Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

HONG KONG (AP) — NBA great LeBron James wrote a rare op-ed in Chinese state media this week, pointing to basketball as an avenue for diplomacy amid tensions with the U.S.Writing in Monday’s edition of the People’s Daily newspaper, the 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star said “basketball is not only a sport, but also a bridge that connects us.”The piece was published as James was in China ahead of two NBA pre-season games next month in Macao between the Phoenix Suns and the Brooklyn Nets. And it comes as leaders in China and the U.S. seek options to avert a…

When Don Searles went to a recent party, he didn’t want to show up empty-handed. So he made peanut brittle using an old family recipe — with a modern-day twist.”We added the marijuana,” he said.The party was hosted by 74-year-old Gayle Crawley at the Trilogy retirement community an hour east of San Francisco, where lately the golf course has a new competitor for popularity.Between 2021 and 2023, cannabis use among Americans 65 and older went up 46%, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.Crawley said those numbers reflect that marijuana is a “good solution to a lot of…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The scuffling Los Angeles Dodgers came oh-so-close to throwing a no-hitter for the second time in three games.Tyler Glasnow and Blake Treinen did not allow a hit to the Colorado Rockies through eight innings on Monday night. Their bid for Major League Baseball’s first no-hitter of the season was broken up on Ryan Ritter’s double to left field against Tanner Scott leading off the ninth. The Dodgers rallied for a 3-1 victory that kept them one game ahead of San Diego in the NL West race.“It would’ve been nice,” Glasnow said of the potential no-hitter, “but…

WASHINGTON (AP) — A decade-long slide in high schoolers’ reading and math performance persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 12th graders’ scores dropping to their lowest level in more than 20 years, according to results released Tuesday from an exam known as the nation’s report card. Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress.The assessments were the first since the pandemic for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in reading and math. They reflect a downward drift across grade levels and subject areas in previous releases from…

CHICAGO (AP) — J.J. McCarthy threw two fourth-quarter touchdown passes and ran for another in his long-awaited NFL debut, and the Minnesota Vikings rallied for a season-opening 27-24 win over the Chicago Bears on Monday night.Chicago’s Caleb Williams had his first career rushing touchdown and threw for a score in Ben Johnson’s first game as the Bears’ coach.McCarthy delivered down the stretch after struggling through the first three quarters. The Vikings and coach Kevin O’Connell are counting on the former Michigan star after he missed his rookie season due to a knee injury, and he delivered when it mattered.Things weren’t…

Semiconductor giant Intel continues to shake up its senior leadership since Lip-Bu Tan took the helm as CEO in March. Intel announced Monday that Michelle Johnston Holthaus will depart the company after more than three decades. Johnston Holthhaus was most recently chief executive officer of Intel products and will remain a strategic adviser. The company also announced the creation of a central engineering group that will build a new custom silicon business for outside customers, according to Intel. This group will be helmed by Srinivasan “Srini” Iyengar who joined Intel from Cadence Design Systems in July. Intel also said that…

X enthusiast and Reddit shareholder Sam Altman had an epiphany on Monday: Bots have made it impossible to determine whether social media posts are really written by humans, he posted. The realization came while reading (and sharing) some posts from the r/Claudecode subreddit, which were praising OpenAI Codex. OpenAI launched the software programming service that takes on Anthropic’s Claude Code in May. Lately, that subreddit has been so filled with posts from self-proclaimed Code users announcing that they moved to Codex that one Reddit user even joked: “Is it possible to switch to codex without posting a topic on Reddit?”…

CLEVELAND (AP) — Slade Cecconi took a bid to end Cleveland’s long no-hitter drought into the eighth inning, and the Guardians rolled to a 10-2 win over Kansas City on Monday night and leapfrogged the Royals in the AL wild-card race.Cecconi (6-6) was six outs from the first no-hitter in the majors this season — and Cleveland’s first since Len Barker’s perfect game in 1981 — when Kansas City’s Michael Massey singled leading off the eighth.On Cecconi’s 95th pitch, Massey lined a 2-1 fastball into left-center. The right-hander received a nice ovation from the crowd in Progressive Field before Cecconi…

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — For decades, Kent Broussard had dreamed about joining Louisiana State University’s prestigious marching band. But, as dreams far too often go, it fell to the wayside. That is, until Broussard retired. After years of hard work — including taking up running with a weighted vest, marching through his neighborhood while hauling a 30 pound (14 kilograms) sousaphone, applying and getting accepted to LSU as a student and re-learning his instrument — the retired accountant made his debut on the field of Tiger Stadium during the football team’s home opener Saturday. The 66-year-old LSU freshman, is…

(Reuters) – The American Academy of Family Physicians said on Monday that it recommends all adults over the age of 18, children and pregnant women to receive COVID-19 vaccines, a contrast to the U.S. government’s narrowed approvals for the shots.Its suggested immunizations for COVID are in line with the pediatric physician’s group, The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations from last month.They contrast with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration which two weeks ago approved the updated vaccines for people with health conditions and all people aged 65 and older.Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said in May the U.S. no longer…