Photo credit: Don Pettit
During Expedition 72, NASA astronaut Don Pettit used his free time on the International Space Station to work on a quite interesting side project. He went ahead and coaxed an early purple potato to sprout in a small improvised garden he’d created on his own. He’d removed a bit of the tuber and placed it in a container with grow lights connected, fastening it in place with a small piece of Velcro. This simple system kept everything stable even as the station zoomed around the Earth.

The potato had smooth purple skin and had grown into an oval form about the size of a huge egg. There were tiny little tendrils shooting out in all directions, looking like pallid threads snapped in mid-stretch. No dirt was visible on any of the surfaces. The photograph quickly went viral, and people went crazy in the comments section, asking all kinds of questions. Some wondered whether it was some unknown organism that had suddenly surfaced floating in space, while others compared it to some of the props seen in sci-fi films.

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Pettit ended up naming his little specimen Spudnik-1 and explaining to everyone what they were looking at. He got the idea from a story about a lone explorer who had to cultivate potatoes on Mars to survive. This was just his own personal experiment to explore how a familiar food like a potato would behave far away from home.

Microgravity changes everything about how a plant develops. Roots do not reach downward the way they would on Earth, instead spreading outward in every direction at once in search of water and nutrients. Shoots behave the same way, scattering rather than growing in a straight line upward. The whole plant takes on a loose, sprawling form that looks nothing like what you would find in a tidy garden back home. Growth is also slower than usual, since without the constant pull of gravity there is no physical stress on the living tissue to drive development forward.

Then there’s the fact that there’s no soil, so the potato skin remains smooth and even under the constant light of the artificial lamps, with no rough brown patches from hitting the earth. Moisture and light are properly metered, but that is the extent of management. It’s all simply these minor adjustments to try to imitate the natural pull of gravity and the cycle of sun and rain that we take for granted on Earth.

NASA teams have been cultivating a variety of plants aboard the station for years, including lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mustard greens, kale, and zinnias, all of which have survived under relatively comparable conditions. Of course, every harvest is a joy because it means they can consume some real food instead of vacuum-sealed meals. Of course, they collect a wealth of information that helps them plan for longer-term expeditions to the Moon or Mars, when every piece of food they bring must serve several functions.

Pettit kept things simple by selecting a potato variety that naturally contains a high concentration of the exotic pigments that give it its deep purple hue. It just so happens that those same molecules can help shelter cells from radiation, which is a significant benefit for longer missions. After the picture went viral, he kept folks informed with some fairly simple updates. The Velcro held the tuber in place, the grow lights provided a consistent supply of electricity, and then, well, it all came down to being patient and keeping an eye on things.
[Source]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that hackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability identified as CVE-2026-33017, which affects the Langflow framework for building AI agents.

The security issue received a critical score of 9.3 out of 10 and can be leveraged for remote code execution, allowing threat actors to build public flows without authentication.

The agency added the issue to the list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, describing it as a code injection vulnerability.

Researchers at application security company Endor Labs claim that hackers started exploiting CVE-2026-33017 on March 19, about 20 hours after the vulnerability advisory became public.

No public proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code existed at the time, and Endor Labs believes that attackers built exploits directly from the information included in the advisory.

Automated scanning activity began in 20 hours, followed by exploitation using Python scripts in 21 hours, and data (.env and .db files) harvesting in 24 hours.

Langflow is a popular open-source visual framework for building AI workflows with 145,000 stars on GitHub. It provides a drag-and-drop interface for connecting nodes into executable pipelines, along with a REST API for running them programmatically.

The tool has widespread adoption across the AI development ecosystem, making it an attractive target for hackers.

In May 2025, CISA issued another warning about active exploitation in Langflow, targeting CVE-2025-3248, a critical API endpoint flaw that allows unauthenticated RCE and potentially leads to full server control.

The most recent flaw, CVE-2026-33017, lets attackers execute arbitrary Python code impacts versions 1.8.1 and earlier of Langflow, and could be exploited via a single crafted HTTP request due to unsandboxed flow execution.

CISA did not mark the flaw as exploited by ransomware actors, but gave federal agencies until April 8 to apply the security updates or mitigations, or stop using the product.

System administrators are recommended to upgrade to Langflow version 1.9.0 or later, which addresses the security problem, or disable/restrict the vulnerable endpoint.

Endor Labs also advised not to expose Langflow directly to the internet, to monitor outbound traffic, and to rotate API keys, database credentials, and cloud secrets when suspicious activity is detected.

CISA’s deadline formally applies to organizations covered by Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01, but private sector companies, state and local governments, and other non-FCEB entities are also advised to treat it as a benchmark and respond accordingly.

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Dutch professional football club Ajax Amsterdam (AFC Ajax) disclosed that a hacker exploited vulnerabilities in its IT systems and accessed data belonging to a few hundred people.

The security issues also allowed transferring purchased tickets to others and enabled modifications to stadium bans imposed to certain individuals.

The club learned about the security issues and their effect from journalists who were tipped off by the hacker.

AFC Ajax is one of the most successful football clubs, winning the UEFA Champions League four times and with 36 Eredivisie titles, the premier professional football league in the Netherlands.

“We recently discovered that a hacker in the Netherlands unlawfully gained access to parts of our systems. Data was viewed,” AFC Ajax stated.

“What we now know is that only the email addresses of a few hundred people were viewed. In addition, for fewer than 20 people with a stadium ban, their names, email addresses, and dates of birth were accessed.”

RTL journalists who received a tip from the hacker independently verified the vulnerabilities and reported that they were able to transfer season tickets from their holders to arbitrary people, access and modify stadium ban records, and gain broad access to fan data via APIs and shared keys.

In a demonstration, they reassigned a VIP season ticket in seconds. Most worryingly, RTL stated it could manipulate 42,000 season tickets, 538 supporter stadium bans, and view details on over 300,000 accounts.

AFC Ajax says that it has engaged external experts to determine the scope of the incident and identify the root cause, while noting that the exposed data has not been leaked.

Meanwhile, all identified vulnerabilities have been patched, and additional security measures have been introduced.

The Dutch Data Protection authority, as well as the police, have also been notified accordingly.

RTL’s investigation was clearly non-malicious. Likewise, the attacker’s limited access and decision to disclose the flaws via the media, rather than exploit them for profit or extortion, suggest the vulnerabilities were not abused at scale.

However, it remains unclear whether this was the first time these weaknesses in Ajax’s systems were discovered or exploited.

Ajax fans who have registered with the club’s systems or purchased season tickets should remain vigilant for suspicious communications, especially those impersonating or claiming to come from the AFC Ajax club.

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Google is adding a pair of new features to Gemini aimed at making it easier to switch to the AI chatbot. Personal history and past context are big components to how a chatbot provides customized answers to each user. Gemini now supports importing history from other AI platforms. Both free and paid consumer accounts can use these options.

With the first option, Gemini can create a prompt asking a competitor’s AI chatbot to summarize what it has learned about you. The result might include details such as your typical written communication style, your family members’ names or your key preferences. The other AI tool’s summary can then be pasted into Gemini, providing Google’s platform with a preliminary profile.

The second option allows users to import their entire chat history with a different AI assistant into Gemini. Doing so allows people to reference earlier conversations or requests made on a different platform after migrating to the Google option.

Anthropic recently introduced a similar memory import feature, so Google may also be hoping to scoop up some of the people who are dropping OpenAI following its shady-sounding new arrangement with the Department of War. Whatever the motivation, these options should make it easier to have a seamless transition between providers.

Alia Ballout is bringing centuries-old family traditions to Singapore through Beît Ballout

When Alia Ballout registered a company in Jan 2023, she didn’t know what it would sell.

But a year later, she launched what she describes as Singapore’s first traditional olive oil brand—sourcing produce from her family’s grove in southern Lebanon, air-freighting it to Singapore, and bottling it locally by hand.

Today, the 28-year-old runs Beît Ballout alone. Her family, split between Oman, Singapore, and London, pitches in especially during Lebanon’s October harvest.

We spoke with Alia to learn more about building a traditional olive oil business, and the challenges of operating across regions with ongoing instability.

Turning heritage into a business

Born in Singapore, Alia is the daughter of Mae Lam, a Singaporean Chinese, and Adib Ballout, a Lebanese.

She spent most of her childhood in Oman before moving to the UK, and later relocating to Singapore at 19, where she is currently based.

In 2021, she enrolled in a Juris Doctor programme at Singapore Management University (SMU). While she completed her degree, she found herself increasingly disillusioned with the environment and began considering alternative paths.

A corporate law lecture on company formation eventually prompted her to register a business in early 2023, despite not having a clear product direction at the time.

After graduating, she took on roles in both the legal field and hospitality, including a stint at Mondrian Hotel. Through conversations with chefs and industry professionals, she gained exposure to supply chains and import-export processes.

The idea for Beît Ballout eventually emerged later that year during a routine video call with her mother. She appeared on screen in Lebanon, sun-hatted, basket in hand, picking olives from their grove. Alia stared at the image—an Asian woman harvesting olives in the Lebanon—and felt something stir up in her heart.

“I looked at her enjoying herself so much,” Alia recalled. “I was like, that’s such a weird image. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

The Ballouts had always held a piece of land with hundreds of olive trees in their backyard. They would return every few months to spend time in their home. The Ballouts would also often pick olives to make olive oil as a yearly family tradition, and if there’s any excess, they would then be given to friends and neighbours.

Spotting an opportunity to bring the family tradition to Singapore, Alia asked her father to ship a canister of Lebanese olive oil on credit, as she did not have any capital at the time. She then created a website for the company, naming it Beît Ballout, which means “House of Ballout” in Lebanese.

Building a brand from scratch

Alia started small—purchasing a handful of S$5 glass bottles from Scoop, which were all she could afford then, and filled them with her family’s Lebanese olive oil. She photographed the bottles and posted them on her private Instagram account, which had around 200 followers.

She had no expectations for the post, so the positive response caught her by surprise. “People were interested because it was such an odd thing to do, and because it came from me.”

From then, Alia primarily began selling her Lebanese olive oil through her website.

Because her initial packaging was modest, Alia had to be creative in promoting the product. “The ugly bottle design forced me to sell the heck out of my product,” she said. “I believed strongly in the quality. I needed to show its value.”

In the early years, she balanced running the business with full-time work at law firms, spending weekdays at the firms and weekends at pop-ups such as Sprout, Crane Living, and eventually the Boutique Fair.

“When I first started pop-ups, I didn’t realise that all they sell you is space. I had to get creative and set up everything by myself”

At these events, she often stood for 12 hours a day, engaging with customers, offering tastings, and addressing sceptics. She also managed marketing and design for Beît Ballout. This consistent, hands-on approach gradually built recognition for the brand in Singapore.

As demand grew, she eventually left her job in Mar last year to run Beît Ballout full-time. Although she had also recently passed the Singapore Bar examination, she chose to pursue the business instead.

“This year, it’s gonna be my third time back at Boutique Fair. Customers who knew me from this, they kind of grew up with me, and the brand.”

A method that dates back centuries

A key part of the brand’s appeal lies in the Ballout family’s ancestral method of harvesting and pressing olives by hand, a practice that dates back centuries.

The Ballouts hand-pick olives—primarily Baladi olives, a variety native to the region and common in Palestine—from nearly 500 trees in their grove in Houmine El Tahta.

Harvesting takes place after the first rainfall, around Oct each year. The olives are then brought to a messara, or pressing plant, where a granite wheel—used in the Levant for centuries—crushes them. The fresh olives are cold-pressed at 27°C within four to six hours of picking.

The result is a rich, green, opaque oil—buttery yet fruity—distinct from the transparent, neutral-tasting commercial varieties.

The olive oil is then packed into large cannisters and air flown into Singapore, before being bottled by hand and sold to customers.

This approach stands in stark contrast to most commercial olive oil production. Alia found that much of it is heavily processed: olives are treated with pesticides, violently shaken from trees, hot-pressed for speed and yield (for comparison, cold-pressed oils yield around 35% of the olive pulp, while hot-pressed oils yield about 37%), and chemically stabilised to extend shelf life—a process that can compromise both flavour and quality.

Moreover, commercial olives typically don’t get pressed for nearly 16 hours, which means the olives would have already entered their fermentation phase, further affecting the oil’s characteristics.

Using food & storytelling to raise awareness

For Alia, Beît Ballout is closely tied to its origins, and she has chosen not to separate the product from its broader cultural and regional context.

She describes her approach as “soft activism”—using food and storytelling to raise awareness and encourage discussion.

This has included initiatives such as curated dining experiences and content on platforms like Substack, where she writes about Levantine history and current affairs.

In addition, as demand for the Ballout’s olive oil grew, the business started engaging workers from local and displaced communities during harvest periods, providing wages and logistical support.

Navigating rising costs and regional instability

Currently, each 500ml bottle of Beît Ballout’s EVOO starts at S$45. It’s priced higher than most commercially available options, but reflects its production methods and supply chain.

However, bringing the product into Singapore has become increasingly challenging.

Alia’s family home is in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel—an area that has seen recurring conflict.

During a visit last Oct, she encountered these conditions firsthand, including drone activity and an explosion just a hill away from her family’s home.

More recently, intensified bombings in Mar forced residents in parts of southern Lebanon to evacuate, leaving behind stored harvests, including 30 tins of the Ballouts’ oil. But thankfully, most of the stock has already been flown into Singapore and is kept safe.

Despite rising costs and logistical challenges, Alia has chosen not to increase prices.

“I haven’t increased my price since the recent escalations, despite it being more difficult to bring in,” Alia reflected. “Every dollar we earn, I want to put back into our new processing facility as I’m building something Singapore has never seen before,” she added.

Building Singapore’s first olive oil bottling facility

Apart from selling directly to individual customers, Beît Ballout also supplied to restaurants such as The Mandala Club’s Popi’s Restaurant, Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, and Suzuki by Kengo Kuma.

To scale operations, Alia is building Singapore’s first olive oil bottling facility, spanning 700 square feet, to handle bottling and packaging. While an exact opening date has not been announced, the facility is set to launch soon.

With olive harvesting and processing temporarily paused due to the ongoing situation in Lebanon, Alia is pivoting to other products using existing stock. She recently introduced a line of olive oil soaps, handmade by her mother, who has run a spa business in Oman for over three decades.

Alia has also visited Spain to study traditional olive oil farms, noting similarities in production methods and business models with those in the Levant.

The brand remains deliberately small and mission-driven. “I’ve never been profit-driven. I feel like I’m put on this earth to retell stories. My marker of success is putting our little village on the map,” Alia said.

I want to change the perspective that people have of Lebanon, one that is not of war and chaos, but instead filled with good produce and community.

Alia Ballout

• Find out more about Beît Ballout here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: ⁠⁠Singaporeans reflect on the Gaza conflict: Balancing empathy, neutrality and national cohesion

Featured Image Credit: Beît Ballout

President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly weighing whether to send ground troops to Iran in order to retrieve the country’s highly enriched uranium. However, the administration has shared little information about which troops would be deployed, how they would retrieve the nuclear material, or where the material would go next.

“People are going to have to go and get it,” secretary of state Marco Rubio said at a congressional briefing earlier this month, referring to the possible operation.

There are some indications that an operation is close on the horizon. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 brigade combat troops to the Middle East. (At the time of writing, the order has not been made.) The troops would come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint forcible entry operations.” On Wednesday, Iran’s government rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president “is prepared to unleash hell” in Iran if a peace deal is not reached—a plan some lawmakers have reportedly expressed concern about.

Drawing from publicly available intelligence and their own experience, two experts outlined the likely contours of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They tell WIRED that any version of a ground operation would be incredibly complicated and pose a huge risk to the lives of American troops.

“I personally think a ground operation using special forces supported by a larger force is extremely, extremely risky and ultimately infeasible,” Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, tells WIRED.

Nuclear Ambitions

Any version of the operation would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that aren’t in close proximity to each other, the experts say. Jonathan Hackett, a former operations specialist for the Marines and the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells WIRED that as many as 10 locations could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak, and Darkhovin research reactors; the Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin enrichment facilities; the Saghand, Chine, and Yazd mines; and the Bushehr power plant.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which may be able to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, though weapon-grade material generally consists of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says that the other two enrichment facilities may also have 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and that the power plant and all three research reactors may have 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that any such supplies deserve careful attention.

Hackett says that eight of the 10 sites—with the exception of Isfahan, which is likely intact underground, and “Pickaxe Mountain,” a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz—were mostly or partially buried after last June’s air raids. Just before the war, Faragasso says, Iran backfilled the tunnel entrances to the Isfahan facility with dirt.

The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve American troops physically retrieving nuclear material. Hackett says that this material would be stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas inside “large cement vats.” Faragasso adds that it’s unclear how many of these vats may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops would have to bring excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving immense amounts of dirt to retrieve them.

A comparatively less risky version of the operation would still necessitate ground troops, according to Hackett. However, it would primarily use air strikes to entomb nuclear material inside of their facilities. Ensuring that nuclear material is inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragasso says, would entail destroying the entrances to underground facilities and ideally collapsing the facilities’ underground roofs.

Softening the Area

Hackett tells WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran are “probably a ruse” that buys time to move troops into place.

Hackett says that an operation would most likely begin with aerial bombardments in the areas surrounding the target sites. These bombers, he says, would likely be from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “rapid-response” force, and the 31st MEU, the only Marine unit continuously deployed abroad in strategic areas, have reportedly both been deployed to the Middle East.

Anthropic won a preliminary injunction barring the US Department of Defense from labeling it a supply-chain risk, potentially clearing the way for customers to resume working with the company. The ruling on Thursday by Rita Lin, a federal district judge in San Francisco, is a symbolic setback for the Pentagon and a significant boost for the generative AI company as it tries to preserve its business and reputation.

“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” Lin wrote in justifying the temporary relief. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”

Anthropic and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests to comment on the ruling.

The Department of Defense, which under Trump calls itself the Department of War, has relied on Anthropic’s Claude AI tools for writing sensitive documents and analyzing classified data over the past couple of years. But this month, it began pulling the plug on Claude after determining that Anthropic could not be trusted. Pentagon officials cited numerous instances in which Anthropic allegedly placed or sought to put usage restrictions on its technology that the Trump administration found unnecessary.

The administration ultimately issued several directives, including designating the company a supply-chain risk, which have had the effect of slowly halting Claude usage across the federal government and hurting Anthropic’s sales and public reputation. The company filed two lawsuits challenging the sanctions as unconstitutional. In a hearing on Tuesday, Lin said the government had appeared to illegally “cripple” and “punish” Anthropic.

Lin’s ruling on Thursday “restores the status quo” to February 27, before the directives were issued. “It does not bar any defendant from taking any lawful action that would have been available to it” on that date, she wrote. “For example, this order does not require the Department of War to use Anthropic’s products or services and does not prevent the Department of War from transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers, so long as those actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions.”

The ruling suggests the Pentagon and other federal agencies are still free to cancel deals with Anthropic and ask contractors that integrate Claude into their own tools to stop doing so, but without citing the supply-chain-risk designation as the basis.

The immediate impact is unclear because Lin’s order won’t take effect for a week. And a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has yet to rule on the second lawsuit Anthropic filed, which focuses on a different law under which the company was also barred from providing software to the military.

But Anthropic could use Lin’s ruling to demonstrate to some customers concerned about working with an industry pariah that the law may be on its side in the long run. Lin has not set a schedule to make a final ruling.