Health officials in Ireland traced an outbreak of aggressive skin infections to a community party featuring three bouncy castles, where about 120 people, roughly half of them children, gathered for a barbecue in fall 2025. Of 48 children who fell ill, 33 were treated by regular doctors, 15 needed emergency care, and four were hospitalized, though all recovered. Genomic testing identified a rare, toxin-producing strain of MRSA that caused symptoms far faster than typical infections, sometimes within hours.
Sony Music and Warner have filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company scraped and used their song catalogs without permission to train its models. This follows a similar suit from Universal Music Group in January, meaning all three major music publishers are now pursuing legal action against Anthropic.
Meta piloted a Model Capability Initiative that would have captured employees' keystrokes and mouse movements to help train its AI models. Workers pushed back quickly, circulating an internal petition, and the program was ultimately shelved after concerns about privacy and a reported data breach.
A new leak reported by MacObserver reveals specifications for the Lenovo Googlebook 15, one of the first Android-based laptops arriving under Google's upcoming Googlebook platform. The device reportedly includes a 15.3-inch 120Hz OLED screen with 2,880 x 1,800 resolution, an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage. It also carries a distinctive LED accent called a 'glowbar' and support for Gemini AI features like Magic Cursor.
Squid Game star Hoyeon has revealed she pursued and secured the role of Sung-ae in director Na Hong-jin's sci-fi film 'Hope,' marking her feature film debut. She described a meeting with Na that convinced him to cast her in the part.
Meta has asked some employees who were previously demoted from management positions to return to managerial roles, according to a Business Insider report. The move comes after the company's widely publicized push earlier this year to flatten its organizational structure by cutting middle management jobs.
Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Warren Davidson sent a letter to Britain's Investigatory Powers Tribunal demanding it stop concealing details of Apple's dispute with the UK government over encrypted iCloud data. The case began when the Home Office ordered Apple to build backdoor access to encrypted backups worldwide, prompting Apple to pull its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK users; the tribunal later dismissed Apple's challenge after the UK narrowed its demand to British users only.
Apple confirmed that iOS 27, launching September 14, will ship without two previously demoed features: Messages suggestions that add items to Reminders, Notes, or Calendar, and an automatic password-fixing tool in the Passwords app. Apple updated its website this week to note both will arrive in a 'future software update' rather than at launch, with the change also affecting iPadOS 27 and macOS 27.
Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI is targeting $2 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg, roughly double its reported run rate in August. The push is fueled by strong adoption of its open-weight K3 model, which OpenRouter data shows generating up to 300 billion tokens daily, even as usage has dipped slightly in recent months.
Documents obtained by WIRED via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that CFTC chairman Michael Selig authorized at least three previously unreported investigations into trading on Polymarket. One order, signed in early May, targeted possible insider trading tied to Biden-era pardon markets, following an NPR report on a trader who made over $300,000 betting correctly on pardons for figures like Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff. A second order in late May authorized scrutiny of Iran-related event contracts, coming shortly after a 60 Minutes segment exposed accounts that earned $2.4 million with a suspicious 98 percent win rate.
Microsoft researchers uncovered a phishing operation in which an unidentified attacker sent over one million fraudulent emails within three days, each tailored to target accounts payable staff at specific companies. The emails impersonated ServiceNow, demanding nearly $50,000 in fake subscription payments, and included fabricated email threads featuring real executives' names to make the scam appear legitimate.
A group of parents and children in Illinois and California filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in Chicago federal court, claiming Meta harvested their Facebook and Instagram photos without consent to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition feature for its smart glasses, and to train generative AI models like Emu and Muse Image. The suit alleges these actions violated state biometric and privacy laws in Illinois and California.