[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Missing Lake Oswego foster children believed to be in danger KGW.com
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – West Virginia’s largest education union has expressed a loss of confidence in the state’s school re-entry metrics map, saying it’s putting people’s lives in danger.
The American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia (AFT-WV) made that announcement Wednesday, adding that it’s considering its next steps.
The union said Gov. Jim Justice has been inconsistent in his COVID-19 response.
“The Governor continues to cherry-pick the portions of AFT’s public health guidance document to suit his own agenda,” AFT-WV said in a statement. “Quite frankly, this shouldn’t surprise us given his habit of changing the rules midstream. In less than a month, he has altered the color-coded map to the point where it is no longer trusted by the public, school employees or nationally recognized public health experts.”
Wednesday’s announcement follows a similar announcement Tuesday by the West Virginia Education Association, which said it will file a legal injunction against Justice and other state officials.
WSAZ reached out to the governor Tuesday evening, who responded he had no comment at that time.
“The public no longer trusts the Governor’s map. In grading the Governor’s performance on this critical test, he receives an F. He is failing to keep West Virginians safe,” stated AFT-WV President Fred Albert.
Tap or click here to see the AFT-WV’s complete statement.
Keep checking the WSAZ app for the latest information.
Copyright 2020 WSAZ. All rights reserved.
Apparently, many Americans spared themselves the torture of watching Tuesday night’s first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
According to early numbers from Nielsen, the debate, which was aptly described by CNN’s Jake Tapper as “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,” is on track to draw a far smaller audience than the record-setting first face-off between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Fast national ratings for the broadcast networks show the Trump-Biden showdown amassing about 29 million total viewers across ABC (which drew the largest broadcast crowd, with 11 million), NBC (8 million), CBS (5.3 million) and Fox (4.5 million) — a decline of 36 percent from 2016.
Four years ago, the broadcast networks combined for 45.3 million total viewers in the preliminary ratings, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That figure rose to 49.33 million after time-zone adjustments for the broadcast. When other outlets, including the cable networks, were factored in, the Trump-Clinton debate wound up at 84.4 million viewers, besting the previous record set by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan’s Oct. 28, 1980 debate (81 million).
The ratings for Tuesday’s Trump-Biden debate will adjust upward once more numbers from cable and other outlets are added, but still are unlikely to approach the numbers from four years ago.
Tuesday’s debate, moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News, was widely derided by viewers and critics who described it as “chaotic,” “combative” and a “travesty.”
Speaking on MSNBC, longtime political pundit James Carville said an unruly Trump “just chased the audience away. It was unwatchable … “tough television.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led Turkey for more than 17 years, is known for being pragmatic as well as pugnacious.
Thus, amid escalating tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over territorial boundaries and maritime gas deposits, Turkey has withdrawn an exploration vessel and agreed to reopen talks with Greece, its fellow Nato member and old Aegean rival. All this just before this week’s EU summit, which a top adviser to Mr Erdogan says is the chance for a Turkish reset with Europe.
Yet he appears simultaneously to be leaping into another conflict — a lethal flare-up of the simmering dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. That could bring him into yet another stand-off with his sometime friend and fellow strongman, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
To recap: Turkey and Russia are on opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Libya and yet they try to collaborate in their attempts to manage these conflicts to their mutual advantage.
Mr Erdogan strongly supported the mainly Sunni rebellion against Bashar al-Assad in Syria from 2011. Back then, he was a more overtly neo-Islamist figure, expecting forces allied to the Muslim Brotherhood to sweep all before them in a series of Arab upheavals. Mr Putin salvaged the Assad regime, committing Russia’s air force to Syria in 2015, alongside Iranian revolutionary guards and their proxy militia on the ground.
When, in the summer of 2016, Mr Erdogan put down an attempted coup d’état at home — in which he felt the US and some EU states had been complicit — Mr Putin moved with speed and agility to heal the rift with Ankara. Realising that Mr Erdogan’s main concern was to push back from his frontier Syrian Kurdish militia, who were allied with Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey but backed by the US in the fight against Isis, Mr Putin allowed three successive Turkish incursions into northern Syria, in 2016, 2018 and 2019. But as Russia bounced back as a regional superpower it collided with Turkey’s desire for strategic depth. This February the two countries came to the brink of war in Syria.
Turkey’s intervention in Libya was intended partly to secure its claim to eastern Mediterranean oil and gas riches. In June it turned the tide of the civil war against Khalifa Haftar, the warlord supported by Russia, France, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Russia reportedly sent warplanes to eastern Libya from north-west Syria in response. Egypt, backed by the UAE and its fighter jets, threatens to invade Libya to stop further Turkish advances. While Ankara appears not to take this sabre-rattling too seriously, there is room for miscalculation.
And so to Nagorno-Karabakh, where current clashes are the heaviest since a brief but violent spasm in 2016 that killed some 200 people, rekindling fears of a return to the war of the early 1990s.
The region, and its ethnic Armenian population, seceded from Turkic Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in a conflict that was overshadowed by the wars of the Yugoslav succession. Now, a major oil and gas pipeline runs from Azerbaijan into Turkey and on to Europe. Russia, which has a military base in, and defence pact with, Armenia also sells arms to Azerbaijan and is seeking to damp the conflict.
Armenian allegations that Turkey has sent Syrian proxies to the Azerbaijani front — reprising its Syrian militia deployment in Libya — remain unconfirmed and denied by Azerbaijan, though it held joint military exercises with Turkey this summer. There is room for miscalculation here too.
Turkey challenging Russia in north Africa or the Levant is not quite the same as a face-off in the Caucasus. While that may be former Ottoman territory, this is former Soviet turf. Under Mr Erdogan’s authoritarian rule, the conceptual boundary between domestic and foreign policy has been erased. Both are fired by a turbocharged nationalism as he tries to shore up his shrinking base. His recourse to hard power abroad, sidelining generations of seasoned diplomats, gives the impression that Turkey has gone rogue.
There are certainly takers for that view in the EU and the US. Should US President Donald Trump fail to win re-election in November, Mr Erdogan will lose the shield his administration has provided. All this comes at a time when Mr Erdogan is politically vulnerable; his adventurism could rebound on a weakened economy and currency.
Few modern leaders have so dominated their countries, winning more than a dozen elections and plebiscites over nearly two decades. Even fewer have done it while seemingly able constantly to expand their power. If Mr Erdogan now overreaches he may test this record to destruction.
Desteny Lara is 18, and she goes to California State University, East Bay. Like many college students in America, she recently had to leave campus and move back home — she’s from South Central Los Angeles. For her, moving back means living in a two-bedroom apartment with 10 family members and grappling with how to keep her focus.
“When it comes to concentrating and doing work, I normally do it at night, because everyone’s asleep. Everyone’s quiet, and it makes me focus more,” Lara says.
Still, it’s getting challenging. And she says she wonders how much longer she can do this for: “Sometimes I think to myself, is school really worth it?”
This is exactly what educators and experts are worried about. COVID-19 and the ensuing economic crisis is putting even more pressure on low-income and first-generation college students. It’s starting to show: So far, there’s been a decrease in students applying for financial aid — especially from low-income students. Around 100,000 fewer high school seniors completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, to attend college this year.
Michele Siqueiros, president of the California-based advocacy organization Campaign for College Opportunity, says the irony is, higher education “is absolutely the only path often for low-income students out of poverty.”
With the average student loan debt at around $30,000, the inaccessibility of a college education was a problem long before COVID-19. Black and Latino college education levels lag far behind whites, and many worry that the pandemic will make it worse.
Brian Troyer, dean of undergraduate admissions at Marquette University in Wisconsin, says he’s heard a lot of student concerns about financial instability since the spring. They include questions like “What happens if our family situation changes? Might I qualify for financial aid?”
In August, the U.S. Census Bureau found students from families with incomes under $75,000 were almost twice as likely to say they canceled plans to attend college than students from wealthier families. “That’s worrisome,” says Siqueiros. “Because we know that when students, especially when low-income students leave higher education, the probability of them returning is highly unlikely.”
Back in South Central LA, Desteny Lara just took on a new job at a fast food restaurant, to make ends meet. She’s worried about juggling school and work. But then she remembers that she’s the first one to make it to college. And that’s a really big deal in her family. “My whole family basically looks up to me. Like my siblings, my cousins. Like [they say] ‘if she can go to college, then you can go to college, too,'” she says.
What does the unemployment picture look like?
It depends on where you live. The national unemployment rate has fallen from nearly 15% in April down to 8.4% percent last month. That number, however, masks some big differences in how states are recovering from the huge job losses resulting from the pandemic. Nevada, Hawaii, California and New York have unemployment rates ranging from 11% to more than 13%. Unemployment rates in Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota and Vermont have now fallen below 5%.
Will it work to fine people who refuse to wear a mask?
Travelers in the New York City transit system are subject to $50 fines for not wearing masks. It’s one of many jurisdictions imposing financial penalties: It’s $220 in Singapore, $130 in the United Kingdom and a whopping $400 in Glendale, California. And losses loom larger than gains, behavioral scientists say. So that principle suggests that for policymakers trying to nudge people’s public behavior, it may be better to take away than to give.
How are restaurants recovering?
Nearly 100,000 restaurants are closed either permanently or for the long term — nearly 1 in 6, according to a new survey by the National Restaurant Association. Almost 4.5 million jobs still haven’t come back. Some restaurants have been able to get by on innovation, focusing on delivery, selling meal or cocktail kits, dining outside — though that option that will disappear in northern states as temperatures fall. But however you slice it, one analyst said, the United States will end the year with fewer restaurants than it began with. And it’s the larger chains that are more likely to survive.
As a nonprofit news organization, our future depends on listeners like you who believe in the power of public service journalism.
Your investment in Marketplace helps us remain paywall-free and ensures everyone has access to trustworthy, unbiased news and information, regardless of their ability to pay.
Donate today — in any amount — to become a Marketplace Investor. Now more than ever, your commitment makes a difference.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s foreign minister says he hopes the U.S. will reconsider its decision to close its diplomatic mission in Baghdad. His press conference Wednesday came after a group of 25 international diplomatic envoys in Iraq issued a joint statement expressing willingness to help the country secure its seat of government. Frequent rocket and mortar attacks have targeted the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s government and home to many foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy. Iraq’s foreign minister called the U.S. threat to close its embassy “dangerous” because “there is a possibility that the American withdrawal from Baghdad will lead to other withdrawals” by other countries’ embassies.
TROY – Shots fired in the city in the first nine months of 2020 are more than twice what they were for all of 2019. The number of homicides have soared, residents wounded in shootings are up and the city faces an increasing feeling of danger, the seven City Council members heard Tuesday night.
“The most pressing topic at hand is the increase in violent crime,” Chief Brian Owens told the council Public Safety Committee, which all council members attended.
The police department is dealing with this along with demands for increased accountability and transparency as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country and the local Troy 4 Black Lives group in the city.
The city is days away from approving contracts for upgraded street surveillance cameras and body cameras that police officers will wear. The surveillance cameras are expected to aid in the investigations of violent crimes and other offenses, while the body cameras are expected to provide real-time recordings of police officers at crime scenes and interacting with the public.
The city also will see the return of a reconstituted Police Objective Review Board in mid-October, the first time the oversight organization has functioned in more than five years, Mayor Patrick Madden said.
Installation of improved surveillance cameras to replace the malfunctioning camera system currently in place and the use of body cameras have been discussed for years. After years of delays, the city is preparing to approve contracts of $95,823 with Eclipse Network Solution to install 120 street cameras and of $119,717 with Axon Enterprises, Inc., for the body cameras.
The violent crimes and protests in the city have put attention on the police department. The last time the Public Safety Committee met was Feb. 12 when the discussion was about idling vehicles, according to the committee meeting minutes.
“There’s been 59 shots-fired incidents this year, more than double of last year,” Owens said.
The city’s toll also includes 13 homicides and 22 shooting in which 29 people were shot, Owens told the council members.
The police department is on pace to exceed its $1.15 million overtime budget, Owens said. The department has spent $998,000 in overtime - 86.7 percent of the annual overtime budget - investigating homicides and other crimes and providing security at demonstrations.
Council members pushed for dealing with the violence and transparency for police operations, including use-of-force policies and filing complaints with the department.
Natural Bridge, N.Y. -- Two Jefferson County teens have been reported missing and one “is believed to be endangered,” according to the county’s sheriff’s office.
Bree Lynn Shultz, 14, was last seen at 6 a.m. Tuesday with Jacob House, 17, deputies said Tuesday night.
The two are missing and Shultz is believed to be in danger, according to deputies.
The two were last seen on a 2000 green Honda Recon 250 ATV with a license plate that reads 93JA56, deputies said.
The two could be near Natural Bridge or may have traveled to Carthage or Harrisville, according to deputies.
Deputies ask that anyone with information call the sheriff’s office at 315-786-2601 or 911.
Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati via the Signal app for encrypted messaging at 585-290-0718, by phone at the same number, by email or on Twitter.
For a century, they languished in a museum attic. Fifteen wooden cases, palm-size and lined with velvet. Cocooned within are some of history’s cruelest, most contentious images — the first photographs, it is believed, of enslaved human beings.
Alfred, Fassena and Jem. Renty and his daughter Delia. Jack and his daughter Drana. They face us directly in one image and stand in profile in the next, bodies held fixed by an iron brace. The Zealy daguerreotypes, as the pictures are known, were taken in 1850 at the behest of the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz. A proponent of polygenesis — the idea that the races descended from different origins, a notion challenged in its own time and refuted by Darwin — he had the pictures taken to furnish proof of this theory.
Agassiz wanted images of barbarity, and he got them — implicating only himself. He had hand-selected his subjects in South Carolina, seeking types — “specimens,” as he put it — but each daguerreotype reveals an individual, deeply dignified and expressive. Their hurt, contempt, fatigue, utter refusal are unequivocal. The photographer, Joseph T. Zealy, who specialized in society portraits, did not alter his method for the shoot; he carried on as usual, using the same light, the same angles, giving the images their unsettling, formal perfection.
Agassiz showed the pictures only once. They were then tucked away at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Rediscovered in 1976, they have been at the center of urgent debates about photography ever since.
Is there a correct way to regard these images? Should one view them, or any coerced image, at all? To whom do they belong? Do they quicken or numb the conscience? Does displaying them traumatize the living? Is it care or cowardice to keep them concealed? What do we owe the dead?
I am looking at the pictures now, in a handsome recently published volume; the deep crimson of its cover matches the plush interior of the portrait cases. “To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes,” edited by Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers and Deborah Willis, convenes a group of scholars of slavery, American history, memory, photography and science. Their aim is to tell “more fully the complex story of the people in these iconic images.”
The specialists attend to their own sections, like the far corners of an immense puzzle. Slowly the era is pieced together in lavish detail, through histories of the daguerreotype and reconstructions of the daily lives of the subjects. The artist Carrie Mae Weems discusses her famous reinterpretation of the photographs. The novelist Harlan Greene delves into the racist history of South Carolina, where 165 years to the day after Zealy completed the series, a white teenager named Dylann Roof posted snippets of 19th-century racist pseudoscience on social media, and killed nine Black congregants of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Do these essays — so rich in context — assist us in seeing the photographs any better? Perhaps a better question is: Do they provide the necessary context? Do they resolve that tension I feel as I look at Drana and register both the appeal in her eyes and the absolute certainty (for she is proud — I feel it in the set of her chin) that she would hate being in this book, perhaps even hate being invoked in this essay — unclothed, stared at, opined upon? And yet the notion that she be forgotten, unseen, is also intolerable. It is the tension of “sitting in the room with history,” as the poet Dionne Brand has written.
It is the tension and the buried irony in the title “To Make Their Own Way in the World,” plucked from an essay by Frederick Douglass. Douglass, the most photographed American of the 19th century, is a recurrent character in this book. There’s no evidence that he knew of the daguerreotypes, but he spoke publicly against pseudoscience, and, like Sojourner Truth, cannily publicized his image as a counternarrative to racist portrayals. In “Lecture on Pictures,” he lauded the democratization of the daguerreotype. He wrote: “Pictures, like songs, should be left to make their own way in the world. All they can reasonably ask of us is that we place them on the wall, in the best light, and for the rest allow them to speak for themselves.”
At first glance, it’s an unimpeachable sentiment. The editors clearly want to give the viewer ample background information and then trust her and the photograph. Compare it to, say, the recent furor over four museums canceling a retrospective of the work of Philip Guston, worried that his depictions of the Ku Klux Klan lacked sufficient framing.
What’s curious about the title is that the story of the Zealy daguerreotypes is one of fraught and contested possession. Harvard, which owns the photographs, long zealously guarded the copyright, threatening to sue Weems, who duplicated the images in her 1995 series “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried.” After deciding that she had a moral if not a legal case, Weems encouraged the lawsuit: “I think actually your suing me would be a really good thing,” she has remembered telling Harvard. “You should. And we should have this conversation in court. I think it would be really instructive for any number of reasons.” Harvard ended up acquiring the series.
In 2019, Tamara Lanier, a retired probation officer living in Connecticut, claimed to be a direct descendant of Renty. Her family had long passed down stories about “Papa Renty,” and Lanier devoted herself to finding him, combing census and death records and slave inventories, finally locating him in South Carolina.
Lanier’s findings have been verified by genealogists, including Toni Carrier, a contributor to the PBS series “African-American Lives,” hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., who writes the introduction to this book. Lanier’s revelation arrives in the midst of decolonial movements around the world, calls for museums to repatriate stolen relics and universities examining their ties to slavery. She has found popular support. Forty-three descendants of Agassiz signed a letter to Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow asking the school to turn over the photographs. This month, the Harvard Undergraduate Council unanimously voted to pass a statement condemning the university’s ownership of the daguerreotypes, writing: “Imagine your great-grandparents were enslaved, exploited, forced to strip naked, photographed against their will, those photographs are publicly shared today … and there was nothing you could do about it.”
A few contributors to this book have expressed skepticism about Lanier’s lineage — although only Gates mentions her directly. Rogers, one of the editors and the author of a previous book about the images, “Delia’s Tears,” maintains that tracing heredity under slavery is complex. “It’s not necessarily by blood,” she has said of family records. “It could be people who take responsibility for each other.” In his introduction, Gates downplays Lanier’s connection to Renty. “In a larger sense, can any one person be the heir of these photographs, or does the responsibility for them fall to all of us to protect them as archival relics of history, to be studied, pondered and reckoned with?”
It’s an odd statement. Why would Lanier’s claim threaten the “pondering” and protection of the pictures? What does he imagine Lanier has in mind for them? Already some writers have taken to approaching her directly, to symbolically ask for her permission to use the images — Thomas A. Foster, for example, author of “Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men.” Lanier encouraged him, he has said, because “she believes that the story of the daguerreotypes and of exploitation under slavery, need to be told.” Lanier’s own lawyer has stated that one ideal use of the pictures could be a traveling exhibit.
But in one respect, Gates is absolutely correct. If Lanier has a claim, the photographs will no longer be known only as “archival relics.” Renty and Delia are not relics to Lanier — they are family. Renty is known not as an object of study but a source of comfort and pride, the star of the family bedtime stories, a man who secretly taught himself and others to read. In Lanier’s accounts, he was never invisible, never lost, never in need of “discovery.” What kind of scholarship, what kind of criticism will he prompt if seen this way — not as a figure in need of reclamation or object of fascination but as an ancestor deserving of protection, whose memory has been improbably preserved?
Daguerreotypes, as is often noted, are sensitive, mirrored surfaces. You need to find the precise angle that blocks out your own reflection. Everything you see depends on where you stand.
Ventilation systems in many modern office buildings, which are designed to keep temperatures comfortable and increase energy efficiency, may increase the risk of exposure to the coronavirus, particularly during the coming winter, according to research published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
A team from the University of Cambridge found that widely-used 'mixing ventilation' systems, which are designed to keep conditions uniform in all parts of the room, disperse airborne contaminants evenly throughout the space. These contaminants may include droplets and aerosols, potentially containing viruses.
The research has highlighted the importance of good ventilation and mask-wearing in keeping the contaminant concentration to a minimum level and hence mitigating the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The evidence increasingly indicates that the virus is spread primarily through larger droplets and smaller aerosols, which are expelled when we cough, sneeze, laugh, talk or breathe. In addition, the data available so far indicate that indoor transmission is far more common than outdoor transmission, which is likely due to increased exposure times and decreased dispersion rates for droplets and aerosols.
"As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere and people start spending more time inside, understanding the role of ventilation is critical to estimating the risk of contracting the virus and helping slow its spread," said Professor Paul Linden from Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), who led the research.
"While direct monitoring of droplets and aerosols in indoor spaces is difficult, we exhale carbon dioxide that can easily be measured and used as an indicator of the risk of infection. Small respiratory aerosols containing the virus are transported along with the carbon dioxide produced by breathing, and are carried around a room by ventilation flows. Insufficient ventilation can lead to high carbon dioxide concentration, which in turn could increase the risk of exposure to the virus."
The team showed that airflow in rooms is complex and depends on the placement of vents, windows and doors, and on convective flows generated by heat emitted by people and equipment in a building. Other variables, such as people moving or talking, doors opening or closing, or changes in outdoor conditions for naturally ventilated buildings, affect these flows and consequently influence the risk of exposure to the virus.
Ventilation, whether driven by wind or heat generated within the building or by mechanical systems, works in one of two main modes. Mixing ventilation is the most common, where vents are placed to keep the air in a space well mixed so that temperature and contaminant concentrations are kept uniform throughout the space.
The second mode, displacement ventilation, has vents placed at the bottom and the top of a room, creating a cooler lower zone and a warmer upper zone, and warm air is extracted through the top part of the room. As our exhaled breath is also warm, most of it accumulates in the upper zone. Provided the interface between the zones is high enough, contaminated air can be extracted by the ventilation system rather than breathed in by someone else. The study suggests that when designed properly, displacement ventilation could reduce the risk of mixing and cross-contamination of breath, thereby mitigating the risk of exposure.
As climate change has accelerated since the middle of the last century, buildings have been built with energy efficiency in mind. Along with improved construction standards, this has led to buildings that are more airtight and more comfortable for the occupants. In the past few years however, reducing indoor air pollution levels has become the primary concern for designers of ventilation systems.
"These two concerns are related, but different, and there is tension between them, which has been highlighted during the pandemic," said Dr Rajesh Bhagat, also from DAMTP. "Maximising ventilation, while at the same time keeping temperatures at a comfortable level without excessive energy consumption is a difficult balance to strike."
In light of this, the Cambridge researchers took some of their earlier work on ventilation for efficiency and reinterpreted it for air quality, in order to determine the effects of ventilation on the distribution of airborne contaminants in a space.
"In order to model how the coronavirus or similar viruses spread indoors, you need to know where people's breath goes when they exhale, and how that changes depending on ventilation," said Linden. "Using these data, we can estimate the risk of catching the virus while indoors."
The researchers explored a range of different modes of exhalation: nasal breathing, speaking and laughing, each both with and without a mask. By imaging the heat associated with the exhaled breath, they could see how it moves through the space in each case. If the person was moving around the room, the distribution of exhaled breath was markedly different as it became captured in their wake.
"You can see the change in temperature and density when someone breathes out warm air -- it refracts the light and you can measure it," said Bhagat. "When sitting still, humans give off heat, and since hot air rises, when you exhale, the breath rises and accumulates near the ceiling."
Their results show that room flows are turbulent and can change dramatically depending on the movement of the occupants, the type of ventilation, the opening and closing of doors and, for naturally ventilated spaces, changes in outdoor conditions.
The researchers found that masks are effective at reducing the spread of exhaled breath, and therefore droplets.
"One thing we could clearly see is that one of the ways that masks work is by stopping the breath's momentum," said Linden. "While pretty much all masks will have a certain amount of leakage through the top and sides, it doesn't matter that much, because slowing the momentum of any exhaled contaminants reduces the chance of any direct exchange of aerosols and droplets as the breath remains in the body's thermal plume and is carried upwards towards the ceiling. Additionally, masks stop larger droplets, and a three-layered mask decreases the amount of those contaminants that are recirculated through the room by ventilation."
The researchers found that laughing, in particular, creates a large disturbance, suggesting that if an infected person without a mask was laughing indoors, it would greatly increase the risk of transmission.
"Keep windows open and wear a mask appears to be the best advice," said Linden. "Clearly that's less of a problem in the summer months, but it's a cause for concern in the winter months."
The team are now working with the Department for Transport looking at the impacts of ventilation on aerosol transport in trains and with the Department for Education to assess risks in schools this coming winter.
BELLE PLAINE, Kan. -- A Kansas woman who was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy after refusing to pull over was unarmed and posed no danger to him or the public, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The court filing paints a different picture to that recounted by authorities following the fatal shooting in Wichita of 51-year-old Debra Arbuckle of Andover by Sedgwick County Deputy Kaleb Dailey in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, 2019.
Authorities said at the time that the deputy fired several rounds after Arbuckle put her car into reverse and accelerated toward deputies. The sheriff's department said the deputy feared for his life.
The family's attorney, Michael Kuckelman, said multiple law enforcement videos show that while Arbuckle did put her car in reverse and the backup lights came on, she never accelerated toward the deputies. Furthermore, Dailey had just rammed her car onto a grassy area and her vehicle was surrounded by patrol cars so she couldn't go anywhere, Kuckelman said. Dailey got out of his car and positioned himself so his vehicle separated him from Arbuckle.
“He wasn't in any sort of danger," Kuckelman said. "He shot her through the passenger window and he shot over his patrol car in order to shoot her.”
Arbuckle couldn't have reached him even if she had wanted to, he said, noting that authorities had earlier spiked her tires during a pursuit so she was unable to drive faster than 15 mph (24 kilometers per hour). Deputies chased Arbuckle because her Volkswagen sedan had a license plate that belonged on a Chevy pickup truck.
The lawsuit, filed by Arbuckle’s son Alek Hansen, seeks unspecified general and punitive damages.
Lt. Benjamin Blick said the Sedgwick County sheriff's office would not comment on the complaint. A home phone number for Dailey could not be found.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in an emailed statement that the case remains under review and that no charging decision has been made. He declined to comment further.
Arbuckle's family wants the sheriff’s department to fire Dailey and for his law enforcement certification to be revoked. They also want Bennett to file criminal charges, Kuckelman said.
Dailey had been on the other side of Wichita when the chase began shortly after 3 a.m., and he raced across the city to join in, at one point reaching 142 mph (230 kilometers per hour).
“That in of itself should result in termination,” Kuckleman said. “We can't have law enforcement driving at speeds of 142 miles an hour through Wichita to go to the east side and join a chase already underway about a wrong license plate being on a vehicle. That is reckless.”
Tom Hamilton
Senior WriterStephan Uersfeld
On the opening weekend of the 2021-21 Bundesliga season, there were six Americans in action. Gio Reyna scored his first Bundesliga goal for Borussia Dortmund, Tyler Adams helped RB Leipzig to an opening round win, John Brooks was on duty for Wolfsburg, Timothy Chandler was a late sub for Eintracht Frankfurt, Josh Sargent started for Werder Bremen and Chris Richards got 17 minutes as Bayern Munich brushed aside Schalke.
Cast your eye over the squad lists and academies up and down the Bundesliga, and there are Americans breaking through in 16 of the 18 top-flight teams; there are, at the last count, 50 US-qualified players in the top three German divisions.
- Stream ESPN FC Daily on ESPN+ (U.S. only)
- ESPN+ viewer's guide: Bundesliga, Serie A, MLS, FA Cup and more
In recent years, German clubs in particular have made a mad scramble to sign the best, young U.S. soccer talent. Speak to players, coaches and agents, and each has a slightly different take on why there are so many Americans in the Bundesliga. You have the ease of work permits, the American mentality, the growing talent pool, the Jurgen Klinsmann effect of the early 2010s, legacies of the U.S. Army presence during the Cold War, the lack of transfer fees, the appeal of the U.S. market from a brand-advancement point of view and, of course, the Christian Pulisic factor.
Ultimately, every club in the Bundesliga wants to find their own Captain America.
There is no exact science to how the past and present USMNT players in Germany ended up there. The German top flight has been a place where Americans have found a home in the past: Eric Wynalda, Claudio Reyna, Landon Donovan, Jovan Kirovski and Brian McBride all played in Germany at the start of their careers. Steve Cherundolo, who won 87 caps for the USMNT, played for Hannover 96 his entire career and is nicknamed "Mayor of Hannover."
When Jurgen Klinsmann took over the U.S. side in 2011, he encouraged young players to look abroad, while also targeting dual-nationality players ("Deutschamerikaners") in the Bundesliga like John Brooks, Jermaine Jones, Fabian Johnson and Timothy Chandler (all of whom had fathers in the military and stationed in Germany).
But the flashpoint, or "eureka" moment, came in the form of Pulisic. He arrived on a free transfer at Borussia Dortmund aged 15 thanks to a Croatian passport, which allowed him to circumnavigate the FIFA regulations prohibiting non-EU players under the age of 18 moving abroad. By the time he turned 18, he'd made 11 top-flight appearances. By the age of 20, he had secured a £58m move to Chelsea as one of the best young players in the world. Dortmund had unearthed a gem, and it didn't take long for other clubs to explore the same talent pool.
Weston McKennie was the next to break through, his form for Schalke since leaving FC Dallas in 2017 earning him a move to Juventus. Elsewhere, Adams joined RB Leipzig from sister club New York Red Bulls, Sargent signed for Werder Bremen having earned trials in Europe after standing out at the now-defunct U.S. Soccer Development Academy. Richards was signed by Bayern Munich from FC Dallas -- the two have established a youth development pathway, with Hoffenheim and FC Cincinnati announcing a similar relationship last Friday.
1:34
Zack Steffen explains his long term future plan, with winning trophies at Man City a priority.
"The reason why it's so good now for American players is that Germany is probably the best league in the world at investing in young talent, believing in young talent and using young talent," RB Salzburg boss Jesse Marsch told ESPN. "That's really good for young players coming over here. And I think that's why they are willing to make the leap to come to this league specifically. I also think the mentality of young American players is [a] really good [fit]."
There are the next crop of American youngsters knocking on the door, like 18-year-old forward Matthew Hoppe at Schalke, dreaming of their opportunity in the Bundesliga. "You have to sacrifice a lot to play out here -- there's a learning curve, but you just have to keep going and keep working hard for your goals and dreams," Hoppe told ESPN. "I think there are a lot of talented players in the USA. They just need to take the jump to Europe, and they need to keep developing their game and take the risk."
One Bundesliga academy head told ESPN young American players have a lot of "discipline and self-motivation" and come with a "certain mentality -- they know how to progress and prevail." An agent told ESPN the mindset and athleticism seen in young U.S. players is a "pull for German clubs." As one player told ESPN: "We just get our heads down and do it."
Academy heads see this mentality as one that works well in tandem with German players of a similar age, while traditional German "gegenpressing" style, founded on hard running and an emphasis on fitness, suits young players too.
- Gold Cup draw: US drawn with Canada
- MLS Power Rankings: Philly soar to No.1
- Why Tessman chose soccer over Clemson football
Pablo Thiam, head of Wolfsburg's academy, told ESPN: "The [young U.S. players] are athletically trained when they come here [to Germany]. This plays a bigger role stateside and we school them in tactics; they usually lack one, maybe two components and that's what we work on."
Marsch knows both sides of the coin well having been assistant at Leipzig, and also having worked in MLS. "When a lot of the young German youth coaches or coaches in general see the young Americans come over here, they see this confidence, they see this will to win and they see this mentality to do whatever it takes," Marsch told ESPN. "That fits well with the German mentality of wanting to be the best and wanting to be the most professional and wanting to make sure they are the most prepared and organized.
"The combination of the two means that you get some fearless players to put into a good environment and give them a chance to grow and get better and these American players are willing to adapt and learn and grow and do whatever it takes. The combination of the two cultures has led to this being a positive trend, and a trend that I hope continues."
0:36
Borussia Dortmund's Gio Reyna joins Taylor Twellman to look ahead to the new Bundesliga season.
When talking to young Americans in Germany, you are struck by their maturity. In our interview Hoppe spoke succinctly but with direction, with his comments anchored on doing everything possible -- like spending lockdown focusing on building muscle -- to achieve personal success.
"I was able to learn a lot here, improve my technique, improve my tactical awareness, mental strength, physique... it was a no-brainer to come to Schalke and play here," Hoppe said. "In America I was lacking in intensity to get better -- I was working hard, training a lot and doing everything. But there's a difference now in the intensity and the will as to how bad I want it."
This is a two-way beneficial relationship: German clubs all want to find the next Pulisic, while so many young American players want to follow in his footsteps. Pulisic proved the talent is there -- it needs to be nurtured.
Another boon for German sides searching for talent in the USA involves economics. The bizarre, antiquated arrangement, whereby American clubs were prohibited from chasing training compensation or payments for any player in their system who was yet to sign a pro contract, has allowed a lot of young U.S.-based players to move abroad for free or, at best, a nominal fee. Major League Soccer has since changed its stance this April, bringing their clubs and new academies in line with FIFA protocol, but we are yet to see this have a real impact on the transfer market.
One prominent agent told ESPN MLS academies may dangle a transfer fee or compensation as a "threat," but no club has yet filed a claim. "I still think you're going to have American kids going to Germany because they're cheap and quality, but we've yet to see, outside of [Bayern Munich's] Alphonso Davies, teams paying big money for MLS players -- that's the next litmus test."
0:59
Man City's Zack Steffen believes taking a knee is still important, but action is needed to make a change.
For the wealthier German clubs, the risk is low: sign a promising player, develop them and you might end up with a superstar (Reyna, Pulisic, Sargent and McKennie were all signed on free transfers). If not, there'll be plenty of teams back in the U.S. who will be willing to sign the player back.
"If a player is interesting, you will always look for a solution with the current club," Thiam, who played for 24 years in Germany with Cologne, Stuttgart, Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg, told ESPN. "And we always find a solution."
Even if a player does get signed to an MLS contract, they're still relatively cheap for interested teams. Borussia Monchengladbach signed American right-back Joe Scally this summer -- signed to NYCFC -- for £1.3m, while Philadelphia Union midfielder Brandon Aaronson is also on a number of teams' radars in Germany and elsewhere on the continent, sources told ESPN.
While there are lots of other pathways for U.S. talent taking the transatlantic leap to Europe -- Reggie Cannon is in Portugal with Boavista, Antonee Robinson is at Fulham and Sergino Dest is about to complete a move from Ajax to Barcelona -- the majority end up in Germany. Working to German football's advantage is the ease young American players have getting a work permit in the Bundesliga compared with the other big European leagues.
The rules for non-EU to get a work permit in the Premier League are dependent on big transfer fees or wages, or international experience, while non-EU places in Serie A and La Liga squads are at a premium. In Germany a young, promising American player aged 16 years old -- provided they have dual European nationality; if not it's 18 years old, per FIFA regulations -- can get the required work permit if they have proof they're joining on a salary and are confirmed as a decent athletic prospect. (Schalke's Evan Rotundo, who has dual nationality with France is one such America-qualified 16-year-old playing in Germany, having signed from San Diego Surf this summer.)
Pulisic's success saw more German teams investing in scouting in America, one source told ESPN. This also coincided with Bundesliga teams looking to foreign markets for commercial benefits -- Bayern Munich opened a New York office in 2014, and the Bundesliga opened theirs next to the city's Grand Central station in 2018. Another source told ESPN we can expect to see more club partnerships, like Bayern-FC Dallas and Hoffenheim-FC Cincinnati that sees footballing knowledge, expertise and insight increasingly being transferred across the Atlantic.
Then there are connections at the personnel level. MLS expansion team St. Louis City SC, who begin play in 2023, appointed ex-German goalkeeper Lutz Pfannenstiel as their sporting director, while Claudio Reyna at Austin FC knows the Bundesliga first-hand. Across the sea back in Germany, you have New Jersey-born Pellegrino Matarazzo serving as head coach for VfB Stuttgart, while Marsch was an assistant coach at Leizpig in 2018-19 and is now leading RB Salzburg in Austria, winning everything in sight.
For the players themselves, the success of Pulisic and McKennie offers a proven track record of clubs backing youth and developing them. The Bundesliga -- with the likes of Jadon Sancho, Davies, Erling Haaland, Gio Reyna and Jude Bellingham -- has always been a place where youth is backed and talent is king.
This ethos caught the imagination of Hoppe at Schalke. Originally from California, he joined the Arizona branch of the Barca Residency Academy before scouts from Europe started taking an interest in the promising young forward.
"When I came here [Schalke] on trial, I was able to see first-hand the training, and meet all the coaches and see the holistic approach, how they develop players and how they turn people into world-class players and take me to the next level," Hoppe told ESPN. "The U23's and the first team have a very good relationship. They often bring up players to train with the first team regularly."
1:30
Kasey Keller examines Josh Sargent's defensive role in Werder Bremen's 4-1 opening loss.
Already at Schalke were fellow Americans Nick Taitague (promoted to the first team over the summer) and McKennie. "I think he [Weston] was an influence," Hoppe told ESPN. "He was a big star here at Schalke, and he was willing to show that Schalke were willing to play young players and young Americans. I spoke to him a few times and he gave me some encouragement and advice. It was a good conversation."
As one Bundesliga academy head told ESPN, "there is huge potential for extraordinary footballers [in Germany]. There is a huge growing rate, a huge pool of players who are all well-trained." The U.S. 2019 Under-20 World Cup team had six players contracted to German clubs while the last Under-17 team had Pablo Soares from Borussia Monchengladbach and Noah Jones from RB Leipzig.
With the top Bundesliga clubs aware of promising American talent as young as 12 years old, the pathway is established. And with the Bundesliga's brand as a place that trusts in youth (Borussia Dortmund's opener against Gladbach was created by Reyna and Bellingham, who are both 17), it's seen as a place where age is irrelevant if you're good enough.
1:15
Former USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann looks ahead to the USMNT stars involved in this season's Bundesliga.
"There's not much politics involved," Klinsmann told ESPN. "The coaches are usually very straightforward. If the kid understands that it's all down to performance and they'll get the chance, the Bundesliga's the place to be."
"All the young players have an extreme talent and the Bundesliga's able to offer these players an opportunity to use their talent, to tweak it, improve all the things they need to work on," Hoppe tells ESPN. "It's so wholesome [in Germany] -- they need to work on their strength, their technique, their tactical ability, their mental strength -- the league helps make them more a complete player."
The migration shows no signs of slowing. This summer gone, Arminia Bielefeld signed 16-year-old goalkeeper Carver Miller from DC United, while Joel Imasuen arrived at Hertha Berlin. Then Bayern and Barcelona were involved in a scramble for Dest. While some move on -- like Sebastian Soto, who joined Norwich City before going out on loan to SC Telstar in the Netherlands, or Blaine Ferri, who swapped Greuther Furth for Fort Lauderdale CF in the USL -- the machine keeps moving.
"I think there are a lot of talented players in the USA," Hoppe says. "They just need to take the jump to Europe, they need to keep developing their game and take the risk."
Five weeks ahead of Election Day, New York City has been inundated with widespread reports of invalid absentee ballots being sent to voters, with incorrect names and addresses placed across an untold number of mail-back envelopes.
So far, the ballot errors appear to be concentrated in Brooklyn, a borough of 2.6 million people whose elections board has a history of mismanaging elections.
Michael Ryan, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, blamed the problem on the board’s vendor, Phoenix Graphics, a commercial printing company based in Rochester, N.Y., which was hired to mail out ballots in Brooklyn and Queens.
“We are determining how many voters have been affected but we can assure that the vendor will address this problem in future mailings, and make sure people who received erroneous envelopes receive new ones,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement on Tuesday.
The mislabeled ballots may further undermine confidence in the New York City Board of Elections, which mishandled the state’s primary election in June, and could buttress President Trump’s assertions that absentee voting is plagued with troubles.
City Board of Elections officials are encouraging voters to call a hotline to receive a new ballot. But phone lines already appear to be jammed: Two voters who called on Monday reported being 65th, and “80-something” in line.
Sal DeBiase, the president and chief executive at Phoenix Graphics, did not reply to multiple requests for comment. The company, which was also hired to print and send ballots in June’s primary elections, has worked with the city’s Board of Elections for years.
Election officials in New York City have already processed nearly 500,000 absentee ballot applications and began mailing ballots to voters last week. While it remains unclear how many voters have been affected, the printing errors appear to be widespread.
On Monday, Merrily Rosso, who lives in Bushwick, got an absentee ballot with a stranger’s name on it. She looked him up and discovered that he lives nearby. Concerned, she called the Brooklyn Board of Elections twice. The first time, they hung up. The second time, they let the phone ring.
So she called the New York City Board of Elections. There were roughly 80 callers ahead of her in line. She hung up.
Rich Rotondo, a Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, resident who works as a project manager for the city, said that he and his partner got ballots with the wrong information on them.
Curious if their neighbors were having a similar experience, they stopped someone who lives in their building and asked him to open his absentee ballot.
“And he opened it up and his was wrong,” Mr. Rotondo said. “Nobody has the right one.”
Sarah Steiner, an elections lawyer, said she had spoken with a contact at the elections board, and anticipated that the Board of Elections will send a letter to all affected voters explaining the error, in addition to the second ballot.
Ballots signed by the wrong voters will be invalid, Ms. Steiner said. Voters who unwittingly sign erroneous ballots will still be able to vote — via a second ballot, or in person. In-person votes cancel a voter’s absentee ballot.
”I’m worried because anything that confuses voters at this point or makes them leery of voting or suspicious of the process is damaging to democracy,” Ms. Steiner said.
Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, said he had received reports of the problems in the city, as well as far more isolated problems in Nassau County, where he is aware of only three affected ballots.
“The downside of introducing widespread absentee balloting is that, once the Boards of Elections start contracting out the process of mailing, then they lose quality control and direct supervision of what goes on,” Mr. Kellner, a Democrat, said in an interview. “This is a good example of the problem.”
The printing error comes on the heels of a June primary election that was riddled with issues and delays.
Overwhelmed by an avalanche of mail-in ballots — 40 percent of voters sent absentee ballots compared with just 4 percent in previous years — election officials spent more than a month counting ballots in some closely watched congressional races.
Tens of thousands of absentee ballots, especially in Brooklyn, were also disqualified because of technical issues like missing postmarks, a missing signature or an improperly sealed envelope.
State officials have taken some steps to address those problems ahead of the November election, implementing new reforms to allow voters to fix errors with their ballots and expanding options for voters to physically drop off their absentee ballots at early polling sites and election offices.
But state election officials are expecting more than five million absentee ballots in the presidential election, or four times the number received in June, and some have already warned that results might not be known until early December.
“I’m disappointed to say the least,” said Matt Eylenberg, a Brooklynite who got the wrong ballot on Monday. “There’s so much stress around this election, as I’m very sure you are aware. They’re really testing the mettle of absentee voting, for sure, and it’s not a good start.”
Stephanie Saul contributed reporting.
