Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.
Microsoft has attributed a recent Mastra AI supply chain attack that compromised more than 140 npm packages to the North Korean hacking group Sapphire Sleet, also known as BlueNoroff.
This attribution comes after Microsoft first disclosed earlier this week that attackers hijacked an npm maintainer account and used it to publish malicious package updates.
“Microsoft assesses with high confidence that this activity is attributable to Sapphire Sleet, a North Korean state actor that primarily targets the financial sector,” the company said in a June 19 update.
According to Microsoft, the attack began when threat actors compromised the npm maintainer account “ehindero,” which had publishing privileges across the Mastra package environment.
Using the account, the attackers published malicious updates for more than 140 packages in the @mastra scope that injected a malicious dependency named “easy-day-js”. This dependency is a typosquat of the legitimate and widely used dayjs JavaScript library.
When the compromised packages were installed, the malicious dependency executed a post-install hook that deployed a malware dropper on developers’ devices, ultimately aimed at stealing sensitive credentials, API keys, authentication tokens, and cryptocurrency wallets.
“Once installed, easy-day-js triggered a postinstall hook that executed an obfuscated dropper script, disabled Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate verification, contacted attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, downloaded a second-stage payload, and executed the payload as a detached hidden process,” explains Microsoft.
The downloaded second-stage payload was a cross-platform information stealer designed to target Windows, Linux, and macOS systems
The implant collected information about the host, browser histories, installed applications, and running processes, and checked whether 166 cryptocurrency wallet browser extensions were installed, including MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase Wallet, Binance Wallet, and TronLink.
The malware also used different persistence methods depending on the operating system, such as Windows Registry Run keys, macOS LaunchAgents, and Linux systemd services.

Microsoft says systems that communicated with the attackers’ command-and-control servers had follow-on activity that utilized tactics previously associated with Sapphire Sleet.
This includes the deployment of a PowerShell backdoor previously used by the group, additional persistence mechanisms, Microsoft Defender exclusions, and a malicious Windows service that granted SYSTEM privileges.
“The PowerShell backdoor, tradecraft, and C2 infrastructure have been used by Sapphire Sleet in other, prior campaigns,” Microsoft explained.
Sapphire Sleet is a North Korean state-sponsored threat actor known for cryptocurrency theft campaigns, malicious browser extensions, fake job offers, and software supply chain compromises designed to steal credentials and cryptocurrency assets.
Microsoft says the group was also responsible for a separate npm supply chain attack on the Axios HTTP client in April 2026.
Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.
PUBLIC SECTOR
Health service told to ensure ministers don’t mistake before-and-after comparisons for cause and effect
The UK’s statistical regulator has told NHS England to ensure ministers are briefed accurately following a row over data used to promote the purported benefits of a Palantir-run platform.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) said the health quango had accepted that it needed to communicate more clearly about data purporting to measure the benefits of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which is based on the US spy-tech firm’s technology under a £330 million contract.
“We expect NHS England to ensure that any figures cited by ministers or in official briefings about the FDP and its effectiveness are communicated in a clear, accurate manner,” the OSR said.
Campaign group Foxglove called on health officials and ministers to correct the record with Parliament and the media on data used to illustrate the FDP’s success.
Earlier this month, the OSR, part of the UK Statistics Authority, said it was assessing how NHS England used data to make claims about the FDP’s performance, which sometimes made its way into ministerial statements.
The move followed a Freedom of Information request from Foxglove, which found that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir’s health data platform were performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live.
Foxglove also said Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 84 percent of the reported fall in outpatient waiting lists, while only 16 trusts were using the tool provided by Palantir.
The results sit uneasily alongside NHS England’s claim that, as of June, 139 trusts used the FDP, with 137 reporting benefits. Another commonly quoted data item found that an Inpatient Care Coordination Solution (CCS) tool based on the FDP had resulted in 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theaters.
Writing to James Murray, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Foxglove noted that NHS England had said in documentation that it was inappropriate to “draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for” in its published FDP data.
Foxglove said: “The claim that Palantir’s FDP has delivered a large number of additional operations has been widely repeated.”
At the time, the OSR said it was assessing the information around NHS England’s claims about the FDP’s performance.
Publishing its response yesterday, the regulator said it had engaged NHS England statisticians and conducted its own desk research based on information provided by the NHS and others who raised concerns about data used to promote the FDP’s benefits.
It noted that on June 6, NHS England added a sentence to published data, which read: “We cannot therefore draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for.” It also updated the methods page.
“NHS England has told OSR that this was motivated, in part, by NHS England having received numerous Freedom of Information requests to provide more detail on how data provided by FDP was analysed,” the OSR said.
“While the addition of this sentence is welcome, we understand why many users took this to represent a significant change in how NHS England was communicating the benefits of FDP data in relation to NHS performance.”
The statement welcomed NHS England’s decision to acknowledge that there is “more that can be done to strengthen messaging around the FDP benefits data and its onward interpretation by users.”
NHS England agreed to add further caveats to the published data and ensure public communications clearly identify before-and-after comparisons and explain that they do not establish causality.
It has also commissioned Imperial College London to evaluate the FDP, looking at products including OPTICA “where the issue around causality is most evident.” OPTICA is designed to streamline the patient discharge process. It was based on Palantir’s technology built under a £60 million series of contracts awarded without competition and then transferred to the FDP. NHS England said it would publish the results.
The OSR said it wanted to be kept informed of progress against a series of other commitments by NHS England’s Head of Profession for Statistics.
An NHS England spokesperson said: “We welcome this review from the Office for Statistics Regulation into the presentation and communication of information about the Federated Data Platform, which found the updates we made to our website have helped to make information more explicitly clear. We are implementing the recommendations in full to provide further clarity about the patient benefits being achieved through the use of the technology.”
Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said: “This damning report makes it clearer than ever that the Government and Palantir must withdraw these dodgy marketing claims and correct the record.
“Even the head of NHS England has admitted personally raising doubts about the claims made on Palantir’s benefits to the NHS. This intervention by the stats watchdog should be the nail in the coffin for the fairy stories we’ve heard about the extra operations supposedly delivered by Palantir’s platform.
“With a new government, there’s a chance to draw a line under the previous administration’s shameful practice of running marketing for this Trump-aligned tech giant. The new health secretary must withdraw these figures, correct the record with Parliament and the media, and ensure that the debate about whether Palantir should have a place in our NHS is conducted based on reliable, verifiable evidence – not spin.” ®
Lenovo has expanded its LOQ gaming laptop lineup with a new graphics option. The company has introduced a refreshed version of the LOQ 17IRX10, pairing Intel’s Core i7-14700HX processor with Nvidia’s newly announced GeForce RTX 5070 12GB laptop GPU. The update gives buyers another configuration to choose from without changing the overall design or feature set of the laptop.
The new variant joins Lenovo’s existing LOQ 17IRX10 lineup, which was previously available with GeForce RTX 5050, RTX 5060, and RTX 5070 8GB graphics options. While the chassis remains unchanged, the addition of a 12GB RTX 5070 brings more VRAM to the series, a specification that has become increasingly important as modern AAA games demand larger texture caches and higher memory capacity.
According to Lenovo’s PSREF listing, the new configuration retains the same 115W Total Graphics Power (TGP) and 2,347MHz boost clock as the 8GB RTX 5070 model. The primary difference is the increase in graphics memory from 8GB to 12GB.

The laptop is available with an Intel Core i7-14700HX, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB PCIe SSD. Lenovo has also retained the 17.3-inch Full HD IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate, making the system suitable for competitive gaming where high frame rates are more important than higher display resolutions. The notebook is powered by a 60Wh battery and supports 245W fast charging.
Connectivity remains unchanged as well. The laptop includes a USB-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery support, three USB-A ports, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5mm audio jack, and Lenovo’s proprietary charging connector, as shown in the product diagrams.
Unlike previous GPU upgrades that focused primarily on increasing raw processing power, this refresh addresses another limitation that has become more noticeable in recent games: graphics memory.
Several recent AAA titles have pushed beyond the practical limits of 8GB VRAM, particularly when high-resolution textures, ray tracing and AI-assisted upscaling are enabled simultaneously. While the RTX 5070 12GB carries the same power budget and clock speeds as its 8GB counterpart, the additional memory should provide more headroom in newer titles and help reduce texture streaming issues at higher graphics settings.

Lenovo has not announced pricing or availability for the new configuration, and Notebookcheck notes that the model is not yet listed for sale.
For buyers considering a gaming laptop in this segment, the refreshed LOQ 17IRX10 doesn’t introduce a new design or a faster processor. Instead, it offers a more balanced GPU configuration that could prove more relevant as games continue to demand additional graphics memory.
Nokia reported comparable operating profit of €434mn for the second quarter of 2026, up 18% on the same period last year and comfortably ahead of the €382mn that analysts polled by LSEG had forecast.
Net sales rose 8% to €4.82bn, or 9% at constant currency, lifted by the companies racing to build AI data centres.
The beat extended a run that began earlier in the year, when comparable operating profit jumped 54% in the first quarter.
For the first half, net sales reached €9.25bn, up 6% as reported and 7% at constant currency, while the group operating margin widened to 9.0% in the second quarter, an improvement of 70 basis points.
The Finnish network-equipment maker’s Network Infrastructure division carried the quarter, with sales up 12% to €2.04bn.
Optical Networks grew 20% and IP Networks 16%, both supplying the optical networking and routing that hyperscalers are buying to wire their AI clusters together and to link data centres across long distances.
Sales to AI and cloud customers more than doubled year on year, reaching €446mn, and the unit booked €2.8bn of fresh orders during the quarter.
Much of that came from selling fibre-optic gear to the large technology firms building AI data centres, a market Nokia has pushed into hard over the past year.
“Demand remains strong, while supply continues to be the main industry constraint, prompting our customers to place longer-term orders,” chief executive Justin Hotard said.
New orders ran well ahead of what Nokia actually shipped, a sign of a lengthening backlog. The €2.8bn of AI and cloud orders booked in the quarter comfortably exceeded the €446mn those customers bought over the same three months, as buyers moved to lock in scarce supply ahead of delivery.
Mobile Infrastructure, still the larger unit by revenue, grew 6% to €2.68bn, a steadier showing than the surging data-centre business.
The mobile networks market has stabilised after several lean years of slowing 5G spend, though it is nowhere near the double-digit growth Nokia is now booking from cloud customers, and it remains the part of the business most exposed to the memory chips whose prices are climbing.
The comparable figures flattered a messier bottom line. On a reported basis, Nokia swung to an operating loss of €50mn and posted net profit of just €5mn, down from €96mn a year earlier, after restructuring and other one-off charges weighed on the accounts.
Nokia expects about €800mn of restructuring charges across 2026, including €350mn tied to integrating its operations in China, €200mn for European restructuring, and €250mn under an earlier cost-cutting programme.
It held the quarterly dividend at €0.04 a share, payable on August 6.
The company raised its full-year outlook for comparable operating profit to between €2.1bn and €2.6bn, up from €2.0bn to €2.5bn, though €0.1bn of the increase is a technical adjustment linked to reclassifying discontinued operations.
Hotard said the group was on track to finish “somewhat above the midpoint” of that range.
The raised guidance still leaves most of the year to play for. Nokia earned roughly €715mn of comparable operating profit across the first half, which means the top of its €2.6bn target depends on the second half delivering close to €1.9bn, a back-loaded shape that leaves little room for slippage.
The results arrive against a backdrop of rising memory chip prices, which AI demand has pushed to record levels and which are squeezing makers of telecoms and networking equipment.
Rival Ericsson has flagged similar cost pressure, though Nokia’s second-quarter numbers suggest it is absorbing the hit for now.
Hotard, who joined from Intel and took over as chief executive in 2025, has steered Nokia towards the data-centre buildout rather than the slower telecoms-equipment cycle that defined the company for much of the past decade.
The next test comes with third-quarter results, when investors will watch whether that €2.8bn order book converts into the second-half momentum he is promising.
I scroll on my phone, sipping on an overpriced espresso tonic at a San Francisco café. I watch as glassy notifications pop up on my home screen, one after another, distorting the top row of app icons in neat succession. Similar to how the glass in my hand refracts the coffee’s colors, the warping effect of Apple’s Liquid Glass tugs at the edges of whatever’s behind each notification, disappearing a second later.
Apple dropped the public beta for iOS 27 in mid-July, with the software’s full release expected in September. The beta version of iOS includes a new slider for adjusting Liquid Glass’s appearance across your iPhone. Apple’s translucent operating system was polarizing when it launched in 2025, with some criticizing how the design impacted text legibility. In response, Apple rolled out updates that tampered with the Liquid Glass effect, making the smartphone interface more opaque.
With iOS 27, Apple gives users the option to make Liquid Glass even more transparent than its default. In the current public beta, this choice is available in Settings under the Appearance tab. If you tap on Liquid Glass here, you can drag it to the left for a more transparent experience.
Fear not—if you don’t feel the same way as I do about transparency—you can drag that same slider to the right and boost the overall opacity of Liquid Glass. There’s still the option to Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast as well.
I immediately cranked my settings to maximum clarity after I downloaded the public beta and left the setting on for a week to get the full experience. I understand why some prefer the heavily tinted version or need to switch it for accessibility reasons, yet I reveled in the warped colors and characters as I experienced Liquid Glass in its clearest glory.
Early during my tests, I found myself slowly scrolling up and down on my Slack messages, watching as the names of Slack rooms refracted behind the menu bar at the bottom of my smartphone screen. I watched as the letters curled into meaningless lines and then reformed, unharmed, on the other side. The more I stared, the more whimsical it felt, and the more I appreciated Apple’s glassy design risk.
The “more clear” setting makes icons under notifications almost glow with the Liquid Glass effect.Photograph: Reece Rodgers

Airlines from Bahrain and Japan just threw their weight behind a plane that looks nothing like the ones filling today’s skies. At the Farnborough Air Show this week, Gulf Air signed a letter of intent for an undisclosed number of JetZero Z4 aircraft, locking in preferential delivery slots for the early 2030s. Japan Airlines followed with a formal support agreement that puts its operational teams inside the design process from the start.
Gulf Air’s new deal puts the carrier at the forefront of the Z4, as it is the first Middle Eastern airline to support the project. Bahrain’s national airline believes the new plane is exactly what it needs to expand its network of routes across Europe and Asia, and it has the advantage of being the first to take possession. According to JetZero CEO Tom O’Leary, the agreement is a vote of confidence in the Z4’s capacity to give customers with a completely new level of experience at a lower cost per seat, while also being significantly more cost-effective for airlines.
At the same time, Japan Airlines announced its own agreement with JetZero, which will see them collaborate on everything from flight operations to passenger service. Takao Suzuki, JAL’s chief strategist, said the step is critical to the company’s long-term aim of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. JetZero’s intentions for the Z4 to touch the runways in the early 2030s align precisely with JAL’s own fleet plans, thus the two firms are on the same page in terms of timeframe. That brings two more airlines to the table, joining Delta, United, Alaska, and EasyJet for a total of 17 airlines providing JetZero with the real-world feedback it need to shape its design.

Now, about the plane itself. The Z4 is a bit of an outlier, with a blended wing body design that eliminates the tube and wing configuration and instead combines the wings and fuselage as a continuous surface. According to JetZero, that is enough to reduce fuel consumption by up to 50% on mid-sized aircraft flying similar routes. It’s planned to carry roughly 250 passengers over a distance of up to 5,000 nautical miles, putting it exactly in the middle of the market where the 757 and 767 used to rule, and unlike some of its potential competitors, the engines are located at the back of the plane, high up on the body.

It means quieter cabins and the possibility of using sustainable aviation fuel instead of traditional jet fuel, and the Pratt & Whitney PW2040-class powerplants that are likely to be installed are designed with all of this in mind. Then there’s the cabin, with wider boarding doors, distinct inner cabins, and each seat having its own dedicated overhead storage area. One advantage is that the plane is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing airport infrastructure, eliminating the need for specific gates or taxiways.

Factory work is now underway, with JetZero breaking ground in mid-June on a gigantic 8 million square foot factory and final assembly plant sprawled across more than 600 acres near to the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina. The project is a significant undertaking, costing $4.7 billion, and is expected to create 14,500 new employment over the next decade. North Carolina created a massive incentive package for the state, one of the largest ever awarded to a company. Then, on July 21, the US Export-Import Bank signed a letter of intent that may release up to $3 billion in financing through its Make More in America initiative. This money will be utilized to help with building, production setup, and purchasing necessary equipment. JetZero intends to relocate its headquarters from California to Greensboro sometime in early 2027.

As the factory in Greensboro takes shape, the team at Northrop Grumman’s Scaled Composites plant in Mojave, California, works on the full-scale demonstrator. The primary section in the middle is now being assembled. They plan to launch their first flight in the fourth quarter of 2027. They’ve already flown a smaller Pathfinder demo to collect all of the necessary aerodynamic data. JetZero expects to submit its proposal for type certification later this year. With commercial production slated to begin by the end of 2030, they hope to have passenger flights operational by the early 2030s.
[Source]
Northrop Grumman has launched a private satellite-servicing mission to attach life-extending “jetpacks” to aging communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit. “It’s the second satellite-saving mission to launch this month, all part of a growing, money-saving effort to keep spacecraft running as long as possible,” reports Phys.org. From the report: Launched by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman’s mission robotic vehicle — dubbed MRV — and its jetpacks will spend the next year angling into the proper orbit 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth. Hundreds of satellites orbit at this so-called geosynchronous orbit, where they match the speed of Earth’s rotation and keep to the same part of the sky for continuous coverage. Once in place by mid-2027, the minivan-sized spacecraft will use its 10-foot (9-meter) arms to attach a jetpack to an aging communication satellite. Then it will zip off to two more satellites in need.
For its debut flight, the spacecraft was accompanied by three electric-propelled jetpacks that peeled away separately following liftoff. Like the MRV, the jetpacks will use their own xenon gas thrusters to get to the desired orbit. Once in place, the jetpacks will wait for the robot to grab them, one at a time, and plug them into their designated satellites. Each jetpack — the size of a washing machine — will provide the necessary oomph for an out-of-gas satellite to keep operating for several more years instead of retiring. If it works, it will be a boon for satellite operators SES of Luxembourg and Optus of Australia, saving them millions of dollars in replacement costs.
Federal agencies pledged over $5 billion to the Genesis Mission, funding 278 AI-for-science projects selected from more than 5,000 applications
Federal agencies have committed more than $5 billion to the Genesis Mission, an Energy Department-led effort to use artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific research, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios announced on Wednesday. The initiative selected 278 projects from more than 5,000 applications, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a summit in Washington. More than 15 federal agencies are contributing research awards, funding, datasets, and facilities to the programme.
The Genesis Mission was established by a November 2025 executive order and is part of what the administration describes as the largest marshalling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo programme. Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil, who is directing the effort for the Energy Department, said the mission brings together leading researchers, institutions, and technology partners to build what he called the next generation of scientific capability. The DOE received the largest response rate for any programme in the department’s history, according to Gil.
The largest single award is a $60 million investment in nuclear energy, funding a three-year project called Prometheus that will use AI to help design, license, manufacture, and operate nuclear reactors. The project team has raised more than $200 million in industry cost share and $30 million in private capital alongside the federal funding. Other funded areas include biomedical research, energy grid reliability, national security, quantum computing, and microelectronics manufacturing.
Alongside the Genesis Mission announcement, Kratsios released a report to President Trump titled “Science: A New Golden Age,” which the White House described as the first comprehensive rethinking of the US science enterprise in more than 80 years. The report calls for federal research funding to shift toward AI-powered research systems and individual scientists rather than universities, which have historically dominated federally funded scholarship. Agencies with at least $3 billion in research authority will be required to submit implementation plans within 90 days.
The funding shift represents a deliberate attempt to reshape roughly $200 billion in annual federal research spending. The report cites the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, which gives selected researchers up to $700,000 annually for five years without requiring a detailed experimental plan, as a model for the kind of flexible, investigator-driven funding the administration wants to expand. The blueprint also identifies national missions including commercial fusion power and returning Americans to the lunar surface by 2028.
The announcement comes as the US-China AI competition intensifies, with Stanford’s 2026 AI Index finding that the performance gap between the best American and Chinese AI models has collapsed to under three percent despite the US spending 23 times more on private AI investment. The Genesis Mission sits alongside other recent federal AI initiatives, including billions in EXIM export financing for US-built AI infrastructure and executive orders on quantum computing, as part of a broader push to maintain American technological leadership through public funding rather than export controls alone.
Ripple effect: Amid growing talk of an AI bubble, a study by Japanese market analysts has found that five of the largest American technology companies are carrying a collective “hidden” debt of over $1.65 trillion, driven largely by massive spending on AI infrastructure. That undisclosed sum exceeds the $1.35 trillion the same companies have officially reported on their balance sheets, and it has grown eightfold over the past four years.
According to estimates from Nikkei Asia, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle have together amassed roughly $3 trillion in total debt, a large share of it tied to exorbitant AI infrastructure spending – long-term data center lease agreements, along with costly servers, graphics accelerators, and other computing hardware that has yet to be delivered.
The report notes that less than half of the true debt figure appears directly on balance sheets, with the remainder disclosed only in accounting footnotes attached to SEC filings. Nikkei was careful to point out that the financial commitments behind this debt are legal under US law, but that the way they’re reported makes it harder for retail investors to accurately gauge these companies’ financial health.
Credit: App Economy Insights
Of the five companies in the study, Meta carries the largest estimated hidden debt, at around $420 billion – nearly three times what it disclosed in its FY 2026 financial statement.
The company’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana, for instance, includes a $27 billion investment from Blue Owl Capital that never appeared in its official earnings report. It’s a fully legal maneuver under current US accounting rules, but one that illustrates just how much can stay out of view.
Oracle’s hidden debt has grown roughly 30-fold over the past four years, reaching $273.3 billion as of the end of May 2026. Most of that stems from long-term leasing agreements with third-party data center operators, part of the company’s push to expand its Stargate AI data center project across sites in Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Credit: App Economy Insights
While much of this debt remains invisible to everyday investors, institutional players and credit rating agencies are starting to take notice. Morgan Stanley and Moody’s have both raised concerns about the practice, and S&P recently downgraded Oracle’s short-term rating from A-2 to A-3, and its long-term rating from BBB to BBB-, placing it just one notch above junk status.
Salad is usually synonymous with healthy eating. Except now, as the US grapples with an expanding outbreak of cyclosporiasis that’s sickened more than 7,100 people in Michigan alone, likely caused by iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms.
In fact, leafy greens are frequently implicated in instances of foodborne illness. There was a 2022 multistate E. coli outbreak tied to romaine served on Wendy’s sandwiches and 173 cases of norovirus linked to Illinois eatery D.C. Cobb’s. In 2021, BrightFarms recalled packaged salad greens sold in several states after 31 people got salmonella. And in 2019, a total of 167 people were infected with E. coli after eating romaine harvested from the Salinas Valley region in California. This isn’t even the first cyclospora outbreak linked to lettuce: In 2020, Fresh Express salad kits were linked to more than 700 cases of people afflicted with the parasite.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that produce is responsible for almost half of the reported foodborne illness cases, with leafy vegetables topping the list. So what is it that makes lettuce a major source of America’s foodborne tummy troubles?
One big reason is simply because lots of people eat it. Lettuce is the second-most-consumed vegetable in the US behind potatoes. (The latest outbreak ensures potatoes will remain the king of US veggies. Plus, french fries.) Wraps, subs, tacos, you name a fast food sandwich and it’s almost certainly got lettuce on it. Salad-slinging chains are fixtures across the US. Grocery store coolers are stocked with salad kits, on top of the unadorned heads of iceberg lettuce and containers of spinach.
Those ready-to-eat salads and blends of spring mix pose a particularly acute risk because they contain multiple types of leafy greens, which can come from different farms and locations. If one type of lettuce in the mix is contaminated, it can contaminate the whole bag. And because that contaminated lettuce gets packaged into lots and lots of bagged salad, it has the potential to spread germs far and wide.
How lettuce is grown can also expose it to a wide array of pathogens. A 2025 study by researchers at Cornell University who studied E. coli outbreaks in romaine lettuce found that a lot of contamination originates from irrigation with untreated surface water applied through overhead spray irrigation systems. There are ways to lower that risk, including switching to irrigation systems that do not directly touch the leaves, but that would require upgrades and downtime.
Lettuce’s satisfying crunch is also what makes it prone to pesky pathogens. Since it’s eaten raw—really, who wants wilted lettuce?—there’s no opportunity to cook off any lingering contaminants. Like other raw fruit and produce, leafy greens don’t go through what’s known as a “kill step”—heating, pasteurization, or freezing—which is designed to eliminate pathogens during the food manufacturing process.
The texture of lettuce is an additional factor in its ability to spread disease.“Many lettuce types have a lot of crevices and folds,” says Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “It’s very easy for these tiny pathogens to get in there.”
Even prewashing procedures at manufacturing facilities don’t always remove microbes, which can cling tightly to leaves. In the case of cyclospora, the parasite has thick outer walls, making it highly resistant to most food sanitizers. Experts say vigorous washing that involves scrubbing is the best way to get rid of cyclospora.
“If you don’t wash these products well, you’re going to end up ingesting whatever is on the lettuce,” says Amira Roess, an epidemiologist at George Mason University.
A Florida teen dropped his social media addiction lawsuit against Meta days before trial, after settling separately with YouTube, TikTok, and Snap
Meta will not face a second jury trial over claims that its social media platforms are addictive to minors after the teenage plaintiff at the centre of the case chose to dismiss his claims. The boy, a 15-year-old from Panama City, Florida, was set to go to trial on July 27 in Los Angeles Superior Court. His attorneys said Wednesday that he is withdrawing from the case in light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a gruelling weekslong trial, according to Bloomberg.
The dismissal marks the first time a plaintiff has voluntarily dropped a bellwether addiction case that was scheduled for trial. YouTube and TikTok had already settled with the plaintiff in recent weeks, and Snap reached a tentative accord on Monday, leaving Meta as the sole remaining defendant. Meta said the plaintiff dropped his case without receiving any payment from the company.
A Meta spokesperson called the dismissal a victory, saying the claims never held up and that the outcome makes clear the company will not back away from defending itself against what it called baseless lawsuits. The plaintiff’s attorneys countered that their client came into the process wanting to hold social media companies accountable and push for changes to protect young people, and that he achieved that goal. They said he is ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery and therapy.
Meta had challenged the strength of the case in court filings, arguing that company data showed the plaintiff created accounts on Instagram and Facebook about six months before filing suit and averaged less than ten minutes a day on either platform. The plaintiff’s attorneys had alleged that he started using social media at age eight, spent up to ten hours a day on various platforms, and developed insomnia, severe depression, suicidal ideation, and anxiety as a result.
The case was the second of several bellwether trials designed to test the strengths of arguments in the more than 3,000 individual lawsuits filed against the four largest social media platforms. The first trial ended in March when a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for a young woman’s mental health struggles and awarded six million dollars in damages, with Meta found 70 percent responsible. That verdict set a reference point for the thousands of cases still waiting, and Meta’s willingness to fight rather than settle has become a defining feature of the litigation.
Whether the dismissal changes the dynamics of the broader case remains to be seen. The plaintiff’s decision to settle with three of the four defendants and then drop the remaining claim against the company that refused to pay suggests Meta’s hard-line strategy may be producing results. But the company still faces more than 3,000 individual complaints, suits from more than 40 state attorneys general, and additional bellwether trials scheduled throughout 2026 and into 2027.
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