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Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Scott Hershberger writes: The late esteemed English actor Christopher Lee traced his ancestry directly to Charlemagne. In 2010 Lee released a symphonic metal album paying homage to the first Holy Roman emperor—but his enthusiasm may have been a tad excessive. After all, says geneticist Adam Rutherford, “literally everyone” with European ancestry is directly descended from Charlemagne. The family tree of humanity is much more interconnected than we tend to think. “We’re culturally bound and psychologically conditioned to not think about…

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Trump campaign ad twists Fauci comment to wrongly suggest praise of the president

Trump campaign ad twists Fauci comment to wrongly suggest praise of the president

CNN reports: Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context. “In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a…

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‘I feel like I have dementia’: Brain fog plagues Covid survivors

‘I feel like I have dementia’: Brain fog plagues Covid survivors

The New York Times reports: After contracting the coronavirus in March, Michael Reagan lost all memory of his 12-day vacation in Paris, even though the trip was just a few weeks earlier. Several weeks after Erica Taylor recovered from her Covid-19 symptoms of nausea and cough, she became confused and forgetful, failing to even recognize her own car, the only Toyota Prius in her apartment complex’s parking lot. Lisa Mizelle, a veteran nurse practitioner at an urgent care clinic who…

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The rise of Gen Z could foretell the fall of Trumpism

The rise of Gen Z could foretell the fall of Trumpism

Laura Barrón-López reports: The evidence all points in one direction: Americans born after 1996, known as Generation Z, could doom not only Trumpism but conservatism as the country currently knows it. Members of Generation Z who are of voting age — 18- to 23-year-olds — want more government solutions. They rank climate change, racism and economic inequality consistently in their top issues, according to polls, and they participated in greater numbers during their first midterm (in 2018) than previous generations…

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Inspired by ruthless authoritarians, Trump turns power of state against political rivals

Inspired by ruthless authoritarians, Trump turns power of state against political rivals

David Sanger writes: President Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes his presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan. Mr. Trump has long demanded — quite publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to…

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Amateur hour at the Trump White House

Amateur hour at the Trump White House

John F Harris and Daniel Lippman write: Nearly everyone remembers the old cliché: If you can’t trust someone to get the little things right, how can you ever count on them to do the big things? President Donald Trump had better hope that bromide, invoked everywhere from youth sports teams to sales-force training sessions, doesn’t apply to him. As his presidency lurches toward a climactic judgment on Nov. 3, the little things lately have rarely gone more pervasively or embarrassingly…

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QAnon is thriving in Germany. The extreme right is delighted

QAnon is thriving in Germany. The extreme right is delighted

The New York Times reports: Early in the pandemic, as thousands of American troops began NATO maneuvers in Germany, Attila Hildmann did a quick YouTube search to see what it was all about. He quickly came across videos posted by German followers of QAnon. In their telling, this was no NATO exercise. It was a covert operation by President Trump to liberate Germany from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government — something they applauded. “The Q movement said these are troops that…

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How our brain sculpts experience in line with our expectations

How our brain sculpts experience in line with our expectations

Daniel Yon writes: The Book of Days (1864) by the Scottish author Robert Chambers reports a curious legal case: in 1457 in the town of Lavegny, a sow and her piglets were charged and tried for the murder of a partially eaten small child. After much deliberation, the court condemned the sow to death for her part in the act, but acquitted the naive piglets who were too young to appreciate the gravity of their crimes. Subjecting a pig to…

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Mortality: ‘I could be one of the diers,’ said Trump

Mortality: ‘I could be one of the diers,’ said Trump

Olivia Nuzzi writes: Donald Trump was on the phone, and he was talking about dying. It was Saturday, October 3, and while his doctor had told the outside world that the president’s symptoms were nothing to worry about, Trump, cocooned in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was telling those close to him something very different. “I could be one of the diers,” he said. The person on the other end of the line…

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Trump’s grip on Republicans is loosening amid a coronavirus backlash and fears of an electoral bloodbath

Trump’s grip on Republicans is loosening amid a coronavirus backlash and fears of an electoral bloodbath

Politico reports: For Republicans, fearful of a possible electoral disaster just weeks away, it has become safe at last to diss Donald Trump — or at least to distance themselves from him in unmistakably purposeful ways. A barrage of barbed comments in recent days shows how markedly the calculus of fear has shifted in the GOP. For much of the past four years, Republican politicians were scared above all about incurring the wrath of the president and his supporters with…

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Covid-19 cases in Arizona dropped 75% after mask mandates began, report says

Covid-19 cases in Arizona dropped 75% after mask mandates began, report says

Arizona Republic reports: COVID-19 cases in Arizona spiked 151% after a statewide stay-at-home order expired and dropped 75% following local mask mandates, a new report says. The report, published this week by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was authored by officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services, including director Dr. Cara Christ. A stay-at-home order in Arizona expired May 15 and two weeks later — between June 1 and June 15 — the daily average number…

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White House blocked CDC from requiring masks on public transportation

White House blocked CDC from requiring masks on public transportation

The New York Times reports: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drafted a sweeping order last month requiring all passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the United States, but it was blocked by the White House, according to two federal health officials. The order would have been the toughest federal mandate to date aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which continues to infect more than 40,000 Americans a…

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Lessons from embedding with the Michigan militia – 5 questions answered about the group allegedly plotting to kidnap a governor

Lessons from embedding with the Michigan militia – 5 questions answered about the group allegedly plotting to kidnap a governor

A search warrant and a list of seized property from an FBI raid related to the alleged kidnapping plot. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images By Amy Cooter, Vanderbilt University Details are still emerging about the men arrested on federal and state charges related to an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Federal prosecutions can take months and even years, so it will be quite some time before a full analysis of this situation becomes possible. But as a…

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The Taliban endorse Trump: ‘We hope he will win the election’ and withdraw U.S. troops — updated

The Taliban endorse Trump: ‘We hope he will win the election’ and withdraw U.S. troops — updated

CBS News reports: President Trump’s reelection bid received a vote of support Friday from an entity most in his party would reject: the Taliban. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview, “We hope he will win the election and wind up U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.” The militant group expressed some concern about Mr. Trump’s bout with the coronavirus. “When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but seems he…

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