Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

By Jack QueenNEW YORK, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Luigi Mangione, accused of gunning down a health insurance ​executive, will appear in federal court on Friday ‌in a hearing over whether he should face the possibility of ‌the death penalty if convicted.Mangione, 27, is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024. Public officials condemned the assassination.Mangione ⁠previously pleaded not ‌guilty to federal murder, stalking and weapons charges and is behind bars while he awaits ‍trial.At a hearing before U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan at 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT),…

Elon Musk said Grok gave him a clean bill of health.Musk told podcaster Peter Diamandis that he recently underwent an MRI. Afterward, the xAI CEO said he followed his own advice by uploading the results of a medical test to his company’s AI chatbot.”I did an MRI recently and submitted it to Grok,” Musk said during a wide-ranging interview with Diamandis on “Moonshots” posted on Tuesday. “None of the doctors nor Grok found anything.”It’s unclear why Musk underwent an MRI. His discussion with Diamandis, the founder of the XPrize and a Harvard-educated doctor, underscores the ongoing discussion about longevity that…

2026 is just getting started, and layoffs are already underway.Companies, including Angi, the company formerly known as Angie’s List, and the popular web tool Tailwind, have cut staff, citing the impact of artificial intelligence among the reasons for the layoffs.More than 100 other companies, from Amazon to Nike to Verizon, have filed legally mandated WARN notices about job cuts to come in 2026, according to WARN Tracker. Some of the cuts are part of previously announced reductions.This year’s cuts follow three years of significant workforce reductions across a broad range of industries, including tech, media, finance, and retail.The moves come…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it’s “naive” to think the US will shift away from China.”The idea of decoupling for whatever reason, philosophical reasons or national security reasons, it’s not based on any common sense,” Huang said during an episode of the “No Priors” podcast posted on Thursday.Huang, whose company is eagerly awaiting the ability to sell advanced chips in China again, praised President Donald Trump’s approach to navigating the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.”I am optimistic that our relationship with China will improve, that President Trump and the administration has a really, really grounded and common-sense attitude…

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Janell Green Smith had attended hundreds of births as a midwife. Now, it was her turn.As she and her husband prepared to welcome their first child, Green Smith set up a pink and rose gold nursery in their Spartanburg, South Carolina, home. She labeled each dresser drawer for the tiny clothes her daughter would soon wear. She shared ultrasound images with relatives, growing more excited as her February due date drew closer.But Green Smith, 31, was also nervous, according to her sister. She had devoted much of her career to improving health outcomes for women in her…

Small speakers hum as two “Star Wars”-themed Lego lightsabers clash. Lights beam from the top of a Lego-built airplane. A roaring engine sound kicks in as multiple vehicles race across the floor.It’s all part of a high-tech — and polarizing — update from Lego called Smart Play that the toymaker unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week in Las Vegas.Lego says its new line of chip-based bricks is “one of the most significant evolutions” since the launch of figurines in 1978.At the center of the system is what Lego calls a Smart Brick. It’s the same size as…

Celebrities over 50 are often asked about their tips and tricks for staying healthy.They tend to eat in a balanced way, exercise consistently, and spend their time more deliberately.Many of them also have a positive attitude toward aging, and often say it has made them more confident.If there’s one question celebrities over 50 never stop getting asked, it’s how they stay healthy.Even interviews meant to promote a new movie, book, or company launch often veer into questions about health and diet.After a while, the answers start to sound familiar.From regular exercise to the morning routines they refuse to skip, the…

AI research lab Anthropic continues to land sizable enterprise deals. Its latest entails bringing its large language models to a legacy German insurance giant. Anthropic on Friday announced a deal with Munich, Germany-based global insurance conglomerate Allianz to bring “responsible AI” to the insurance industry. The parties declined to share financial terms of the deal. The partnership is made up of three specific initiatives. The first is making Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI-powered coding tool, available to all of Allianz’s employees. Anthropic and Allianz will also build custom AI agents for Allianz employees that can execute multi-step workflows with a human…

TikTok is preparing to carve off parts of its US business, but not all US workers are joining the new entity.Some US staff were told this week that they will not work for the new joint venture, called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, led by managing investors Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. Instead, they will work for a separate TikTok global entity that will remain under ByteDance’s ownership, called TT Commerce & Global Services LLC.The change, outlined in a memo sent to impacted employees, includes workers who focus on US products that will remain tied to TikTok’s global operations after…

Meta’s Chief Technology Officer and head of Reality Labs, Andrew Bosworth, has called an all-hands meeting for January 14, describing it as the “most important” of the year.Bosworth is also strongly recommending that Reality Labs employees attend the division’s meeting in person, two Meta employees told Business Insider.The emphasis on in-person attendance is unusual for the division, which oversees the company’s wearables, virtual and augmented reality initiatives, and a nascent robotics unit, these employees said. Some managers have told employees to “drop what they’re doing” to attend the all-hands in person, one employee told Business Insider.Meta did not immediately respond…