Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The University of Michigan is under federal scrutiny after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the United States.The Education Department on Tuesday opened an investigation into the university’s foreign funding, citing the pair of cases that were announced days apart in June. It said the “highly disturbing criminal charges” raise concerns about Michigan’s vulnerability to national security threats from China.“Despite the University of Michigan’s history of downplaying its vulnerabilities to malign foreign influence, recent reports reveal that UM’s research laboratories remain vulnerable to sabotage,” said Paul Moore, chief…

As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines. French AI startup Mistral has jumped into the audio race with its first open model, aiming to challenge the dominance of walled-off corporate systems with open-weight alternatives.   On Tuesday, Mistral announced the release of Voxtral, its first family of audio models aimed at businesses. The company is pitching Voxtral as the first open model that’s capable of deploying “truly usable speech intelligence in production.” In other words, no longer will developers have to choose between a cheap, open system that fumbles transcriptions and…

NEW YORK (AP) — Caitlin Clark will be in a 3-point contest for the first time in her pro career as the Indiana Fever guard will compete Friday night in the WNBA All-Star competition.She’ll be joined by contest record holder Sabrina Ionescu, who last entered the contest in 2023 and hit 25 of her 27 shots in the final round, scoring 37 points. It was the most shots made in a 3-point contest in either the WNBA or NBA.The Liberty’s star guard wanted to make sure she was completely healthy before officially entering the contest. She said she’ll be trying…

Danone U.S., the maker of YoCrunch, is recalling the yogurt product due to the potential presence of plastic pieces in the packaging’s dome topper, according to federal health officials.In an alert, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the plastic pieces, which were discovered after reported consumer complaints, could potentially cause a choking response if eaten.”The plastic pieces are transparent, may have sharp edges, and could present a risk to consumers because some pieces are between 7 and 25 mm in length,” the FDA noted. “The issue is isolated only to the separately packaged topper and does not impact the…

2025-07-15T14:52:36Z Share Facebook Email X LinkedIn 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. Apple is investing $500 million in MP Materials, a US producer of rare earth magnets. News of the deal sent MP Materials’ stock price soaring more than 25% Tuesday. The move also sends a message to President Donald Trump, who has pressured Apple to build in the US. American manufacturing is getting…

Miley Cyrus is back with “Something Beautiful,” a new, critically acclaimed visual album showcasing the pop star’s many talents.In the new film and album, the 32-year-old embodies various roles — a showgirl, a ’60s European film star and more.”These kind of nuances were important for me, creating something that I feel is really modern and very now,” Cyrus told ABC News. “But again, it’s really honoring … these kind of, like, you know, iconic women in film and in music.”ABC News – PHOTO: Miley Cyrus talks to ABC News about her new visual album “Something Beautiful.”Cyrus describer her new project…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a new blue color additive derived from the fruit of the gardenia, a flowering evergreen.The color is approved for use in sports drinks, flavored or enhanced non-carbonated water, fruit drinks, ready-to-drink teas as well as hard and soft candy.Petitioned by the Gardenia Blue Interest Group, the additive is made by refining the compound genipin — derived from crushed Gardenia jasminoides Ellis fruit, which is often used in traditional Chinese medicine — by reacting it with soy protein hydrolysate.Though soy, a potential allergen, is used to make gardenia blue, the group has…

Open source database management system Postgres is nearly 40 years old, but has recently started seeing explosive demand due to being very well-suited for AI applications. Despite this rise in popularity, search and analytics functionality remain limited. ParadeDB is changing that. ParadeDB is an open source Postgres extension that facilitates full-text search and analytics directly in Postgres without users needing to transfer data to a separate source. The platform integrates with other data infrastructure tools, including Google Cloud SQL, Azure Postgres, and Amazon RDS, among others. Philippe Noël, the co-founder and CEO of ParadeDB, told TechCrunch that he and his…

When xAI launched Grok 4 last week, the company claimed the large language model outperformed several competitors on different benchmarks. But the Grok account on X that runs off the model immediately showed there were some major issues: it started saying its surname was “Hitler”, tweeted antisemitic messages, and seemed to reference Elon Musk’s posts when asked about controversial topics, siding with the xAI owner’s views as a result. xAI soon afterwards apologized for Grok’s behavior. On Tuesday, the company said it has now addressed both issues. We spotted a couple of issues with Grok 4 recently that we immediately…

ATLANTA (AP) — Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity…