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Labubu Fans Dote Over Ugly-Cute Doll Trending at Comic-Con 

Customers walk around plush figures and toys on display in the first Pop Mart store selling Labubu toys in Berlin, Germany, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Customers walk around plush figures and toys on display in the first Pop Mart store selling Labubu toys in Berlin, Germany, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
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Labubu Fans Dote Over Ugly-Cute Doll Trending at Comic-Con 

Customers walk around plush figures and toys on display in the first Pop Mart store selling Labubu toys in Berlin, Germany, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Customers walk around plush figures and toys on display in the first Pop Mart store selling Labubu toys in Berlin, Germany, 25 July 2025. (EPA)

San Diego Comic-Con is the latest location where the ugly-cute dolls named Labubu have been trending, with fans carrying the plushies globally popularized by celebrities Rihanna, Lizzo, Dua Lipa, and Lisa from the K-pop group Blackpink.

The wide-eyed and grinning doll was created in 2015 by Hong Kong artist and illustrator Kasing Lung. In 2019, Lung allowed them to be sold by Pop Mart, a Chinese toy company that sells collectible figurines, often in "blind boxes".

"Blind boxes" are sealed boxes containing a surprise item that is usually part of a themed collection.

Naomi Galban, from San Diego, waited in line on Sunday at the Pop Mart booth in the San Diego Convention Center for a chance to get her first Labubu.

"Every time I go to a Pop Mart store, they're sold out," the 24-year-old told Reuters. She hoped to buy one for her little sister.

Emily Brough, Pop Mart's Head of IP Licensing, spoke to Reuters on Thursday about Labubu fans at Comic-Con.

"We love to see how fans are personalizing it (Labubu) for themselves," Brough said next to the Pop Mart booth.

While Brough noted that there were many people with a Labubu strapped to their bags and backpacks at Comic-Con, the doll's popularity did not happen overnight. Labubus had a huge boost in 2019 after Pop Mart began selling them, and in 2024, when Blackpink's Lisa, who is Thai, created a buying frenzy in Thailand after she promoted Labubu on social media.

Pop Mart saw sales skyrocket in North America that same year, with revenue in the US in the first quarter of 2025 already surpassing the full-year US revenue from 2024, Pop Mart said.

When he created Labubu, Lung gave the character, who is female, a backstory inspired by Nordic mythology.

He called her and his other fictional creatures "The Monsters."

Diana Goycortua, 25, first discovered Labubu through social media, and before she knew it, it felt like a "game" to try and collect the dolls.

"It's a little bit of gambling with what you're getting," the Labubu fan from San Diego said on Sunday while waiting at the Pop Mart booth, concluding that her love for the character made it worth trying blind boxes.

Goycortua already has three Labubus, and was hoping to score her a fourth one at Comic-Con.

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Varieties

EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A drone view shows people using kayaks and paddle boards in the River Thames at Teddington Lock, London’s first official river bathing water site, as temperatures climb over the bank holiday weekend due to a heat dome spreading across the region, in London, Britain, May 24, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A drone view shows people using kayaks and paddle boards in the River Thames at Teddington Lock, London’s first official river bathing water site, as temperatures climb over the bank holiday weekend due to a heat dome spreading across the region, in London, Britain, May 24, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes/File Photo
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EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A drone view shows people using kayaks and paddle boards in the River Thames at Teddington Lock, London’s first official river bathing water site, as temperatures climb over the bank holiday weekend due to a heat dome spreading across the region, in London, Britain, May 24, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A drone view shows people using kayaks and paddle boards in the River Thames at Teddington Lock, London’s first official river bathing water site, as temperatures climb over the bank holiday weekend due to a heat dome spreading across the region, in London, Britain, May 24, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes/File Photo

The world has just experienced the second-hottest May since records began, as climate change and the developing El Niño weather pattern conspired to push up average land and sea temperatures, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Wednesday.

The hottest May on record was in 2024, in records going back to 1940, Reuters reported.

The average ⁠global temperature last ⁠month was 1.42 degrees Celsius above the average in 19th-century pre-industrial times.

Western Europe experienced one of the most severe heatwaves ever recorded so early in the year.

C3S says ⁠the extreme heat in Europe was in line with scientists' expectations of how climate change will affect the world's fastest-warming continent.

Parts of the Pacific Ocean recorded exceptionally high temperatures as it transitions towards El Nino conditions.

Extreme weather last month included fatal floods in China and Türkiye.

The El Niño ⁠weather ⁠pattern is expected to form in the coming months and to fuel extreme weather around the world.

El Niño naturally occurs every two to seven years, when weakening trade winds result in warmer waters in the eastern Pacific. The result tends to be higher global temperatures, and disrupted rainfall, meaning drought in some regions, heavy rains in others.

Varieties

Woolly Mammoth Among Trove of Ancient DNA Found in Squirrel Poo

A squirrel eats on a barrier closing off the National Mall on June 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
A squirrel eats on a barrier closing off the National Mall on June 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
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Woolly Mammoth Among Trove of Ancient DNA Found in Squirrel Poo

A squirrel eats on a barrier closing off the National Mall on June 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
A squirrel eats on a barrier closing off the National Mall on June 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

A huge treasure trove of ancient DNA from animals including extinct woolly mammoths has been discovered in frozen squirrel feces in Canada's remote Yukon territory, scientists said Tuesday.

The DNA found deep inside sealed-off burrows is between 3,000 and 700,000 years old, offering a rare window into how life has changed over the millennia, AFP reported.

As well as DNA from woolly mammoths -- which the US company Colossal claims it is trying to "de-extinct" -- genetic material was also found from wolves, bison, horses, a cheetah and hundreds of plants.

Tyler Murchie, a palogenomics researcher at Canada's McMaster University and lead author of a new study, admitted that digging through squirrel poop might sound "less appealing" than discovering, say, a mammoth tusk.

However, the "spectacular" amount of information they uncovered suggests that feces is an overlooked way to see into our planet's distant past, he added.

The scientists had just been expecting to study the squirrel's microbiome before coming across the "really surprising biodiversity of organisms", Murchie said.

It turned out that arctic ground squirrels were ideal subjects for this research because of their "natural archivist behavior,” he explained.

The squirrels are only conscious for around four months a year, spending the rest of their life in hibernation.

So when they are awake, "they've got to get out there and eat as much as they can of everything," Murchie said.

The squirrels pack their burrows with nuts, seeds, leaves, bones, fur and anything else they can find.

But over time, rising permafrost permanently sealed off some of the burrows in the Yukon, creating a perfectly preserved time capsule.

Murchie said they even found a "super cute little guy" frozen in time.

"He just went to sleep one season, then he never woke up... it wasn't until some paleontologist came by investigating that they found him in there."

The scientists used the DNA to reconstruct 18 mitochondrial genomes, including for six woolly mammoths that lived in different eras.

This involves using computers to stitch together DNA fragments, like puzzle pieces, Murchie explained.

Colossal has declared its intention to resurrect the woolly mammoth, which went extinct around 4,000 years ago.

However, experts have expressed skepticism about the claim, saying the resulting animal would be more like an Asian elephant with some genetic tweaks to make it resemble a mammoth.

Murchie, who does not work for Colossal, said the genetic data they found would be made publicly available, so the company could use it.

"But they already have so much DNA to go off of -- whole genomes from different organisms -- so I'm sure ours is a drop in the bucket," he added.

The team behind the latest research, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, is working on another study describing what the DNA reveals about the woolly mammoth's evolution.

Murchie could not speak about that future research, other than to say it was "super cool.”

"I can't believe that we were able to get these insights from squirrel feces," he added.

Varieties

Encouraging Trial Results for AstraZeneca's New Weight-Loss Pill

The logo for AstraZeneca is seen outside its North America headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, March 22, 2021. (Reuters)
The logo for AstraZeneca is seen outside its North America headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, March 22, 2021. (Reuters)
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Encouraging Trial Results for AstraZeneca's New Weight-Loss Pill

The logo for AstraZeneca is seen outside its North America headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, March 22, 2021. (Reuters)
The logo for AstraZeneca is seen outside its North America headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, March 22, 2021. (Reuters)

A new pill developed by the British pharma firm AstraZeneca appears to help people lose a similar amount of weight to other GLP-1 oral drugs, trial results showed Monday.

If confirmed by further research, the pill could mark AstraZeneca's entrance into the massively lucrative weight-loss drug market currently dominated by Denmark's Novo Nordisk and American giant Eli Lilly.

The astronomical popularity of the appetite suppressing injectable drugs called GLP-1 agonists has kicked off a race to produce tablet versions that easier to take.

AstraZeneca's new pill, called elecoglipron, resulted in weight loss "comparable to that reported for other oral" GLP-1 drugs, according to phase 2 trial results published in the Lancet medical journal.

Side effects recorded during the randomized trial, which had 310 participants, were also similar to those seen for other GLP-1 pills, with nausea being the most common.

For overweight or obese adults without diabetes, the pill resulted in "average weight reductions of up to 10.5 percent at 26 weeks and 11.8 percent at 36 weeks in the highest-dose group," said Marie Spreckley of the University of Cambridge.

But the weight management researcher -- who was not involved in the study -- emphasized the phase 2 trial was not mainly designed to compare the pill to other anti-obesity drugs.

"Larger and longer phase 3 trials will therefore be needed to confirm the durability of these effects, establish longer-term safety and tolerability, and determine its place within the growing range of obesity and diabetes treatments," she explained.

AstraZeneca will face stiff competition -- Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have already developed pill versions of their hugely successful drugs.

The oral form of Eli Lilly's popular Mounjaro GLP-1 drug was approved in April in the United States, where it is sold under the brand name Foundayo.

The pill version of Novo Nordisk's blockbuster drug Wegovy is already available in the US and was given the green light by European Union health authorities last month.