Europe’s merger and acquisition activity also experienced a boost in the first quarter, with that momentum continuing into Q2.

New data from Crunchbase has shown that in Q2 of 2026, European start-ups reported the strongest quarter in four years for venture funding. The region’s start-ups raised roughly $24bn in Q2, with figures having risen by a third, quarter on quarter and two-thirds higher than the $14.4bn during the same period in 2025.

Europe’s merger and acquisition activity was also shown to be improving steadily. Despite public market exits remaining subdued, in Q1 mergers and acquisitions picked up, with the momentum moving on into the second quarter. 

The UK in particular was found to have had a successful second quarter for VC funding, as start-ups based in the region raised $10.4bn. This figure is not too far off the UK’s peak of $10.8bn in 2021 and also marks the third-largest funding quarter for the UK on record. 

Other countries with a strong start-up performance for the quarter include Germany, which trailed behind the UK with $3.2bn, France with $2.4bn and Sweden with $2bn. 

Early-stage funding reached $8.6bn across more than 250 start-ups in Europe last quarter according to Crunchbase, whose data indicated that large Series A and Series B rounds were raised by London-based Isomorphic Labs, London’s AI self-learning lab Recursive, Germany’s fusion energy company Focused Energy, London’s semiconductor developer Fractile and London-based quantum processor provider QuantWare.

Late-stage funding, for Europe-based organisations, totaled $12.1bn in Q2, up 90pc year over year. Among the large Series C and D rounds were German robotics developer Neura Robotics, the Netherlands’ Nearfield Instruments, which makes inspection tools for semiconductor manufacturing, UK quantum computing start-up Oxford Quantum Circuits and Germany’s satellite launcher Isar Aerospace.

Notably, European seed funding totaled $3.2bn for the last quarter, with 1bn of that raised by a single organisation, Ineffable Intelligence, which is a UK-based AI start-up building a ‘superintelligence’ platform. It was founded by former Google DeepMind researcher David Silver.

Other notable seed funding rounds for the period include efforts made by Inherent, a London-based AI lab for science, Italy’s autonomous driving technology producer Niulinx and Stockholm-based defense tech company Swebal.

Crunchbase’s report said, “European startup investment has now steadily increased since the fourth quarter of 2024, with increased momentum in the just-ended quarter, driven by larger rounds of $100m and over. 

“The region’s startup ecosystem shows particular strength in deep tech and financial services as well as the formation of new AI labs and M&A activity has fueled liquidity for the next batch of startups. Now the question remains, will it be enough to keep Europe competitive with the frontrunners, the US and China?”

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from the horrible dept

One of the key tools in the tool belt of the anti-vaxxer has long been VAERS, the voluntarily reporting system for adverse events following vaccinations. People who don’t really understand how any of this works often get very, very confused about what VAERS is and is not. It does not contain confirmed outcomes caused by vaccines, it does not provide any medical advice as a result of the reports within it, and it is not a controlled reporting mechanism. Instead, it is a system that is wide open to reports of adverse events by any member of the public or healthcare community. In other words, it’s just a raw reporting tool.

And the problem is that people who report to VAERS can lie, be confused, misreport details, and so on. Anti-vaxxers, for instance, can flood the system with false or misleading reports. And, by some accounts, they do that very thing. The point of all of this very long opening is this: you can’t trust an individual report that claims an adverse vaccine effect to be accurate or true.

Take Andrea Shaw of Idaho, for instance. Shaw has been very public on the internet and podcasts after the death of her two 18 month old twins with claims that they were the result of adverse effects of vaccines. Shaw also reported the deaths in VAERS, claiming an association with several childhood vaccines received a week before their deaths. As a counterpoint to that claim, she also has now been charged with purposefully suffocating her children to death.

The Payette Police Department announced the indictment of 23-year-old Andrea Shaw, formerly of Payette, on two counts of First Degree Murder in connection with the deaths of her 18-month-old twins. Shaw was arrested by Boise Police on June 30th.

The newly released indictment accuses Shaw of suffocating both of her twins to death. Both charges are of Murder in the First Degree, meaning the prosecution is alleging that Shaw deliberately, with premeditation and with malice aforethought, killed both of her children, meaning she will be eligible for the death penalty, though the prosecution has not yet announced whether they intend to seek it.

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This is an investigation that’s been going on for nearly a year. While that was happening, Shaw appeared on the podcast for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the disgusting anti-vaxxer organization that RFK Jr. used to head up. Not happy to merely pump out misinformation via podcast, CHD teamed up with Shaw to file a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, claiming that AAP had misled the public about the safety of vaccines.

The charge is first degree murder for Shaw. I, of course, will not claim that police and prosecutors are perfect when it comes to their work, but the length of the investigation and the charges sure point to a prosecutor who is confident in their evidence. Shaw is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but anyone with any sense can see where this is most likely headed.

Children’s Health Defense should be ashamed of itself. But it won’t be. In fact, I have little doubt that it, or its fans, will claim that any evidence against Shaw and that her prosecution has been bought and paid for by the vaccine industry. That’s just how they roll.

That’s how they lie.

Filed Under: andrea shaw, anti-vaxxers, murder, vaccines, vaers

Companies: children’s health defense

It’s giving away its ‘series 1’ trading cards online and at in-person event.

A patch Microsoft released on Wednesday to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Defender security engine may cause Windows machines to write files large enough to completely consume available disk space, the researcher who discovered the flaw said.

RoguePlanet, tracked as CVE-2026-50656, came to public notice in June when NightmareEclipse, the pseudonymous name used by a researcher, disclosed it along with code for exploiting it. The vulnerability allows remote attackers to gain administrative control of Windows 10 and Windows 11 machines, even when real-time protection has been disabled. Over the past few months, the anonymous researcher has published a handful of other zero-days that have sent Microsoft scrambling to develop patches.

Writing files of unlimited size

Microsoft said Wednesday that it patched RoguePlanet with an update to the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, which is used by the Defender antivirus app. The fix will automatically be downloaded and installed without users having to take any action. Wednesday’s update also includes “defense-in-depth updates to help improve security-related features.”

In a post on Thursday, NightmareEclipse said the defense-in-depth additions produce behavior that may allow attackers to exhaust all available space on a hard drive by writing massive amounts of data to it. The newly introduced mitigations create a problem in mpengine.dll, the driver associated with the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, that in some cases causes it to leak 8 bytes of data when trying to open a file. New functionality in SpyNet, a cloud service that allows Microsoft Security Essentials or Forefront Endpoint Protection to send reports about suspicious software and programs to Microsoft, also plays a role in the potential mass file-writing behavior.

Defender normally places hard limits on how big a file can be written to disk when scanning and quarantining a machine.

“This implementation make [sic] sense, because quarantining a huge file will cause Defender to completely exhaust the available disk space,” the researcher wrote. “I found a small exception to this rule, apparently the spynet functions in mpengine.dll really wants [sic] to keep a local copy of Zone.Identifier ADS file and it does not matter how big this file is, Windows Defender will cache it locally anyways.”

Microsoft has recently been cleaning up some longstanding Windows 11 pain points, including parts of the Start menu and Search. According to a new report from Windows Latest, the company is also preparing several useful changes for the new Outlook app on Windows 10 and Windows 11, which became generally available in 2024.

Microsoft is adding a warning for users who start replying to an older email after a newer response has arrived in the same conversation. The alert is meant to stop people from replying without seeing the latest information in the thread.

How will the warning work?

Outlook will check whether the message you are answering is still the most recent one in the conversation. If another response has arrived, the app will warn you before you continue replying. Microsoft plans to switch the feature on by default, although it has not revealed what the alert will look like.

Microsoft’s roadmap says testing began around July 7, while the public rollout is expected by the end of August 2026. Outlook.com will receive the warning feature as well.

What else is coming to Outlook?

Microsoft is also improving categories in the new Outlook. Users will be able to apply a category from the right-click menu, pin frequently used categories to Favorites, and drag messages onto a pinned category to label them. These category controls are expected to arrive by the end of September 2026.

Rule-based replies using saved templates are also planned. Users will be able to create a template, set conditions for incoming messages, and have Outlook send the prepared response automatically when those conditions are met. The rollout is expected to begin in September 2026.

The takeaway: Block, the parent company of mobile payment service Cash App, has reached a $45 million settlement with regulators and the attorneys general of 46 states and the District of Columbia to resolve allegations that it failed to adequately protect users from fraud. As part of the settlement, Block also agreed to provide live customer support to all users.

According to the indictment, Block exposed its users to fraud by misleading them about Cash App’s security. The company promised advanced fraud detection mechanisms but allegedly allowed scammers to operate freely. Investigators further alleged that the app did not provide a phone number for customer support, leading many users to search online, where they found fake numbers created by scammers.

Investigators claimed that Block, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2009, was aware of the phone support scams but did little to prevent them. In fact, the company reportedly did not establish an official support hotline until 2021. Cash App also did not require a Social Security number or date of birth during signup, making it easier for potential scammers to target unsuspecting users.

In separate press statements, attorneys general from several states including New York, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Oregon, and Colorado heralded the settlement as a major victory for consumers. They also slammed the company for not being forthright to its users about its lax security protocols and inadequate customer support mechanisms.

According to New York Attorney General Letitia James, Block marketed Cash App as a secure service comparable to traditional banks, leading customers to believe that their funds were protected by cutting-edge security protocols. In reality, the company allegedly did not have a proper fraud detection system and offered no way for customers to report scams and fraud.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that “lax verification standards, a years-long absence of phone support, and deceptive social media promotions” by Block left users exposed to scammers. He added that the company was also accused of delaying internal fraud investigations and locking legitimate users out of their accounts, leaving them with no way to recover stolen funds.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul noted that people who entrusted Cash App with their earnings deserved “a clear picture of how safe their money would be.” Instead, Block misled them about the strength of its consumer protections. Kaul added that the company’s lackadaisical approach was especially alarming, given that many of its customers are unbanked or underbanked Americans.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said that Block had separately agreed to pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the Washington Department of Justice, alleging that the company facilitated at least $22 million in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments over a five-month period during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed sets the stage for McLaren’s next release, the 788HS, which is promoted as the final iteration of a mid-engine V8 supercar line that began with the 720S in 2017 and has since included the 765LT and 750S. The 4.0-liter twin turbo V8 delivers 777 horsepower, a 37-horsepower improvement from the 750S. Not that it counts, but the torque remains at 590 pound-feet, and the engine continues to spin at 8500 rpm.

The acceleration is quick enough to hit 60 mph in 2.8 seconds, 124 mph in 7 seconds, and 205 mph in no time at all. The coupe’s dry weight is a svelte 2789 pounds, thanks to McLaren engineers’ efforts to reduce any unnecessary weight. They retuned the linked hydraulic suspension and sharpened the front end, lowering it by 0.2 inches compared to the 750S, with the intention of increasing body control and steering response.

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There’s more, including carbon-ceramic brakes, which are only seen on the Senna, so that speaks volumes about what they’re up to. Six-pot forged aluminium calipers hold the front discs tightly in place. We also obtained our first center-lock wheels on this car, which were lifted directly off the Senna. This vehicle has advanced aerodynamics, producing 10% more downforce than the 765LT. We now have a new S-duct that channels air through the hood and across the cockpit, and the active rear wing has been updated. We also get a larger diffuser; more on that in a minute.

Its aerodynamic components are made of carbon fiber, because why not? Because you are receiving symposer tuning, the crew has also incorporated a quad-exit titanium exhaust, allowing you to enjoy the engine sound from start to finish. The improved engine-mount calibration allows for an almost direct connection from powerplant to driver.

The interior has been redone, and they just went a bit further, so no one is complaining. It has a carbon fiber center console, seats with a new perforation pattern, and a special number plate with distinguishing badging. Only 200 of these will be built, with half coupes and half spiders developed by McLaren’s Special Operations division. Owners can customize the colors, materials, liveries, and other interesting elements to make each one truly unique.

You’re looking at a starting price of £450,000 before you even consider all the choices. The 750S already costs that much, so adding all of the bells and whistles will make this car even more pricey. Until recently, the HS badge was rather uncommon, appearing on only two other McLarens in history. This is it, the third installment, and it concludes the current platform saga, but a new generation is just around the way.

Samsung has confirmed its next Galaxy Unpacked event for July 22, where it’s expected to unveil its next-gen foldables. Recent reports suggest the devices may be priced significantly higher in Europe compared to their predecessors. Now, a new leak claims the same could be true for the US market as well.

US buyers could see a $100 jump

According to South Korean outlet SEDaily, the Galaxy Z Fold 8, AKA the Wide Fold, is expected to launch in the US at $1,899 for the 256GB model. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the direct successor to the Fold 7, could cost $2,099 for the same storage capacity, a $100 hike over the Fold 7’s $1,999 launch price.

This lines up with the European pricing leaked earlier this month, which put the base 256GB Ultra model at €2,199, a €100 increase over its predecessor. Although the SEDaily report doesn’t outline pricing for the other storage variants, the hike is expected to be steeper for those models.

The price hike is likely tied to the ongoing memory shortage, though Samsung is reportedly still “conducting a final review of its pricing plan,” meaning the final figures could shift by the July 22 launch.

New AI features and One UI 9.0 could help justify the higher price

To offset the price increase, Samsung is reportedly leaning heavily on software upgrades for the upcoming models. The Galaxy Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, and Flip 8 could be the first from the company to launch with One UI 9.0 and Gemini Intelligence, Google’s new AI system that can carry out tasks across multiple apps.

While the report doesn’t offer pricing details for the Flip 8, it echoes earlier reports suggesting the device could ship with a Qualcomm chip in select regions and Samsung’s own Exynos chip elsewhere. Samsung has not confirmed anything officially, so it’s best to take this information with a grain of salt until the company takes the stage on July 22.

Microsoft says Windows users should expect to see an increase in security updates as the company increasingly relies on artificial intelligence to discover vulnerabilities in its codebase.

In a blog post published today, Microsoft said advances in AI have significantly accelerated vulnerability discovery, allowing engineers to identify more security issues before they can be exploited in zero-day attacks.

“The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis,”  Microsoft said.

As part of this approach, the company is using Microsoft Security’s multi-model agentic scanning harness (MDASH), an AI-powered vulnerability discovery system previously detailed by Microsoft, which scans critical binaries and validates potential vulnerabilities using multiple AI models.

Microsoft says the system scans critical Windows binaries for vulnerabilities and then validates the findings using multiple AI models. Vulnerability candidates are then passed through a second Windows-specific validation pipeline designed to eliminate false positives before engineers investigate the issues.

The company says it is also using AI to help engineers understand failures more quickly, suggest possible bug fixes, and identify similar bugs elsewhere in the Windows source code. However, Microsoft says human engineers will still oversee and review all proposed code and validate fixes before they are released into production.

Microsoft says the increased use of AI for vulnerability discovery means customers are likely to see more security updates to address newly discovered vulnerabilities in each monthly Patch Tuesday release.

“As AI helps defenders discover more issues, customers will see a higher volume of security updates included in each security release,” says Microsoft.

Artificial intelligence is used not only to find and fix vulnerabilities but also by threat actors to power their attacks and exploit zero-day flaws before they are fixed.

Due to this, Microsoft also announced today that it is updating its Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) practices to account for AI-enabled attack techniques and to use AI earlier in the software development process to identify security issues before features are released.

This announcement comes two days after Reuters reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has begun using Anthropic’s Fable AI model to scan government software for vulnerabilities that cybercriminals or foreign intelligence services could exploit.

According to the report, the AI-assisted code audits have already uncovered numerous vulnerabilities, though officials did not disclose how many or provide details on their severity.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

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