At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday. Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches. An NFL spokesperson said: “The NFL continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts.At least one in four former NFL players in study suffered from degenerative brain disease CTEFlight prices change frequently due to real-time factors like demand, seat availability, and competition.Airlines use dynamic algorithms to adjust fares based on shifting market conditions.While experts reject claims that clearing cookies or using incognito mode can lower airfare prices, there are strategies you can use to find the best deals.Can Clearing Your Search History Really Lower the Cost of Your Next Flight?Shareholdersunite Essentials is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Without exception, every high performer I’ve studied credits a host of supporters for success. Research has found that a willingness to ask for help is crucial to achievement.I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in CommonOver the past several weeks, some of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems took actions their creators did not intend. In one case, an Anthropic A.I. agent attempted to plant malicious code in open-source software, using fabricated identities to deceive a human into executing it. In a separate event, a swarm of OpenAI agents undergoing evaluation autonomously penetrated the production systems of Hugging Face, a platform used to share A.I. models, executing more than 17,000 autonomous actions before Hugging Face contained the intrusion. OpenAI did not realize for several days that its agents were responsible. None of these incidents led to consequential harm. That is precisely why they are easy to dismiss. But with A.I. capabilities advancing at extraordinary speed and behaving in ways we often can’t anticipate, we cannot afford to wait for disaster to tell us which signals mattered. Our failure of imagination has to end here.We Know the Risks of A.I. We Need to Act.Few ideological causes ever united Bernie Sanders, an American politician so left-wing he could run for office as a European centrist, and Charlie Kirk, a Trumpian firebrand. A rare point of agreement among them, oddly, was the appeal of Sweden. To the gruff senator the Scandinavian country is a wellhead of socialist good sense that America should emulate. For the conservative stalwart, who was murdered a year ago while preaching his right-wing credo at a university, the home of IKEA and Spotify was equally worthy of admiration. Yet to him Sweden thrived not because of its large state but in spite of it—it was all down to an innate don’t-tread-on-me individualism a Texan might recognise.How Sweden became a country of big-state libertariansBrexit is costing the UK £11.7bn a year in lost exports, stark new figures show, piling further pressure on Andy Burnham to rejoin the EU’s single market and customs union. The damning findings by Logistics UK, which represents freight companies and is one of the largest trade associations in the UK, show that the loss in revenue compared with 2019 is worth £400 per household in the UK per year. The organisation has called on the prime minister to push for greater alignment with EU regulations as campaign groups ramp up pressure to find a pathway for Britain back into the bloc. It comes as a major new business survey by the European Movement UK has revealed that 72.8 per cent of firms say that Brexit has had a negative impact on their businesses, 96.4 per cent say it has had a negative impact on their communities, and 98.2 per cent want the UK to rejoin the EU’s single market.True cost of Brexit on UK trade revealed as calls to rejoin single market growIncidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways have hit a new high, according to research that also suggests the severity of deception and misalignment is worsening. Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by AI users on the social media platform X. The observatory was set up with funding from the UK government’s AI Security Institute (AISI) and began tracking AIs slipping free from their users’ instructions last November. Cases recorded since then include AIs pretending to be their own human controller and mimicking their writing style to effectively grant themselves consent to take actions and bypassing rules requiring human approval for actions. A loss of control incident is defined as having clear evidence suggesting scheming or scheming-related behaviours.Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research findsTaking a common cholesterol-lowering medication can reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke for people aged over 70, with a low risk of serious side effects, a world-first clinical trial led by Australian researchers has found. Statins are already commonly prescribed to people under the age of 75 who meet certain risk criteria, such as having diabetes and high cholesterol, to prevent them from having a major heart event such as a heart attack, stroke, or from requiring heart surgery. People who have already had a major heart event are also commonly prescribed the drugs, regardless of their age.Statins can safely cut risk of heart attacks or strokes in healthy people aged over 70, world-first clinical trial showsMany adults living with obesity have “indistinguishable” cholesterol and blood pressure levels compared with those who are a healthy weight, largely because of the use of statins, according to a study. In some cases, people with obesity were “better off” than those of a healthy weight, researchers added. In the past, adults with obesity were more likely to have increased blood pressure and higher levels of unhealthy cholesterol, but the study has found that differences in unhealthy cholesterol levels and blood pressure have “narrowed or disappeared” among those aged 40 and over.Statins helping people with obesity match those of healthy weight on key metrics, study findsMost weight loss drugs mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which is released by the gut after eating to reduce appetite and cravings. You crave less; you eat less; you lose weight – and research shows these drugs do work in the short term. But side effects such as muscle loss have been reported, and most studies suggest people quickly regain lost weight when they stop using them. This is why Professor Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, wants most people to eschew weight loss drugs in favour of diets that naturally promote GLP-1 production. “People think I’m going to tell them to eat less, but I always tell them to eat more,” he says. “In a world of Ozempic, what you want is a diet that makes your own GLP-1, instead of having to take pills. Now you’re less hungry, and your intestine and stomach feel full because you’re eating a lot of food.”The science-backed diet that a longevity expert says can beat weight-loss drugsIn a housing crisis that has now stretched across two decades, Americans have spent years arguing about the local regulations governing what and where people can build. Should suburbs allow homeowners to add garage apartments? Should cities continue setting aside land for parking spaces? Should it be easier to approve the construction of apartment towers? These are important debates, but they also reveal how narrow our imagination has become. Millions are struggling to afford rent or buy a home. Policy responses thus far have mostly amounted to crossing out onerous rules in the hope that profit-minded developers will then build more housing. Even Congress’s newly passed bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act focuses mostly on streamlining regulations to stimulate more private building. The act includes many important reforms and is an excellent start, but it does not go nearly far enough to address the scale of the problem.How to Fix the Housing Crisis: Look to WWIIShareholdersunite Essentials is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.