Christine Hauser

In the past few days, deep sea explorers aboard the Petrel, a 250-foot research vessel that explores historically significant shipwrecks, announced they have located the wreckage of the Japanese carriers Kaga and Akagi, two among the six-carrier fleet used by Japanese aircraft to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In June 1942, U.S. dive-bombers attacked the carriers in one of the most famous battles in American naval history, about six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted the formal entry of the United States into the war. It was named after the Midway Atoll, a strategic ring-shaped reef some 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu, and was seen as a turning point for the U.S. in the Pacific campaign against Japan, which had naval superiority but lost four carriers in the episode.

The Petrel crew had spent weeks surveying the area, documenting more than 500 square nautical miles before picking up the wreckage in a conservation site known as Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the atoll region of the Central Pacific. Using sonar images, the Kaga came into view on Wednesday, and the Akagi was detected on Sunday in depths of 17,000 feet, according to Vulcan Inc., which owns and operates the Petrel and has served as multibillionaire Paul G. Allen’s organization overseeing and supporting his philanthropic initiatives. The carriers were the largest Japanese carriers that Japan had at the time.

The crew has discovered more than 30 sunken warships, including, this year, the remains of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Wasp, which was sunk by a Japanese submarine in July 1942, and, in 2015, the Japanese warship Musashi.

“This project is significantly different from previous missions as it required a level of investigation, analysis and survey of a carrier-based engagement initially separated by over 150 nautical miles,” Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan, said in a statement. “It was a major carrier-to-carrier battle that left its eerie evidence strewn for a total area covering thousands of square nautical miles across the ocean floor.”

Petrel owes its existence to Allen, who founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, and to Vulcan. Underwater exploration and World War II history were interests of Allen’s. He died in 2018 at 65 after a recurrence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

During the Battle of Midway, from June 3-7, the Japanese carriers were divebombed by American planes and the Kaga was torpedoed before they were scuttled by their own navies. The battle’s overall casualty toll was 2,204 Japanese soldiers and sailors, and 307 U.S. forces, according to Naval History and Heritage Command figures.

The scene as the two carriers went to their underwater graves, as seen by a surviving U.S. pilot who was shot down, was captured in a New York Times dispatch on June 10, 1942:

“The sister ships Kaga and Akagi are no more. Tossing in his rubber boat in the waters off Midway, our wounded Ensign Gay watched the two great Japanese carriers blasted into flame from stem to stern as their planes circled helplessly above them, unable to land on the blazing furnaces which had been their nests.”

An Associated Press reporter onboard the Petrel who is writing about the discovery said that the Akagi was resting amid a pile of debris and that the ground around it was clearly disturbed by the impact of it hitting the seafloor.

“She’s sitting upright on her keel, we can see the bow, we can see the stern clearly, you can see some of the gun emplacements on there, you can see that some of the flight deck is also torn up and missing so you can actually look right into where the flight deck would be,” Kraft told the AP.

In the battle, the United States lost one carrier, the USS Yorktown, and a destroyer, USS Hammann, while two other Japanese carriers, the Soryu and Hiryu, also sank.

“With each piece of debris and each ship we discover and identify, our intent is to honor history and those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice for their countries,” Kraft said.

Similar to previous discoveries, there are no plans to disturb the carriers, which are considered war graves that will go untouched, a Vulcan spokeswoman confirmed.

Frank Thompson, a historian from the Naval History and Heritage Command, who is part of the team aboard the Petrel, said the discovery would give historians a “new perspective” of the pivotal battle. “Unlike land battles, war at sea leaves no traces on the surface,” he said in the statement.

This article originally appeared in

Wrecked Japanese Carriers, Lost in WWII, Are Found in Pacific Depths

In the murky depths thousands of feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, two Japanese warships that have rested undisturbed since the Battle of Midway in World War II have been discovered.

Detectives went to the facility, Danby House in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to investigate June 21, days after the tip was received. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services inspected the residence in July and ordered it the next month to halt admissions.

Scrutiny of the alleged abuse of patients has expanded since the summer. This month, three workers at Danby House were charged with assault of a person with a disability, according to a police statement.

Local and national news outlets picked up the details of the state health agency’s inspection report on Danby House, describing a “fight club” that operated secretly at the center.

But Lt. Eric Montgomery, an investigator with the Winston-Salem Police Department, said he did not know about “anything that would be characterized as a fight club,” though the investigation is not yet complete.

In a statement Wednesday, Danby House said the fight was an “isolated incident” involving three employees who had worked there for less than a year. The center has since made changes in its leadership structure and added training.

“One of the effects of dementia can be aggressive behaviors, and our staff is trained to deescalate any acts of aggression in a safe manner,” the statement said. “These employees did not follow through with this training and were subsequently terminated, but the new care team in place at Danby House has been trained in how to properly handle any aggressive behaviors and that training will continue to be revisited on a regular basis.”

The patients involved in the fight still live at the facility, the statement said.

Detectives investigating the scope of the alleged abuse say their work is complicated by the fact that it involves residents who are unable to remember events or to speak for themselves. The two women involved in the fight are described in the state health agency’s report as “not interviewable” and disoriented.

“Typically with the average investigation, you want to examine all the evidence that you can, and that would include talking to the people involved,” Montgomery said Wednesday.

“Sometimes we have to do an investigation that we don’t have a victim we can talk to, or children, or people who are not verbal, or seniors who have difficulty in recalling accounts of events,” he said. “That can make it difficult.”

One of the workers, Marilyn Latish McKey, 32, was charged with two counts of assault of a person with a disability, according to the police report. Two other workers, Tonacia Yvonne Tyson, 20, and Taneshia Deshawn Jordan, 26, were charged with one count each of the same charge, the report said. They could not be reached for comment.

The police statement said employees “allowed residents to fight with one another, encouraged the fighting of the residents and one employee physically assaulted a resident by shoving the resident.” The defendants are scheduled to appear in court Nov. 14. Tyson was listed in Forsyth County jail records as being held on a parole violation, but the other defendants have apparently been released on bond.

The state Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that it “takes any allegations of abuse, neglect and exploitation in licensed adult care homes very seriously,” adding, “In the matter of Danby House, law enforcement received an anonymous tip and notified the facility, which immediately terminated the employment of three staff members.”

There were no injuries, the report about the arrests said.

After it learned of the tip to police, the state health agency sent an inspection team. A wide-ranging report provided details about “deficiencies,” such as employees who said they had not been fully trained in some aspects of patient care. The report was posted online, and The Winston-Salem Journal reported on it last week.

In a section under “Resident Rights,” the 82-page report said the facility had failed to ensure that three residents in the special care unit were free of abuse and neglect by the three employees.

One video shows a resident lying unattended on the floor while a staff member shoved another resident — a woman who was later depicted in the fight — into her room, the report said.

The second video, later shared on social media, shows the fight June 19 between the woman and a third resident, who was hitting and kicking her in a bedroom, while she said, “Let go, help me, help me, let go,” the report said.

A staff member said, “Stop screaming” and swore at the woman who was being struck. As the fighting was being recorded, “the staff continued to allow the residents to fight and did not intervene,” the report said. As one of the women “started to strangle” the second one, no one intervened, and one of the workers could be heard saying, “Punch her in the face.”

Another worker asked: “Are you recording?” “You going to send it to me?”

The three workers could be heard “talking, laughing and commenting” during the fight, the report said.

The employee who recorded the fight video told investigators that she did so because the woman being beaten up was a “pain in the butt.” The woman, who had a diagnosis of dementia, was disoriented and often screamed and yelled, the report said.

Video of Dementia Patients Fighting Leads to Charges for 3 Workers

The anonymous tip to the Winston-Salem Police Department came in June. A caller said a cellphone video posted on social media showed two women with dementia at an assisted living center being encouraged by workers to fight each other, authorities said.

An increase in cases of the disease, called Eastern Equine Encephalitis, has prompted authorities in Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, North Carolina and New Jersey to issue the warnings: Remove standing water. Use repellent. Seal windows and doors.

The five deaths were in Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, according to state officials.

In Michigan, three people have died from the disease, for which there is no known vaccine, in a total of seven confirmed cases this year, state officials said this week. The deaths occurred between mid-August and early September, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The state is experiencing its worst outbreak of the disease in more than a decade, Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical executive, said in a statement Tuesday. The state reported six cases in 2002, the last time it recorded a large number of people with the virus.

In Massachusetts, there was one fatality in nine confirmed cases so far this year, state authorities said Wednesday. One person in West Warwick, Rhode Island, died from the disease out of three cases in the state, health authorities in that state reported Tuesday. The Rhode Island Department of Health announced Thursday it was conducting a second round of aerial spraying across the state.

“We strongly encourage residents to take precautions such as using insect repellent with DEET, wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants when outdoors during the peak mosquito-biting hours, which are dusk and dawn,” James Rutherford, a health officer for Kalamazoo County’s Health and Community Services in Michigan, said in a statement earlier this month.

In Michigan, one of the fatal cases was in Kalamazoo County, which is south of Grand Rapids, the statement said. The man who died there was identified by his family as Gregg McChesney, 64, a local television station reported.

He was a “perfectly healthy, happy human being, and within a matter of nine days he went from perfectly healthy to brain dead,” Mark McChesney, a brother, told News 8 on Tuesday.

On Monday, authorities in Connecticut announced their first human case of EEE for this season.

The commissioner of the Department of Public Health, Renée D. Coleman-Mitchell, on Monday said in a statement that an adult in East Lyme had tested positive for the disease after falling ill during the last week of August with encephalitis and was in the hospital, said the Connecticut Department of Public Health statement.

“Other states throughout the Northeast are also experiencing an active season for EEE,” the statement said.

New Jersey’s Department of Health reported last month it had one diagnosis this season, but Thursday it said there were two more: in Atlantic and Union counties. Kelly Conner, a press assistant in the communications office at the North Carolina Department of Health, said there had been one case in Catawba County.

The disease is one of the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases in the United States, with a fatality rate of 33% in humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 90% of the horses that are stricken with the disease die, it said.

Mark Fischer, an epidemiologist in the CDC’s Arboviral Diseases Branch, said this year’s increase in cases had not set off any alarms. “It’s normal to see spikes from year to year,” he said. “However, we are seeing a higher level of activity than in recent years.”

Infections are seasonal, mostly from late spring through early fall, but cases rarely occur in winter.

Transmission of the virus is most common in and around swamps in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast states and in the Great Lakes region, the CDC said.

The virus is transmitted to people and animals through a mosquito bite. It cannot be transmitted from one person to another, or from an animal to a person. In the United States, an average of seven human cases are reported annually, the agency said.

Early symptoms usually appear about 4 to 10 days after exposure to the virus. They include headache, high fever, chills and aches. Symptoms can develop into brain swelling, which can result in headache, disorientation, tremors, seizures and paralysis, the Michigan statement said.

There is no human vaccine or specific anti-viral treatment, the CDC said. It said people with symptoms should consult a health care provider for a diagnosis.

Fischer also noted that EEE is far less common than West Nile virus, which has had 20 times more cases this year.

“Eastern Equine Encephalitis can be scary; we understand the concern because it’s a serious disease,” Fischer said. “But it’s a rare disease. People should know that they can take action to protect themselves.”

States Warn Residents About Rare Mosquito-Borne Illness That Has Killed 5

Health authorities have warned residents to protect themselves against bites from mosquitoes that can transmit a rare virus that has killed at least five people in three states this year.

An increase in cases of the disease, called Eastern Equine Encephalitis, has prompted authorities in Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey to issue the warnings: Remove standing water. Use repellent. Seal windows and doors.

In Michigan, three people have died from the disease, for which there is no known vaccine, in a total of seven confirmed cases this year, state officials said this week.

The state is experiencing its worst outbreak of the disease in more than a decade, Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical executive, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In Massachusetts, there was one fatality in the nine confirmed cases so far this year, state authorities said Wednesday. One person died from the disease out of the three cases in Rhode Island, health authorities in that state reported Tuesday.

In Michigan, the fatal case was in Kalamazoo County, which is south of Grand Rapids, the statement said. The man who died was identified by his family as Gregg McChesney, 64, a local television station reported.

He was a “perfectly healthy, happy human being and within a matter of nine days he went from perfectly healthy to brain dead,” Mark McChesney, a brother, told News 8 on Tuesday.

On Monday, the authorities in Connecticut announced their first human case of EEE for this season.

The commissioner of the Department of Public Health, Renée D. Coleman-Mitchell, on Monday said an adult in East Lyme has tested positive for the disease after falling ill during the last week of August with encephalitis, and is in the hospital, said the Connecticut Department of Public Health statement.

New Jersey’s Department of Health reported last month it had one diagnosis this season, but on Thursday it said there were two more: in Atlanta and Union counties.

States Warn Residents About Mosquito-Borne Illness That Has Killed 5

“I think I shot him,” the clerk, Anwar Ghazali, 29, told a customer when he returned to the store, according to a police affidavit and the Shelby County district attorney’s office.

Ghazali didn’t call the police, the authorities said.

Harris’ body was discovered two days later in a nearby yard, where he had bled to death from a gunshot wound in the back of his left leg, the district attorney’s office said, and Ghazali was arrested.

After a four-day trial, Ghazali was convicted by a jury Thursday of second-degree murder, the Shelby County district attorney, Amy Weirich, said in a statement Friday.

Lora Fowler, a prosecutor, said Harris had been “left to bleed out and die.”

“This defendant took it upon himself to be the judge and jury and the executioner over a $2 beer,” she said, according to WMC Action News in Memphis.

Ghazali faces 15 to 25 years in prison and will be sentenced Sept. 23, his lawyer, Blake Ballin, said in an email Monday. He was initially indicted on first-degree murder charges, which would have carried a life sentence, but Ballin argued at the trial that the case was “neither a premeditated nor a knowing killing.” The gun belonged to the store’s owner, he said.

“Mr. Ghazali maintains that he had no intent to kill Mr. Harris over a stolen beer,” he said in the email. “Rather, he acted recklessly when he wildly fired into a dark field as Mr. Harris ran away in order to scare him.”

He said that Ghazali did not call the police because he did not believe that he had actually hit the teenager with gunfire.

After the shooting, several dozen people protested, demanding the closing of the store, according to local news reports. Ballin said Ghazali had worked there as a cashier for about two months.

“If we don’t value black lives and believe that Dorian’s life is worth far more than an allegedly stolen beer, then we’re not authentically honoring my father,” the Rev. Bernice A. King — the daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the chief executive of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta — said on Twitter in April 2018.

On Friday, after the verdict, a columnist for The Commercial Appeal, Ryan Poe, wrote: “Harris shouldn’t have stolen the drink, but that’s not the point. Harris wasn’t on trial. The trial was about whether Ghazali, who wasn’t in fear of his life, should have shot and killed a fleeing Harris for stealing a $2 drink.”

In a statement released after the verdict, Ballin described Memphis as a community that is struggling and plagued by racial and economic inequality.

“I understand why this case has caused public frustration, because another African American kid has been needlessly killed,” Ballin said in an email Monday.

“But decisions of guilt and innocence and questions of intent should not be based on emotion,” he said. “The defense team did our best to make sure that the jury rendered a verdict based on the facts of the case and not on the color of someone’s skin. That would just be another injustice.”

“Why did this happen to my son?” Harris’ father, Hanson Peete, told WMC Action News at the start of the trial; he could not be reached by telephone or email Monday. “Why was it that he was left there like that? Like he was nothing. Like he was a nobody.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/us/dorian-harris-murder-anwar-ghazali.html" id="8ed7542d-607b-30f0-a4b7-a741d97e28bf">The New York Times</a>.

Clerk Convicted of Murder for Shooting Memphis Teenager Who Stole $2 Beer

Dorian Harris, 17, grabbed a few cans of Spiked Watermelon beer from a cooler in the Top Stop Shop in Memphis, Tennessee, last year. He ran out the door without paying, dropping one in his haste. The store clerk grabbed a handgun and chased him, firing off a few shots into the dark night, on March 29, the authorities said.

Intense blooms have led to swimming bans from lakes in the Pacific Northwest to the entire Mississippi seacoast, to Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey’s largest lake. Algal blooms tend to thrive in high temperatures and after heavy rains carry fertilizer runoff and sewage into waterways.

The health threats to animals range from skin rashes to neurological problems. The blooms can release toxins that can cause liver damage, lead to respiratory paralysis or produce other fatal conditions. The danger drew national attention in recent days after a woman in North Carolina lost her three dogs — Harpo, Abby and Izzy — after they had gone swimming in a pond.

Cyanobacteria, the main organisms that produce the toxins that make the freshwater blooms harmful, can cause ailments in people, but dogs are more susceptible because they ingest them, said GreenWater Laboratories, which tests water samples for the toxins.

Sometimes the algae look like grains of floating green sand or scum. They can go undetected by dog owners if they lurk under the water’s surface or attach to plants. Wind can blow algae from one area into another that had previously looked clear.

While the sight and odor of algae repels humans, animals sometimes lap up the water, ingest floating pieces of algae or snap at floating algal balloons. They could fall fatally ill after licking their wet fur. Toxic algae can also dry up into crusts onshore, where dogs might nibble on them.

Brittany Stanton took her 2-year-old golden retriever, Oliver, on Aug. 3 to Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas, where he jumped off their kayak into the water.

In a Facebook post, Stanton said he collapsed after getting out of the water and died at the veterinarian’s office. “It only took one hour from the time we left the water for Oliver to breathe his last breath,” she wrote.

The next day, the city of Austin advised pet owners to keep their animals out of the lake because of the potential presence of harmful algae. On Friday, it said the advisory remained in effect after tests confirmed a neurotoxin from algae had been found in one area called Red Bud Isle.

Morgan and Patrick Fleming of Marietta, Georgia, took their border collie, Arya, to Lake Allatoona, about 35 minutes north of Atlanta, on Saturday, a local television station reported Monday. The animal became ill and died from what a veterinarian said was “most likely” an algal toxin, it reported.

“It happens every single year in the U.S. and around the world,” Val Beasley, a professor of veterinary, wildlife and ecological toxicology sciences at Pennsylvania State University, said Monday.

“A lot of times, the neurotoxins will kill the animal before they can get to the veterinarian,” he said. “This time of year is when you have the most numbers of cases and people are out and about with their animals and the conditions are ripe for the cyanobacteria to grow.”

He said that there were no nationwide figures of dog deaths from the poisoning.

Melissa Martin, the owner of the three dogs in North Carolina, said Harpo jumped into a pond in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Thursday.

“He just splashed around in it a little bit,” she said. A few times, he put his face under the water as it he were “bobbing for apples.”

When he got to shore, he apparently got Abby and Izzy, who had stayed out but were muddy, wet with the pond water, she said. When they went home, Martin started to give Harpo a bath when she heard her wife shriek from the yard.

“Her back legs were trembling. Her body was in the shape of a C,” she said. “Burning to the touch.”

Martin raced Abby to an animal emergency hospital. Their veterinarian was not available to comment Monday, but Martin said she was asked whether their other dogs had been around water.

When she said they had been, she was told, “Get your other dogs here right now.” All three animals had been infected she said the vet told her.

“I told him he was such a good boy and he had done so much,” Martin said, describing her last moments with Harpo, a therapy dog, just before he and the other two dogs died. “He put his paw on my arm.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/us/blue-green-algae-dogs.html" id="dbc785cb-ad47-36df-a267-5d34ea6b3a96">The New York Times</a>.

Poisonous Algae Is Killing Frolicking Dogs

Dog owners have reported this summer that their pets became fatally ill after swimming in freshwater lakes and ponds, apparently after ingesting water laden with toxic blue-green algae.

The group’s members, who include some of the world’s most prominent scientists, are elected to lifetime positions, and currently they can only be asked to depart.

But as the science world moves to address gender imbalances, discrimination and sexual harassment against women in historically male-dominated fields, the academy has faced pressure to change its membership rules.

In a preliminary vote Tuesday at the group’s annual meeting in Washington, members approved an amendment to the organization’s bylaws that would give it the power to remove any scientist who engages in sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying or other activities as defined in a new code of conduct.

A final vote by the academy’s full membership of about 2,000 scientists is expected by mid-June.

“Some members have been asked to resign before, but we never had the capability to force the member to resign,” Marcia McNutt, president of the academy, said in an interview Thursday.

Controversies involving academy members and other scientists have engulfed numerous laboratories, lecture halls and conferences in recent years.

In 2015, Geoffrey W. Marcy, an acclaimed astronomer, resigned from the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley after he was found guilty in a campus investigation of sexually harassing students.

In 2018, Columbia University removed a top neuroscientist, Thomas Jessell, from his posts after an internal investigation uncovered violations of “university policies and values.”

As The New York Times has reported, studies have documented biases that favor male scientists in hiring, salary, startup funds, credit for authorship, invitations to give talks at prestigious university seminars and invitations to speak on conference panels (aka “manels”).

Some argue that changes need to take root in the institutions that support scientists in the United States, where female scientists hold only about 30 percent of senior faculty positions. In October, the National Science Foundation started to require institutions to notify it if a scientist working on a project using the foundation’s funds was found to have harassed someone.

The vote at the National Academy of Sciences was a similar effort, McNutt said. The group’s umbrella organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, had commissioned a study on gender issues just before the accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public in 2017 and propelled the #MeToo movement era into the center of the national conversation, she said.

“The problem of sexual harassment spread from not just the entertainment industry and politics but also into science,” McNutt said. “We heard the names of a number of prominent scientists that were being put into the news, but the academy decided it needed to wait until this report came out.”

In June 2018, the National Academies released the results of that gender study, its first on the issue. It concluded that years of efforts to prevent sexual harassment in science, engineering and medicine had failed, and recommended that universities and legislators make sweeping changes in how they respond to allegations of harassment.

The issue was a sensitive one for the National Academies because some of its members had been found to have sexually harassed people at their universities.

“It basically said we needed to address sexual harassment as seriously as other forms of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism,” she said.

In August, the National Academy of Sciences started to draft its code of conduct, and this week’s vote on the bylaws was a way to enforce it, McNutt said. “The academy felt we have to practice what we preach,” she said.

About 95 percent of those voting were in favor, she said, while the others were worried about the process by which suspected violations would be adjudicated. McNutt said the process was still being “refined” but could include cases in which universities have taken action, or in which scientists are fired or there is public documentation about misdeeds.

“Then we would decide whether it is relevant,” she said. “We would decide what sort of punishment seems reasonable, given the severity of the offense.”

Nancy Hopkins, a molecular biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who in 1994 measured laboratory space for a report on gender discrimination that drew national attention, said the academy’s move was an “excellent idea.”

“Putting the power and prestige of the Academy behind this — and other issues of scientific misconduct — is hugely important,” she wrote Thursday in an email. “It won’t solve this problem but it is a critical component of the solution — as we continue to advance solutions to these issues for the good of science.”

On social media, reaction from women in sciences to the vote was swift, with some saying that such a move was long overdue.

The academy has taken other steps to try to address recurring problems in its more than 150-year history. This week, it announced that it had elected 100 new members, 40 of them women, the most elected in any one year to date.

McNutt said about 18 percent of the academy’s members were women but they made up about half its governing council.

“It is wrong to say that it is a male-dominated organization,” she added, “because the voices of the women are well respected.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/science/national-academy-sciences-sexual-harassment.html" id="0d0c2d14-ed55-3293-aebb-4f75180fe2a2">The New York Times</a>.

Science Academy Pushes to Eject Members Found Guilty of Sexual Harassment

The National Academy of Sciences moved this week toward a landmark shift in policy that would allow it for the first time to eject members who have violated its code of conduct, including in cases of sexual harassment.

“One thing you almost didn’t hear anything about while we had people pretending to be sick when they weren’t sick and leaving kids unattended to or in situations that they should not have been in — a little girl was shot, 7 years old, by another kid,” he said in a speech before the Rotary Club of Louisville on Thursday.

“Because they were somewhere that they weren’t intended to be, because the parent didn’t have any option,” he added.

Democrats hit back. The Kentucky Democratic Party posted video of Bevin’s remarks and said, “We need better leadership in the governor’s office, and Matt Bevin will never provide it.”

The party and others also pointed to previous remarks by Bevin connecting teachers’ strikes with a rise in crimes committed against or by children.

In April 2018, when teachers were protesting at the state Capitol, Bevin said they were exposing children to danger. “Children were harmed — some physically, some sexually, some were introduced to drugs for the first time — because they were vulnerable and left alone,” he had said, according to The Courier-Journal.

The Kentucky Democrats said Friday: “First it was sexual assault; now it’s an accidental shooting. This is disgusting and unforgivable.”

Bevin did not specify in his comments Thursday which shooting he was referring to, and his office did not reply to an email Friday seeking comment.

Numerous public schools in the state have been closed this year after teachers called in sick as a protest against budget proposals that would reduce public education funds. Because it is illegal in Kentucky for state employees to strike, educators have used their sick days to protest.

The election for governor is Nov. 5, and Bevin, who was elected as the state’s 62nd governor in 2015, is eligible to run for a second term.

Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s attorney general and a Democratic candidate for governor, said Bevin’s remarks linking teachers to the shooting meant he was “unfit to govern.”

Local news outlets reported that Bevin was probably referring to a shooting that wounded a 7-year-old girl in Shively, in the Louisville area, on March 12. According to police, the girl was not home alone at her apartment building but was in the care of her uncle, who is her legal guardian.

The girl was accidentally shot in the face by her 11-year-old brother, who had found a handgun in a lock box that was believed to have been secured, Lt. Col. Josh Myers of the Shively Police Department said Friday. The bullet entered her left cheek and exited through the base of her skull, he said.

She survived and is expected to be released from the hospital Friday, he said.

The children are students at public schools in Jefferson County, which was one of 10 districts statewide that were closed between Feb. 28 and March 14 for teacher “sick-outs,” some only for a few days. But the girl was shot at about 3 p.m., and dismissal times of 2:20 p.m. meant a student of her age would have been out of school anyway.

“To politicize the tragic shooting of a child is beneath the dignity of the office Matt Bevin has rarely acted as if he holds,” the Kentucky Education Association, which represents 40,000 educators, said in a statement Thursday.

According to one measure, a poll by Morning Consult, which surveys more than 5,000 registered voters nationwide on their governor, Bevin is the “most unpopular” governor in the country, with a 52 percent disapproval rating in his state.

He has repeatedly drawn criticism for his public statements. Amid a renewed national conversation about childhood vaccinations, Bevin said in March that he and his wife had made sure that all nine of their children got chickenpox.

In 2018, he drew criticism from state Democrats for likening state workers who oppose a pension overhaul to drowning victims getting in the way of their own rescue.

After Bevin’s comments in 2018 that children were in greater danger because of the teacher strikes, Kentucky’s Republican-led House of Representatives passed two resolutions condemning the remarks. One of the resolutions said his comments “concerning harm to children are so beyond the pale that they are unworthy of repetition in this honorable chamber.”

The other resolution said teachers had the right to free speech and assembly, even if legislators might not agree with what the teachers were asserting.

Bevin later apologized in a video message to “those who were hurt.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/us/matt-bevin-kentucky-teacher.html" id="b5fe0a56-f6f3-36f9-a015-dab353353019">The New York Times</a>.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, came under criticism from state Democrats on Friday for suggesting that teachers on strike were to blame for the shooting of a 7-year-old girl who had stayed home because of school closures. The remarks were the latest to ignite controversy for the governor, who faces low approval ratings before an election in November.

Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky Is Criticized for Blaming Teacher Strikes for Girl's Shooting

On Wednesday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department released the 11-minute video of the March 25 shooting of Danquirs Franklin, a 27-year-old black man who the police said was carrying a gun, in the parking lot of a Burger King.

It said in a statement that the video was also provided to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office as part of criminal and internal investigations to determine whether the shooting was “justified.”

The shooting of Franklin has shaken the city of Charlotte, the most populous in the state, with about 860,000 people. In 2016, the fatal shooting of a 43-year-old black man, Keith Lamont Scott, by an officer from the same department prompted days of sometimes violent protests in Charlotte.

The police had publicly released a shorter version of the video on April 15, but the full, 11-minute version was distributed to comply with a Superior Court judge ruling that granted a media request for the footage.

“I know I don’t like how it looks, and I think I’m pretty reasonable, people,” the police chief, Kerr Putney, told reporters.

“What cannot be more disheartening is watching the video, and we see a lot of them, and it appears that, but for training, we could have rendered more aid,” Putney said, according to the radio station WFAE.

On April 15, just before the police released the two-minute version of the video, Charlotte officials gathered to call for calm.

Mayor Vi Lyles, according to video of her remarks, called the shooting a “tragic moment” in which “many lives were changed forever,” and said that people had the right to protest. “We owe it to the community to see for themselves what has been recorded,” she said.

Lyles also highlighted the work of law enforcement officers, whose jobs “require an instantaneous decision, and that is something that none of us should take lightly.”

“I call on all of Charlotte to come together respectfully,” she said.

Meghan McDonald, the spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said Thursday that the Police Department had turned over investigative material to the district attorney’s office on Wednesday.

“This office can now begin its review of the investigation to determine whether the officer acted lawfully or unlawfully,” she said. The office’s goal is to complete its own investigation within 90 days, she said.

At about 9 a.m. on March 25, dispatchers received two calls about events unfolding at a Burger King on Beatties Ford Road, the police said. The first caller said an armed man had walked behind the counter and was pointing a weapon at an employee. The second caller said a man had approached her vehicle while she was waiting for food in the parking lot and had pulled out a gun.

The body-camera video starts inside the patrol car of two officers en route to the Burger King. Radio traffic can be heard describing a vehicle there. When the officers, Wende Kerl and Larry Deal, get out, they draw their guns and approach Franklin, who is crouching on the pavement within the open door on the front passenger side of a vehicle, apparently talking to someone in the front seat.

The officers approach from the back of the vehicle and shout at Franklin to “drop the weapon” or “put the gun on the ground” about two dozen times. Franklin is motionless and has his hands down, but then moves his hand. Shots ring out. Franklin slumps sideways against the door and then falls face first onto the ground.

That all happened in the first two minutes of the initial footage. The longer video showed the aftermath.

There is the sound of moaning, as Kerl reaches over his shoulder, saying, “I’ve got to pick up the gun.” The officers radio for assistance. Someone can be heard crying.

“He pulled a gun,” Kerl says to Deal.

“Yes he did, I know, Wende,” her partner says. “You OK?”

“All I know is I shot because he had the gun in his hand,” Kerl says a few minutes later. “This is the gun. I had to take it from underneath him,” she says to another officer who has arrived at the scene.

“I haven’t touched him yet,” she says.

Medics arrive about four minutes after the shooting.

Over the next six minutes of footage, Kerl repeatedly talks about what has happened. “I shot him. He pulled a gun. He wouldn’t drop it,” she tells another officer. “I didn’t have a choice.”

After another few minutes, she says: “I had to. He wouldn’t drop the gun, and he brought it out of his jacket.”

“Is he alive?” she asks later, by that time seated in her patrol vehicle. Another officer replies that he doesn’t know.

Sandy D’Elosua, a department spokeswoman, said on Thursday that officers were trained in CPR and in placing tourniquets, and that Deal had checked the man’s pulse and breathing. The department is still conducting an internal review, which will include a look at whether sufficient aid was rendered.

The police, in their statement on the day of the shooting, said Kerl “perceived an imminent, deadly threat” and fired two times, striking Franklin. He was transported to the Atrium Health hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the police said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department policy says officers should take “any appropriate measure they are trained and certified to take” to render medical aid to an injured person in the event of an officer-involved shooting, The Charlotte Observer reported. A department spokesman could not be reached on Thursday.

“Danquirs was the joy of my life gone but you will never be forgotten,” his mother, Deborah Franklin, wrote on Facebook days after his death.

Kerl, who was hired in 1995, was placed on administrative leave, the police said. Jeremy B. Smith, her lawyer, said in a statement on Wednesday that Kerl “had to analyze in a split second” before deciding to open fire to protect the person, the public and her partner.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/charlotte-police-shooting-video.html" id="e06a4ee6-d612-312c-acb0-19939818fec0">The New York Times</a>.

The police in Charlotte, North Carolina, have released body-camera video of the fatal shooting of a man by one of their officers last month, saying they are investigating whether the officers provided enough aid to the man before medics arrived.

Christine Hauser

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