Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

athomas edited. For Wednesday at 12:01 am ETThomasina Clarke has watched school after school close in her once thriving St. Louis neighborhood, which was hit by a tornado this spring and whose population has plummeted in recent decades.“It’s like a hole in the community,” Clarke said. She fears a new round of closure discussions could strip the historically Black community of a storm-damaged high school, whose alumni include Tina Turner and Chuck Berry. St. Louis Public Schools is among the districts nationwide weighing how many urban schools to keep open due to shrinking budgets, the falling birthrate and a growing…

Dr. Heidi Leftwich, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UMass Memorial Health, said she has gotten many more questions about acetaminophen from some of her pregnant patients in recent weeks.The safety of the fever and pain reliever “comes up periodically,” especially when there’s a news story about it, said Dr. Allison Bryant, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Mass General Brigham.Rather than scare them or dictate what they should do, Bryant said, she favors “shared decision-making” with her patients, with them “at the center” of her guidance.At a news briefing Monday, President Donald Trump promoted unproven claims that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy…

The Trump administration is hailing a medication called leucovorin for reducing some autism symptoms, but experts who research or treat autism almost uniformly agree the medication should be studied further before it’s rolled out to children or adults.Leucovorin, also referred to as folinic aid, is a synthetic form of vitamin B9 that requires a prescription. It’s often administered to cancer patients alongside chemotherapy in the form of an IV.The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that it’s in the process of approving a tablet version for certain autism patients.Many researchers questioned whether the approval was premature, given that only a…

Health experts from around the globe are joining the chorus of doctors and organizations pushing back against the Trump administration’s announcement Monday linking the use of acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol and many cold and flu medications — during pregnancy to an increased risk of autism in children.”Effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” President Trump said at a news conference with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others.In a statement Tuesday, the European Union’s European…

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A’ja Wilson bounced back from a rare off game with 25 points and nine rebounds, and the Las Vegas Aces evened their WNBA semifinals playoff series with a convincing 90-68 Game 2 victory over the Indiana Fever on Tuesday night.The best-of-five series heads to Indianapolis, where Game 3 will be played Friday night.Wilson made 10 of 18 shots to go with playoff career-high five steals, two nights after the four-time MVP made just 6 of 22 field goals. Her performance helped the Aces come back strong after losing the series opener 89-73.She said her team didn’t…

Meta has missed a Senate deadline to hand over records of how its AI chatbots interacted with children, defying a request tied to revelations about the company’s internal policies.On August 15, Sen. Josh Hawley gave Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg until September 19 to provide every draft of a 200-plus page internal rulebook that guided what Meta’s AI chatbots could and couldn’t say, along with enforcement manuals, an age-gating system, and risk reviews.Hawley’s demand came after a Reuters investigation showed Meta’s rules allowed bots to engage in provocative behavior that included sexual conversations with children. Meta removed that language and is…

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees are headed to the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons. But first, there’s plenty to play for over the final days of the regular season.New York secured its spot in the postseason with a 3-2, come-from-behind win over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night on José Caballero’s RBI single with two out in the ninth inning that scored team captain Aaron Judge with the winning run.While the win clinched at least an AL wild card, the Yankees (89-68) closed within a game of East Division-leading Toronto (90-67) after the…

This week on StrictlyVC Download, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos is joined by Francis deSouza, the renowned entrepreneur, operator, and, since January, COO of Google Cloud. They discuss his goals for Google Cloud and how the company maintains its competitive position by focusing on startups while giants like AWS and Oracle snap up major deals with leading AI companies — namely, OpenAI and Anthropic. The conversation also covers the tangled web of relationships in the AI ecosystem, where companies like Google Cloud provide infrastructure services while their parent companies compete fiercely in generative AI, even as those same parents hold investment…

Major medical organizations and scientific groups are reacting to the Trump administration’s assertion on Monday that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy, the main ingredient in the drug Tylenol, may be linked to autism, despite limited evidence to suggest the association.During a press conference at the White House, President Donald Trump said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will begin notifying physicians immediately that it is “strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary” and that the FDA would update the label for acetaminophen with enhanced information about the possible link.Additionally, Trump and Health and Human…

Google Search is bringing its AI Mode feature — its AI-powered search experience — to Spanish-speaking users, the company announced on Tuesday. This expansion will introduce Google’s conversational search interface to a broader market, allowing users to ask questions using natural language queries, engage in back-and-forth conversations, upload images, dig deeper on complex topics, and more. The Spanish-language rollout comes on the heels of Google’s major AI Mode expansion in August, when the company released the feature to 180 more countries worldwide. Previously, it had only been available in the U.S., U.K., and India. During that August rollout, Google also…