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Consumer Protection
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Ex-CDC official says cyclospora numbers don't add upFormer senior CDC official Debra Houry says federal and state case counts diverge wildly, with Michigan alone reporting 2,640 cases on 13 July against a national CDC figure of just 843 that day. RF…StubHub's refund fight follows fans from the stands to the courtsA California federal lawsuit filed by Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria alleges StubHub sold World Cup tickets it never had and then leaned on refunds instead of replacements, even after buye…Councils get new teeth against vape shops and betting parloursEngland's councils will need to grant planning permission for new vape shops and lose the aim to permit rule that currently forces them to wave through betting-shop applications meeting licensing c…Taylor Farms recalls jalapeño products across 26 statesThe salmonella outbreak behind it has sickened 345 people and hospitalised 36 across 27 states, traced to a grower in Sinaloa, Mexico, and lands weeks after Taylor Farms was already fighting a sepa…California moves to ban AI from playing therapistSB 903 would bar companies from advertising chatbots as therapy, stop AI making independent therapeutic decisions or diagnoses, and require written consent before any AI records or transcribes a se…Burnham's next target: fake discounts and subscription trapsThe government reckons a crackdown on inflated was prices and invented RRPs could save consumers £400 million a year, with the rules to be set through an autumn consultation and passed via secondar…£150 energy discount is automatic for most, but only if your name is on the billSuppliers check records against benefit status as of 23 August for this cycle, and around six million households qualify, but anyone not named as billpayer needs to update their supplier's records …Telegram says an extortionist planted CSAM to force an App Store banTelegram's CEO claims someone deliberately seeded child abuse material into a chat specifically to trigger Apple's removal policies, turning content moderation into a weapon against a rival platfor…Education Department wipes loans for another 170,000 defrauded borrowersThis is the latest tranche under borrower defense to repayment rules, the mechanism that lets defrauded students at collapsed for-profit colleges get federal loans discharged, and 170,000 more appr…Michigan confirms first two deaths in cyclospora outbreakCyclospora outbreaks are typically linked to contaminated fresh produce imports, making this a supply chain traceability problem for grocers and importers as much as a public health one.LinkedIn just admitted its feed has an AI slop problemAdding a button to flag AI-generated content is LinkedIn quietly conceding that its own algorithm has been rewarding low-effort, machine-written posts because they perform well on engagement metric…Amazon and Walmart's AI shopping bots are quietly burying 'Made in USA'If AI shopping assistants are systematically deprioritising domestic manufacturing labels in product recommendations, that's a policy problem hiding inside a UX decision, not a technical glitch. Th…Yum Brands says Taco Bell sales are recovering post-cyclosporaThe outbreak dented traffic hard enough that Yum's CEO addressed it directly on the earnings call, and a fast recovery claim only holds up if the next quarter's same-store sales confirm it.eBay pays $55.7m for sending cockroaches to its criticsThis is the final bill for one of the strangest corporate scandals of the last decade. EBay and several former executives will pay $55.7 million to settle claims they orchestrated a harassment camp…Prediction markets are eating exchange volume, and regulators are behindThe FIA, the trade body for derivatives exchanges, is now publicly discussing prediction markets as a disruption rather than a niche, a marker of how fast Kalshi and Polymarket have moved from nove…Prenups are up, and lawyers say it's about protecting businesses, not romanceFamily lawyers report rising prenup demand from founders and business owners specifically to ring-fence company equity before marriage, not from any particular rise in cynicism. For anyone who's ra…J&J's $5.5bn talc offer is a number chosen to make trials go awayJohnson & Johnson's offer caps out at $5.5 billion, well below the $8.9 billion bankruptcy-channelled settlement plan that federal judges rejected twice in 2023 and 2024. The company has now tried …Meta dodges the next social media addiction trialThe lawsuit's withdrawal doesn't clear Meta of the broader litigation wave, dozens of similar cases are still queued up against the company.Novo Nordisk sues Eli Lilly over Ozempic marketing claimsNovo Nordisk is accusing Eli Lilly of running materially misleading adverts for its GLP-1 rivals at the exact moment both companies are locked in the most valuable pharmaceutical arms race of the d…Taylor Farms confirmed as the source of the diarrhea outbreakHealth officials have narrowed the outbreak to Taylor Farms produce despite days of conflicting signals, a reminder that the fragmented US food supply chain still struggles to trace contamination q…Brussels' €550m AliExpress fine is a warning shot at every marketplace, not just oneA record fine under the Digital Services Act only works as deterrence if the next platform believes it could be them, and €550m makes that believable for Temu, Shein and even Amazon's third-party m…Ofcom opens formal probe into TikTok's age checksThis is Ofcom's first major test of the Online Safety Act's child protection powers against a platform TikTok's size, and the outcome sets the template for every enforcement action that follows. Th…Taco Bell pulls lettuce over Cyclospora outbreakHealth authorities have linked the outbreak to Taylor Farms lettuce supplied to Taco Bell locations across several states, forcing the chain to yank the ingredient before the CDC finishes its case …BNPL finally gets FCA-style guardrails, and lenders feel it firstBuy now pay later providers coming under formal consumer protection rules means affordability checks, refund rights and clearer rejection processes become mandatory rather than optional goodwill ge…Ofwat's £30.5m fine on South East Water won't fix the pipesA penalty this size barely dents a water company's balance sheet, and that's precisely the criticism Ofwat keeps facing every time it hits a supplier for 'repeated' failures rather than forcing str…A midnight curfew for teen social media is a compliance headache waiting to happenForcing platforms to cut access for older teens at midnight sounds simple in a press release and is a nightmare in engineering terms: age verification at scale, time-zone handling, and enforcement …Heating oil customers get compensation after price-hike rulingRedress payments are landing for households hit by unexplained heating oil price spikes, a small but overdue win for rural customers with no mains gas alternative and little pricing leverage.High-spending online gamblers will face financial checks in the UK. The compliance cost lands entirely on operators.UK online gambling platforms will be required to conduct financial affordability checks on high-spending customers, with the Gambling Commission expected to implement this through direct operator o…Car finance compensation is delayed again, and every month of delay costs claimants real moneyA tribunal has paused the UK's car finance compensation scheme, pushing any payouts into next year and extending what is already the longest-running retail lending scandal since PPI. The Financial …US egg producers settle benchmark price manipulation claimsMajor US egg producers have reached a settlement over allegations they colluded to manipulate benchmark prices, a case that has wound through the courts for years. The settlement figure has not bee…The Supreme Court kills geofence warrants and the ad-tech industry should take noteThe US Supreme Court has ruled that geofence warrants require Fourth Amendment probable-cause protections, ending the practice of law enforcement demanding bulk location data on every device presen…Ryanair dropped its family seating fees the moment the regulator looked. That timing is the whole story.Ryanair has scrapped charges for families to sit together after the Civil Aviation Authority launched a formal probe, a capitulation that arrived with suspicious speed for a policy the airline had …Aviation regulators are warning about power bank fire risks ahead of the summer peakThe Civil Aviation Authority has renewed warnings about lithium-ion power banks in hold luggage as summer travel volumes hit their seasonal high. Lithium batteries are prohibited in checked bags un…Adidas, Calvin Klein, and Uniqlo lose UK ad bans over recycled fabric claimsThe Advertising Standards Authority banning three major fashion brands in the same cycle for misleading recycled-material claims is not a coincidence; it reflects a deliberate enforcement escalatio…StubHub fined nearly £1 million and ordered to refund UK customers over hidden feesThe CMA extracting both a fine and mandatory refunds from StubHub for burying fees until checkout puts every UK ticketing and marketplace platform on notice that drip pricing is now an enforcement …Cancelled card loophole is letting fraudsters continue charging accountsWhich? has identified a vulnerability where recurring charges continue hitting cancelled card numbers because card networks route them through updated credentials, meaning consumers who cancel a ca…Valve's Steam Machine launches today. It is a bet that PC gaming economics can survive the console playbook.Valve has launched the Steam Machine, its most direct challenge to Sony and Microsoft's living-room hardware dominance, running SteamOS and built around an AMD chip with FSR 4 support. Critically, …A fatal Tesla crash into a Texas home is now a federal investigation. The autonomous driving liability question is moving from theoretical to legal.US federal safety regulators have opened an investigation into a Tesla crash that killed a woman after the vehicle struck a residential property in Texas. The investigation sits within a pattern of…The UK is overhauling home buying. Sellers will pay more upfront; buyers will pay less overall.The government's proposed shake-up of England and Wales property transactions attacks a real inefficiency: failed sales cost the UK economy an estimated £1.5 billion per year, and the reforms expli…Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis over construction zone riskWaymo has recalled more than 3,800 robotaxis after identifying a software fault that could cause vehicles to enter active construction zones. The recall is a reminder that autonomous vehicle deploy…