Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia has become the latest state where a federal judge has blocked a law requiring age verification for social media accounts.Like in seven other states where such laws have been blocked, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Georgia law infringes on free speech rights.The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg means that the Georgia measure, which passed in 2024, won’t take effect next week as scheduled. Instead, Totenberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law until there’s a full ruling on the issue.Georgia’s law would require some social media providers to take “commercially reasonable” steps…

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NCAA is considering a proposal that would allow athletes and staff members to bet on professional sports and shift enforcement efforts to college sports betting and “behaviors that directly impact game integrity.”The Division I Council introduced the proposal that will be considered this fall and be implemented if Divisions II and III officials also approve.The NCAA would still bar betting on college sports and sharing information about college events with bettors. Advertising and sponsorships associated with betting are also not allowed at NCAA championship events.The shift comes as the organization grapples with the growth of legalized…

NEW YORK (AP) — The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge were the first players picked for the July 15 All-Star Game at Atlanta’s Truist Park, elected as starters by fans on Thursday.Judge led the major leagues with 4,012,983 votes in the first round of fan balloting and the outfielder was picked for his seventh American League start in eight All-Star Games, though he missed the 2023 game because of a sprained right big toe. He also was the leading vote-getter during the first phase in 2022 and last year.Ohtani topped the NL and…

CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator’s net worth has skyrocketed to about $10 billion in the three months since the AI firm went public, Bloomberg reports. His company’s debut was both the biggest tech IPO so far of 2025 — raising $1.5 billion — and somewhat of a clunker: Its founders had reportedly hoped to raise a lot more — up to $4 billion — and had to skinny their ambitions. CoreWeave still feels a bit like both a success and a house of cards. It offers AI training and inference cloud services built upon a growing stockpile of Nvidia…

There’s little debate anymore about the fact that AI will displace human workers.How many workers? That’s another question.And here’s an estimate from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: He says up to 50% of the work at his enterprise software company is now being done by AI.That quote comes from a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. And if that sounds like a number that invites some skepticism, you’re not alone.For starters, Benioff is a sales guy who loves big events, big buildings, and big claims, so you might expect there could be some exaggeration going on here. Maybe he’s trying to…

After Google temporarily paused the rollout of its buggy AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature in Google Photos, the company announced that it has improved the feature’s ability to quickly return search results. The AI feature, first introduced at Google’s I/O developer conference last year, allows users to search across their collection of digital photos using natural language queries. Leveraging Google’s Gemini, Ask Photos taps into the AI’s ability to understand a photo’s content and its other metadata when responding to input. However, users complained the AI feature wasn’t reliable and was often slow to respond while the AI was “thinking.” Addressing…

PUERTO PLATA, Dominican Republic (AP) — Wander Franco, the suspended Tampa Bay Rays shortstop charged in a sexual abuse case, was found guilty on Thursday but received a two-year suspended sentence.Franco was arrested last year after being accused of having a four-month relationship with a girl who was 14 at the time, and of transferring thousands of dollars to her mother to consent to the illegal relationship.Franco, now 24, also faced charges of sexual and commercial exploitation against a minor, and human trafficking, but was found not guilty of those.Judge Jakayra Veras García said Franco made a bad decision as…

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), made up of members recently hand-selected by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted 5-1 on Thursday to recommend against flu vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal.A few moments before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee voted 6-0 to recommend all Americans aged 6 months and older receive an annual influenza vaccine.One committee member, Vicky Pebsworth, abstained on each vote.MORE: Why is thimerosal back on the CDC’s agenda when it’s barely in flu shots anymore?Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative, which is used to prevent microbial contamination of…

A key vaccine committee, newly appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted against recommending certain vaccines that contain a preservative long targeted by anti-vaccine advocates despite broad scientific consensus on its safety.The call against the preservative, called thimerasol, was first presented by Lyn Redwood, former leader of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, during a June 26 meeting for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.She argued that thimerasol is a neurotoxin and the panel should recommend only thimerosal-free flu vaccines for all pregnant women, infants and children. The panel also voted the…

Meta has hired a highly influential OpenAI researcher, Trapit Bansal, to work on its AI reasoning models under the company’s new AI superintelligence unit, a person familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch. OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed to TechCrunch that Bansal had departed OpenAI. Bansal’s LinkedIn page says that he left OpenAI in June. Bansal has worked at OpenAI since 2022 and was a key player in kickstarting the company’s work on reinforcement learning alongside co-founder Ilya Sutskever. He is listed as a foundational contributor on OpenAI’s first AI reasoning model, o1. Bansal could offer a significant lift to Meta’s…