Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal vaccine advisory committee this week is expected to discuss whether newborns should still get the hepatitis B vaccine — the first shot found to prevent cancer.Federal health recommendations now suggest that all babies be vaccinated against the liver infection in their first day of life, but U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s committee on Thursday is expected to change that — contradicting previous public health advice.It’s not clear exactly what the committee is considering, but the American Academy of Pediatrics will still urge a birth dose, said the organization’s Dr. Sean O’Leary.“We are…

A voluntary recall was issued for hundreds of thousands of cases of bags of shredded cheese sold at major retailers in October, according to the Food and Drug Administration.More than 250,000 cases of cheese were recalled by the Great Lakes Cheese Co. in a voluntary recall to retailers on Oct. 3, an FDA report said. The report’s classification date is marked Dec. 1, and the recall was described as “ongoing.”A list of brands named in the report include popular store-owned brands from Target, Aldi, Walmart and H-E-B grocery stores such as Good & Gather, Happy Farms, Hill Country and Great…

Right on the heels of announcing Nova Forge, a service to train custom Nova AI models, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced more tools for enterprise customers to create their own frontier models. AWS announced new capabilities in Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker AI at its AWS re:Invent conference on Wednesday. These new capabilities are designed to make building and fine-tuning custom large language models (LLMs) easier for developers. The cloud provider is introducing serverless model customization in SageMaker, which allows developers to start building a model without needing to think about compute resources or infrastructure, according to Ankur Mehrotra, general…

The latest bid to squeeze a ban on states regulating AI into an annual defense bill has reportedly been rejected after facing bipartisan pushback.  House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said Tuesday that Republican leaders would look for “other places” to include the measure – an effort that President Trump has supported – according to The Hill.  The proposal to preempt states from enacting their own AI regulation came months after GOP lawmakers sought to include a 10-year moratorium on state AI laws in Trump’s tax and spending bill earlier this year. The provision failed then due to strong resistance…

Google Photos users can now access their year-end Recap, the photo-hosting site’s own version of something akin to Spotify Wrapped. Like other annual reviews, the Google Photos Recap lets you look back on your past year in photos, offering a combination of memorable highlights enhanced with graphics and other effects, plus photo stats and more. U.S. users will also gain access to a new feature powered by Google’s AI, Gemini, which will showcase your hobbies and other top highlights, the company says. First introduced in 2024, Google Photos Recap aims to capitalize on the data-powered review trend, popularized by services…

Noticed Google recently making big moves in the AI space? OpenAI certainly has.The world’s most famous startup reportedly declared a “code red” in a companywide memo from CEO Sam Altman. What comes next could be a critical juncture in the AI wars that impacts us all.Altman told employees to go heads down on improving ChatGPT, setting aside work on other products. It’s a sign that the already intense battles over AI are only going to amplify.On the one hand, that could spur even more innovation. Monopolies are never beneficial to consumers. Google’s threat to OpenAI’s place atop Mount AI could…

Patients are being warned to stop using some glucose monitors made by Abbott Diabetes Care after the company found malfunctioning sensors may be linked to hundreds of adverse events and several deaths, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.Internal testing by Abbott found that some sensors in certain FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus devices may provide incorrect low glucose readings, the company said in a news release. Abbott said it had received reports of 736 adverse events potentially linked to the issue. Fifty-seven were reported in the United States. Seven deaths, none of which were in U.S.,…

(Corrects dateline to Dec 3)By Puyaan Singh and Sneha S KDec 3 (Reuters) – Niche fitness-tracking firms such as WHOOP are coming under increased regulatory scrutiny as technological advances blur the lines between wearable and medical devices, exposing them to higher compliance costs ​and hampering their competitive advantage.Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates certain health-focused tools in wearable devices such as smartwatches, many ‌companies have until now used a “regulatory gray zone” to bundle apps such as blood pressure monitors under advanced wellness features, without formal approvals.However, the regulator has started to crack the ‌whip by making it…

Spotify Wrapped is here! It’s time to relive your year in listening.The annual music run-down — which takes more than a year to create — is officially a marquee event for Spotify. Last year, 1 in 3 of Spotify’s over 713 million users engaged with their Wrapped. The campaign has grown from music to podcasts to audiobooks, and from a wholly digital event to in-person pop-ups.This year, Spotify Wrapped has several new features, or “stories,” as the company likes to call them. Spotify will calculate your listening age and place you in a club. It’ll also race your top artist…

As an elementary school student, Daniela Gutierrez didn’t have a teacher who tried to get close and form a connection with her. That experience stayed with Gutierrez, who is now a senior at Mojave High School in North Las Vegas, and inspired her aspirations for the future. “Since I didn’t have great teachers, I thought I could make a great teacher toward other kids in the future,” she said. But Gutierrez isn’t waiting for college to start working on her goal. The 18-year-old is enrolled in the Teacher Academy College Pathway Program, a new state-sponsored program teaching students about what…