Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

For a while it seemed like the diarrhea-inducing parasite cyclospora was everywhere. Confirmed and suspected cases number more than 22,000 across 15 states, with 517 people requiring hospitalization. Two people in Michigan died. But now, with signs that the outbreak is slowing down, experts say lettuce is probably safe to eat again.The reason? Most of the contaminated produce is no longer available.Federal health authorities have linked the outbreak to iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico and distributed by Taylor Farms, including at Taco Bell restaurants. On July 17, Taylor Farms announced a recall of shredded iceberg lettuce and salad mixes…

Swati KhandelwalAug 11, 2026Vulnerability / Windows Security Microsoft released its monthly security updates on Tuesday, and one of the flaws it closed is already being used in attacks. The bug sits in a core Windows kernel driver that handles network socket operations. An attacker with code already running on a machine can use it to escalate to SYSTEM. That patch goes out first. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS score: 7.0) and is the only one in this month’s release Microsoft flags as under active exploitation. Exploitation depends on triggering a race condition in the driver. Microsoft has not…

The Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act is expected to be held for a cloture vote in September upon the US Senate’s return, but it still faces significant hurdles on the path to becoming law.Just before the Senate broke for a month-long recess last week, Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture for the crypto market structure bill to go to the floor for consideration. Lawmakers will return from recess on Sept. 14, but only have 14 days scheduled to be in session before breaking for a recess before the November election and another 22 days before the end of the…

Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin’s Democratic race for governor remained too close to call as of 10 p.m. Tuesday as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Madison Rep. Francesca Hong were locked in a tight contest for the nomination. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany easily won the Republican nomination after securing the state GOP and President Donald Trump’s endorsements early. As early election results poured in, Crowley and Hong were separated by less than a percentage point, with each receiving about 40% of the more than 600,000 votes cast. State Sen. Kelda Roys and former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan…

Your article rightly highlights the strain heatwaves place on farming (Adapting to global heating: which UK public services are struggling in hot weather?, 5 August). But the government’s thinking on climate adaptation has a troubling blind spot down at the farm: animal welfare.The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 requires ministers to consider animals as sentient beings when developing policy, yet current discourse on heatwaves and farming treats animals almost entirely as economic assets: deaths are framed as “reduced productivity”, rather than as sentient individuals enduring terrible suffering.During the June heatwaves, French media reported that between 1 and 3 million birds died in a…

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has survived a vote of confidence before a general election due in November, saying he has the “full support” of his ruling National Party.Luxon had called for an “urgent” meeting with his National Party caucus on Wednesday to address “‌increased speculation about [his] leadership”.”I have the full support of our caucus… Our caucus is united, and it is determined to win this election,” he told reporters after the meeting which lasted more than three hours.This was the second challenge to his leadership in four months. Support for Luxon and his party remained weak amid…

Even under more plausible scenarios envisioned by the researchers, in which external growers get on board to varying degrees, consumer prices would rise and EU agricultural imports decline. Though that would in turn boost domestic production, with exact numbers depending on producers’ willingness to adapt. The findings lay out an unpalatable political choice for Brussels: Keep angry farmers’ tractors off the streets, or hit consumers’ wallets as they fulfill basic needs at the grocery store. The proposed residue ban, which is part of the food and feed safety simplification package, is popular with European farmers seeking a level playing field…

For the 14th time, a Google product has hit 1 billion users. Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X that a billion people are using Gemini every month, and that Gemini is Google’s fastest-growing product ever.A billion users is a huge milestone, but Google isn’t the first AI app to hit it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit the mark a few weeks ago, though the company buried the announcement that “more than 1 billion people are putting ChatGPT to work” in an otherwise anodyne blog post about how people use AI. External data suggested ChatGPT crossed 1 billion users as early as…

Google says Chrome’s anti-abuse systems reduced unwanted notifications on Android by more than 7 billion per day during the first quarter of 2026. In a new blog post, Google argues that notification abuse has increasingly been used to distribute scams, malware, phishing attempts, and fraudulent payment requests. To reduce the abuse, Google developed a “Swiss cheese” defense model, where several overlapping systems try to stop abuse at different stages. “Our goal is to ensure that if abuse slips through one layer, another is there to catch it,” Google explained. “This approach allows us to halt abuse at the source, preventing…

Strategy said it held 840,447 BTC as of Aug. 9 and has begun treating its Bitcoin reserve as a source of balance-sheet flexibility.Michael Saylor said Strategy sold $108 million in Bitcoin and $653 million in MSTR shares to increase its dollar reserve by $650 million, and repurchased $109 million of STRC, its variable-rate preferred stock.The timing aligns the three moves without proving that each dollar from the Bitcoin sale directly funded the repurchase. Strategy is also willing to convert a small portion of its BTC into liquidity while supporting a capital structure whose dividends and interest are measured in dollars.The…