Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — toxic chemicals found in products like nonstick pans and personal care items — can linger in the body for up to 20 years, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals,” professor and lead study author Mingyu Zhang of Harvard Medical School told ABC News.Forever chemicals have come under growing scrutiny in recent years because they build up in the body and may trigger health problems, according to a growing body of research.In this new study, Zhang and his team found that when babies were exposed in the womb to specific types of forever chemicals — PFDeA,…

If you had trouble accessing your Google Meet link or your firewall service, you are not alone.Multiple major sites, especially cloud platforms, experienced a mass outage on Thursday.Based on information on the Google Cloud Service Health page, a wide array of cloud services are down across multiple continents, from the Americas to Africa. As of 2 p.m. PT, active outages in the US included the agent assist function, speech-to-text, Cloud Memorystore, Cloud Workstations, and Google BigQuery.At around 11:30 a.m. PT, Downdetector showed over 13,000 reported incidents for Google Cloud.Soon after, web services that appeared to experience disruptions included Amazon Twitch,…

Voice assistants are becoming a bigger part of our daily lives, and hype from frontier labs like OpenAI has sparked debate about whether talking chatbots might actually be a substitute for real human connections.But in many health and social care contexts, voice AI is less about replacing human-human connections and more about filling gaps and freeing up staff from busywork. In clinics across the US, AI-powered voice tools are already calling insurers and handling paperwork, freeing up staff for more meaningful, patient-facing work.At the individual level, AI voice companions are stepping in to offer conversation and comfort to people who…

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — By the time Eric Tennant was diagnosed in 2023 with a rare cancer of the bile ducts, the disease had spread to his bones. He weighed 97 pounds and wasn’t expected to survive a year with stage 4 cancer.Two years later, grueling rounds of chemotherapy have slowed the cancer’s progress, even as it has continued to spread. But chemotherapy has also ravaged Tennant’s body and his quality of life.Recently, however, the 58-year-old had reason to hope things would improve. Last fall, his wife, Rebecca, learned of a relatively new, noninvasive procedure called histotripsy, which uses targeted ultrasound…

It sounds like the start of a 21st-century horror film: Your browser history has been public all along, and you had no idea. That’s basically what it feels like right now on the new stand-alone Meta AI app, where swathes of people are publishing their ostensibly private conversations with the chatbot. When you ask the AI a question, you have the option of hitting a share button, which then directs you to a screen showing a preview of the post, which you can then publish. But some users appear blissfully unaware that they are sharing these text conversations, audio clips,…

You probably don’t know who Alexandr Wang is. But that’s going to change: The 28-year-old is about to become known as the guy Mark Zuckerberg spent $15 billion on.Wang is the CEO of Scale AI, a data company that works with giant AI leaders like Meta and OpenAI. And Meta is reportedly about to spend $15 billion to buy a 49% stake in Scale AI.What does Meta get for that investment — which values Scale AI at close to $30 billion, about double its last valuation from a year ago?In theory, that money lets Meta cement its relationship with a…

Health officials in the United Kingdom are warning customers to throw away certain Jolly Rancher candies due to ingredients that may increase the risk of cancer.The candies, made by the Hershey Company, include Jolly Rancher Hard Candy, Jolly Rancher Misfits Gummies, Jolly Rancher Hard Candy Fruity 2 in 1, and Jolly Rancher Berry Gummies, the Food Standards Agency, a government department in the United Kingdom, said.The Jolly Rancher candies were sold in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the agency said in the announcement on Wednesday, June 11.The products contain mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) and mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH),…

Tesla sued a former engineer for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its humanoid robotics program, Optimus, and using them to launch a rival startup. The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday and originally reported on by Bloomberg, accuses Zhongjie “Jay” Li of stealing trade secrets regarding Tesla’s development of “advanced robotic hand sensors” to launch his startup Proception, a Y Combinator-backed company building robotic hands. The complaint states that Li, who worked at Tesla from August 2022 to September 2024, downloaded confidential information about Optimus on two separate personal smartphones. The complaint also added that during the last few months…

The rapper Silentó, known for his viral hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty in the 2021 shooting death of his cousin.Ricky Lamar Hawk, 27, who performs as Silentó, entered the plea on Wednesday for charges including voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and concealing the death of another, according to DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston.PHOTO: In this Jan. 28, 2019, file photo, rapper Silento performs in concert during 2019 Super Bowl Live at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)”This…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cincinnati Reds left-hander Wade Miley is accused in court documents of providing drugs to the late Tyler Skaggs, a Los Angeles Angels pitcher who died of an accidental overdose in 2019.Skaggs’ former agent, Ryan Hamill, said in a deposition that Skaggs told him he was using pain pills containing oxycodone, which were provided by Miley.The deposition is part of a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family against the Angels in California. A former publicist for the Angels, Eric Kay, was convicted in Texas of providing the fentanyl-laced pills that an autopsy said contributed to Skaggs’…