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Tag: children

  • Scientists find more evidence that breast milk of those vaccinated against COVID-19 may protect infants

    Scientists find more evidence that breast milk of those vaccinated against COVID-19 may protect infants

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    Newswise — A new study from the University of Florida provides more evidence that the breast milk of people vaccinated against COVID-19 provides protection to infants too young to receive the vaccine.

    This latest study follows up on findings published in 2021 showing that the breast milk of vaccinated people contained antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The new study, published in the Journal of Perinatology, analyzed the stool of infants that consumed this breast milk and found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies there as well.

    “Our first study showed there were SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the breast milk, but we couldn’t say if those antibodies were getting through the babies’ gastrointestinal tract and possibly providing protection there,” said Joseph Larkin III, senior author of the study and an associate professor in the UF/IFAS department of microbiology and cell science.

    Using a technique called a neutralization assay, the researchers showed that the antibodies found in the infants’ stool offered protection against the virus. The assay begins by isolating antibodies from the stool and adding them to a special line of cells that have the kind of receptors the SARS-CoV-2 virus uses to enter the cell. The researchers then introduce a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus, which acts like the virus that causes COVID-19 but is safer to use in the lab. The pseudovirus is fluorescent, so when it binds to a cell, the cell lights up.

    “We saw that when the antibodies were present, there were fewer fluorescent cells compared to our controls where no antibodies were present,” said Lauren Stafford, one of the study’s first authors and a UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences doctoral student in Larkin’s lab.

    “The antibodies run interference and don’t let the virus get to the cells,” Larkin added.

    While the virus that causes COVID-19 is often thought of as mainly affecting the lungs, it can also invade the gut, which is why finding antibodies there is significant, the researchers said. 

    “The antibodies ingested through breast milk may provide a protective coating in the infants’ mouths and gastrointestinal tract,” said Dr. Vivian Valcarce Luaces, the study’s other first author and a postdoctoral fellowship trainee in neonatology .

    The study also measured and tested antibodies found in the mothers’ blood plasma and breast milk soon after vaccination and then again about six months later. The researchers found that the antibodies in the plasma and milk of vaccinated people were better able to neutralize the virus, though they also observed that antibody levels decreased at the six-month mark, which other vaccine studies have found as well.

    Dr. Josef Neu, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor in the UF College of Medicine department of pediatrics, division of neonatology, said the first and second studies together give a more complete picture of how vaccinating against COVID-19 during pregnancy and breastfeeding may be protective for parent and child.

    “In our research, we’re following the journey of the antibodies, from the time they are produced in mom after vaccination and now through the baby’s digestive system. The next question is whether those babies are less likely to get COVID-19,” Dr. Neu said.

    The researchers say larger studies are needed to answer that question, as this latest study included 37 mothers and 25 infants, a relatively small number of participants.

    However, this study adds to a growing body of research revealing how vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy and breastfeeding may protect newborns, the researchers say. Currently children under sixth months of age cannot receive the vaccine, so breast milk may be the only avenue for providing immunity.

    The study was funded by grants from the Children’s Miracle Network and The Gerber Foundation.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends COVID-19 vaccination for people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant or who may become pregnant in the future. According to the CDC, as of late November 2022, just over 70% of pregnant people in the United States had completed the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines, though only 14% had received the bivalent booster.

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    University of Florida

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  • New Shiley EyeMobile for Children Hits the Road to Serve Underserved Communities

    New Shiley EyeMobile for Children Hits the Road to Serve Underserved Communities

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    Newswise — The new UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children has started its engine and is driving to schools in San Diego County to serve low-income families in need of eye exams.

    The new EyeMobile is a 33-foot-long furnished recreational vehicle with two exam rooms, as well as a waiting area for children and families. It even has a television for the children to watch while they wait for their exam and a wall area with a robust selection of eye frames.

    The new UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children, a program of UC San Diego Health, was funded by an estate gift from a former patient.

    The vehicle is scheduled to visit approximately 250 preschools this coming year in underserved areas at no cost to families. It replaces the previous EyeMobile that had been in service for nearly 15 years.

    The bigger more efficient EyeMobile will help achieve the program’s long-term goal of providing eye care services to 20,000 underserved, low-income children per year.

    “The families we serve do not have another way to access eye exams. Some don’t even have transportation and others must decide between getting milk or getting eyeglasses for their kids,” said Iliana Molina, director of the UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children.

    “The new EyeMobile will allow us to continue providing a critical service to families. When children can see, they are able to learn, which then expands the educational opportunities for under-represented students.”

    The EyeMobile program includes vision screening, dilated eye examinations by an optometrist, a free pair of glasses if needed, follow-up monitoring with teachers and parents and referrals for subspecialist care as needed.

    There is also bilingual parent and teacher information to teach families about the importance of eye/brain development and how eye care plays a crucial role in preparing children to learn.

    “Early detection and treatment have proven to reduce the negative impact vision problems may have on a child’s development. If left untreated, conditions such as amblyopia, could lead to irreversible vision loss and psychosocial effects,” said Rachel Lee, OD, optometrist with the UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children.

    “The EyeMobile program provides children with the best sight so they can learn at their maximum potential.”

    The UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children is a program in the Division of Community Ophthalmology at the Shiley Eye Institute and Viterbi Family Department of Ophthalmology.

    Funded by several foundations, corporations and individuals, the UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile program launched in 2001. Since then, more than 250,000 children across San Diego County have been screened. The program has become a model for other communities and a platform for research studies.

    In 2021-2022, the UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children traveled 8,226 miles and delivered 895 pairs of prescription glasses to students.

    “My favorite part of the experience is delivering the eyeglasses to the students at school and watching their reaction when they can see clearly for the first time,” said Molina.

    “I will never forget the first time I delivered a pair of glasses. The little boy was amazed that I had freckles. He gently touched my face and could not believe he could see that much detail. It was an emotional moment and made me realize the profound impact of the program.”

    The former EyeMobile will be retrofitted to provide senior vision care services throughout San Diego County.

    “When I go to bed each night, I know we did something good, and it’s incredibly rewarding,” said Molina.

    “I considered medical school or law school before I chose this career path. There is not a day that goes by where I regret my decision. I am fully dedicated to the EyeMobile program, our amazing team, parents and teachers, school administrators and our donors.”

    In addition to the UC San Diego Shiley EyeMobile for Children, UC San Diego Health has embarked on other regional efforts to address health equity in local neighborhoods, including mobile vaccination units.

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    UC San Diego Health

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  • These Are The Essential Gun Safety Rules For Parents, Whether You Own A Gun Or Not

    These Are The Essential Gun Safety Rules For Parents, Whether You Own A Gun Or Not

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    Abby Zwerner was teaching her classroom of first graders on Jan. 6 in Newport News, Virginia, when she was shot and seriously wounded.

    The shooter was one of her students, a 6-year-old.

    Steve Drew, the town’s police chief, explained in a press conference on Monday that the child’s mother had legally purchased the gun. The boy put it in his backpack and brought it to school.

    The parent of another student in the class told The Washington Post that Zwerner was attempting to confiscate the weapon when she was shot.

    Zwerner is in stable condition at an area hospital, and the school, Richneck Elementary, is closed for the week.

    It’s terrifying to imagine this child picking up a gun in his little hands and zipping his backpack shut around it. But given how many guns there are in the U.S., it’s unsurprising that children access them — with often devastating results.

    Firearms have become the leading cause of death for U.S. children, surpassing deaths by automobile accidents in 2020.

    A 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey estimates 393 million civilian-held firearms in the United States. That’s more guns than in the other top 25 countries combined. The U.S. represents only 4% of the global population but has nearly 40% of the world’s firearms.

    And gun ownership increased significantly during the pandemic, with 8.4 million people purchasing their first gun in 2020 and another 5.4 million in 2021.

    Children live in many of these homes. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) estimates that approximately one-third of U.S. children reside in a home with at least one gun and that 4.6 million children live with an unlocked, loaded weapon.

    Given the ubiquity of guns, how can we keep our children safe?

    School shootings tend to dominate our fears, but children are much more likely to be hurt or killed by a gun in their own homes and neighborhoods.

    Here are some things we can do to reduce the odds that our children will be harmed by gun violence.

    Johner Images via Getty Images

    Reconsider having a gun in your home.

    You may have had a firearm for years, but becoming a parent makes you see the world, and its risks, differently.

    “It’s really important for parents to educate themselves about the risks around a decision to have a gun at home,” Nina Vinik, founder of Project Unloaded, told HuffPost.

    One of the biggest risks for anyone with access to a gun is suicide. Kids who live in homes with guns are four times as likely to attempt suicide, and suicide attempts with firearms are fatal 90% of the time. When they attempt suicide with a firearm, nine out of 10 young people access the gun in their own home or the home of a relative.

    Adults living in a home with a gun are more likely to die by suicide or homicide, meaning that the children in their homes are more likely to lose a parent or other caregiver.

    Another real possibility is accidental death or injury in a home with a gun. Between 2015 and 2020, there were more than 2,000 unintentional shootings in which children shot themselves or others, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Most of these shootings occurred in people’s homes, and when a child shot another person, it was almost always — 91% of the time — another child.

    The trauma of these shootings has long-term impacts on those involved. For example, researchers found, in 2013-2104, that 13% of children reported having heard gunshots or seen someone shot by the time they were adolescents.

    “We are all traumatized. Every single instance of gunfire that children are exposed to impacts their ability to learn, grow and develop,” Johanna Thomas, a psychologist and Moms Demand Gun Action volunteer in Arkansas, told HuffPost.

    Deciding to bring a gun into your home is “not an irreversible decision,” Vinik said.

    You can surrender a gun to your local police or contact the National Center for Unwanted Firearms for help with safe disposal. In addition, you can use a safety deposit box to maintain possession of your weapon but store it outside your home. These are often available at banks.

    You can use a safety deposit box if you want to maintain possession of your gun but store it outside your home.

    Chris Jongkind via Getty Images

    You can use a safety deposit box if you want to maintain possession of your gun but store it outside your home.

    If you do have a gun at home, store it safely.

    The AAP says that the safest home for a child is one without guns, but you can do things to prevent your child from accessing a weapon if you choose to keep one in your house.

    “Research shows the most effective way to prevent children from accessing firearms is making sure all guns are stored, unloaded, locked and separated from ammunition. We’ve seen far too many reports of tragic incidents across the country where kids get their hands on guns that adults believe were stored securely, but they actually weren’t,” said Thomas, who identifies as a mother and a gun owner.

    Thomas listed the following places where people sometimes keep their firearms, thinking they are hidden, but children can locate them relatively easily:

    “An unlocked dresser or nightstand drawer; under a couch cushion, mattress or pillow; in an unlocked closet; or high on a shelf or on the top of the refrigerator.”

    You may think your children don’t know that you own a gun or where the weapon is kept, but this is often untrue.

    “Guns are in closets, nightstand drawers, backpacks, purses, the trunk of the car, where they’re just left out. Many children in gun-owning households know where their guns are, even when their parents don’t think they do,” said Thomas.

    Thomas adds that parents must be vigilant about not leaving unsecured, accessible weapons in vehicles as well.

    Pediatrician Dr. Janine Zee-Cheng told HuffPost that she asks all of her patients whether there is a gun in the home and, if so, how it is stored.

    “I ask who has access to them and how that access is obtained (fingerprint, code, etc.),” Zee-Cheng said. “I also ask if people with access have been trained in their use. I then mention resources for firearm owners (the children’s hospital offers free trigger locks, and I have some in the office to give out if they like).”

    In Indiana, where Zee-Cheng has her practice, she says it is common for children to live in a home with a gun.

    Ask about guns in the homes of friends, neighbors and relatives.

    It’s not the first question that comes to mind when scheduling a playdate or sleepover, but you need to ensure that your child will not come across an unsecured weapon anywhere they may be playing.

    Asking if any guns are in the home before a playdate ensures your child will not encounter an unsecured weapon anywhere while playing.

    Weekend Images Inc. via Getty Images

    Asking if any guns are in the home before a playdate ensures your child will not encounter an unsecured weapon anywhere while playing.

    Just as you want to ensure there will be an adult in the home when you send your child over, “similarly, parents need to know about the presence of guns,” said Vinik.

    “It’s also important to ask those questions, just to create norms,” she added. You can add it to your checklist for playdates, alongside letting others know about any allergies your child has and making sure the adult in charge has your phone number.

    If they have a gun in the home, ask how it is stored, ensuring the safety precautions described above are met.

    Understand the limits of talking to your child about guns.

    You probably want to tell your children never to touch a gun, even if they aren’t sure whether or not it’s real. And you should do so — but know that the impact of these messages is limited.

    Research shows that children often ignore such warnings when confronted with a real firearm.

    Data also suggests that kids know more about the weapons in their homes than their parents think they do.

    “Kids know where their parents store guns, and more than one-third reported handling their parents’ guns, many doing so without the knowledge of their parents. Nearly one-quarter of parents didn’t know that their children had handled the gun in their house,” said Thomas, who suggests that parents see talking to their kids about gun safety as a precaution, not a guarantee.

    Zee-Cheng thinks it’s appropriate for parents to begin talking about gun safety when they notice their children engaged in pretend play involving guns — which, she adds, is normal for all kids.

    “Kids are aware of guns from their peers and from media from a very young age,” said Zee-Cheng.

    Another reason to broach the topic is school lockdown drills, which Zee-Cheng said “can be enormously stressful. At a minimum, parents should allow kids to debrief after lockdown drills and to ask what they understand about the drills.”

    Parents who have concerns about their school’s safety plan or who want to take an active role in creating it may be able to join a school or district’s safety team.

    Jill Lemond, director of education at Evolv Technology and former assistant superintendent of safety and school operations at Oxford Community Schools in Oxford, Michigan, believes that these teams should be comprised of “administrators, principals, teachers, emergency responders, members of the local police and fire departments, community members, such as coaches, that are directly involved with students, and parents.” Older students can also participate.

    Lemond pointed to weapons confiscated during screening procedures that were prevented from entering school buildings as evidence that preventative measures can have an impact.

    The communal effort involved in creating and implementing safety plans, Lemond explained, also provides its own sort of protection.

    “Creating an environment of safety,” Lemond added, “where everybody in the community feels empowered and that they can and do play an active role in keeping students safe, also helps to decrease the likelihood of an incident.”

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  • NICU mom stays by her son’s side after his nurses leave to strike | CNN Business

    NICU mom stays by her son’s side after his nurses leave to strike | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Lora Ribas hasn’t left her son’s bedside in four days.

    Her one-year-old baby, Logan, has been in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) since he was born. For the past three and a half months, he’s been under the care of Mount Sinai Hospital where thousands of nurses are currently striking.

    Logan was born prematurely at 27 weeks and is on a ventilator because his lungs were underdeveloped.

    Mount Sinai’s NICU has been consistently understaffed even before the strike, Ribas said. But since Mount Sinai’s nurses began picketing Monday, new travel nurses have replaced Logan’s primary care nurses – nurses who don’t fully understand her son’s needs, she said.

    Ribas said she’s too scared to leave her son alone under the care of the new travel nurses. She took a leave from work to stay by his side.

    “It’s scary to think that I can’t even go to the bathroom without me being concerned,” Ribas told CNN.

    Although the travel nurses are trying to compensate, they “don’t really know my son” and are still learning where supplies are around the unit, Ribas said.

    They aren’t able to give him one-on-one care because of the staffing shortages, according to the mom, and she said the staffing levels are even lower at night.

    Two nurses currently working inside Mount Sinai Hospital told CNN Monday that additional traveling nurses have not shown up as expected on their floors to replace nurses that are striking, causing stress for patients and staff.

    Mount Sinai Health System did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    In preparation for the strike, Mount Sinai announced Friday it would transport newborns in its intensive care unit to other area hospitals. But the most critical babies – like Logan – have stayed in the hospital’s NICU unit. One NICU nurse at Mount Sinai who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said moving a NICU baby to another hospital can be a risky move.

    “It’s a big journey for a baby who’s never been outside the hospital,” she told CNN. “It’s not anything that we want to happen. We want our babies to stay.”

    The more critical the baby’s condition is, the more complicated a transfer to another hospital becomes, the nurse explained.

    “You would need at least a doctor or nurse practitioner, a respiratory therapist if the patient is on respiratory support and a transport nurse to work the pumps and administer medicine if needed,” she said.

    Ribas said her son’s primary nurses who are striking right now are heartbroken they had to leave him and have been calling her to check on his status.

    “He has really wonderful primary nurses,” she said. “They were in tears having to leave him because my baby suffered cardiac arrest two days before the strike happened, and so now I’m dealing with that plus the shortage of staff. Which is very scary.”

    The nurses strike at two private New York City hospitals – Montefiore and Mount Sinai – involving over 7,000 nurses entered its second day Tuesday. Montefiore said it was holding bargaining sessions Tuesday. Mount Sinai has no plans to do so, according to the nurses’ union.

    The sticking point continues to be enforcing safe staffing levels, New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) union officials said.

    A pediatric oncology nurse at Mount Sinai who administers chemotherapy to children with cancer said it’s hard to leave her patients to strike, but she knows it’s in the best interest of their care.

    “We love these patients more than anything,” Melissa Perleoni said, “and it breaks our heart – at least it breaks my heart – to be out here but I have to do this for the future of their care.”

    Ribas said she hopes hospital management reaches a contract with the nurses soon.

    “The nurses are the heart of the NICU, and they do need to figure it out before it becomes a different situation – because every single minute, every hour, the babies are running a very, very high risk of even dying in here.”

    “There’s nothing that could bring your kid back. Nothing,” she said.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby, Vanessa Yurkevich and Mark Morales contributed to this report

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  • Fisher-Price reminds consumers of 2019 recall of Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after more deaths | CNN Business

    Fisher-Price reminds consumers of 2019 recall of Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after more deaths | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Fisher-Price has reannounced its 2019 recall of the Rock ‘n Play Sleepers on Monday after at least eight infant deaths occurred after the initial recall, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

    “On April 12, 2019, at the time the original recall was announced, over 30 fatalities were reported to have occurred in the Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after the infants rolled from their back to their stomach or side while unrestrained, or under other circumstances,” the commission said in a statement. “Since the recall, approximately 70 additional fatalities have been reported, which includes at least 8 fatalities that were reported to have occurred after the initial recall announcement.”

    “Approximately 100 deaths have reportedly occurred while infants were in the products,” the CPSC indicated. “Fisher-Price notes that in some of the reports, it has been unable to confirm the circumstances of the incidents or that the product was a Rock ‘n Play Sleeper.”

    The CPSC indicated that “consumers should stop using the Rock ‘n Play immediately and contact Fisher-Price for a refund or voucher. It is illegal to sell or distribute the recalled sleepers.”

    The initial 2019 recall affected about 4.7 million sleepers. The sleepers were sold at stores such as Walmart, Target and Amazon from September 2009 to April 2019.

    At the time of the initial recall, Chuck Scothon, general manager at Fisher-Price, said the company considered the recall the “best course of action” and would continue to stand by the safety of all its products.

    “With these actions, we want parents around the world to know that safety will always be a cornerstone of our mission, that we are committed to these values, and will continue to prioritize the health, safety and well-being of the infants and preschoolers who utilize our products,” Scothon said during the initial recall.

    – CNN’s Nicole Chavez contributed to this report

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  • Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

    Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Mount Sinai Morningside and West hospital reached a tentative agreement with the state nursing union on a new contract Sunday, avoiding a strike Monday morning, according to a news release from the union.

    Nurses at two other area hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Bronx, are still due to strike after not reaching agreements.

    Both hospitals are back at the bargaining table with New York State Nurses Association nurses today – if a tentative agreement is not reached, then approximately 3,625 nurses at Mount Sinai and approximately 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Bronx will strike at 6 a.m. Monday. The union said during a news conference Sunday morning that negotiations could go into the early morning.

    The new tentative agreement at Morningside and West brings the anticipated number of nurses to strike down from 8,700 to about 7,125. The tentative agreement improves staffing, protects benefits and increases salaries over three years.

    That brings seven of the 12 New York hospitals in negotiations to reach tentative agreements or new contracts.

    “The time is now to settle fair contracts that help nurses deliver the care that all New Yorkers deserve. We are fighting to improve patient care and will do whatever it takes to win,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Sunday.

    New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital is continuing to move infants out of intensive care units to other area hospitals, is diverting ambulances to other facilities and postponing elective surgeries and heart surgeries ahead of a planned nursing strike Monday.

    In a statement late Saturday, the hospital said it has been negotiating “in good faith” with the nursing union on a new contract. Mount Sinai has agreed to meet with NYSNA nurses after walking out on a bargaining session Thursday, the union said Sunday.

    A Mount Sinai spokesperson told CNN on Saturday the hospital system is actively bargaining with the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses under separate union agreements.

    But if agreements aren’t reached at several New York City area hospitals, thousands of nurses will strike on Monday morning.

    The hospital said Sunday its current wage offer “is identical” to ratified agreements at NewYork-Presbyterian and Maimonides – and would increase a Mount Sinai nurse’s base salary by 19.1 percent over three years.

    “But NYSNA’s inconsistent bargaining, unwillingness to accept this offer, and insistence on moving forward with a strike has left us no choice but to take significant actions to care for our patients,” the hospital statement said.

    Seven neonatal intensive care unit infants were safely transferred Saturday to partner hospitals in New York City, a hospital spokesperson told CNN on Sunday. Another six will be transferred Sunday from the NICUs at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai West, the spokesperson said.

    “In addition, we have transferred close to 100 patients from the affected hospitals – The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside – to unaffected hospitals within the Mount Sinai system and partner hospitals in NYC and we continue to safely discharge patients who were schedule to go home.” All elective surgeries have been postponed, the spokesperson said.

    The NYSNA hit back Saturday at comments from Mount Sinai, which said Friday it was transferring infants in its neonatal intensive care units to other area hospitals because of the strike notice, adding the hospital was dismayed by the union’s “reckless” actions.

    “As a labor and delivery nurse who helps mothers to bring babies into this world, I find it outrageous that Mount Sinai would compromise care for our NICU babies in any way. We already have NICU nurses caring for twice as many sick babies as they should,” Matt Allen, the union’s regional director, said.

    “It’s unconscionable that Mount Sinai refuses to address unsafe staffing in our NICU and other units of the hospital but is now stirring fears about our NICU babies in contract negotiations,” he added.

    In a statement Saturday, the NYSNA said nurses at BronxCare and The Brooklyn Hospital Center reached tentative agreements that will improve safe staffing levels and enforcement, increase wages by 7%, 6%, and 5% annually during their three-year contract, and retain their healthcare benefits.

    On Saturday, nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian announced they had agreed to ratify their deal, but it was a close vote – 57% nurses voted yes and 43% were against.

    “Voting on whether to ratify a contract is a key component of union democracy. Just like in any democracy, there is rarely 100 percent consensus,” Hagans said in a statement.

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  • Amid negotiation gridlock between Mount Sinai Hospital and the nursing union, newborns in intensive care are caught in the middle, one nurse says | CNN Business

    Amid negotiation gridlock between Mount Sinai Hospital and the nursing union, newborns in intensive care are caught in the middle, one nurse says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Crucial union negotiations between Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York State Nurses Association appear to be at a standstill and both parties say the other is refusing to return to the bargaining table.

    As the impasse continues between the hospital and union, the most vulnerable patients – newborns in Mount Sinai’s neonatal intensive care unit – are caught between the opposing sides, causing worry among families, one Mount Sinai nurse, who declined to provide her name out of fear of repercussions, told CNN.

    With thousands of New York nurses poised to strike early Monday morning, one of Manhattan’s famed hospitals announced Friday it would transport newborns in its intensive care unit to other area hospitals in preparation for the strike.

    A Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson confirmed to CNN Friday that neonatal intensive care unit infants would be transferred to other area hospitals because of the strike notice.

    “We are seeking a resolution [to the strike.] The impact is great,” the spokesperson told CNN.

    A NICU nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital told CNN that families of patients in the unit have been deeply concerned about moving their sick infants from one hospital to another. Moving the babies to a different facility can be “very stressful” for a NICU patient, the nurse said, as well as the parents.

    “They’ve asked us all week what’s going to happen to their babies, and what’s going to happen next week,” the nurse said.

    “It’s a big journey for a baby who’s never been outside the hospital,” she told CNN. “It’s not anything that we want to happen. We want our babies to stay. We want to be taking care of them. And it’s kind of shocking, and actually a little infuriating, that the hospital is letting it get to this point.”

    The more critical the baby’s condition is, the more complicated and riskier a transfer to another hospital becomes, the nurse explained.

    “You would need at least a doctor or nurse practitioner, a respiratory therapist if the patient is on respiratory support and a transport nurse to work the pumps and administer medicine if needed,” she said.

    The nurses who care for the sick infants often grow close to the families and develop a trusting relationship with them, especially because some babies spend weeks or even months in the NICU, the nurse told CNN.

    “They’re comfortable leaving their babies with us when they aren’t able to be there,” she said. “We keep in contact with the families after their babies have gone home – so we really do develop a close bond to these families.”

    “We treat our babies in the hospital like they’re our own kids. We’re very protective of them,” she added.

    New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans has said the goal of the negotiations is to improve patient care and staffing, get fair wages and to recruit and retain nurses.

    Negotiations between the health system and the nurse’s union have been ongoing since September, a Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN Saturday, but low staffing levels have afflicted the NICU unit for years, the nurse told CNN.

    “For over three years now, we’ve been understaffed,” she said.

    The number of patients in the unit surges and falls regularly, according to the nurse, but as patient levels rise, staffing levels stay the same. The unit can surge to 64 patients, she said.

    “You feel like you’re not actually giving your all to your patients,” she said. “You’re really pulled very thin.”

    Paying close attention to infant patients is especially important, according to the nurse, because unlike other patients – even small children – they can’t verbalize pain or discomfort.

    “You really have to be on top of their vital signs and general assessment. And when you’re not able to spend as much time as you need to with them, some things do get missed,” she said. “And it’s very unfortunate.”

    CNN has reached out to the hospital regarding the nurse’s comments on low staffing.

    More than 8,700 nurses are prepared to strike Monday morning if tentative contract agreements are not reached at several hospitals, Hagans, the union president, said at a virtual news conference Saturday morning.

    As of Saturday, negotiations across New York’s hospitals were continuing at Montefiore Bronx and the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses, according to the nurse’s union.

    But the president of the nurse’s union told reporters Saturday the main Mount Sinai Hospital complex left the bargaining table late Thursday and no further bargaining sessions have been scheduled since.

    A Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN that hospital management is “waiting for the union to come back to us” to resume negotiations.

    The hospital said it put forth a deal at Thursday evening’s bargaining session was the same one the union agreed to for nurses at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Tentative agreements have also been reached with union nurses at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

    Mount Sinai also said it has offered a 19.1% compounded pay raise over three years, which is the same offer other hospital systems in the city have made.

    The NICU nurse at Mount Sinai said that nurses in her unit don’t want to strike and are hoping that they can come to an agreement with the hospital before Sunday night.

    “It truly breaks our heart having to strike and leave our patients, but unfortunately you have to do some drastic things sometimes,” she told CNN.

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  • Seattle Schools Sue Tech Giants Over Social Media Harm

    Seattle Schools Sue Tech Giants Over Social Media Harm

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    SEATTLE (AP) — The public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.

    Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children.

    It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media, and providing additional training to teachers.

    “Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” the complaint said. “Worse, the content Defendants curate and direct to youth is too often harmful and exploitive ….”

    Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

    While federal law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — helps protect online companies from liability arising from what third-party users post on their platforms, the lawsuit argues that provision does not protect the tech giants’ behavior in this case.

    While hundreds of families are pursuing lawsuits against the companies over harms they allege their children have suffered from social media, it’s not clear if any other school districts have filed a complaint like Seattle’s.

    Internal studies revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021 showed that the company knew that Instagram negatively affected teenagers by harming their body image and making eating disorders and thoughts of suicide worse. She alleged that the platform prioritized profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public.

    “Plaintiff is not alleging Defendants are liable for what third-parties have said on Defendants’ platforms but, rather, for Defendants’ own conduct,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants affirmatively recommend and promote harmful content to youth, such as pro-anorexia and eating disorder content.”

    The lawsuit says that from 2009 to 2019, there was on average a 30% increase in the number of Seattle Public Schools students who reported feeling “so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row” that they stopped doing some typical activities.

    The school district is asking the court to order the companies to stop creating the public nuisance, to award damages, and to pay for prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media.

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  • Kansas sexual assault suspect accused of kidnapping children was taken into custody, police say | CNN

    Kansas sexual assault suspect accused of kidnapping children was taken into custody, police say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 21-year-old sexual assault suspect accused of kidnapping three children over the span of two days was taken into custody Thursday, police in Wichita, Kansas, said.

    All three children have been located and are safe, Wichita Police Department spokesperson Chad Ditch told reporters during a Thursday news conference.

    A teenage girl reported being kidnapped on Wednesday evening by a “biracial male driving a blue vehicle” who attempted to sexually assault her in the car, Ditch said. The teen was let go by the suspect and reported the incident to a family member. Authorities began looking into the case and investigated throughout the night, Ditch added.

    Ditch described the victim as being in her “early teens.”

    Less than 24 hours later, two elementary school students – a boy and a girl – left their home by foot shortly before 9 a.m. to go to school. The children were allegedly kidnapped by a man in a blue vehicle who would go on to drop off the boy shortly after, police said.

    The young girl was also located safe a short time later, according to Ditch.

    Officers who were patrolling the area spotted the suspect’s vehicle and after attempting to stop him, a brief pursuit by foot occurred. He was eventually taken into custody without incident, Ditch said.

    Authorities did not identify the suspect by name.

    “Both these cases are still in their early stages,” Ditch added. “We have investigators out here still actively investigating both incidents. We do strongly believe that the suspect that we have in custody is the suspect involved in both of these cases.”

    Authorities are continuing to investigate potential charges, Ditch said. Though the children are safe, the experience was “extremely traumatizing,” he said.

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  • Should parents be concerned about their kids in sports in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s injury?

    Should parents be concerned about their kids in sports in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s injury?

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    Newswise — Dr. Olujimi A. Ajijola, an associate professor of medicine at the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center, is available to discuss what parents should know 

    Amid Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s ongoing recovery from a cardiac arrest, parents may wonder how to best protect their kids in youth sports. Dr. Ajijola of the UCLA Cardia Arrythmia Center says to maximize safety, every parent should learn CPR, schedule a physical examination before the season, and ask the league if there are emergency personnel or automated external defibrillator present at games.  

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    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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  • Masks still work to reduce the transmission of respiratory disease

    Masks still work to reduce the transmission of respiratory disease

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    Newswise — As we dive deep into a new wave of COVID-19 infections this winter, the value of masking is back in public discourse. This is an especially important topic after much of the preventive efforts seem to have been suspended after more than two years of the pandemic.  A viral tweet shared by thousands makes the following claim: “If face masks worked, China wouldn’t be seeing such numbers…”. It then goes on to claim that “there’s no evidence that mask mandates helped reduce infections anywhere. The largest of the school studies showed they made no difference in those settings either.”

    Back in March, Newswise refuted the claim that masking does “nothing.” As we mentioned before, several studies have shown that widespread mask-wearing is associated with reductions in disease transmission of COVID-19 (See here, here, and here). Therefore, the claim that masks don’t work is entirely false. 

    Chris Cappa, Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis, debunks the claim that masks don’t work and why we’re seeing high rates of COVID in China…

    We know that masks help to reduce transmission of respiratory disease by blocking the particles that carry respiratory viruses. The evidence for this is unequivocal. Yet, we know that the overall effectiveness of mask wearing depends importantly on the type of face mask worn and how well a mask is worn. High-quality, well-fitting respirators worn properly provide substantially more protection than other mask types, such as surgical masks or cloth masks. Regardless, if masks are even 50% effective, which is about the effectiveness of many surgical masks, they can have major public health benefits. But, a 50% intervention alone cannot completely eliminate risk or reduce transmission to zero.

    The currently high rates of COVID in China are in many ways expected as people start to interact across households to a much greater extent than they have in the recent past. Mask wearing by the public can and does absolutely help reduce the rates of transmission. But masks alone cannot eliminate transmission risk entirely.

    Greg Schrank, MD, MPH, who serves as an Associate Hospital Epidemiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the UM School of Medicine, tells us how masking works to slow the spread of the coronavirus and other air-borne diseases…

    One of the primary ways that respiratory viruses are transmitted between people is by traveling through the air on small particles. These particles appear to be more stable in the air when the weather is cooler and drier, like in wintertime. Coupled with the indoor gatherings of the holidays, it makes winter a much more active time for respiratory viruses. Well-fitting, multi-layered masks work to protect the wearer by filtering out the small particles containing the viruses. If someone is infected with a virus, the masks work by containing these particles and preventing them from spreading out into the surrounding environment. This is especially true in crowded or confined spaces with poor ventilation, where infectious particles accumulate in the air, leading to transmission. Though cloth masks may provide some benefit, the most effective masks are those that are multi layered, cover your nose and mouth completely, and are well-fitting, preventing gaps around the nose or sides of the face. These masks are better at filtering the aerosols (fine particles) that contain the virus and better prevent transmission as compared to cloth masks. A well-fitting procedure/surgical mask, KN95, or N95 are all examples of these higher quality masks that fit and filter better than a cloth mask.

     

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  • A $3,300 self-driving stroller is at this year’s CES. Are parents ready? | CNN Business

    A $3,300 self-driving stroller is at this year’s CES. Are parents ready? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Hang onto your baby bonnets: Self-driving technology is coming to strollers.

    Canadian-based baby gear startup Gluxkind was showing off its Ella AI Powered Smart Stroller at this year’s CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that offers some of the most cutting edge – and out-there – new technologies.

    The smart stroller offers much of the same tech seen in autonomous cars and delivery robots, including a dual-motor system for uphill walks and automatic downhill brake assist. Like a Tesla with “Autopilot,” the Gluxkind’s stroller’s onboard technolgy has sensors that detect objects around it – but it’s meant to serve as an “extra pairs of eyes and an extra set of hands,” according to the company’s website – not a replacement for a caregiver.

    The Ella stroller is able to drive itself for hands-free strolling – but only when a child is not inside. It uses cameras to monitor surroundings and navigate the sidewalks.

    For parents who are probably and understandably nervous about putting their baby in a stroller with a mind of its own, Gluxkind provided a YouTube video with some use cases. A parent walking a stroller down hill rushes to save a child’s dropped toy that is rolling away. The stroller brakes on its own.

    In another demo, a child is tired of sitting in the stroller and wants to be carried. The Ella strolls itself while the parent carries the child.

    Still self-driving technology isn’t totally proven and certainly not ready for prime time. Although companies that have implemented the technology in cars say they add an element of safety when used properly and the driver is paying attention, putting children in the care of AI may not be for everyone.

    Gluxkind, founded in 2020, also put additional stroller-specific features into the Ella including “Automatic Rock-My-Baby” and a built-in white noise machine to soothe sleeping toddlers. The entire system is outfitted with a car seat, infant bassinet and toddler seat.

    “The development has been driven by our own experience as new parents.,” Anne Hunger, Gluxkind CPO and co-founder, wrote in a November press release. “We’ve put a lot of hard work into this product and are excited to get it into more customers’ hands in 2023.”

    For $3,300, parents can join the pre-order list for the 30-pound Ella, one of the consumer tech products named as an Innovation Awards Honoree at the 2023 CES show. Deliveries of the stroller are expected to begin in April 2023, according to the company website.

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  • Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed

    Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed

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    Lebanon’s navy and U.N. peacekeepers have rescued more than 200 migrants from a boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea hours after it left northern Lebanon’s coast, the military said in a statement

    BEIRUT — Lebanon’s navy and U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday rescued more than 200 migrants from a boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea hours after it left northern Lebanon’s coast, the military said in a statement. Two migrants were killed in the incident.

    The army statement said the vessel was carrying people “who were trying to illegally leave Lebanon’s territorial waters.” It said three Lebanese navy boats and one from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, recused 232 migrants.

    Reports from the northern city of Tripoli — Lebanon’s second largest and most impoverished — said Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian men, women and children were on the boat that left northern Lebanon after midnight Friday. Residents of Tripoli who are in contact with survivors said the dead were a Syrian woman and a Syrian child.

    UNIFIL said in a statement that the Maritime Task Force is assisting the Lebanese navy in search and rescue operations in the sea between Beirut and Tripoli “where a boat in distress with a large number of people on board was found. Our Indonesian and Greek ships are on the scene.”

    “We will continue to provide assistance,” UNIFIL said.

    Lebanese security forces have been working to prevent migrants from heading to Europe at a time when the small nation is in the grips of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.

    A crowded boat capsized on Sept. 21 off the coast of Tartus, Syria, just over a day after departing Lebanon. At least 94 people were killed, among them at least 24 children. Twenty people survived and some remain missing.

    It was one of the deadliest ship sinkings in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in recent years, as more and more Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians try to flee cash-strapped Lebanon to Europe to find jobs and stability.

    The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says risky sea migration attempts from Lebanon over the past year have surged by 73%.

    Lebanon’s economic meltdown that began in October 2019, has left three- quarters of the country’s 6 million people, including a million Syrian refugees, living in poverty.

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  • In US, sharply contrasting views on Benedict XIV’s legacy

    In US, sharply contrasting views on Benedict XIV’s legacy

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    NEW YORK — In the United States, admirers of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI remembered him warmly for his theological prowess and devotion to traditional doctrine. However, some U.S. Catholics, on learning of his death Saturday, recalled him as an obstacle to progress in combating clergy sex abuse and expanding the role of women in the church.

    Professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, depicted Benedict as “a man of unwavering faith, deep conviction and towering intellect,” yet added that he left “a complicated legacy.”

    She noted that last February, following a report that implicated him in the cover-up of sexual abuse during the years he served as Archbishop of Munich, Benedict “acknowledged his failure to act decisively at times in confronting sexual abusers.”

    Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, noted that Benedict – before becoming pope – had a lead role in enforcing church discipline at a time when the sex-abuse crisis was making headlines in the U.S. two decades ago.

    “When he was elected to succeed John Paul II as pope in 2005, Benedict XVI was the person who was most knowledgeable about clergy sexual abuse.” Millies said via email. “Yet, the crisis continued to fester throughout Benedict’s papacy past his resignation in 2013 and even today.”

    Millies suggested that Benedict’s most important legacy was his resignation, arising from “his recognition that he could not fix the abuse crisis or accomplish much else in the face of the deeply entrenched power of the Vatican’s centralized bureaucracy.”

    Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, praised Benedict as “a superb theologian” and recalled how the announcement of his resignation “shocked the world.”

    “He recognized the great demands made of him as the chief shepherd of the Universal Church of a billion Catholics worldwide, and his physical limitations for such a monumental task,” Broglio said in a statement. “Even in retirement, retreating to live out a life in quiet prayer and study, he continued to teach us how to be a true disciple of Christ.”

    Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was appointed archbishop of New York and nominated as a cardinal by Benedict, praised the pope emeritus as a “erudite, wise, and holy man, who spoke the truth with love.”

    Dolan held a special Mass for Benedict at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; its bells tolled 95 times before the Mass — reflecting Benedict’s age when he died.

    President Joe Biden — a church-going Catholic who differs with church teaching on abortion and some other social issues — issued a statement evoking a meeting with Benedict at the Vatican in 2011. Biden recalled Benedict’s “generosity and welcome as well as our meaningful conversation.”

    “He will be remembered as a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the Church, guided by his principles and faith,” Biden added. “May his focus on the ministry of charity continue to be an inspiration to us all.”

    Monsignor Kevin Irwin, dean emeritus at Catholic University of America, called Benedict a “theology professor extraordinaire… a clear thinker who was a quiet contributor to the church’s continuity after Pope John Paul II.”

    Irwin said Benedict’s resignation left him stunned.

    “But, in the end it was about understanding he was overwhelmed and letting him go,” Irwin said.

    Monsignor Stephen Doktorczyk, vicar general for the Diocese of Orange in Southern California, remembered Benedict as a gracious leader who had the ability to build bridges and foster reconciliation.

    “There was this unfair perception that he was there to cut people off at the knees,” said Doktorczyk, who served for five years — from September 2011 to December 2016 – in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for processing clergy sex abuse complaints. “He tried to be a peacemaker. When there was a way to reconcile, he tried to look outside the box.”

    Others were more critical, including Kate McElwee, executive director of the U.S.-based Women’s Ordination Conference, which seeks to enable women to be ordained as Catholic priests.

    “For many Catholics, Pope Benedict’s papacy is a chapter of our church’s history that we are still healing from,” McElwee said. Her statement asserted that Benedict, as head of the Vatican’s doctrine office and as pope, “orchestrated a rigid campaign of theological suppression on the question of women’s ordination, creating a culture of fear and pain within the church.”

    Also offering a harsh judgment was David Clohessy, a longtime leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

    “In more than 30 years as a mighty Vatican bureaucrat – nearly 10 of them as the world’s top Catholic figure – Benedict enabled countless child sex crimes and cover-ups to continue by virtually refusing to publicly expose even one child molesting cleric or a complicit church official,” Clohessy said via email.

    “With his extensive power and bully pulpit, he could have prevented hundreds or perhaps thousands of kids from being sexually assaulted. But he didn’t. Instead, he chose, time and time again, to side with ordained clergy over vulnerable children.”

    The Survivors Network’s leadership, in a statement, said honoring Benedict now “is not only wrong, it is shameful.:

    “Benedict was more concerned about the church’s deteriorating image and financial flow to the hierarchy versus grasping the concept of true apologies followed by true amends to victims of abuse,” the statement said,

    The leader of a Maryland-based group that advocates for LGBTQ Catholics, Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, noted that Benedict — prior to his papacy — helped shape a document that called homosexual orientation as ”an objective disorder” and a Catechism describing sexual activity between people of the same gender as “acts of grave depravity.”

    “Those documents caused — and still cause — grave pastoral harm to many LGBTQ+ people,” DeBernardo said,.

    ———

    Associated Press reporter Deepa Bharath in Southern California contributed to this report.

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Afghan war orphan remains with Marine accused of abduction

    Afghan war orphan remains with Marine accused of abduction

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    The Afghan woman ran down the street towards her friend’s apartment as soon as she heard the news: the White House had publicly weighed in on her family’s case.

    Surely her child, who she says was abducted by a U.S. Marine more than a year ago, would now be returned, she thought. She was so excited that it was only after she’d arrived that she realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

    “We thought within one week she’d be back to us,” the woman told The Associated Press.

    Yet two months after an AP report on the high-stakes legal fight over the child raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the White House to the Taliban, the baby remains with U.S. Marine Corps Major Joshua Mast and his family. The Masts claim in court documents that they legally adopted the child and that the Afghan couple’s accusations are “outrageous” and “unmerited.”

    “We are all concerned with the well being of this child who is at the heart of this matter,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after the AP detailed the child’s plight in October.

    Last month, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to intervene in the legal wrangling over the fate of the child, arguing that Mast’s adoption should never have been granted. The government has said Mast’s attempts to take the child directly conflicted with a U.S. foreign policy decision to reunite the orphan with her Afghan family. They asked that the case be moved from a rural Virginia court to federal court, but were denied by Presiding Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore.

    Additionally, federal authorities say multiple investigations are underway.

    “We all just want resolution for this child, whatever it’s going to be, so her childhood doesn’t continue to be in limbo,” said Samantha Freed, a court-appointed attorney assigned to look after the best interests of the child. “We need to get this right now. There are no do-overs.”

    The legal fight has taken more than a year, and Freed is worried it could take months — maybe even years — more. The child is now 3 ½ years old. The Afghan family spoke with the AP on condition of remaining anonymous out of fear for their safety and concerns for their relatives back in Afghanistan.

    Mast became enchanted with the child while on temporary assignment in Afghanistan in late 2019. Just a few months old, the infant had survived a Special Operations raid that killed her parents and five siblings, according to court records.

    As she recovered from injuries in a U.S. military hospital, the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross identified her relatives, and through meetings with the State Department, arranged for their reunification. The child’s cousin and his wife — young newlyweds without children yet of their own — wept when they first saw her, they said: Taking her in and raising her was the greatest honor of their lives.

    Nonetheless, Mast — in spite of orders from military officials to stop intervening — was determined to take her home to the United States. He used his status in the military, appealed to political connections in the Trump administration and convinced the small-town Virginia court to skip some of the usual safeguards that govern international adoptions.

    Finally, when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan last summer, he helped the family get to the United States. After they arrived, they say, he took their baby from them at the Fort Pickett Virginia Army National Guard base. They haven’t seen her since and are suing to get her back.

    The Afghan woman gave birth to a daughter just weeks after the girl they’d been raising was taken from them. Every time they buy an outfit or a present for their daughter, they buy a second matching one for the child they pray will come back to them soon.

    The Masts did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Stepping out from a recent hearing, Joshua Mast told AP they’ve been advised not to speak publicly.

    In court filings, Mast says he acted “admirably” to bring the child to the United States and care for her with his wife. They say they’ve given her “a loving home” and have “done nothing but ensure she receives the medical care she requires, at great personal expense and sacrifice.” Mast celebrated his adoption of the child, whose Afghan family is Muslim, as an act of Christian faith.

    The toddler’s future is now set to be decided in a sealed, secret court case in rural Virginia — in the same courthouse that granted Mast custody. The federal government has described that custody order as “unlawful,” “improper” and “deeply flawed and incorrect” because it was based on a promise that Afghanistan would waive jurisdiction over the child, which never happened.

    The day Mast and his wife Stephanie Mast were granted a final adoption, the child was 7,000 miles away with the Afghan couple who knew nothing about it.

    In court, Mast, still an active duty Marine, cast doubt on whether the Afghan couple is related to her at all. They argue that the little girl is “ an orphan of war and a victim of terrorism, rescued under tragic circumstances from the battlefield.” They say she is a “stateless minor” because she was recovered from a compound Mast says was used by foreign fighters not from Afghanistan.

    The case has been consumed by a procedural question: Does the Afghan family — who raised the child for a year and a half — have a right under Virginia law to even challenge the adoption?

    Judge Moore ruled in November that the Afghan family does have legal standing; the Masts’ appeal is under review.

    The child’s Afghan relatives, currently in Texas, believe the U.S. government should be doing more to help them, because numerous federal agencies were involved in the ordeal.

    “The government is not doing their job as they should,” said the Afghan woman. “And in this process, we are suffering.”

    A State Department official said one of the agency’s own social workers stood with Mast when he took the baby at Fort Pickett, but “had no awareness of the U.S. Embassy’s previous involvement in reuniting the child with her next of kin in Afghanistan.” The official described how the U.S. had worked hard in Afghanistan to unite the child with her relatives.

    “We recognize the human dimension of this situation,” said the official.

    The Department of Defense said in a statement that the decision to reunite the child with her family was in keeping with the U.S. government’s foreign obligations, as well as international law principles that mandate family reunification of children displaced in war. The Defense Department said it is aware that Mast “took custody” of the child but declined to comment further.

    The Afghan couple pleaded for help from the tangle of agencies at Fort Pickett: the military, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the police. Some didn’t believe them, some said there was nothing they could do, some tried to intervene to no avail.

    The couple eventually reached Martha Jenkins, an attorney volunteering at the base.

    “When I first heard their story, I thought there must be something lost in translation — how could this be true?” said Jenkins. She contacted authorities.

    Almost two months after they lost the child, Virginia State Police dispatch records obtained by the AP show “an advocate” called to report what had happened.

    “The family is on Fort Pickett, they are requesting an investigation to the validity of the adoption and if it was done under false pretenses,” wrote the dispatcher. The record notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were involved.

    Jenkins, who was in Virginia temporarily, called every Virginia adoption attorney she could find until she reached Elizabeth Vaughan.

    “It was very surprising to me that no one helped them,” said Vaughan, who offered to represent the Afghan couple for free. “I don’t think they had a lot of the paperwork Americans like to see when someone’s proving that they have custody. But there are laws about people, trusted adults, who arrive with a child. So much more investigating should have been done.”

    A Marine Corps spokesperson wrote in a statement that they are fully cooperating with federal law enforcement investigations, including at least one focused on the alleged unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. In emails Mast sent asking for help bringing the child from Afghanistan, now submitted as exhibitions in court, he referenced reading classified documents about the raid that killed the girl’s family.

    Investigators and prosecutors declined to comment, citing the ongoing inquiries.

    On the other side of the globe, the Taliban issued a statement saying it “will seriously pursue this issue with American authorities so that the said child is returned to her relatives.”

    Now every night before bed, the Afghan couple scroll through an album of 117 photos of the year and half they spent raising her — a sassy child with big bright eyes, who loved to dress up in shiny colors and gold bangle bracelets. There’s a photo of the child wearing a black and green tunic and tiny gold sandals, nestled on the young Afghan man’s lap, smiling mischievously at the camera. In one video, she runs alongside the man, bouncing down the sidewalk to keep up with his stride.

    They’ll soon be moving to a new two-bedroom apartment. There, they say, the little girl’s room will be ready for her, whenever she comes home.

    ———

    AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report

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  • Ontario officials: 2 adults, 2 children killed in house fire

    Ontario officials: 2 adults, 2 children killed in house fire

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    HAMILTON, Ontario — There was no evidence of working smoke alarms in a Hamilton house that caught fire, claiming the lives of four people, Ontario officials said Friday.

    Two adults and two children died in a hospital after firefighters pulled them from the second floor of the burning townhouse Thursday night in the city’s southeast, Hamilton fire Chief Dave Cunliffe said Friday.

    Cunliffe said about 30 firefighters were at the scene when the blaze was at its peak.

    “They did everything they could through very difficult conditions,” he said. “It is very difficult when we bring people out and they, unfortunately, succumb to their injuries.”

    Two other people inside the home were hospitalized in stable condition, Hamilton police said in a statement early Friday morning.

    Police did not immediately confirm the victims’ identities, the relation between them, or details about the two people who survived.

    The Ontario fire marshal’s office is continuing to investigate the cause of the fire.

    Speaking at the scene, fire investigator Mike Ross said it appears that the fire started and spread across the entire ground floor before migrating up the stairs to the second floor.

    Crews were called to the townhouse just after 11 p.m.

    Witnesses said neighbors rushed toward the burning home with ladders as children inside screamed for help.

    Chris Theriault, who lives next-door and had to evacuate as a result of the fire, said three or four neighbors were trying to get a ladder up to a man on the second floor who was hanging out his window, also screaming for help.

    “There was black smoke billowing and I heard children screaming inside to help them,” Theriault said. “Obviously by the time the firefighters got to them it was too late.”

    Juliana Tavares, a family friend of the residents of the unit, said some of the people in the house were related and that the kids were a brother and sister with “an amazing bond.”

    She described the brother as the “most sensitive young boy” who helped others and the sister as a “brilliant, intelligent young girl” who “lit up a room.”

    “I was just here two days ago with (the kids) opening their gifts from Christmas and I can’t even believe it,” she said.

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  • Former IS families face neighbors’ hatred returning home

    Former IS families face neighbors’ hatred returning home

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    RAQQA, Syria — Marwa Ahmad rarely leaves her run-down house in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The single mother of four says people look at her with suspicion and refuse to offer her a job, while her children get bullied and beaten up at school.

    She and her children are paying the price, she says, because she once belonged to the Islamic State group, which overran a swath of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and imposed a radical, brutal rule for years.

    Ahmad is among tens of thousands of widows and wives of IS militants who were detained in the wretched and lawless al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria after U.S.-led coalition and Syrian Kurdish forces cleared IS from the region in 2019.

    She and a growing number of families have since been allowed to leave, after Kurdish authorities that oversee the camp determined they were no longer affiliated with the militant group and do not pose a threat to society. But the difficulties they face in trying to reintegrate back in Syria and Iraq show the deep, bitter resentments remaining after the atrocities committed by IS and the destructiveness of the long war that brought down the militants.

    There also remains fear of IS sleeper cells that continue to carry out attacks. IS militants in Raqqa on Monday attacked and killed six members of the Kurdish-led security forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. The attack came following a surge of SDF and U.S. raids targeting IS militants in eastern Syria.

    Near Ahmad’s house, an IS slogan, “The Islamic Caliphate is coming, God willing,” is graffitied on the wall of a dilapidated building.

    It’s an ideology that Ahmad once believed in. She said she and her sister joined IS after their brother, an IS member, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2014. She married a member of the group, though she says he was a nurse, not a fighter. He has been detained since 2019.

    Ahmed says she now rejects IS. Her community doesn’t believe that though, and she claims it’s because she wears the conservative niqab veil that covers most of her face.

    “Now, I have to face people, and many of the people in this society have been hurt by (IS),” Ahmad said. “Of course, it was not only the organization that did so. We, the people who live in Syria, have been hurt by the Free Syrian Army, the regime, and IS, right? But they don’t say that.”

    She says the neighborhood bakery sometimes refuses to give her bread. Even her own father, who did not approve of her joining the extremist group, threatened a shop owner who employed her that he would accuse him of communicating with IS if he didn’t fire her.

    After IS overran Raqqa, large parts of northern and eastern Syria and western Iraq in 2014, the group declared a so-called Islamic caliphate over the territory. Thousands came from around the world to join. Raqqa became the “Caliphate’s” de facto capital.

    U.S.-backed Kurdish-led authorities battled for years to roll back IS. Finally in March 2019, they captured the last sliver of IS-held territory in Syria, the small village of Bahgouz. Ahmed’s husband was captured by the SDF at Bahgouz, and Ahmed and her children were sent to al-Hol camp.

    Ever since, what to do with the women and children at al-Hol has been a conundrum for the Kurdish-led authorities. Most of the women are wives and widows of IS fighters. Thousands of Syrians and Iraqis have been released and sent home, as well as a number of foreigners.

    Still some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis, half of whom are children, remain crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp in a barren stretch of desert. Several thousand foreigners from dozens of countries also remain.

    Conditions are dire. Kurdish-led authorities and activists blame IS sleeper cells for surging violence within the camp, including the beheading of two Egyptian girls, aged 11 and 13, in November. Ahmad says life in al-Hol was similar to life under IS, “except you’re fenced in.”

    Armed militants affiliated to IS still control large parts of the camp, Human Rights Watch said in a recent report, citing camp authorities.

    The U.S. Central Command said it conducted 313 raids targeting IS militants in Syria and Iraq over the past year, detaining 215 and killing 466 militants in Syria, mostly in cooperation with the SDF.

    The Kurdish-led forces announced Thursday, citing a surge in IS attacks, that they launched a new military campaign against the extremist group, dubbed “Operation Al-Jazeera Thunderbolt,” to target sleeper cells in al-Hol and nearby in Tal Hamis.

    Despite all this, Ahlam Abdulla, another woman released from al-Hol, says life in the camp was better than in her hometown of Raqqa.

    “In general, everyone is against us. We are fought wherever we go,” she said. She says husband joined IS and worked in an office for the militant group, while she just looked after the house.

    With the support of her tribe’s elders, the mother of five returned to Raqqa in 2020 without her husband, who has been missing for four years. She says local authorities have watched their every move with suspicion and asked for their personal information.

    “We are scared,” she said. “If anyone asks, I just say my husband died at the Turkish border.” She tells no one she was at al-Hol.

    Saeed al-Borsan, an elder of the al-Walda tribe, says that reintegrating women and children from al-Hol has been a huge challenge, both because of a lack of job opportunities and because residents struggle to accept them. Tribe elders like al-Borsan have been trying to help women find housing and livelihoods.

    “The children especially have faced difficulties, lack of education, and disconnection from society for five years,” he explained, sitting in a room with other tribesmen with a set of prayer beads in one hand. “They’re victims.”

    Local charities and civil society groups have tried to help the children reintegrate into schools and help their mothers improve their skills to find better jobs.

    “They stayed under the rule of IS, and many of them are relatively still influenced by them,” Helen Mohammed of Women for Peace, a civil society organization supporting women and children, told The Associated Press. “They were victims to extremist ideology.”

    But she believes the women can be successfully reintegrated with the right services and support.

    Abdulla says she attended a few workshops but feels her job prospects haven’t improved yet. In the meantime, she earns a little by cleaning carpets and homes and selling traditionally jarred pickled or dried seasonal food, known locally as “mouneh.”

    Meanwhile, Ahmad got rejected from yet another job. She said she didn’t get a clear reason why, but believes it’s because her husband was with IS.

    “We have to live with the IS label in this society,” Ahmad said as she let her kids out of her dim house to play. “No matter how hard we try to be part of this community, to embrace the people and be nice to them, they still look at us the same way.”

    ———

    Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

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  • Edie Landau, TV and film producer, dies at 95

    Edie Landau, TV and film producer, dies at 95

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    LOS ANGELES — Edyth “Edie” Landau, the Oscar-nominated producer and executive vice president of National Telefilm Associates, has died at 95.

    The longtime entertainment producer died of natural causes on Saturday in her home in Century City, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday.

    After studying at Wilkes College, Landau began her trailblazing career in the entertainment industry. She moved to New York City, worked at National Telefilm Associates and launched The American Film Theatre. The company was founded by Ely Landau, who she later married.

    She went on to produce Oscar-nominated films “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Hopscotch” and “The Deadly Game” — and television shows “The David Susskind Show,” “The Play of the Week,” “The Mike Wallace Interview,” and “Open End.”

    Landau became an equal rights advocate, possibly sparked by helping in 1958 to change restrictions barring women from boarding all-male passenger planes. She attended the University of West Los Angeles School of Law and became a member of the State Bar of California in 1982.

    Landau also started a Beverly Hills-based agency called Nannies Unlimited to help parents and guardians with childcare services.

    Recently, Landau used poetry as a way of self-expression. She has released multiple poetry books, including “Smiles for Seniors: And Anyone Else Who Can Poke Fun at Themselves,” “Life in Two Lines: Poems to Make Seniors Smile,” “Life in the Coronavirus Era: Poems to Help Seniors Smile,” “Edie’s Book of Wisdom” and “Edie’s Anatomy Lesson.”

    Her son, an Oscar-winning producer of “Titanic” and “Avatar,” Jon Landau, posted a photo of the two on Instagram from his childhood Tuesday, with the caption:

    “95+ incredible years. The top picture is me and my mom from when I was one year old, the bottom picture is from one week before her passing. Edie, thank you for all you taught me, thank you for the life example you always were, and thank you for all the love you bestowed on me. You will be in our hearts forever,” he said.

    Landau is survived by her three children.

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  • Review: A baby for sale in Korean drama ‘Broker’

    Review: A baby for sale in Korean drama ‘Broker’

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    The Korean drama “ Broker ” begins like a noir. A young woman walks slowly in the pouring rain in the middle of the night in Busan, her flimsy hood doing little to keep her dry. She looks haunted but determined and soon we see her destination: A church with a collection receptacle labeled “Baby Box.” It’s then, from behind, that we see something squirming under her large, hooded jacket. She doesn’t open it, though. She sets the infant boy gingerly on the ground, wrapping him in his blanket, and walks away.

    Thankfully for the kid, two detectives are staking out this particular baby box. One, Soo-jin (Bae Doona), gets out to put the baby in the box. The other, Detective Lee (Lee Joo-young), trails the mysterious woman. They suspect an illegal child trafficking ring is operating out of the church and need to catch the perpetrators in the middle of a sale.

    Yet “Broker” is not an edge-of-your-seat crime thriller or maudlin drama. Yes, there are two cops on the tail of several men who have a shadowy business selling orphaned and deserted kids to wealthy owners. Yes, there are shades of a large, powerful crime syndicate looming. And yes, there are abandonment issues aplenty.

    But despite all the ingredients for a certain kind of film, writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda had something different in mind. In “Broker,” he’s made a quiet road trip film about some gentle souls in difficult situations and the makeshift family they become.

    Anyone who has seen the Japanese filmmaker’s “Shoplifters” will recognize some similar throughlines, from the family aspect to its gentle approach towards people on the fringes of society — but “Broker” takes things a step further by playing around with gender roles and expectations in unexpected and enlightening ways, making the detectives women and men the ones wearing the baby carriers.

    The baby box is not something out of a dystopian future, but a real thing in Japan and Korea that was meant for good but also extremely controversial. Was it enabling parents to “throw away” children too easily, some wondered. Or was it a public service for the most desperate in societies where single mothers are shamed?

    These questions are asked in the film, and gently debated, but “Broker” isn’t interested in definitive answers or moralizing, but instead empathy for both the mothers in impossible situations and the children haunted by their abandonment.

    Ha Sang-hyeon (played by Song Kang-ho of “Parasite”) is the lead broker of the operation, but he is not a slimy, soulless criminal mastermind using the babies and kids as a mere means to a profitable end. In fact, his de facto daycare looks like a pleasant place of love and attention for the littlest and most helpless infants on up.

    He and his right-hand man, Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) discover a note with this newest arrival: His name is Woo-sung and his mother says she’ll be back for him. From experience, they know that this is rarely ever true, especially when there is no parental name or number left. But the early twist is that the mother, Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun), does come back and soon the three are on a journey to sell Woo-sung to the right kind of parents (a kind of Goldilocks scenario). There is a light and almost comic touch to some of these interactions that also doesn’t trivialize things.

    “Broker” is definitely a slow burn that can feel a bit repetitive at times, though the introduction of Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo) as an 8-year-old orphan with Premier League dreams helps get the film over a meandering hump.

    It also packs an emotional punch and has some surprises yet, but most importantly it’s a reminder that filmmakers looking to explore society’s ills don’t need to make something a misery fest to do so effectively and powerfully.

    “Broker,” a NEON release now playing in theaters, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some language.” Running time: 129 minutes. Three stars out of four.

    ———

    MPA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

    ———

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

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  • Spontaneous baby movements have purpose

    Spontaneous baby movements have purpose

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    Newswise — Spontaneous, random baby movements aid development of their sensorimotor system, according to new research led by the University of Tokyo. Detailed motion capture of newborns and infants was combined with a musculoskeletal computer model, to enable researchers to analyze communication among muscles and sensation across the whole body. Researchers found patterns of muscle interaction developing based on the babies’ random exploratory behavior, that would later enable them to perform sequential movements as infants. Better understanding how our sensorimotor system develops could help us gain insight into the origin of human movement as well as earlier diagnosis of developmental disorders.

    If you’ve spent time with a baby, you’ll probably have noticed that they hardly keep still. Right from birth — and even in the womb — babies start to kick, wiggle and move seemingly without aim or external stimulation. These are called “spontaneous movements” and researchers believe that they have an important role to play in the development of the sensorimotor system, i.e., our ability to control our muscles, movement and coordination. If we can better understand these seemingly random movements and how they are involved in early human development, we might also be able to identify early indicators for certain developmental disorders, such as cerebral palsy.

    Currently, there is limited knowledge about how newborns and infants learn to move their body. “Previous research into sensorimotor development has focused on kinematic properties, muscle activities which cause movement in a joint or a part of the body,” said Project Assistant Professor Hoshinori Kanazawa from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.  “However, our study focused on muscle activity and sensory input signals for the whole body. By combining a musculoskeletal model and neuroscientific method, we found that spontaneous movements, which seem to have no explicit task or purpose, contribute to coordinated sensorimotor development.”

    First, the team recorded the joint movements of 12 healthy newborns (less than 10 days old) and 10 young infants (about 3 months old) using motion capture technology. Next, they estimated the babies’ muscle activity and sensory input signals with the aid of a whole-body, infant-scale musculoskeletal computer model which they had created. Finally, they used computer algorithms to analyze the spatiotemporal (both space and time) features of the interaction between the input signals and muscle activity.

    “We were surprised that during spontaneous movement, infants’ movements “wandered” and they pursued various sensorimotor interactions. We named this phenomenon ‘sensorimotor wandering,’” said Kanazawa. “It has been commonly assumed that sensorimotor system development generally depends on the occurrence of repeated sensorimotor interactions, meaning the more you do the same action the more likely you are to learn and remember it. However, our results implied that infants develop their own sensorimotor system based on explorational behavior or curiosity, so they are not just repeating the same action but a variety of actions. In addition to this, our findings provide a conceptual linkage between early spontaneous movements and spontaneous neuronal activity.”

    Previous studies on humans and animals have shown that motor behavior (movement) involves a small set of primitive muscular control patterns. These are patterns that can typically be seen in task-specific or cyclic movements, like walking or reaching. The results of this latest study supports the theory that newborns and infants can acquire sensorimotor modules, i.e., synchronized muscle activities and sensory inputs, through spontaneous whole-body movements without an explicit purpose or task. Even through sensorimotor wandering, the babies showed an increase in coordinated whole-body movements and in anticipatory movements. The movements performed by the infant group showed more common patterns and sequential movements, compared to the random movements of the newborn group.

    Next, Kanazawa wants to look at how sensorimotor wandering affects later development, such as walking and reaching, along with more complex behaviors and higher cognitive functions. “My original background is in infant rehabilitation. My big goal through my research is to understand the underlying mechanisms of early motor development and to find knowledge that will help to promote baby development.”

    ####

    Paper Title:

    Hoshinori Kanazawa, Yasunori Yamada, Kazutoshi Tanaka, Masahiko Kawai, Fusako Niwa, Kougoro Iwanaga, Yasuo Kuniyoshi “Open-ended movements structure sensorimotor information in early human development”. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2209953120

    Funding: 

    This work was supported in part by JSPS  KAKENHI  (grant numbers 22H04770, 21K11495, and 21H00937).

    Useful Links:

    Graduate School of Information Science and Technology: https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.shtml

    Hoshinori Kanazawa’s webpage: http:// www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kanazawa/

    About the University of Tokyo
    The University of Tokyo is Japan’s leading university and one of the world’s top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world’s top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.

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