Did the election leave you feeling numb? Or maybe you’re hopeful, relieved, angry or feeling something else entirely. Coming at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two therapists about our complicated postelection emotions.

Recounts are expected in two Minnesota House races. The election results could determine control of that legislative body. The upcoming recounts are expected soon and come after initial ballot totals changed when election officials discovered technical glitches.

Is there really such a thing as a "shy Trump voter"? Who is contacted to take part in pre-election polls? And are they reliable or not?

Spending on campaign ads is up $1 billion from four years ago, according to data from AdImpact, analyzed by NPR. The state that's been the target of the most money is Pennsylvania.

Rolf Nordstrom, president and CEO of the nonpartisan nonprofit Great Plains Institute, and Gregg Mast, executive director of Clean Energy Economy Minnesota, weigh in on what the election results will mean for the energy transition already underway.

Messages of congratulations from world leaders began pouring in after former President Donald Trump’s historic political comeback and election victory. Here's a list of five reactions from around the world.

The bodies of two poll workers, who were among the five people killed in Missouri after flash floods swept through the state, were discovered early Wednesday.

A 25-year-old Michigan man is facing federal charges after he allegedly threatened violence against conservative Christians over former President Donald Trump winning the presidential election.

One of the creators of a Christian nonprofit effort aimed at “better Christian politics” claims President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election is a “disaster” for the United States.

The president of Focus on the Family says he’s “encouraged” by Tuesday’s election results even as he acknowledged both victories and setbacks for the pro-life movement.

In a historic political comeback on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump was reelected for a second, nonconsecutive term to serve as the 47th president of the United States, and he has promised to “help our country heal” after a bruising campaign during which he escaped two assassination attempts.

The 2024 election yielded mixed results for the pro-life movement, with voters in several states supporting pro-abortion ballot measures as such referendums came up short in other states. 

Russia is holding its first-ever three-day presidential election on March 15-17. First polling stations opened in the Far East at 23:00 Moscow time. As many as 112.3 million Russians can cast their vote in the election, the Central Electoral Committee said. There are four candidates competing for the post of the head of state: Vladimir Putin, current president; Leonid Slutsky, LDPR leader; Nikolai Kharitonov, candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation; Vladislav Davankov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, New People party. Vladimir Putin The sitting head of state, Vladimir Putin, is running for election as a self-nominated candidate. In case of victory, it will be Putin's fifth term. Vladimir Putin first took office as President on March 26, 2000, when Boris Yeltsin resigned.

The voter turnout in the Russian presidential election set a new record as it amounted to 77.44 percent, Ella Pamfilova, the chairwoman of the Central Election Commission said. More than 87.113 million voters took part in the Russian presidential election. "Precinct election commissions across the country have completed their work. 99.74 percent of ballots have been entered into the state automated system, so we can fully summarise the results of the presidential election,” she said.

The statement from former US President Donald Trump about the "destruction" of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline should be considered an element of the election campaign, Kremlin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. After the explosion of the gas pipeline, one thread survived, and Gazprom is ready to immediately start deliveries if Germany agrees to buy natural gas from Russia, Peskov said. "There is a surviving thread of Nord Stream 2, and it is ready to be launched, as President Putin said. Therefore, it is very difficult to guess what Mr. Trump had in mind here," Peskov concluded.

The United States is holding the 60th presidential election on Tuesday, November 5. US citizens also elect a vice president, 468 congressmen, governors of 11 states and representatives to local governments. The Democratic Party in the elections is represented by the current US Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for a seat in the Oval Office, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris's running mate if she wins. Their Republican rivals are the 45th former US President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator James David Vance. By tradition, the elections first began at midnight in New Hampshire. Six out of six registered residents of Dixville Notch cast their ballots: three for Harris, three for Trump.

Dr. Neil Johnson, a physics professor at George Washington University, explores unconventional areas within physics, focusing on complex, "taboo" problems not traditionally tackled by physicists, like online hate networks.

[Politics] :
Myung Tae-kyun, a self-proclaimed political consultant and a key figure in a high-profile scandal involving the president and first lady, was questioned by the prosecution for the second consecutive day on Saturday. The Changwon District Prosecutors' Office grilled Myung for over 12 hours on Saturday ...

[more...]

[Inter-Korea] :
North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Tuesday morning, just hours before the start of the U.S. presidential election.   South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff(JCS) said it detected the launches around 7:30 a.m. from the Sariwon area in North Hwanghae ...

[more...]

[Economy] :
Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said Thursday that he expects Donald Trump’s reelection to have a “considerable” impact on the South Korean economy.  The minister made the remarks Wednesday in Seoul during a meeting of ministers concerned with the economy, the morning after Donald Trump won the U.S. ...

[more...]

[Economy] :
Representatives of the government and the business community met to discuss former President Donald Trump’s reelection and how it might affect trade.  At a meeting presided over by Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Duk-geun on Thursday, participants exchanged views on the likely impact of the ...

[more...]

Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is widely used to analyze the shape and size of nanoparticles in solution. A multitude of models, describing the SAXS intensity resulting from nanoparticles of various shapes, have been developed by the scientific community and are used for data analysis. Choosing the optimal model is a crucial step in data analysis, which can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for non-expert users. An algorithm is proposed, based on machine learning, representation learning and SAXS-specific preprocessing methods, which instantly selects the nanoparticle model best suited to describe SAXS data. The different algorithms compared are trained and evaluated on a simulated database. This database includes 75 000 scattering spectra from nine nanoparticle models, and realistically simulates two distinct device configurations. It will be made freely available to serve as a basis of comparison for future work. Deploying a universal solution for automatic nanoparticle model selection is a challenge made more difficult by the diversity of SAXS instruments and their flexible settings. The poor transferability of classification rules learned on one device configuration to another is highlighted. It is shown that training on several device configurations enables the algorithm to be generalized, without degrading performance compared with configuration-specific training. Finally, the classification algorithm is evaluated on a real data set obtained by performing SAXS experiments on nanoparticles for each of the instrumental configurations, which have been characterized by transmission electron microscopy. This data set, although very limited, allows estimation of the transferability of the classification rules learned on simulated data to real data.

Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is a widely used method for nanoparticle characterization. A common approach to analysing nanoparticles in solution by SAXS involves fitting the curve using a parametric model that relates real-space parameters, such as nanoparticle size and electron density, to intensity values in reciprocal space. Selecting the optimal model is a crucial step in terms of analysis quality and can be time-consuming and complex. Several studies have proposed effective methods, based on machine learning, to automate the model selection step. Deploying these methods in software intended for both researchers and industry raises several issues. The diversity of SAXS instrumentation requires assessment of the robustness of these methods on data from various machine configurations, involving significant variations in the q-space ranges and highly variable signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) from one data set to another. In the case of laboratory instrumentation, data acquisition can be time-consuming and there is no universal criterion for defining an optimal acquisition time. This paper presents an approach that revisits the nanoparticle model selection method proposed by Monge et al. [Acta Cryst. (2024), A80, 202–212], evaluating and enhancing its robustness on data from device configurations not seen during training, by expanding the data set used for training. The influence of SNR on predictor robustness is then assessed, improved, and used to propose a stopping criterion for optimizing the trade-off between exposure time and data quality.

Small-angle scattering (SAS) is a key experimental technique for analyzing nanoscale structures in various materials. In SAS data analysis, selecting an appropriate mathematical model for the scattering intensity is critical, as it generates a hypothesis of the structure of the experimental sample. Traditional model selection methods either rely on qualitative approaches or are prone to overfitting. This paper introduces an analytical method that applies Bayesian model selection to SAS measurement data, enabling a quantitative evaluation of the validity of mathematical models. The performance of the method is assessed through numerical experiments using artificial data for multicomponent spherical materials, demonstrating that this proposed analysis approach yields highly accurate and interpretable results. The ability of the method to analyze a range of mixing ratios and particle size ratios for mixed components is also discussed, along with its precision in model evaluation by the degree of fitting. The proposed method effectively facilitates quantitative analysis of nanoscale sample structures in SAS, which has traditionally been challenging, and is expected to contribute significantly to advancements in a wide range of fields.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks on during a news conference after he toured the newly reopened Ruby Bridges Elementary School on March 16, 2021 in Alameda, California. ; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California on Thursday scheduled a Sept. 14 recall election that could drive Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, the result of a political uprising largely driven by angst over state coronavirus orders that shuttered schools and businesses and upended life for millions of Californians.

The election in the nation’s most populous state will be a marquee contest with national implications, watched closely as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections, when a closely divided Congress again will be in play.

We’ll get the latest. 

With files from the Associated Press 

Guests: 

Katie Orr, government and politics reporter for KQED; she tweets @1KatieOrr

Lara Korte, California politics reporter at the Sacramento Bee; she tweets @lara_korte

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"This is a petty, partisan power grab that is absolutely retaliation towards my office," Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs says of the new law.; Credit: Ross D. Franklin/AP

Arizona Republicans have stripped the secretary of state's office — currently held by a Democrat — of the right to defend the state's election laws in court, or choose not to, a change enacted as part of Arizona's newly signed budget.

The spending blueprint that Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law Wednesday declares that the attorney general — currently a position occupied by Republican Mark Brnovich — has sole authority over election-related litigation.

If the secretary of state and attorney general were to disagree over a legal strategy when Arizona election laws are challenged, the new law states that "the authority of the attorney general to defend the law is paramount."

Republicans also adopted language stating it's their intent for the law to apply through Jan. 2, 2023, coinciding with the end of Democrat Katie Hobbs' term as secretary of state.

Hobbs, the top election official in Arizona who's now running for governor, says her lawyers are looking at whether this change violates the Arizona Constitution.

"This is a petty, partisan power grab that is absolutely retaliation towards my office," Hobbs said. "It's clear by the fact that it ends when my term ends. ... It is at best legally questionable, but at worst, likely unconstitutional."

Republicans have generally cast the law as a cost-saving measure, citing Hobbs and Brnovich's frequent disagreements over how to defend state election laws that have been challenged in court. In 2020, Hobbs filed complaints with the state bar against Brnovich and other lawyers in his office.

Other election provisions in the budget

The budget includes a number of other election provisions, and it comes weeks after Republicans enacted new restrictions on early voting in the state, and as a controversial review of 2020 election results in Maricopa County continues.

Here are some of the other election-related measures in the budget:

• New laws could soon require watermarks, QR codes and other security measures to be printed on ballots.
• There's a new mandate to inspect state and county voter registration databases and create a report on voters who cast federal-only ballots — an option available to Arizonans who don't show proof of citizenship to register to vote in the state, but are still allowed to register under federal law.
• And a new task force would investigate alleged social media bias as an unreported in-kind political contribution.

The ballot security measures, though not mandated by law in the budget, have the potential to be the most cumbersome and costly requirement for county election officials to implement.

The budget amendment provides a list of 10 "ballot fraud countermeasures" for counties to choose from — features like holographic foil, background designs similar to those found on banknotes and ultraviolet or infrared ink. If mandated, counties would have to implement any combination of at least three features from the list on their ballots. The budget provides $12 million to pay for those features, to be split among Arizona's 15 counties.

"By everyone's admission, there is only one company that can do any of this," said Jennifer Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties. "And so now, we can't have a competitive bid process or a traditional procurement process at the county or state level to use these countermeasures because we're locked into one company."

That company is Authentix, a Texas-based firm that provided Republican Rep. Mark Finchem with a sample ballot that included watermarks, QR codes and other security measures. Finchem had the sample ballot on display at the Capitol in March. According to the Yellow Sheet Report, it could be five times more expensive to print ballots with those security measures as it is to print paper ballots currently in use.

Marson said Finchem has acknowledged the security levels required of companies in the budget amendment could only be met by Authentix, and has vowed to mandate the ballot security measures in the "very near future."

Finchem defended the company in a brief email. He wrote that Authentix "offers these countermeasures to governments around the world for document and tax stamp security."

As the budget was being considered, Democrats like Sen. Tony Navarrete said the amendment is part of a broad effort to solidify conspiracy theories of election fraud.

"It's important for us to make sure we vote down conspiracy-laced amendments that are going to hurt the integrity of our election system in the state of Arizona and encourage other states to have these bad copycat laws spread like wildfire," he said.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Catawba County Board of Commissioners adopts resolution supporting citizen participation in government through elections in Catawba County.

Catawba County Board of Elections appoints Amanda Duncan as new Director of Elections to succeed retiring Larry Brewer.

Lisa Przekop, director of admissions at University of California, Santa Barbara, says that many high schoolers this year wrote their application essays about depression and anxiety during the pandemic.; Credit: Patricia Marroquin/Moment Editorial/Getty Images

College-bound high schoolers are making their final deliberations ahead of May 1, the national deadline to pick a school. That day will mark the end of a hectic admissions season drastically shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many colleges dropped standardized testing requirements, and because some high schools gave pass/fail grades and canceled extracurriculars and sports, admissions counselors had to change how they read and evaluate applications.

"[It was] definitely the craziest of all my 36 years, without a doubt," says Lisa Przekop, director of admissions at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The UC school system received the most applications in the United States.

Like many others, Przekop says all of her staff has been working remotely throughout the pandemic. But if pivoting to working from home wasn't a challenge enough, Przekop says the school saw an increase in applications of 16%.

"On top of all that, we had to devise a way of doing our admissions selection process without the use of SAT or ACT scores," she says. "So any one of those things would have been a major change, but to have all of them at the same time was beyond anything really that I could've imagined."

Przekop spoke with All Things Considered about how what counselors looked for in applications this year changed, what topics they saw in admissions essays and how the process might have actually improved in spite of the pandemic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

Has it all added up to more time spent on every individual application?

Quick answer, yes. Things are much more nuanced now. And although a student may have, for instance, planned to do certain activities, well many of those activities were canceled. The other big difference was students were a lot more depressed this year, obviously. Everybody's more anxious, including students. They're applying for college which is stressful in and of itself. And so what we found is a lot of students used their essays to talk about depression, anxiety, things like this. To read essay after essay after essay about depression, anxiety, stress — is taxing. And so we really had to encourage staff to take more breaks as they were reviewing. So it definitely slowed the whole process down at a time when we had more applications to review.

Can you give any insight into what you are basing your decisions on this year?

Absolutely. Maybe in the past I would've focused on that GPA right away. Now when I'm looking at that academic picture, I have to look at the fact that did the student challenge themselves as much as they could have? Were the courses even available? Do I see any trends in their academic performance? If their spring term of last year, their junior year, was all pass/no pass, can I safely assume that they did well in those courses? And that's where you really had to rely on what the students shared in their essays to try to piece that together.

Are you noticing greater diversity in the students applying to UC?

In terms of ethnic diversity, yes, we are seeing that. In terms of diversity of experience — for instance, first generation students and students with lots of different socioeconomic backgrounds — we're definitely seeing that. I'm seeing students who are very committed to the environment more so than i've seen before. I'm seeing students who are more politically aware and active than I've seen before. So I'm definitely seeing a pattern of behaviors that look a little bit different than students in the past.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police tape blocks access from a street leading to the building complex where the Capital Gazette is located on June 29, 2018, in Annapolis, Md. The suspect barricaded a back door in an effort to "kill as many people as he could kill," police said.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Jury selection in the trial of the gunman who fatally shot five employees at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., on June 28, 2018 gets underway on Wednesday.

Jarrod Ramos, 41, has pleaded guilty — but not criminally responsible for reason of insanity — in the killings of John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in modern U.S. history.

"There is a sense that you don't want this to be the thing that makes your life change," Phil Davis, the paper's former criminal justice reporter who now works at the Baltimore Sun, told NPR.

Davis was hiding under his desk while live tweeting the shooting that day. Later, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that put out a paper the very next day.

"That's kind of what drove me to continue as a criminal justice reporter. Once I got the feeling of like, 'no we're going to get back to exactly what we do. We're going to tackle this how we would even if it wasn't us and try to go at it from the perspective of a local community newspaper,'" Davis said.

Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Columbia University's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, said what made this shooting reverberate in newsrooms across the U.S. was "the idea of a newsroom full of colleagues being murdered just because they are journalists. It's an identity based attack."

Attacks on journalists in the U.S. haven't stopped there. During his time in office, President Donald Trump tweeted that the news media is the enemy of the people. Associated Press journalists were threatened and had their equipment damaged by supporters of Trump during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. And last year, during the protests in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd by police, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported at least 160 threats to journalists across the country in one week--mostly by police.

Shapiro says the trial is a reminder to the public of the risks and costs local reporters take daily.

"The reality is that local newsrooms all over the country cover extraordinarily difficult events affecting their own families, neighbors, kids, schools whether that is wildfires, whether that is mass shooting, whether that is COVID-19," Shapiro said.

The Capital Gazette trial has been delayed several times due to COVID-19, turnover in the public defender and state's attorney's offices, and rounds of court hearings. Davis says he hopes the long-awaited trial brings some closure.

"Certainly for the families of the victims themselves, I look forward to being on the other end of this trial," he said. "And whatever the outcome is, being able to embrace them and support them just to bring them some sort of closure."

Today, less than a week before the third anniversary of the shooting, the judge has called a pool of 300 people to determine the 12 that will sit as jurors. They will then determine Ramos's mental sanity during the attack.

Steve Mercer, a former Maryland public defender, said the defense has the burden to prove Ramos's sanity. He said that in cases like these, the defense will look at motive and intent. One possible motive, Mercer says, is Ramos' "long-simmering feud with the paper."

Ramos sued the paper for defamation in 2012 after reporters wrote about his guilty plea on charges of criminal harassment and 90-day suspended jail sentence. But that motive might not hold up.

"I think there's a big gap between sort of being upset about a story that's published ... and then going in and committing a mass shooting," Mercer said.

Mercer adds what presents a challenge to both the defense and prosecution is Ramos's conduct after the shooting. He was found by police under a desk at the scene of the shooting with a pump-action shotgun which was purchased legally a few years before.

"The defense may point to it and say that it shows just a disconnect from reality and a lack of awareness of what was going on," Mercer said.

Circuit Court Judge Judge Michael Wachs will ultimately decide if he ends up in prison or a state psychiatric hospital.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

As jurisdictions around the nation explore how to shore up their voting systems against vulnerabilities revealed by the 2016 election, Congress held a hearing yesterday to learn more about cyberthreats and options for thwarting them.

In a new NAE Perspective, authors Barbara B. Simons and Poorvi L. Vora argue that systematic manual examination of ballots, rigorous ballot accounting procedures, and public compliance audits would increase election transparency and are urgently needed.

In this high-stakes year for democracy, the importance of robust election safeguards and national cybersecurity strategies cannot be understated

The Kroger Co. has announced the launch of Harvest Apple, a new limited edition Private Selection line of products spicing up fall with a fresh new twist.

Gopuff announced a trio of investments into its "Basically" private label brand, expanding its assortment of everyday essentials as consumers continue to seek greater value amid rising costs of living.

The 2020 election is over, but efforts to understand the impacts are just beginning.

Every four years, the election season brings a natural decline in customer demand for services. Marketing costs rise as all channels become saturated with campaign spending, and consumer sentiment declines. 

Eight important factors to consider when selecting and installing a residential floor drain.

Consortium of leading organizations investing in clean energy and disadvantaged communities is competing to manage part of the fund

Hight and Bang lead the Tour, as the 12 best all-mountain, freestyle snowboarders in the world vie for a win at the Tour's third stop and the overall Tour champion crown in the Alaskan backcountry

Elizabeth Levy and Kiley Miller join US-SIF Board; Stephanie Cohn Rupp, Mamadou-Abou Sarr and Anthony Eames & Board Chair, Diederik Timmer, are re-elected

Leading national distributor of commercial supplies, equipment, and chemicals expands its resinous coatings and epoxy flooring selection with PPG.

A groundbreaking set of tools from Softailed streamlines the software selection process. It saves time, increases efficiency, and empowers better decision-making.

Amerigo Scientific announced the availability of its vast selection of glycan standards supplied to meet the analytical needs of researchers and scientists.

"Our design services represent a fusion of imagination and expertise," says Robbie Robinson, spokesperson for Carmel Stone Imports

Astonishingly Accurate & Prophetic Virus Expert Sounds Alarm

Crawlpaw Pet Products, Inc. empowers pet owners worldwide with exceptional shopping experience and customer satisfaction with quality on a budget.

Democrats Know They Can't Win Fairly So They Intend To Rig The Contest

The Rise in Security Measures

Season three of "Take It Or Leave It" continues with host, Dr. Barbara Taber's unique analysis of the geopolitical and cultural landscape in 2024, focusing on hot button issues with her trademark style.