A poll covered by The Independent says about half of Americans have skipped meals because of grocery prices. We look at what several 2026 surveys actually found, and why the numbers differ. Also: a San Francisco startup is paying people $20 an hour to walk robot dogs, because the robots need real-world data and AI still can’t control hardware well. And a new NIH-funded study of a 1972 British law found that one extra year of school lowered dementia diagnoses decades later, especially for people at high genetic risk. Plus Texas Roadhouse’s steak mix-up, small colleges betting on football, a 3-year-old soccer player and the police, and a cave with 111,000 spiders.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}