Cucumbers shipped to the U.S. and Canada, and organic eggs sold in 25 Costco stores in five southern U.S. states, were recalled this week for potential salmonella contamination. The cucumber outbreak sickened 68 people, including 18 who were hospitalized, in 19 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. No one has died. Produce grown in Sonora, Mexico, by Agrotato S.A. may be the culprit, the agency said. A recall announced Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was tied to the outbreak. SunFed Produce, based in Arizona, recalled cucumbers sold between Oct. 12 and Nov. 26, the FDA said. The recall happened after SunFed was told by the FDA that there were associated illnesses reported between Oct. 12 and Nov. 15. People who bought cucumbers during the window should check with the store where they purchased them to see if the produce is part of the recall. The egg recall involved nearly 11,000 cartons of 24-count organic eggs sold under Costco's Kirkland Signature brand that landed on shelves in Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee starting Nov. 22, according to the company’s announcement posted Wednesday on the FDA website. No illnesses were immediately reported. Handsome Brook Farms said the cartons included eggs that were “not intended for retail distribution." Shoppers should check to see whether their egg cartons have Julian code 327 printed on the side and have a use-by date of Jan. 5, 2025. If the eggs are included in the recall, throw them out or take them back to the store for a refund. New Mexico man awarded $412 million medical malpractice payout for botched injections Customers who had either of the recalled food products should wash items and surfaces that may have been in contact with the foods using hot, soapy water or a dishwasher. Salmonella can cause symptoms that begin six hours to six days after ingesting the bacteria and include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Most people recover without treatment within a week, but young children, people older than 65 and those with weakened immune systems can become seriously ill. Earlier this summer, a separate salmonella outbreak in cucumbers sickened 450 people in the U.S.  

Jurors in New Mexico have awarded a man more than $412 million in a medical malpractice case that involved a men’s health clinic that operates in several states. The man’s attorneys celebrated Monday’s verdict, saying they are hopeful it will prevent other men from falling victim to a scheme that involved fraud and what they described as dangerous penile injections. They said the punitive and compensatory damages total the largest amount to ever be awarded by a jury in a medical malpractice case in the U.S. “It's a national record setting case and it's righteous because I don't think there's any place for licensed professionals to be defrauding patients for money. That is a very egregious breach of their fiduciary duty," said Lori Bencoe, one of the lawyers who represented the plaintiff. "That's breach of trust and anytime someone is wearing a white coat, they shouldn't be allowed to do that.” The award follows a trial held in Albuquerque earlier this month that centered on allegations outlined in a lawsuit filed by the man's attorneys in 2020. NuMale Medical Center and company officials were named as defendants. According to the complaint, the man was 66 when he visited the clinic in 2017 in search of treatment for fatigue and weight loss. The clinic is accused of misdiagnosing him and unnecessarily treating him with “invasive erectile dysfunction shots” that caused irreversible damage. China's new crew has arrived at space station in sign of growing influence in space field Nick Rowley, another attorney who was part of the plaintiff's team, said the out-of-state medical corporation set up a “fraudulent scheme to make millions off of conning old men.” He provided some details in a social media post, saying clinic workers told patients they would have irreversible damage if they didn't agree to injections three times a week. NuMale Medical Center President Brad Palubicki said in a statement sent Wednesday to The Associated Press that the company's focus is on continuing to deliver responsible patient care while maintaining strict safety and compliance standards at all of its facilities. “While we respect the judicial process, due to ongoing legal proceedings, we cannot comment on specific details of the case at this time,” he said. Scientists expect more solar storms to produce auroras NuMale also has clinics in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, Nebraska, North Carolina and Wisconsin. According to court records, jurors found that fraudulent and negligent conduct by the defendants resulted in damages to the plaintiff. They also found that unconscionable conduct by the defendants violated the Unfair Practices Act.

Australia’s House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media, leaving it to the Senate to finalize the world-first law. The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts. The legislation passed 102 to 13. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced. Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system. “Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament. The bill was introduced to the Senate late Wednesday to be debated at an unspecified time. The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats. Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday. Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children. Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered, and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer. Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.” “The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament. “There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added. The platforms had asked for the vote to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could be enforced. Melbourne resident Wayne Holdsworth, whose 17-year-old son Mac took his own life last year after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, described the bill as “absolutely essential for the safety of our children.” “It’s not the only thing that we need to do to protect them because education is the key, but to provide some immediate support for our children and parents to be able to manage this, it’s a great step,” the 65-year-old online safety campaigner told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “And in my opinion, it’s the greatest time in our country’s history,” he added, referring to the pending legal reform.

The engine for a flagship new small Japanese rocket burst into flames Tuesday during a combustion test, but there was no injury or damage to the outside, officials said. The second failure in a row raises concern about the progress of the Epsilon S rocket, whose debut is expected for next year. The test was conducted inside of the restricted area at Japan's Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is investigating, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters. The fire was followed by an explosion and plumes of white smoke. Tuesday's failure comes just over a year after the explosion last year of the same Epsilon S engine during a test, according to JAXA. Last year's explosion was related to damage to the ignition systems of the engine and JAXA has since taken the necessary steps, the agency has said. “Development of flagship rockets such as Epsilon S is extremely important from the perspective of ensuring autonomy of Japan's space development,” Hayashi told reporters. “JAXA will thoroughly investigate and take steps.” The Epsilon S rocket is meant to improve Japan's position in the growing satellite launch market and its debut flight was slated for early next year. Japan's larger H3 rocket, failed in its debut launch in February 2023 but has since made three consecutive successful flights, most recently earlier in November.

Volcanoes were erupting on the mysterious far side of the moon billions of years ago just like on the side that we can see, new research confirms. Researchers analyzed lunar soil brought back by China's Chang'e-6, the first spacecraft to return with a haul of rocks and dirt from the little-explored far side. Two separate teams found fragments of volcanic rock that were about 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even more ancient, dating back to 4.2 billion years. “To obtain a sample from this area is really important because it’s an area that otherwise we have no data for,” said Christopher Hamilton, a planetary volcano expert at the University of Arizona who was not involved with the research. Scientists know there were active volcanoes on the near side, the part of the moon seen from Earth, dating back to a similar time frame. Previous studies, including data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggested the far side might also have a volcanic past. The first samples from that region facing away from Earth confirm an active history. The results were published Friday in the journals Nature and Science. China has launched several spacecraft to the moon. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 spacecraft returned moon rocks from the near side, the first since those collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts and Soviet Union spacecraft in the 1970s. The Chang'e-4 spacecraft became the first to visit the moon's far side in 2019. The moon’s far side is pockmarked by craters and has fewer of the near side’s flat, dark plains carved by lava flows. Why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, said study co-author Qiu-Li Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Li said the new findings reveal over 1 billion years of volcanic eruptions on the lunar far side. Future research will determine how the activity lasted so long.

A Chinese space ship carrying a three-person crew docked with its orbiting space station Tuesday as the country seeks to expand its exploration of outer space in competition with the United States, even as it looks for cooperation from other nations. The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months, conducting a variety of experiments and maintaining the structure. They are expected to stay until April or May of next year. The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers. Song and Wang were born in the 1990s and are graduates of the third wave of Chinese astronaut recruitment, having undergone a rigorous testing and training process taking years. Early Wednesday morning, China declared the launch and entry into outerspace a “complete success.” The Shenzhou-19 spaceship carrying the trio blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:27 a.m. local time atop a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of China’s crewed space missions. “The crew condition is good and the launch has been successful,” the state broadcaster China Central Television announced. China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, mainly because of U.S. concerns over the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party’s military arm’s overall control over the space program. China’s moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. and others, including Japan and India. The new team will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months and will overlap with them for a couple of days or more. They are expected to stay until April or May of next year. The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers, born in the 1990s. Song was an air force pilot and Wang an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Wang will be the crew’s payload specialist and the third Chinese woman aboard a crewed mission. Besides putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese space agency has landed an explorer on Mars. It aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make China the second nation after the United States to do so. It also plans to build a research station on the moon and has already transferred rock and soil samples from the moon in a first for any nation in decades, and placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first. The U.S. still leads in space exploration and plans to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year. The new Chinese crew will perform spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris, some of which was created by China. According to NASA, large pieces of debris have been created by “satellite explosions and collisions.” China’s firing of a rocket to destroy a redundant weather satellite in 2007 and the “accidental collision of American and Russian communications satellites in 2009 greatly increased the amount of large debris in orbit,” it said. China’s space authorities say they have measures in place in case their astronauts have to return to Earth earlier. China launched its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China’s technological advances over the past two decades.

Scientists affiliated with the Nairobi-based International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) on Monday announced the discovery of a promising solution to the plastic waste menace in the lesser mealworm. Scientists at the ICIPE have discovered that the larvae of a species of darkling beetle known scientifically as Alphitobius are capable of consuming plastics, which have contributed to global pollution. Fathiya Khamis, ICIPE senior scientist and lead researcher of the study, said the researchers have also identified a consortium of important bacteria in the gut of the mealworm, which helps in the digestion of plastic. "Although often mistaken for ordinary worms, mealworms are the larvae of the darkling beetles. Worldwide, yellow mealworms, the larvae of a darkling beetle species called Tenebrio molitor, have been used to biodegrade plastic," Khamis said in a statement released in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. Ban on Plastic Bags: Here’s Why it Matters According to Khamis, this is the first time that the African native smaller mealworms' ability to decompose plastics has been recorded. She stated that while Africa generates only 5 percent and uses 4 percent of global plastic, there is an increase in the usage of single-use plastic, making the continent the second most polluted. Khamis said scientists tested the ability of the lesser mealworm to consume polystyrene, one of the major microplastics that is fast accumulating both in land and water bodies. Abdou Tenkouano, ICIPE director-general, said the research boosts a growing body of innovations for a circular economy. "We can exploit this knowledge to solve the plastic waste pollution while also harnessing the benefits of mealworms, which are part of the population of highly nutritious edible insects," Tenkouano said. Phasing out plastic products: Stakeholders for following global practice He said that the ICIPE study also increases knowledge on bioremediation, the use of microbes to clean up contaminated ecosystems, soil and groundwater applications. Evalyne Ndotono, a co-researcher, said that researchers are conducting additional studies to understand the process through which mealworms consume polystyrene and whether they gain any nutritional benefits from the material. She noted that polystyrene waste comes from the commercial application of its most common form, Styrofoam, a material that is used in food storage containers, packaging of equipment, disposable plates and cups, and insulation in construction.

A celestial object discovered decades ago is actually twins orbiting each other, a new study confirms. Scientists have puzzled over the object known as Gliese 229B, the first known brown dwarf discovered 30 years ago. Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars because they're lighter than stars, but heavier than gas giant planets. This object appeared too dim for its mass. Astronomers collected light and chemical clues using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and observed it's a duo circling close to each other. “It resolves a glaring discrepancy,” said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved with the research. The twins orbit a small star about 18 light-years away. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Astronomers have spotted brown dwarf pairs before, but these two whip around at much closer range. They orbit each other every 12 days, less than the time it takes for the moon to circle the Earth. “It shows you how weird the universe is, and how different solar systems are from our own,” said study co-author Rebecca Oppenheimer with the American Museum of Natural History. The research was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The twins' discovery means there could be other lurking brown dwarfs with a hidden partner, said co-author Jerry Xuan of the California Institute of Technology.

Expect to see more northern lights in unusual places as the sun continues to sizzle, space weather forecasters said Tuesday. Strong solar storms this year have triggered shimmering auroras much farther south than usual, filling skies with hues of pink, purple, green and blue. The sun is currently at the maximum phase of its 11-year cycle, making solar surges and northern lights more frequent. This active period was expected to last for at least another year, though when solar activity will peak won't be known until months after the fact, according to NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This solar cycle has yielded more colorful auroras farther south and more are likely, said NASA's Kelly Korreck. “We still could possibly get some good shows in the next few months,” she said. Such storms can also temporarily disrupt power and communications. Ahead of a solar outburst, NOAA would alert operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit. In May, NOAA issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning. The storm that slammed Earth was the strongest in more than two decades, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere. That same month, scientists recorded the biggest flare erupting from the sun, but Earth was out of the way. Previous solar cycles have produced storms more intense than May's so space forecasters are keeping a close eye on the sun to prepare for any major disruptions, said NOAA’s Bill Murtagh. Sunita Williams to vote in US election from Space Last week, a powerful solar storm dazzled skygazers far from the Arctic Circle when auroras appeared in unexpected places including Germany, the United Kingdom, New England and New York City.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry is being awarded Wednesday, a day after two artificial intelligence pioneers won the physics award. The Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is set to announce the chemistry prize late morning. Last year, the award went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots — tiny particles just a few nanometers in diameter that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging. Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize. The awards continue with the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14. The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.