Could it be? Might a chemical found in the skin of ordinary red grapes and peanuts allow the body to shrug off the damage exacted by diabetes and heart disease, even Alzheimer's–and add years to life? A new study in the journal Nature offers a tantalizing taste of just that. But don't stock the wine cellar just yet.
Will Democrats capture the House? And, if so, by how much? Polls on congressional races tend to be a bit spotty. To attack the question from a different angle, I checked in with Tom Brunell, a political science professor at the University of Texas–Dallas. He, along with fellow poli-sci Prof. Patrick Brandt, has constructed an economic forecasting model that attempts to predict the outcome of the battle for the House. The three main factors are the presidential approval rating, inflation, and the unemployment rate. (I first mentioned the model in my U.S. News cover story that examined the Bush economy and the midterms.) A month or so ago, the duo was predicting the GOP would barely hold the House with 220 seats. Brunell didn't want to update the model–"predicting an election on the eve of an election is like betting on a horse race with one furlong left," he wrote me in an E-mail–but I finally pressured him into it. Using the latest available numbers (Bush's rating is down, but the economic numbers are better), the Brandt-Brunell model now predicts ... the GOP will win 219 seats. But given the 6.5-seat margin of error, "it really is a coin flip right now for majority control of the House. It is anybody's ballgame," Brunell adds. So Dems may win, but no tidal wave.
AP - President Bush, campaigner in chief for a party in peril, set out on a rescue mission for embattled candidates in the unlikeliest of places Thursday as Republicans struggled to minimize their losses in next week's elections.
AP - The leader of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, resigned Thursday after being accused of paying for sex with a man in monthly trysts over the past three years.
AP - Authorities on Thursday filed murder and arson charges carrying the death penalty against a man suspected of setting a Southern California wildfire last week that killed five firefighters.
Movie superstar Tom Cruise and MGM are partnering to resurrect the historic United Artists movie studio founded by Charlie Chaplin, MGM's CEO announced Thursday. Cruise and his partner Paula Wagner, will have "substantial ownership" in the new studio and Cruise will star in films for United Artists and produce.
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals resigned Thursday after denying an accusation by a male prostitute that the pastor paid him for sex over three years.
In an assessment for a military journal, a U.S. Army officer who advised Iraqi troops concludes the ultimate goal of having Iraq control its security "will exceed" the new army's capability "for some time to come."
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