Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin woman who almost killed her sixth-grade classmate to please the fictional horror villain known as Slender Man was ordered back to a state psychiatric hospital Tuesday after she escaped from her group home last month.Waukesha County Circuit Judge K. Scott Wagner granted a state Department of Health Services request to revoke 23-year-old Morgan Geyser’s release privileges. Geyser told the judge through her attorney, Tony Cotton, last week that she would not fight revocation. Wagner then approved the request during a short hearing.Cotton didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment.Geyser and her friend…
Amazon is expanding its AI-powered digital assistant Alexa+ with new capabilities. The company announced on Thursday that it’s adding four new integrations to the service that will allow the assistant to work with Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp starting in 2026. These additions allow customers to book hotels, get quotes for home services, and schedule salon appointments, among other things. With Expedia, customers can compare, book, and manage hotel reservations, or tell Alexa their preferences to get personalized recommendations. (e.g. “Can you find me pet-friendly hotels for this weekend in Chicago?”) The new services join Alexa+’s existing integrations with Fodor,…
If you’ve been gaming as long as I have, you’ve watched the medium evolve from simple 2D side-scrollers to sprawling, photo-realistic worlds. And as games have grown more ambitious, the screens we play them on have had to level up, too. Today’s best gaming TVs look nothing like the tiny tube TVs of yesteryear. Modern displays deliver crisp 4K resolution, bright HDR highlights, and ultra-fast refresh rates that make every swing, jump, and dodge feel silky smooth.To get the most out of a PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, or PC, certain display features are essential. That’s where my work as a…
Developers and companies are increasingly deploying AI agents and chatbots within their apps, but so far they’ve mostly been restricted to text. Digital avatar generation company Lemon Slice is working to add a video layer to those chats with a new diffusion model that can create digital avatars from a single image. Called Lemon Slice-2, the model can create a digital avatar that works on top of a knowledge base to play any role required of the AI agent, like addressing customer queries, helping with homework questions, or even working as a mental health support agent. “In the early days…
Creators are ringing in a banner year for influencer marketing, and they might consider sending a thank-you note to Unilever CEO Fernando Fernández.In March, Fernández unveiled a new “influencer-first” strategy. He said the consumer-goods company would work with 20 times the number of influencers it had previously worked with. The owner of well-known brands such as Dove, Hellmann’s, and Vaseline also said that it would spend half of its ad budget on social media, up from 30%.The result has been a galvanizing event for the influencer marketing space, according to marketing consultants and executives, talent agents, and influencer marketing insiders.”Unilever…
The University of Oklahoma has fired an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.” The university said in a statement posted Monday on X that its investigation found the graduate teaching assistant had been “arbitrary” in giving 20-year-old junior Samantha Fulnecky zero points on the assignment. The university declined to comment beyond its statement, which said the instructor had been removed from teaching. Through her attorney, the instructor, Mel Curth, denied Tuesday…
A Texas boy’s second dose of the MMRV vaccine cost over $1,400. A Pennsylvania woman’s long-acting birth control cost more than $14,000.Treatment for a Florida Medicaid enrollee’s heart attack cost nearly $78,000 – about as much as surgery for an uninsured Montana woman’s broken arm.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. In 2025, these patients were among the hundreds who asked Bill of the Month to investigate their medical bills.As millions of Americans grapple with the rising cost of health insurance next year, the Bill of the Month series will…
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year. The department said it will send notices to approximately 1,000 borrowers the week of January 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days notice before their wages can be garnished. The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been…
Amazon has stopped more than 1,800 suspected North Korean agents from applying for jobs over the last 20 months, a top executive at the firm has said.In a post on LinkedIn, Stephen Schmidt, Amazon’s chief security officer, said North Korean nationals had in recent years been attempting to land remote tech roles with companies across the globe.”Their objective is typically straightforward: get hired, get paid, and funnel wages back to fund the regime’s weapons programs,” Schmidt wrote.Amazon has used a combination of AI-powered screening and human verification to detect and block such applications, Schmidt continued.The company’s AI model searches for…
Dec 23 (Reuters) – The weight-loss drug market is surging, with biotech firms racing to win share in a sector dominated by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.Analysts forecast the industry will generate about $150 billion in annual sales in the next decade.Novo Nordisk won a key first-mover advantage after U.S. regulators approved a pill version of its blockbuster obesity injection Wegovy, the first GLP-1 pill cleared for obesity.The following is a list of weight-loss drugs in development by Novo, Lilly and other companies chasing the next blockbuster treatment:NOVO NORDISKThe Food and Drug Administration approved the oral version of Novo Nordisk’s…