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Harris holds a 66-electoral-vote lead over Trump, calculates prominent data scientist

Harris holds a 66-electoral-vote lead over Trump, calculates prominent data scientist

Fortune reports: Data scientist Thomas Miller has crafted a model for forecasting the 2024 presidential election that, he says, is far more reliable than the polling that’s constantly cited in the media as the best guide to the outcome on Nov. 5. Instead, the Northwestern University professor deploys a framework based on the betting odds set by folks wagering their dollars not on the candidate they intend to vote for, but the one they expect to win. This writer began…

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23andMe is on the brink. What happens to all its DNA data?

23andMe is on the brink. What happens to all its DNA data?

NPR reports: Last month, Chenedy Wiles finally got around to it. The 27-year-old traveling nurse spit into a tube and mailed it to 23andMe, where the genetic testing company’s lab examined her DNA and generated a glimpse of her ancestry. “One of the reasons I decided to get the test is that as an African American, it’s very common for our heritage to get lost,” said Wiles, who lives in Chicago. Once her results arrived in the mail, it revealed…

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When data is missing, scientists guess. Then guess again

When data is missing, scientists guess. Then guess again

Matt von Hippel writes: Data is almost always incomplete. Patients drop out of clinical trials and survey respondents skip questions; schools fail to report scores, and governments ignore elements of their economies. When data goes missing, standard statistical tools, like taking averages, are no longer useful. “We cannot calculate with missing data, just as we can’t divide by zero,” said Stef van Buuren, the professor of statistical analysis of incomplete data at the University of Utrecht. Suppose you are testing…

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Regional war feared as Biden backs Israel’s threat to retaliate after Iranian missile attack

Regional war feared as Biden backs Israel’s threat to retaliate after Iranian missile attack

  Israel has announced it is sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel that Iran says targeted Israeli military and security sites, a response that comes after a series of escalating Israeli attacks in recent months against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian leaders. The United States aided Israel in intercepting many of the Iranian missiles on Tuesday, and President Joe…

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Hurricanes like Helene are deadly when they strike and keep killing for years to come

Hurricanes like Helene are deadly when they strike and keep killing for years to come

The Associated Press reports: Hurricanes in the United States end up hundreds of times deadlier than the government calculates, contributing to more American deaths than car accidents or all the nation’s wars, a new study said. The average storm hitting the U.S. contributes to the early deaths of 7,000 to 11,000 people over a 15-year period, which dwarfs the average of 24 immediate and direct deaths that the government counts in a hurricane’s aftermath, the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature…

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‘Make them riot’ — Trump election case judge unseals special counsel motion on immunity

‘Make them riot’ — Trump election case judge unseals special counsel motion on immunity

CNBC reports: A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed a redacted motion by Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing evidence against former President Donald Trump in his criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C. The 165-page document was filed by Smith as part of his argument that Trump can still be prosecuted for efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss despite a Supreme Court ruling in July that he has presumptive presidential immunity for official acts. Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the filing…

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Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir

Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir

The Guardian reports: Melania Trump made an extraordinary declaration in an eagerly awaited memoir to be published a month from election day: she is a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body – including the right to abortion. “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign…

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Multiple women claiming romantic relationships with RFK Jr. threaten his standing in Trump orbit

Multiple women claiming romantic relationships with RFK Jr. threaten his standing in Trump orbit

Mediaite reports: At least three women are claiming to have had romantic relationships with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in just the last year, as he pursued a long-shot bid for the presidency, Mediaite has learned. People close to Kennedy now fear the revelation of those alleged relationships could jeopardize his standing in Donald Trump’s orbit, particularly as the former president and 2024 Republican nominee fights to win over suburban women. Two sources with direct knowledge of the three women’s accounts…

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Musk funded right-wing political non-profit years before he endorsed Trump, sources say

Musk funded right-wing political non-profit years before he endorsed Trump, sources say

Reuters reports: Elon Musk secretly funded a conservative political group in recent years, according to four people familiar with his donations, illustrating quiet financial support for right-wing causes even before the billionaire entrepreneur in July endorsed former President Donald Trump’s bid for re-election. Two of the people familiar with the donations told Reuters that Musk’s contributions to the organization, Building America’s Future, had started by 2022. One of those people and a third source said the donations amounted to millions…

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A new theory argues humans evolved through competition

A new theory argues humans evolved through competition

Megan Scudellari and Mark Belan write: A surprising discovery about human evolution began with a research study about, surprisingly, birds. Five years ago, evolutionary biologist Laura van Holstein at the University of Cambridge read a study on the role of competition in songbird evolution. The work, from an international team of evolutionary biologists, found that competition between interacting species of songbirds—over food, mates, and territory—drove the evolution of new traits, such as beak shape, across long timescales and large distances…

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Israel vows to retaliate after Iran launches unprecedented missile attack

Israel vows to retaliate after Iran launches unprecedented missile attack

Julian Borger writes: The sight of missiles descending on Tel Aviv on Tuesday night was the clearest sign imaginable that the regional conflict so widely feared over the past year may finally have ignited. This is the second Iranian aerial attack on Israel in less than six months, but last time there was several days’ notice; the much slower drones and cruise missiles arrived first, and the principal target was a military base in the underpopulated Negev desert. This time,…

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White House backed Israeli attacks on Hezbollah despite opposition from Pentagon, State and intelligence community

White House backed Israeli attacks on Hezbollah despite opposition from Pentagon, State and intelligence community

Politico reports: Senior White House figures privately told Israel that the U.S. would support its decision to ramp up military pressure against Hezbollah — even as the Biden administration publicly urged the Israeli government in recent weeks to curtail its strikes, according to American and Israeli officials. Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad…

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Can Israel root out Hezbollah?

Can Israel root out Hezbollah?

  Israel says its army has launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon to target Hezbollah. It’s the latest escalation after more than a week of air strikes across the country, which have killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians, and the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. It comes as Israeli allies, including US President Joe Biden, urge it to agree to a ceasefire with Hezbollah. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has voiced support for the Israeli military’s goals in Lebanon. So. does America…

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In the aftermath of Helene, many rural communities begin the recovery effort on their own

In the aftermath of Helene, many rural communities begin the recovery effort on their own

Chris Moody writes: We knew something had gone terribly wrong when the culverts washed up in our backyard like an apocalyptic art installation splattered with loose rock and black concrete. The circular metal tubes were a crucial piece of submerged infrastructure that once channeled water beneath our street, the primary connection to town for our small rural community just outside Boone, North Carolina. When they failed under a deluge created by Hurricane Helene, the narrow strip of concrete above didn’t…

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