Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

In 2021, Hannah Hinders left the U.S. for Costa Rica on the heels of a bad breakup that left her wracked with anxiety, causing her to have panic attacks and drinking to excess. Hinders had even lost weight in the wake of her heartbreak. “I wasn’t healthy mentally or physically,” she tells Yahoo.Fast forward nearly four years, and Hinders is still living and surfing daily in Santa Teresa. Her mental and physical health are the “best they’ve ever been,” she says. “I can’t even describe the change I’ve had in my life.”Moving to Costa Rica isn’t the answer for everyone.…

Alphabet’s life sciences unit, Verily, plans to restructure its business as it anticipates a fresh round of investment.In a town hall meeting on Monday, Verily CEO Stephen Gillett told staff that Verily would transform from a Limited Liability Company to a C-corp, a business structure generally considered more investor-friendly, according to a person who heard the remarks and asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to speak to the press.Gillett told employees the change was happening as Verily anticipated a fresh round of investment and stopped short of confirming whether any investment had been secured and by whom.Employees…

There’s a little secret about Google’s AI. Want in?Google charges users to access its latest and most capable AI through its Gemini website and app. However, you can use those same models for free on the AI Studio website, which is Google’s developer playground.It seems the secret is well and truly out: data from Similarweb, which analyzes web traffic, shows that visits to Google AI Studio have rocketed following the launch of its image editor, Nano Banana.The data shows a big jump last December, when Google rolled out Gemini 2.0, a significant update on its flagship model. While there have…

PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — One of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history, the Camp Fire in Paradise is among the many natural disasters that have upended American students’ learning over the past decade. Damaged schools, lost homes and layers of trauma have left a mark on thousands of children — a scenario sure to continue as climate change makes these events more frequent and more intense.The challenges that persist in Paradise nearly seven years later are a reminder of how long learning recovery can take, and a lesson on how schools can give traumatized kids a better chance of thriving…

PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — Nearly seven years after Paradise was ravaged by wildfire, the foothill town smells like pine trees again. New homes are sprouting up on once-scorched lots. Construction trucks rumble through neighborhoods. An ice cream shop recently opened around the corner from the newly rebuilt high school.But in the town’s classrooms, recovery has been more complicated — and much slower. Even as Paradise gradually rebuilds schools lost to California’s 2018 Camp Fire, officials have found getting kids on track academically — and recreating a tight-knit, thriving school community — is a lot tougher than just flipping on the…

LONDON (AP) — Two-time Grand Slam champion Lleyton Hewitt has been suspended for two weeks for pushing an anti-doping official.The International Tennis Integrity Agency said Wednesday that the sanction will be in effect from Sept. 25 until Oct. 7, so as not to be “unduly punitive” on Hewitt by impacting his Davis Cup schedule.The incident occurred last November after Hewitt, Australia’s captain, pushed a 60-year-old volunteer anti-doping chaperone after his team’s semifinal loss to Italy.Hewitt denied the charge — which was brought after a review of video evidence, witness statements, and interviews — pleading self-defense.The ITIA referred the case to…

LONDON (AP) — Ilona Maher wants to be known, first and foremost, as a rugby player. A really good one.Not as a content creator.Not as a social media influencer.“I hate it when people say that about me, ‘Oh, she’s just an Instagrammer,’” she told her sisters during their House of Maher podcast.But Maher the rugby player has begun her offseason. Her Eagles — the United States team — were eliminated from the Women’s Rugby World Cup last weekend though she is remaining in England to see how it unfolds.She’s yet to reveal her future plans but all roads seem to…

The college football schedule looks, shall we say, more competitive in Week 3. At least we think it does.South Florida, Baylor and Mississippi State posted upset wins during a week otherwise marked by blowouts. Six Associated Press Top 25 teams combined to beat their FCS opponents by an average of 58 points, and six others beat FBS opponents by at least 31 points last weekend.Only two ranked teams will play opponents from the Football Championship Subdivision this week, but there still are 12 other games where the ranked team is at least a three-touchdown favorite.There are three Top 25 matchups…

The opening weekend of the NFL season was capped by a pair of unlikely comebacks led by the reigning MVP and a quarterback making his NFL debut.Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills overcame a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Baltimore in one of the most improbable comebacks in recent history on Sunday night.J.J. McCarthy and the Minnesota Vikings followed that up a night later when McCarthy became the first QB in four decades to erase a 10-point hole in the fourth quarter and win in his NFL debut.A look deeper inside the numbers shows how surprising both…

The United States death rate decreased by 3.8% in 2024 as COVID fell out of the top 10 leading causes of death for the first time in four years, new provisional federal data shows.The overall rate declined from 750.5 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 722 per 100,000, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).This marks the lowest death rate recorded since 2020, during the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and follows declines that began in 2022.MORE: US life expectancy rose in 2022 as deaths due to…