Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

MINNA, Nigeria (AP) — A total of 100 of the schoolchildren abducted from a Nigerian Catholic school last month have been released, the Christian Association of Nigeria said Monday, adding that more than 100 students remain in captivity.At least 303 schoolchildren were seized at the Niger state school together with 12 of their teachers when gunmen attacked the St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri community on Nov. 21. Fifty escaped in the hours that followed.Daniel Atori, a spokesman for the association in Niger state, told The Associated Press that the church learned the children were released during the weekend and…

Young people entering the job market are facing the toughest conditions in years — but artificial intelligence isn’t the reason.A new analysis from a London-based economics consultancy suggests something much more old-fashioned is going on: Companies simply aren’t hiring.Since 2023, unemployment among new entrants to the US labor force has jumped more than 2.5 percentage points — a sharp contrast with older workers, whose jobless rates have remained flat, according to the analysis from Dario Perkins, a managing director at Global Data.TS Lombard.”For the AI maximalists, this is ‘proof’ that companies are deploying the technology rather than hiring graduates. And…

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Changes that Disney made to a popular program that lets qualifying disabled people skip long lines at its California and Florida theme parks are too restrictive, disabled fans contend in a federal lawsuit and shareholder proposal that seek to expand eligibility.The battle over who can skip long lines on popular rides because of their disabilities marks the latest struggle by Disney to accommodate disabled visitors while cracking down on past abuses. But some Disney fans say the company has gone too far and has no right to determine who is disabled.“This isn’t right. This isn’t what…

AI companies are prioritizing flash over substance, says Surge AI’s CEO.”I’m worried that instead of building AI that will actually advance us as a species, curing cancer, solving poverty, understanding universal, all these big grand questions, we are optimizing for AI slop instead,” Edwin Chen said in an episode of “Lenny’s” podcast published on Sunday.”We’re basically teaching our models to chase dopamine instead of truth,” he added.Chen founded AI training startup Surge in 2020 after working at Twitter, Google, and Meta. Surge runs the gig platform Data Annotation, which says it pays one million freelancers to train AI models. Surge…

By Byron Kaye and Cordelia HsuSYDNEY, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Sydney teenager Ayris Tolson believes the start of her first summer holiday under Australia’s youth social media ban will be relatively easy as she spends time with family, but as the weeks drift by, she fears being alone and isolated.From December 10, Australia will impose a ​world-first social media ban on under-16s, blocking them from TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram.More than one million under-16s will lose their accounts and nine days later break ‌for the long December-to-January holidays when most of Australia shuts down until February.”You’re basically isolated for…

There’s a debate rippling through Silicon Valley: How far can scaling laws take the technology?Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, whose company just released Gemini 3 to widespread acclaim, has made it clear where he stands on the issue.”The scaling of the current systems, we must push that to the maximum, because at the minimum, it will be a key component of the final AGI system,” he said at the Axios’ AI+ Summit in San Francisco last week. “It could be the entirety of the AGI system.”AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is a still theoretical version of AI that reasons as…

Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey defended the use of AI technology to make life-and-death decisions in war on Sunday.A group of defense tech startups that includes Anduril, along with traditional defense companies, is developing autonomous AI weapons and tools for use in conflicts around the world, worrying some who say the technology is not ready for such high-stakes environments.”When it comes to life and death decision-making, I think that it is too morally fraught an area, it is too critical of an area, to not apply the best technology available to you, regardless of what it is,” Luckey told journalist Shannon…

The following is the transcript of the interview with former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who now serves on the boards of Pfizer and United Healthcare, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Dec. 7, 2025.MARGARET BRENNAN: For a look at some recent changes to U.S. public health policy. We’re joined now by former FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb. He also serves on the boards of Pfizer and United Healthcare. Welcome back.DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Thank you.MARGARET BRENNAN: You know there was some pretty big news on Friday, and the American Academy of Pediatrics said they are deeply alarmed…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first used the term “AIDS” on Sept. 24, 1982, more than a year after the first cases appeared in medical records. Those early years of the crisis were marked by a great deal of confusion over what caused the disease, who it affected and how it spread.But the naming itself – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which we now know is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV – was a milestone. How people talked about and named the AIDS crisis shaped how it was viewed and either fostered or countered a culture of…

While OpenAI continues to insist that there are currently no ads — or tests for advertising — live in ChatGPT, the company’s chief research officer Mark Chen also acknowledged that the company “fell short” with recent promotional messages and is working to improve the experience. Chen and other OpenAI executives were responding to posts from ChatGPT’s paying subscribers who complained about seeing promotional messages for companies like Peloton and Target. In response, the company said it was only testing ways to show apps built on the ChatGPT app platform that it announced in October, with “no financial component” to those…