Author: wildgreenquest@gmail.com

After a long court battle, the SAVE plan is officially kaput.Launched in 2023, the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) federal student loan repayment plan was created to replace the outgoing REPAYE program–and help keep Biden’s campaign promise to forgive student loans.Under the SAVE plan, a borrower’s monthly payment would be calculated based on income and family size and could be set as low as $0 per month for the lowest-earning borrowers. The program also fast-tracked forgiveness for those who borrowed less than $12,000.Several states sued the Biden administration in 2024, arguing that the SAVE plan exceeded the…

Actor John Stamos is thinking a lot more about potential opportunities to live-stream these days—be it at New York’s Thanksgiving Day parade, performing with the Beach Boys when he heads to Route 66 for the 100-year anniversary later this year, or even while getting his first-ever tattoo in Austin for SXSW. “I thought, ‘Oh, we should have live-streamed that,” said Stamos, speaking at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “That could have been interesting watching me go through that kind of pain.”As chief innovation officer of Zeam, a startup that lets people stream local TV stations and other content from anywhere,…

Published March 21, 2026 06:09AMOn the morning of June 11, 1998, former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy (LASD) John Aujay set out for what was meant to be a routine training run at the Devil’s Punchbowl—a high-desert nature preserve where the rugged terrain of the San Gabriel Mountains meets the arid edge of the Mojave Desert. At the time, the 38-year-old Army special forces veteran was training for the upcoming Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, a challenging race through steep mountain terrain in Northern California.He was never seen or heard from again. Decades later, journalists Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd…

The healthcare crisis in the U.S. is one marked by rising costs, coverage gaps, staggering medical debt, and attacks on access. While various groups have stepped up with innovative solutions to address these serious issues, experts say the crisis is likely to get worse in the absence of radical policy change at the federal level.Consider how Undue Medical Debt is tackling the $220 billion in medical debt that affects some 100 million Americans. Since the nonprofit was founded more than a decade ago, it has forgiven $27 billion in debt for 17 million people by buying debt for pennies on…

To sell the idea of last year’s Wienie 500 to Oscar Mayer, creative agency Johannes Leonardo used AI to show what a race among the iconic Wienermobiles might look like when they took to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s historic oval.“That is an inherently brilliant idea that most people will go, ‘That’s fun,’” said the agency’s CEO, Helen Andrews, during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “It’s a good example of how AI can accelerate creativity, not replace it.”While AI can be a powerful way for brands to accelerate production and analyze consumer data, creative types must…

Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home prices—as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index—will rise 0.5% from February 2026 to February 2027. That’s a mild downward revision from its 12-month forecast published last month (+0.9%).While Zillow’s national home price forecast isn’t negative, it isn’t exactly bullish either. It foresees a soft national housing market in 2026, one where affordability may improve slightly as U.S. income growth outpaces U.S. home price growth.What type of regional variation does Zillow anticipate in 2026?Among the 300 largest U.S. metro-area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase from…

Published March 21, 2026 03:00AMOne of the scariest aspects of a panic attack is that it can trick a person into thinking they’re having a heart attack. After all, some panic attack symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, dizziness, and rapid heart rate, look a lot like well-known signs of one. As such, it might seem counterintuitive for people with panic disorder to intentionally induce these symptoms. But new research suggests that doing just that—via brief, high-intensity sprints—could reduce the severity and frequency of a person’s panic attacks. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, highlights the benefits of exposure therapy for…

Sure, when chatbots aren’t outright hallucinating, they can be helpful tools for gathering information, generating ideas, and completing tasks.But some of the biggest players in the AI chatbot space—including OpenAI, Google, and Meta—aren’t exactly known for strong privacy protections. So you have to have a lot of blind faith that the data you give to their chatbots won’t be used in ways you might not like, such as building a profile around you and your prompt history for the purposes of advertising or tracking.So, what’s a person to do if they don’t trust Big Tech with their chatbot data? Give…

The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds.Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S.On Thursday, sites…

Nearly 90,000 bottles of children’s ibuprofen have been recalled across the United States, according to an enforcement report this week from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Strides Pharma Inc. has recalled 89,952 bottles of Children’s Ibuprofen Oral Suspension following customer complaints of a “gel-like mass and black particles” in the medicine.The India-based company had manufactured the ibuprofen for Taro Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. based in Hawthorne, New York. The recall comes from Strides Pharma’s Bridgewater, New Jersey, subsidiary. Strides Pharma initiated the recall on March 2, with the FDA labeling it a Class II recall on Monday, March 16. A Class…