Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

The heated debate over Florida’s plan to revoke some school vaccine mandates was on full display Friday when state officials held a meeting for the public to weigh in on the proposed changes.The current plan, according to officials at the Florida Department of Health, is to eliminate requirements that children be vaccinated against hepatitis B, chickenpox and haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) in order to attend private or public schools in the state, including prekindergarten. Admission to day cares would not require those vaccines, either, nor the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. There is no set timeline yet for when the changes…

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is leading a 20-state coalition suing the Trump administration over its new $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions. The states say the policy is unlawful and threatens aspects of the public sector that depend on skilled foreign workers.The states plan to file the suit on Friday.The lawsuit argues the Department of Homeland Security imposed the fee outside the bounds of congressional authority and skipped required notice-and-comment procedures, according to a press release from Bonta’s office. The states say the fee — more than 10 times the existing typical H-1B fees — would strain schools, universities,…

The Barr family purchased a new couch recently, and we’ve been trying to sell the old one. My wife posted in a local email group and a potential buyer got in touch with a question.”Do you happen to know the model? I would love to look it up online rather than asking you lots of questions. 🙂 Thanks!” she wrote.This is an old couch, so all product codes dissolved in the sands of time years ago. So, I took two photos of the furniture, uploaded them to Gemini, and asked for help. The Google chatbot sent back its best guess…

2025-12-12T21:26:30.691Z Share Facebook Email X LinkedIn Reddit Bluesky WhatsApp Copy link lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. We just got a sobering picture of how often AI models get their facts straight. This week, Google DeepMind introduced the FACTS Benchmark Suite, which measures how reliably AI models produce factually accurate answers.It tests models in four areas: answering factoid questions from internal knowledge, using web search effectively,…

King Charles III said Friday that his cancer treatment will be reduced in the new year because of early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to doctors’ orders.Charles, 77, revealed the information in a recorded message broadcast on British television Friday as part of a campaign to encourage people to take advantage of screening that can detect cancer in its early stages when it is easiest to treat.Buckingham Palace made the announcement last year that doctors detected cancer in the king.”Early diagnosis quite simply saves lives,” the king said Friday.”I know, too, what a difference it has made in my own case,…

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah has repealed a collective bargaining ban passed earlier this year that prevented labor unions serving teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees from negotiating on behalf of their workers.Republican Gov. Spencer Cox on Thursday approved the repeal of a policy that experts had called one of the most restrictive labor laws in the country. The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature originally approved the policy in February, saying it was needed to allow employers to engage directly with all employees, instead of communicating through a union representative. Thousands of union members from the public and private sector…

King Charles III announced in a video message Friday that he will be reducing his cancer treatment schedule in the new year, citing his early diagnosis, and urged others to get screened for cancer early as well.In a pre-recorded video message released Friday as part of Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK’s “Stand Up To Cancer” night, the monarch shared how early cancer diagnosis and treatment had made a difference for him, “enabling me to continue leading a full and active life, even while undergoing treatment.”He added that thanks to his early diagnosis and treatment, “my own schedule of cancer…

NEW YORK (AP) — It may feel like you are surrounded by sniffles and coughs, but flu season activity is still low in many parts of the U.S.New government data posted Friday shows that as of last week, flu activity was high in four states — Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey and New York — and minimal or low in most others. Severity indicators are increasing but are still within the boundaries of a “mild” season, said officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.A number of diseases tend to peak in the winter, thanks to indoor gatherings that…

Disney’s billion-dollar OpenAI deal isn’t the only way the company is embracing AI. In recent months, the Mouse House has been quietly adding new AI tools to its arsenal and encouraging staff to use them.”They clearly see where things are headed,” a longtime software engineer at Disney said. This marked a shift from this summer, when Disney had seemed “hesitant to rely on AI tools,” they said.Disney has given its employees access to several AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot and Amazon’s Q Developer. Thanks to Disney’s OpenAI deal, employees will also soon have access to the enterprise version of ChatGPT,…

One day in November, a product strategist we’ll call Michelle (not her real name), logged into her LinkedIn account and switched her gender to male. She also changed her name to Michael, she told TechCrunch.  She was partaking in an experiment called #WearthePants where women tested the hypothesis that LinkedIn’s new algorithm was biased against women.  For months, some heavy LinkedIn users complained about seeing drops in engagement and impressions on the career-oriented social network. This came after the company’s vice president of engineering, Tim Jurka, said in August that the platform had “more recently” implemented LLMs to help surface…