Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

NEW YORK (AP) — Jannik Sinner returned to the U.S. Open semifinals by beating No. 10 Lorenzo Musetti 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 on Wednesday night in the first all-Italian matchup in a men’s major quarterfinal. The No. 1 seed continued what’s been an easy title defense and on Friday will face No. 25 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, who beat No. 8 Alex de Minaur 4-6, 7-6 (7), 7-5, 7-6 (4).Sinner is into his fifth straight Grand Slam semifinal and, with a win Friday, would reach the finals of all four majors this year. He has won 26 consecutive matches in majors on…

On Sept. 4, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his vaccine policies.A few days prior, on Sept. 1, 2025, President Donald Trump demanded pharmaceutical companies to prove that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work, saying that the CDC was “being ripped apart over this question.” It was his first public acknowledgment of the chaos roiling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and subsequent resignations of four high-level agency officials.Meanwhile, public health experts…

French AI startup Mistral AI is finalizing a €2 billion investment at a post-money valuation of $14 billion, reports Bloomberg, positioning the company as one of Europe’s most valuable tech startups. The two-year-old OpenAI rival, founded by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, develops open source language models and Le Chat, its AI chatbot built for European audiences. Mistral isn’t commenting on the report, but the round would represent Mistral’s first major raise since June 2024, when it was valued at €5.8 billion. The company has previously raised over €1 billion from prominent investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. The…

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Andrew McCutchen and Bryan Reynolds homered off last-minute spot starter Emmett Sheehan and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-0 on Wednesday night.Sheehan (5-3) got the nod when the Dodgers opted to let Shohei Ohtani skip his scheduled start while dealing with an illness. Ohtani remained in the lineup, however, and had two of Los Angeles’ five hits. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the hope is Ohtani can return to the mound this weekend in Baltimore.Five Pirate pitchers combined for the club’s major-league leading 17th shutout of the season. Mike Burrows (2-4) got the win…

Scale AI, which helps tech companies prepare data to train their AI models, filed a lawsuit against one of its former sales employees and its rival Mercor on Wednesday. The suit claims the employee, who was hired by Mercor, “stole more than 100 confidential documents concerning Scale’s customer strategies and other proprietary information,” according to a copy seen by TechCrunch. Scale is suing Mercor for misappropriation of trade secrets and is suing the former employee, Eugene Ling, for breach of contract. The suit also claims the employee was trying to pitch Mercor to one of Scale’s largest customers before he…

CHICAGO (AP) — Angel Reese aired her frustrations with the Chicago Sky as the franchise finishes another losing season.The two-time WNBA All-Star told the Chicago Tribune that she “might have to move in a different direction and do what’s best for me” if the team doesn’t improve its outlook.“I am very vocal about what we need and what I want,” she said. “I’d like to be here for my career, but if things don’t pan out, obviously I might have to move in a different direction and do what’s best for me. But while I am here, I’m going to…

A Nebraska-based cleaning products firm announced a nearly $200 million move to build what’s being billed as the only “official” Dogecoin treasury company — and Elon Musk’s go-to attorney is heading up the effort.CleanCore Solutions on Tuesday issued a public statement naming Musk’s longtime personal attorney, Alex Spiro, as the chairman of its board of directors.The Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency has long been backed by Musk. Spiro, a partner at the New York office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.Spiro has helped Musk defeat a defamation lawsuit and worked on…

Apple’s Siri overhaul may include an AI-powered web search tool with technology powered by Google’s Gemini, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The iPhone maker, which has been criticized for falling behind in the AI race, delayed its long-awaited Siri update until 2026. In the meantime, the company has been scrambling to determine whether its own AI models alone will work well enough to make its upgraded Siri competitive with the AI answer engines available today from tech companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google. Per Bloomberg, Apple could be turning to Google for a solution to its…

Lawyers for Donald Trump and Sundar Pichai have been in private negotiations for four months in hopes of resolving the president’s 2021 “de-platforming” lawsuit against YouTube and the CEO, Business Insider has confirmed — and now the judge is demanding a public update.In an order issued from Oakland late Tuesday, US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told the parties to provide “a substantive plan” for resolving the lawsuit.The judge rejected the parties’ joint request for two more months to let negotiations play out before their next court appearance. Instead, she set an October 6 date for a public videoconference…

Mike Liberatore, xAI’s chief financial officer, has left the company, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. This marks the latest in a string of high-profile executive departures.  The former Airbnb executive joined the company in April and left around the end of July, per the WSJ. While at xAI, he helped orchestrate the company’s $5 billion debt raise, alongside another $5 billion in equity — almost half of which came from SpaceX. He also oversaw some of the Elon Musk-owned AI firm’s data center expansion in Memphis.  Liberatore’s departure comes after xAI’s general counsel, Robert Keele, left in…