Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Florida’s surgeon general made a surprising announcement last week that the state is moving to “end all vaccine mandates.”Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health would be working with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office to end all mandates in state law. DeSantis noted that some vaccine mandates would be removed immediately while others would require legislative intervention.Ladapo said that parents should be able “to choose” what vaccines they want their children to receive or not to receive.MORE: Trump says RFK Jr. ‘means very well’ after his Senate testimony on vaccine policyIn a statement to ABC News, the Florida Department…

Facing growing political pressure, Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III announced Monday evening that the dean and department head overseeing a children’s literature course at the center of a viral recording were going to be removed, saying they approved plans to teach material inconsistent with the published course description.The announcement came after a video circulated online Monday showing a student confronting a professor over LGBTQ-related content in the class, sparking backlash from Republican lawmakers and calls for investigations, a response from the U.S. Department of Justice, and a statement from the Texas A&M System chancellor pledging to discipline…

Companies that have dug deep into AI have fallen in love with nuclear power for its promise of 24/7 electricity. Meta, Google, and Microsoft have all made deals with startups or reactor operators. But does the nuclear industry love AI back? Yes, with caveats. No one is proposing to let an AI run a reactor, but power companies are increasingly interested in the technology’s potential to tighten things up on the business side, Bradley Fox, co-founder and CEO of Nuclearn, told TechCrunch. Fox and Jerrold Vincent started Nuclearn to capitalize on that interest. The company says its AI tools are…

Europe’s big comeback plan to close the innovation gap with the US and China is struggling to take off.One year ago, former Italian prime minister and former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi warned that the EU faced an “existential challenge” if it didn’t invest in advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.In his landmark report, Draghi said Europe had missed the boat on cloud computing and quantum, but argued it still had a shot at leadership in generative AI and other frontier industries.A year later, the follow-through looks underwhelming, according to a new Deutsche Bank report published on Tuesday.Only 11.2% of…

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Suspended Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco, who was found guilty earlier this year of sexually abusing a minor, was detained by police on Tuesday and admitted into a clinic in the Dominican Republic for mental health issues, according to authorities.The request to have him detained and admitted came from his family, police spokesman Col. Diego Pesqueira told The Associated Press. He noted that Franco’s admittance into a private clinic in his hometown of Baní is not linked to any legal issues.Last weekend, the 24-year-old player took to social media to denounce that $16,000…

Mistral AI, the French company that develops the AI chatbot, Le Chat, and several foundational large language models, is considered one of France’s most promising tech startups, and is arguably the only European company that could compete with OpenAI. “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025. In a significant step up from its June 2024 valuation of $6 billion, Mistral is now valued at €11.7 billion (approximately $13.8…

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sidney Crosby is well aware of the trade talk swirling around him, now that he and the Pittsburgh Penguins have gone three seasons without making the playoffs.Going into another at age 38 with little realistic hope of the team contending, the three-time Stanley Cup champion acknowledged the rumors are now part of his reality, even if he’d rather they not be.“I understand it,” Crosby said Monday night at the NHL player media tour on the Las Vegas Strip. “That’s the hard part about losing. Everybody thinks that the losing is the buzzer goes (off), you lose…

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Liberty are finally healthy heading into the playoffs and the defending champions have confidence they can win another title.The road won’t be easy as the team is a No. 5 seed and will most likely have to start the postseason on the road in Phoenix.Since the WNBA changed its playoff format in 2016 to the top eight teams regardless of conference making the postseason, no five seed has ever won a championship. The only team not in the top two to do it was Chicago in 2021, which was a six seed.“There’s no…

French AI startup Mistral has secured a massive investment from Dutch chip company ASML.Mistral, which is seen as Europe’s answer to OpenAI, received a 1.3 billion euros, or $1.5 billion, investment from ASML as part of a wider $2 billion funding round, the companies said Tuesday.ASML, which has a market capitalization of $308 billion, has taken a roughly 11% stake in Mistral, making it the startup’s largest shareholder. The Dutch company sells specialized machinery essential for chip manufacturing,The funding roughly doubles Mistral’s post-money valuation to nearly $13.8 billion, cementing its place as Europe’s most valuable AI startup.Mistral’s funding is dwarfed…

(Reuters) – Drugmaker Eli Lilly said on Tuesday it is launching an artificial intelligence and machine learning platform that provides biotech companies access to drug discovery models trained on years of its research data.Drug developers are increasing adoption of AI technologies for discovery and safety testing to get faster and cheaper results, in line with an FDA push to reduce animal testing in the near future.Lilly’s platform, TuneLab, consists of AI models which include proprietary data obtained at a cost of over $1 billion.”Lilly TuneLab was created to be an equalizer so that smaller companies can access some of the…