, competitor pricing and inventory — or so they claim.

Digital price tags displaying $5.96 for dried fruit on a supermarket shelf. — Jammer Gene – stock.adobe.com

When Walmart — the largest retailer in the US — adopted the ever-changing price tags, shoppers were furious and worried prices would constantly rise. The behemoth even scored a patent for a demand forecast tool that will not only predict what customers will buy, but it will also recommend a price based on the projection.

But now there’s another chain taking the heat.

Kroger will expand its already large number of stores using the sneaky shelf practice. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that hundreds of more locations in the Cincinnati-Dayton division — which includes Northern Kentucky — will now use digital price tags.

The powerhouse has been rolling out electronic shelf labels — or ESLs — to hundreds of its stores across the country as early as 2018. Kroger previously shared that nearly one in four of its locations nationwide have them.

ESLs are supposed to reduce paper and save the company hours of labor, and free up workers to help shoppers with other tasks. However, customers smell something fishy.

Much like the system Walmart uses, Kroger’s ESLs will have the ability to change the price of any item sitting on store shelves in just seconds — a potential cash grab.

Kroger denies that the pricing system will be used for surge pricing. But shoppers are buying it.

Shoppers exiting a Kroger supermarket in Peoria, Illinois. — Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Bad idea. You can literally get a higher price on your entire cart before you get to the register. That doesn’t even sound legal,” a shopper wrote to Facebook.

Another wrote, “There [are] too many other stores out there to shop at, so Kroger, just lost me as a customer.”

“It is an effort for these corporations to squeeze every last cent out of a consumer. This is a real application of AI and how it will play a role in life going forward for everyone,” A worried shopper wrote on Facebook.

Lawmakers aren’t falling for it either, as putting trust in huge corporations with little oversight on the matter may not be the best practice — shocking.

“Digital price tags may enable Kroger and other grocery chains to transition to ‘dynamic pricing,’ in which the price of basic household goods could surge based on the time of day, the weather, or other transitory events,” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey wrote in a letter to the grocery chain.

Kroger has not gotten back to The Post’s request for comment on surge pricing.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/15/lifestyle/kroger-rolls-out-digital-shelf-tags-despite-customer-outcry/

Trump officials won’t let G7 access Anthropic’s most advanced AI models: ‘Completely illogical’

The Trump administration won’t allow G7 member countries to regain access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models after the US imposed a ban last week over national security concerns, sources told The Post.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer requested a “carve-out” for British nationals and companies to Anthropic’s cutting edge “Mythos” and “Fable” AI models after the US on Friday announced export controls that barred its use by anybody outside the US or foreign nationals.

But issuing any kind of exemption to the export controls to another country — even a G7 ally — would be “completely illogical,” a Trump administration official told The Post.

The insider said the US was working with Anthropic to make sure their models were safe for all users worldwide.

“It’s America making sure the technology is protected,” the source said.

News of Starmer’s request for a carveout was reported earlier by the Telegraph.

White House officials are negotiating with Anthropic over how to resolve the ban, sources told The Post.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, suggested a resolution could be worked out directly with the AI giant’s CEO, Dario Amodei.

“We can’t have frontier models running amok,” the source briefed on the matter said.

“It’s all about working things through with Dario.”

The controversy between the AI giant and the Trump administration erupted last week when Anthropic said that the Commerce Department ordered it to block access outside the US and for foreign nationals over national security concerns.

In response, the company disabled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 globally, claiming that it could not restrict the models to users only in the US.

Anthropic said the government cited a potential “jailbreak” that could let the models identify software vulnerabilities, which the company described as “narrow”.

Anthropic rejected the broad action. “We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said in a statement after the measures were slapped on its top-level models.

The shutdown came days after Anthropic released Fable 5, its latest high-capability model.

The company said it had coordinated with the government on safety measures ahead of the launch.

Tensions between Anthropic and the Trump administration have simmered for months.

Earlier this year, the government placed the company on a supply chain blacklist after Anthropic refused to let the US military use its models for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Anthropic has warned that similar restrictions, if applied across the industry, would effectively stop new frontier model releases from every major AI developer. Other Anthropic models remain available.

The Post has approached a White House spokesperson and Anthropic for comment.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/16/business/trump-admin-open-to-talks-with-anthropic-over-foreigner-ban/

Life-threatening GLP-1s overdoses are on the rise

Uncontrollable vomiting. Seizures. Throwing up blood.

These are some of the horrifying symptoms people have reported after overdosing on GLP-1 drugs.

Though the drugs have been around since 2005 to manage diabetes, they exploded in use after 2021, when Wegovy was approved by the FDA to treat obesity. Since then, GLP-1 use has quadrupled to as many as 1 in 8 adults taking the medications.

And with increased use, calls to poison centers for GLP-1 exposures also sky rocketed. In 2021, they were managing around 100 related calls a month. It’s steadily increased to around 1000 related calls a month in 2025.

Part of the reason is that GLP-1s are easier to get than ever via telehealth, which is often a one-stop shop that bypasses an in-person doctor’s visit and a trip to the pharmacy. While that makes things dramatically cheaper and faster, it also unleashes largely unregulated medication onto folks looking for help with weight loss.

What happens when you overdose on a GLP-1 drug?

For some, an overdose starts with uncontrollable vomiting, as it did with Karleigh McClain. A month after she was diagnosed with a GLP-1 overdose, she told NBC News, she was dealing with residual side effects of elevated heart rate and vision problems.

Lottie Moss, younger sister of model Kate Moss, also spoke about getting hospitalized for a GLP-1 overdose. She couldn’t keep water or food down, she said, and while in the hospital, she had a seizure due to dehydration.

Leigh-Anne Lagden, a content creator, was also hospitalized after vomiting blood.

With more GLP-1s out in the world, kids can get ahold of them too. A 7-year-old in Indiana injected herself with her mom’s medication, causing her to be hospitalized twice, her family told WTHR News. She was vomiting so often, she also couldn’t keep water down and stopped urinating.

At one point, her parents said she started throwing up “brown chunks,” which doctors said could’ve been her stomach’s lining. The family feared for her life, but she ultimately made a full recovery.

Shawn Rose, a businessman from Chicago, also feared he might not survive after something went wrong with his GLP-1 medication. “At one point, they told me if I wouldn’t have came in when I did, I would have probably died,” he told KING 5 News. “I was so sick that … I thought I was dying.”

GLP-1s can cause low blood sugar levels, causing shakiness, sweating, confusion, dizziness, and in severse cases, loss of consciousness. It can also increase the risk of developing pancreatitis.

The risk of getting GLP-1s online

Both McClain and Moss got their GLP-1 meds through less-than-ideal methods. Moss got it through a friend, while McClain joined a growing number of people who got their GLP-1 prescription via telehealth.

She says she turned to a telehealth company after her insurance stopped covering the name brand medication, so it was dramatically cheaper to get ahold of the drug online.

Better prices, short turnaround times, and fewer questions asked make telehealth an appealing option for many. People also turn to telehealth to get around what they might feel are awkward conversations about their weight.

By bypassing the traditional safeguard of an in-person doctor’s visit, getting GLP-1s is fast and cheap. But that also means the telehealth’s understanding of a patient’s health may be incomplete — reports say some companies don’t require a call with a doctor at all before getting a GLP-1 script.

And less or no time with a doctor means that patients won’t necessarily be getting the spiel about the importance of proper eating, exercise, and follow up care.

One-stop GLP-1 shopping

What’s more, many telehealth companies act as both the doctor and pharmacy, removing another traditional block in the process where a patient might ask questions and address concerns.

But the medicine telehealth companies are offering aren’t necessarily the same thing as the name brand stuff.

In February, the FDA sent warning letters to 30 telehealth companies over their claims that their products were comparable to FDA-approved name brand medications when their products are compounded without any federal oversight.

Through compounding, the pharmacy combines active pharmaceutical ingredients with additives. The FDA says that concentrations of that active ingredient can vary depending on the compounder, and a single compounder may offer multiple concentrations.

Patients are left to navigate the two-pronged issue of inconsistent dosing and little to no doctor oversight.

“Many of the patients who received vials of compounded semaglutide lacked experience with self-injections,” the FDA said in a 2024 report. “Unfamiliarity with withdrawing medication from a vial into a syringe and coupled with confusion between different units of measurement (e.g., milliliters, milligrams and “units”) may have contributed to dosing errors.”

What to look out for

Compounded drugs are not reviewed for safety, efficacy, or quality, so don’t believe marketing that it’s the same as the name brand, the FDA warns.

Some red flags to look out for include too-good-to-be-true pricing, medicine that looks different than expected, packaging that had be opened or damaged, and getting a prescription without meeting with a doctor at all.

GLP-1s can cause nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting normally. But if you can’t stop vomiting and are experiencing extreme pain or dizziness, go to the ER.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/16/health/life-threatening-glp-1s-overdoses-are-on-the-rise-whats-behind-it/

'Iran manager calls team World Cup’s ‘most oppressed,’ claims immediately sent back to Tijuana'

Iran manager Amir Ghalenoei said his team was told it needed to leave Los Angeles immediately following its 2-2 draw against New Zealand on Monday night.

Ghalenoei said he was not given a reason, and left unsaid who made the decision.

The Iranian team initially planned to stay in California after the game for recovery and return to its base camp in Tijuana, Mexico on Tuesday.

“They didn’t even give us time to recover after the game today,” Ghalenoei said in Farsi, via FIFA’s interpreter. “They said to us, you have to leave immediately, whereas today, it’s very important for us to have time for recovery, but yet [we] have been asked to get on a plane and return to our camp in Mexico, in Tijuana, and we are really troubled by that.”

Iran’s very participation in the World Cup was in question until the last minute due to its war with the United States and Israel.

Though it was originally slated to have base camp in Arizona, that was moved to Tijuana, and though all of its players — including captain Mehdi Taremi, who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — were given visas to travel to the United States, a number of support staff and Iranian journalists were not.

Taremi and Mohammad Mohebi told reporters in the mixed zone that FIFA president Gianni Infantino was in their locker room pregame promising help, though exactly what came from that was left unclear.

“Perhaps our team is the most oppressed one in the whole World Cup,” Ghalenoei said. “The head of the federation is absent. Our media isn’t here, our management, many of them aren’t here. We used to have part of the coaching team to help with substitutions, but we didn’t have that. … That’s why I think we are the most oppressed team in the World Cup.”

“The fact that they delayed our arrivals, they are forcing us to go back early without time for recovery, they are making the situation more and more difficult, facing us with more hurdles,” he said. “We’re not gonna let that stop us from doing our best.”

https://nypost.com/2026/06/16/sports/iran-manager-calls-team-world-cups-most-oppressed/

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