Fakes of the globally popular Labubu dolls seized recently in Scotland are “potentially dangerous”, according to trading standards officers.
The elf-like creature from Chinese toy maker Pop Mart are the latest craze in collectibles and have gone viral on social media.
But officials in Aberdeen are warning consumers and businesses to be alert, following the seizure of “counterfeit and potentially dangerous” versions of the toys from shops in the city.
They had loose parts which could pose a choking hazard.
The council’s trading standards team seized the counterfeit Labubu toys from four premises across the city.
They did not have the required safety labelling.
Trading standards manager Graeme Paton said: “Following the discovery of counterfeit toys, we want to alert consumers and particularly parents to be extra vigilant.
“These counterfeit toys can seem like a bargain compared with trying to source the genuine toy, especially when they are a much-sought-after item, but they are potentially dangerous.”
He added: “Counterfeit toys can potentially pose significant dangers to young children such as chemical exposure and choking hazards.
“These products routinely lack proper safety testing and we encourage anyone concerned about the safety of toys they’ve purchased to get in touch with us via Consumer Advice Scotland.”
Labubu is both a fictional character and a brand.
The word itself does not mean anything.
It is the name of a character in “The Monsters” toy series created by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung.
The vinyl faces are attached to plush bodies, and come with a signature look – pointy ears, big eyes and a mischievous grin showing nine teeth.
A curious yet divided internet cannot seem to decide if they are adorable, or just bizarre.
The healthcare industry faces growing demand for MRI scans while battling widespread staff shortages, increased wait lists and rising burnout among healthcare professionals worldwide. Radiology departments are under immense pressure to deliver more with fewer resources, all while ensuring diagnostic accuracy and maintaining a high standard of care. The Philips Future Health Index 2025 Global Report shows healthcare professionals recognize AI’s potential: not just to reclaim time lost to administrative tasks, but to diagnose diseases more precisely, reduce avoidable hospital readmissions, and improve patient outcomes.
SmartSpeed Precise directly addresses these challenges as the technology is seamlessly integrated into the MR system, enabling a transformative leap in workflow efficiency and throughput, all without compromising image quality. This deep integration allows radiology teams to harness the full power of AI in a single, intuitive solution that simplifies daily operations, accelerates scans, and consistently delivers sharp, high-quality images across clinical settings.
“SmartSpeed Precise helps us do what was previously thought impossible—deliver sharper, faster MRI with less effort,” said Dr. Julian Luetkens, Professor of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. “In breast MRI, we saw acquisition times reduced by up to 50% [3], with image quality improving compared to previous Compressed SENSE protocols. That’s a game-changer.”
Come forth protectors of Sharval! From July 7–23, 3 a.m. server time, the Diablo Immortal Druid Trial Race is your chance to show your devotion to Sanctuary in a fierce, time-based dungeon challenge.
Players who accept the challenge from the in-game event hub must run a hellish version of Mad King’s Breach while playing as the Druid. Your goal? Cut through hordes of the Burning Hell’s foot soldiers and their deranged king as quickly as possible. You will be ranked based on your fastest clear time, with ties decided by highest damage output in that run.
Each week of the competition, the top 200 players from each server will receive one random Legendary item and one random Set item delivered via in-game mail. And once the competition ends, the mightiest Druid—the number one ranked player worldwide—will assist in naming a future Legendary item.
Attune to nature’s might, center your primal sensibilities, and enter the fray. May success find you!
See the current leaderboard rankings on the official Diablo X account. They will be updated every Monday and Thursday at 7 p.m. PDT.
To get a full overview of the Druid ahead of the race, including its skills and affixes, visit this article.
A new report out today from phishing defense company Cofense Inc. reveals a dramatic rise in malicious activity leveraging Spain’s .es top-level domain, marking a shift in tactics among phishing operators targeting enterprise users.
According to the research from Max Gannon and Jacob Malimban from Cofense’s Intelligence Team, the use of the .es TLD in credential phishing campaigns surged by a whopping 19 times from the fourth quarter of 2024 through to the end of the first quarter of this year. The surge in the use of .es saw the TLD enter the top three most abused domains for phishing, behind only .com and .ru.
The .es domain is officially intended for Spanish-speaking audiences, but threat actors seemingly don’t care and are increasingly using it to disguise malicious content. The researchers note that the abuse isn’t isolated to a specific group either, as a broad cross-section of phishing campaigns has adopted .es domains to host second-stage phishing pages — sites users are redirected to after clicking on email links.
The sites are often used to harvest login credentials or distribute remote access tools such as XWorm and Dark Crystal RAT. A RAT is a type of malware that allows attackers to secretly control a victim’s computer or network remotely.
Though the surging use of .es TLDs is perhaps surprising, what isn’t is the company the threat actors are impersonating: Microsoft Corp. and its various services. Some 95% of the phishing campaigns using the .es TLD are impersonating Microsoft services such as Outlook. Bringing up the rear, other companies being impersonated include Adobe Inc., Google LLC, and Docusign Inc., though at much lower rates. The campaigns often feature highly polished emails and convincing login pages hosted on pseudo-randomly generated subdomains under .es domains.
In an interesting twist, the researchers also claim that nearly all of these malicious .es domains — about 99% — are hosted on Cloudflare Inc.’s infrastructure, often using Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA for added legitimacy. That raises questions about how easily threat actors are leveraging modern deployment tools such as Cloudflare Pages to spin up malicious content quickly.
“While Cloudflare has recently made deploying a web page quick and easy via command line with pages hosted on [.]pages[.]dev it is unclear whether their recent move to making domains hosted by them easy to deploy has attracted threat actors to their hosting services across different platforms or if there are other reasons, such as how strict or lenient Cloudflare is with abuse complaints,” the researchers write.
The report emphasizes that the use of dynamically generated subdomains that are typically random strings rather than human-readable names is a common trait of these campaigns. Examples include domains like gymi8.fwpzza.es, making them harder for casual users to identify as suspicious.
Cofense warns that organizations should be alert to this shift in TLD abuse and adapt their detection strategies accordingly, particularly focusing on subdomain monitoring and more nuanced brand spoofing detection. As phishing tactics evolve, domain abuse patterns continue to be an early warning signal for threat activity.
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1. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine Books: $30) A story of friendship, love and adversity during the 1980s Space Shuttle program.
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3. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (Tor Books: $30) A vampiric tale follows three women across the centuries.
4. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Press: $30) An unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond.
5. So Far Gone by Jess Walter (Harper: $30) A reclusive journalist is forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren.
6. The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Henry Holt & Co.: $29) An unexpected wedding guest gets surprise help on her journey to starting anew.
7. My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Atria Books: $30) The bond between a group of teens 25 years earlier has a powerful effect on a budding artist.
8. Nightshade by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown & Co.: $30) A cop relentlessly follows his mission in the seemingly idyllic setting of Catalina Island.
9. Among Friends by Hal Ebbott (Riverhead Books: $28) What begins as a celebration at a New York country house gives way to betrayal, shattering the trust between two close families.
10. Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Berkley: $29) Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of an heiress.
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4. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Crash Course Books: $28) The deeply human story of the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
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9. Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (Penguin Press: $32) Inside President Biden’s doomed decision to run for reelection and the hiding of his serious decline.
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Dust devils on Mars could be crackling with electric currents, according to a new study — and scientists are a little concerned about this because a buildup of such charge could harm rovers rolling along the surface of Mars.
“Electrified dust will adhere to conducting surfaces such as wheels, solar panels and antennas. This may diminish the availability of solar energy, harm communications and complicate the motion of rovers and robots,” Yoav Yair, a professor at Reichman University in Israel who studies planetary lightning and was not part of the new study, told Space.com.
The study, led by Varun Sheel, head of the Planetary Science Division at the Physical Research Laboratory in India, uses computer models to show how charges could be distributed inside a Martian dust devil. But before getting to how charge buildup works within Red Planet dust devils, it is key to understand how dust devils form on Mars to begin with.
As the sun heats the Martian surface, air near the surface gets heated. Hot air is lighter than cool air, and so it tends to rise. Pockets of hot air therefore rise through cold air, rapidly forming an upward current. The sudden uprush causes air to speed horizontally inward to the center of a newly forming vortex. If the conditions are right, the vortex completes formation and starts spinning. As the air continues to rise, the vortex gets stretched vertically — sort of like a noodle — making the vortex spin even more quickly. As the vortex picks up speed, the wind swirls and kicks up dust. This creates a dust devil.
In short, dust devils are like little gusts of dust high on adrenaline.
Dust devils are frequent on the dry and dusty Martian surface. Mars has lower gravity and a thinner atmosphere compared to Earth. This allows the wind there to kick up dust higher than wind on Earth can. As a result, Martian dust devils can be thrice as large as their terrestrial analogues. NASA’s Viking was the first spacecraft to report dust devils on Mars. Later, Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance captured dust devils zooming across the desolate Martian landscape. In general, such whirlwinds can pose a threat to landers and rovers — however, some rovers have actually benefited from dust devils. In 2005, a benevolent dust devil blew dust off the Spirit rover’s solar panels, increasing its power levels. Dust devils on Mars, indeed, are a fascinating and curious phenomenon.
And deepening the intrigue, the new study suggests lightning could be zapping inside these dust devils on Mars.
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A dust tower can be seen in the bottom center of this image, taken by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The most common form of lightning on Earth is the one seen during a thunderstorm. As water and ice churn violently inside a thundercloud, they generate electrical charges due to friction. Once that happens, the atmosphere around the clouds doesn’t let these charges flow through easily. This means the charges have nowhere to go and keep building up. At some point, the charges can’t hold anymore — and they snap. The charges crack through the atmosphere in the form of an electrically conductive conduit, which we see as lightning.
Interestingly, the new study’s team explains, a similar kind of churning happens inside dust devils on both Earth and Mars. In the case of dust devils rather than clouds, however, it’s the dust particles that are getting churned instead of ice and water droplets. Again, friction builds up charges, and when the charges can’t hold any more, the charges release in the form of lightning.
To be clear, the formation of a strong electric field precedes lightning and no direct observations of electric fields within dust devils on Mars have been found thus far. Instead, the study uses computer models to estimate the possible electric field strength and distribution within a Martian dust devil. This is, in fact, the first study to consider the size distribution of dust particles.
Sheel and his team found that when the atmosphere of Mars is laden with dust, the atmosphere becomes less conductive, prohibiting the flow of charges. This could cause a massive charge buildup in a dust-filled vortex, triggering lightning, he explains.
“The possibility that one day we can discover lightning [in these dust devils] is the most exciting aspect of the results,” Sheel told Space.com.
In terms of distribution, the study found that larger, positively-charged particles would settle at the bottom of the dust devil while lighter, negatively-charged ones would rise upward. The team also found that larger dust particles would increase the possibility of lightning.
“[The paper] adds an original level of complexity by discussing size distributions,” Yair said. “This is an important addition to the existing literature, with practical implications.”
However, regarding the possibility of dust devils generating lightning, Yair says, “I am surprised that the authors discuss the probability of lightning inside the dust devil while neglecting the fact that highly charged dust may discharge at much lower electric fields … negating the possibility of lightning.”
“In the end, predictions about lightning are very difficult because we don’t fully understand how particles charge each other, not even really on Earth. … Ultimately, I think the question will be settled only [by] direct observations on Mars,” Steven Desch, a professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, who was also not involved in the study, told Space.com.
Some progress may have happened on that front, too.
A recent study — shared by a group led by Baptiste Chide of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, France at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna in May — may have recorded the thunder from an electrical discharge. “Electrical discharges such as lightning are among the most energetic and remarkable phenomena in planetary atmospheres,” write the authors in their paper. They studied sounds recorded by the SuperCam microphone onboard the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars. The recordings showed signs of coming from an electric discharge in a dust devil. This is the first such direct detection on Mars, setting the stage for newer discoveries by upcoming Mars missions such as the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin rover.
The study was published in the journal Physics of Plasmas in March.
Researchers have discovered a dramatic and unexpected shift in the Southern Ocean, with surface water salinity rising and sea ice in steep decline.
Since 2015, Antarctica has lost sea ice equal to the size of Greenland — the largest environmental shift seen anywhere on Earth in the last decades. The Southern Ocean is also getting saltier, and this unexpected change is making the problem worse.
For decades, the ocean’s surface freshened (becoming less salty), helping sea ice grow. Now, scientists say that trend has sharply reversed.
Using European satellite data, research led by the University of Southampton has discovered a sudden rise in surface salinity south of 50° latitude.
This has coincided with a dramatic loss of sea ice around Antarctica and the re-emergence of the Maud Rise polynya in the Weddell Sea – a huge hole in the sea ice nearly four times the size of Wales, which hadn’t occurred since the 1970s.
The findings were published on June 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Alessandro Silvano from the University of Southampton who led the research said: “Saltier surface water allows deep ocean heat to rise more easily, melting sea ice from below. It’s a dangerous feedback loop: less ice leads to more heat, which leads to even less ice.
“The return of the Maud Rise polynya signals just how unusual the current conditions are. If this salty, low-ice state continues, it could permanently reshape the Southern Ocean — and with it, the planet. The effects are already global: stronger storms, warmer oceans, and shrinking habitats for penguins and other iconic Antarctic wildlife.”
In these polar waters, cold, fresh surface water overlays warmer, saltier waters from the deep. In the winter, as the surface cools and sea ice forms, the density difference (stratification) between water layers weakens, allowing these layers to mix and heat to be transported upward, melting the sea ice from below and limiting its growth.
Since the early 1980s, the surface of the Southern Ocean had been freshening, and stratification had been strengthening, trapping heat below and sustaining more sea ice coverage.
Now, new satellite technology, combined with information from floating robotic devices which travel up and down the water column, shows this trend has reversed; surface salinity is increasing, stratification is weakening, and sea ice has reached multiple record lows — with large openings of open ocean in the sea ice (polynyas) returning.
It’s the first time scientists have been able to monitor these changes in the Southern Ocean in real-time.
Contrary to the new findings, man-made climate change was generally expected to sustain Antarctic Sea ice cover over the coming years.
Aditya Narayanan, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton and co-author on the paper, explains: “While scientists expected that human-driven climate change would eventually lead to Antarctic Sea ice decline, the timing and nature of this shift remained uncertain.
“Previous projections emphasized enhanced surface freshening and stronger ocean stratification, which could have supported sustained sea ice cover. Instead, a rapid reduction in sea ice — an important reflector of solar radiation — has occurred, potentially accelerating global warming.”
Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato, co-author of the study and Regius Professor of Ocean Sciences at the University of Southampton added: “The new findings suggest that our current understanding may be insufficient to accurately predict future changes.”
“It makes the need for continuous satellite and in-situ monitoring all the more pressing, so we can better understand the drivers of recent and future shifts in the ice-ocean system.”
The paper Rising surface salinity and declining sea ice: a new Southern Ocean state revealed by satellites is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is available online.
The project was supported by the European Space Agency.
