We created a fresh install of 2.6 for testing purposes, primarily hoping it would clear up our problems with there being a blank status field when first creating an issue.

We took the following steps:

1. Created a project.
2. Added an issue of type bug - the issue status is blank
3. Changed the status of this issue (manually) to 1 in DB
4. Added new issue - also blank
5. Ran DB checker - it resets both status to blank
5. Ran DB checker again - produces error
(see attached screens)

One thing I did notice (after we created a second project) is we can create an issue no-fail with a status if we only fill out the Summary field. If we type in other fields (e.g. environment), the status is blank.