Average and conditional treatment effects are fundamental causal quantities used to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments in various critical applications, including clinical settings and policy-making. Beyond the gold-standard estimators from randomized trials, numerous methods have been proposed to estimate treatment effects using observational data. In this paper, we provide a novel characterization of widely used causal inference techniques within the framework of staged event trees, demonstrating their capacity to enhance treatment effect estimation. These models offer a distinct advantage due to their interpretability, making them particularly valuable for practical applications. We implement classical estimators within the framework of staged event trees and illustrate their capabilities through both simulation studies and real-world applications. Furthermore, we showcase how staged event trees explicitly and visually describe when standard causal assumptions, such as positivity, hold, further enhancing their practical utility.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (right) attends a joint news conference with Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Prime Minister's Office on Monday. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met in Tokyo on Monday and agreed that Japan will provide about 10 surveillance drones, worth about ¥500 million ($3.36 million), to the South Asian nation's navy. This will be Japan's first provision of defense equipment to Sri Lanka under its official security assistance program. The stability and development of Sri Lanka, which is located at a strategic point in the Indian Ocean, is extremely important, Ishiba said at a joint news conference after the meeting. In response, the president voiced his commitment to creating a peaceful and stable Indo-Pacific region.

After significantly weakening other Iranian-backed groups in the region, Israel's military has turned its attention to the Houthis, carrying out a series of punishing strikes on Yemeni ports and other infrastructure. Last month an Israeli attack in Sana killed senior members of the Houthi-led government -- including the prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi -- but appeared to leave the group's military leadership largely unscathed. Israeli strikes in Yemen have also killed and wounded dozens of civilians in recent months, according to human rights groups. The United States has also bombed Yemen, in response to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Houthis say they have targeted ships linked to Israel, although some of the ships they struck have no clear connection to the country. Houthi attacks on Israel are typically blocked or intercepted by the Israeli military, as was the case late on Thursday when sirens sounded in parts of Israel and the military soon after said that a missile from Yemen had been thwarted.

Israeli strike on Yemen's Houthis reportedly kills eight The Israeli military says its air force has carried out its most powerful strike in Yemen in response to the Houthi movement's repeated drone and missile attacks on Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said dozens of its aircraft bombed targets belonging to the Houthis' security and intelligence services, and military in the capital Sanaa. The Houthi-run government's health ministry denounced what it called Israel's brutal crime, saying civilian facilities and residential buildings were hit and that eight people were killed. It comes a day after 22 people were injured, two of them seriously, in a Houthi drone attack in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. The Houthis have controlled much of north-western Yemen since they ousted the country's internationally recognised government from there 10 years ago, sparking a civil war.

Rescuers say 20 people have been injured in southern Israel after the Israeli military said a drone was launched from Yemen. The Israel Defense Forces said the drone struck the town of Eilat on the Red Sea coast, with attempts made to intercept it. The Magen David Adom emergency medical service said 20 people were taken to Yoseftal Hospital - two with serious limb injuries. This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

Jimmy Kimmel's big TV comeback strangled as SEVENTY ABC affiliates refuse to air tonight's show Wall Street delivers clear verdict on Trump's Tylenol claims I was a devout Catholic... until I died. I'm the doctor on the cusp of an autism breakthrough... we're using an everyday $2.50 pill to reverse children's symptoms Secret Service foils'espionage' plot in NYC ahead of UN General Assembly that could have crashed Big Apple's phone network The'marry me' sex move that'll make even the most commitment-phobic of men beg to see you again... and it worked for THREE of my friends Sarah Ferguson sent Jeffrey Epstein fawning apology email'after he threatened to destroy her' in'Hannibal Lector-like' phone call The six hidden messages in the texts between Charlie Kirk's'assassin' and his trans lover DECODED Awkward moment Emmanuel Macron rings Trump for help after his motorcade is stopped by cops in New York... but ends up having to get out and walk Kate Middleton delivers a'mic drop' moment in dazzling gold dress identical to the late monarch - giving a glimpse of the Queen she plans to be William is urging his father to disown Fergie and Andrew over Epstein scandal... but King fears they could go rogue and values their loyalty Insiders speak out on Barack and Michelle Obama's secretive yacht vacation amid's**t show': 'They NEEDED this trip' MORE: Gabrielle surging into major hurricane as forecasters warn of'life-threatening' impact to East Coast Hurricane forecasters warn that the US East Coast could feel the wrath of two tropical cyclones at the same time next week. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) revealed their updated tracks for a pair of tropical disturbances brewing in the Atlantic, giving both a high likelihood of turning into named storms within seven days . One of these threatening weather systems, currently dubbed Invest 94L, is expected to form right off the coast of Florida . The other potential storm, called Invest 93L, has been developing in the middle of the Atlantic and forecasters unveiled an initial path that could take it towards the Carolinas by the end of the week.

Keep an eye out for dragonfly swarms. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When you think of migration, the first creature to pop into your head are probably birds . The second will likely be whales, and the third might be monarch butterflies (). You probably have no idea that migratory dragonfly species exist--and that's because even researchers don't know a whole lot about them. And yet, North America may have up to 18 migratory dragonfly species .

The Israeli military says a drone launched "from the east" crashed in the southern city of Eilat, causing material damage but no casualties. The drone reportedly fell in the city's hotel zone. Israel has repeatedly conducted its own attacks on Yemen. Following its bombing of Qatar on September 9, Israel intensified its strikes on Yemen, killing dozens. The drone attack in Eilat follows a series of 12 strikes carried out by Israel on Tuesday against Yemen's port of Hodeidah.

Most previous work on Conversational Query Rewriting employs an end-to-end rewriting paradigm. However, this approach is hindered by the issue of multiple fuzzy expressions within the query, which complicates the simultaneous identification and rewriting of multiple positions. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework ICR (Iterative Clarification and Rewriting), an iterative rewriting scheme that pivots on clarification questions. Within this framework, the model alternates between generating clarification questions and rewritten queries. The experimental results show that our ICR can continuously improve retrieval performance in the clarification-rewriting iterative process, thereby achieving state-of-the-art performance on two popular datasets.

Microsoft says its new $30bn (£22bn) investment in the UK's AI sector - its largest outside of the US - should significantly boost Britain's economy in the next few years. Its package forms a major part of a £31billion agreement made between the UK government and various other US tech giants, including Nvidia and Google, to invest in British-based infrastructure to support AI technology, largely in the form of data centres. Microsoft will also now be involved in the creation of a powerful new supercomputer in Loughton, Essex. Speaking exclusively to the BBC Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC of the tech's potential impact on economic growth. It may happen faster, so our hope is not ten years but maybe five.