Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of nurses at some of New York City’s biggest hospitals could go on strike Monday during a severe flu season, three years after a similar walkout forced some of the same medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.The looming strike could impact operations at several of the city’s major private hospitals, including Mount Sinai in Manhattan, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.Nearly 15,000 nurses could walk off the job early Monday if a deal is not reached, amounting to the largest nurses strike in city history, according…

Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia have said they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot Grok. These are the most aggressive moves so far from government officials responding to a flood of sexualized, AI-generated imagery — often depicting real women and minors, and sometimes depicting violence — posted by Grok in response to requests from users on the social network X. (X and xAI are part of the same company.) In a statement shared Saturday with the Guardian and other publications, Indonesia’s communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid said, “The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a…

Google today announced a new open standard, called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI agent-based shopping, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference. The standard, developed with companies like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, lets agents work across different parts of customer buying processes, including discovery and post-purchase support. The core idea is that the standard could facilitate these various parts of the process instead of requiring connections with different agents. Google said that it also works with other agentic protocols, such as Agent Payments Protocol (A2P) — which Google announced last year — Agent2Agent (A2A), and Model…

Deaths from a rare and dangerous bacterial infection could rise if fewer teens are vaccinated, doctors warn.After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all adolescents get vaccinated against meningococcal disease in 2005, cases of the potentially deadly illness plummeted in the United States by 90%.However, cases have sharply risen since 2021, likely due to a combination of mutating bacteria and declining rates of vaccination overall, especially among teens getting a booster dose for bacterial meningitis, doctors suggest.Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease doctor at UT Health in Houston, is concerned that as cases of bacterial meningitis climb…

No more California dreamingCalifornia’s billionaires are at a crossroads.One of the biggest business stories kicking off the year is the proposed wealth tax in California. The state’s rich and powerful, worth more than $1 billion, would face a one-time 5% tax on their assets if the plan gets approved.The proposal, which aims to address a projected multibillion-dollar state budget deficit, has prompted plenty of grumbling among the California elite.As Business Insider first reported, some have already taken action, including Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.Page converted his secretive family office out of California in late December and incorporated it…

Landing a job at McKinsey & Company has never been easy. The firm has long been known for recruiting top talent from top schools and leading industry experts.AI, however, is forcing the firm to rethink the types of applicants it considers in the hiring process, CEO Bob Sternfels said.On Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast podcast this week, Sternfels said the firm used AI to analyze its past 20 years of hiring data to understand where it may have overlooked talent for its coveted class of partners.The firm found that applicants who had setbacks and recovered were more likely to become partners.…

OpenAI reportedly asking contractors to upload real work from past jobs OpenAI and training data company Handshake AI are asking third-party contractors to upload real work that they did in past and current jobs, according to a report in Wired. This appears to be part of a larger strategy across AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data in the hopes that this will eventually allow their models to automate more white-collar work. In OpenAI’s case, a company presentation reportedly asks contractors to describe tasks they’ve performed at other jobs and upload examples of “real, on-the-job work”…

Indonesia, home to the world’s fourth-largest population, has barred access to Grok after the AI chatbot generated sexualized images of real women and children.Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications said it is temporarily suspending access to Grok to “protect women, children, and the entire community from the risk of fake pornographic content generated using artificial intelligence technology.””The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space,” Meutya Hafid, the minister of communications, said in a statement.Elon Musk’s xAI makes Grok and also owns X, which integrates…

Indonesian officials said Saturday that they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot Grok. This is one of the most aggressive moves so far from government officials responding to a flood of sexualized, AI-generated imagery — often depicting real women and minors, and sometimes showing assault and abuse — posted by Grok in response to requests from users on the social network X. (X and xAI are part of the same company.) In a statement shared with the Guardian and other publications, Indonesia’s communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid said, “The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as…

Dan Ross is a hypnotherapist who specializes in working with day traders.The number of traders who entered his practice doubled in 2025.His work involves uncovering traders’ unconscious beliefs. He says there are misconceptions about hypnosis.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dan Ross, a hypnotherapist who works with day traders at Silicon Valley Hypnotherapy Center. It has been edited for length and clarity.I originally discovered Tony Robbins back in the 1990s, and one of the tools he uses is hypnosis. I got fascinated by watching how rapidly he could work to help people make changes. I got curious…