Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

DALLAS (AP) — The Dallas Mavericks and Kyrie Irving have agreed on a $119 million, three-year contract with the All-Star guard still recovering from a torn ACL that will sideline him into the 2025-26 season, a person with knowledge of the deal said Tuesday night.Irving is declining the $43 million player option in the final year of his current three-year contract, the person told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal isn’t expected to be finalized until the start of the new league year on July 6.The new contract will align Irving with co-star Anthony Davis, who…

LONDON (AP) — Efforts to vaccinate children globally have stalled since 2010, leaving millions vulnerable to tetanus, polio, tuberculosis and other diseases that can be easily prevented.Protection from measles in particular dropped in 100 countries between 2010 and 2019, unravelling decades of progress, including in rich countries that had previously eliminated the highly infectious disease, according to a new analysis of global vaccination trends published Tuesday in the journal Lancet.“After clean water, vaccination is the most effective intervention for protecting the health of our children,” said Helen Bedford, a professor of children’s health at University College London, who was not…

Starbucks said Tuesday that the coffee chain is changing how it charges for beverage add-ins like matcha and syrups as it moves to standardize pricing across the company’s stores. Starbucks will now charge 80 cents for any combination of syrup or sauce that modifies an unflavored drink, instead of charging for each addition. But the company noted that it won’t charge customers to substitute a sauce or syrup in a pre-flavored drink, such as adding vanilla syrup to a Caffè Mocha.Starbucks also plans to charge $1 for adding a scoop of matcha powder to non-matcha drinks, and will charge 50…

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana filed several lawsuits accusing pharmaceutical giant CVS of abusing customer information and using its dominant market position to drive up drug costs and unfairly undermine independent pharmacies, the state’s attorney general said Tuesday.Attorney General Liz Murrill began investigating CVS after the company sent out mass text messages to thousands of residents on June 11 to lobby against legislation that took aim at its business structure. The texts warned that medication costs could go up and all CVS pharmacies in the state would close.The lawsuits, which were filed Monday in central Louisiana’s St. Landry Parish, seek…

CINCINNATI (AP) — Major league debuts are a milestone for any player.Chase Burns had one for the record books.The Cincinnati Reds rookie became the first starting pitcher in the expansion era to strike out the first five batters on Tuesday night against the New York Yankees.The 22-year old Burns, the second overall pick in last July’s amateur draft, gave up three runs in five innings, but his teammates made sure that the night ended on a positive note as the Reds rallied for a 5-4 victory in 11 innings.“I feel like after the first batter, I kind of settled in…

(Reuters) -The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that it is investigating reports of two deaths due to acute liver failure in non-ambulatory Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients after receiving Sarepta Therapeutics’ gene therapy, Elevidys.In June, Sarepta reported a second death in a patient who had received its gene therapy, which raised concerns about the safety and future demand for the treatment.The patients who died were a 16-year-old, weighing 70 kilograms, and a 15-year-old, weighing 50 kilograms. Both boys were non-ambulatory and their deaths occurred within 90 days after treatment, the company said in an investor call last week.The…

Measuring AI progress has usually meant testing scientific knowledge or logical reasoning — but while the major benchmarks still focus on left-brain logic skills, there’s been a quiet push within AI companies to make models more emotionally intelligent. As foundation models compete on soft measures like user preference and “feeling the AGI,” having a good command of human emotions may be more important than hard analytic skills. One sign of that focus came on Friday, when prominent open source group LAION released a suite of open source tools focused entirely on emotional intelligence. Called EmoNet, the release focuses on interpreting…

It’s been a rough year for Apple stock, but there might be hope for a rebound with a rumored AI acquisition.Apple has been the worst-performing Magnificent Seven stock in 2025, with shares down 20% year-to-date. On top of weak iPhone sales and tariff concerns, the company has lagged in the AI race among its mega-cap tech peers.At Apple’s WWDC earlier this month, the company failed to ease Wall Street’s concerns about its Apple Intelligence product, with investors bemoaning the company’s lack of a new killer app.However, Apple executives could be eyeing a purchase of AI startup Perplexity, Bloomberg reported last…

Abridge, an AI startup automating medical notes, has secured a $300 million Series E at a $5.3 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The round, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Khosla Ventures, follows the company’s $250 million February fundraise at a $2.75 billion valuation. The 7-year-old Abridge is widely considered to be the leader in the increasingly crowded AI-powered medical scribe market, largely due to its early entry and integration with Epic Systems, the dominant health record software. In Q1, Abridge reached $117 million in contracted annual recurring revenue (a metric that includes all signed recurring…

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on Tuesday signed into law a bill that provides unemployment benefits to striking workers, following neighboring Washington state in adopting measures spurred by recent walkouts by Boeing factory workers, hospital nurses and teachers in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon’s measure makes it the first state to provide pay for picketing public employees — who aren’t allowed to strike in most states, let alone receive benefits for it. It makes striking workers eligible to collect unemployment benefits after two weeks, with benefits capped at 10 weeks.Only three other states — New York, New…