npr--2020-06-23--Politics Influenced Justice Department In Roger Stone Case, DOJ Lawyer Tells Hill

A current Justice Department prosecutor is planning to tell lawmakers on Wednesday that in his many years in the government , `` I have never seen political influence play any role in prosecutorial decision making .
With one exception : United States v. Roger Stone , '' according to a copy of his prepared testimony .
Aaron Zelinsky , who has worked at the department since 2014 , is scheduled to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday as one of two `` whistleblowers '' set to describe politicization at the Justice Department , said Chairman Jerrold Nadler , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zelinsky said he heard that Stone received different treatment `` because of his relationship to the president . ''
Zelinsky said the person in charge of the U.S. attorney 's office at the time was `` receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break . ''
And , he said : `` I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was 'afraid of the President . '
`` Zelinsky described `` significant pressure ... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outright distort the events that transpired in [ Stone 's ] trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction . ''
Eventually , higher-ups in the office overrode the original recommendation about how stiffly to punish Stone and filed a new memo `` at odds with the record and contrary to Department of Justice policy . ''
Zelinsky ultimately withdrew from the case , along with three others , after the department refused to heed their objections that `` such political favoritism was wrong and contrary to legal ethics and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentenced Stone to serve 40 months in prison .
He had been due to report there next week .
But Stone 's lawyer filed an unopposed motion to delay his surrender until September , citing a `` heightened risk '' of COVID-19 in the `` close confines '' of a prison .
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec called it notable that Zelinsky had no discussion with the attorney general , the U.S. Attorney and other members of political leadership at Justice about the Stone sentencing .
`` Instead , Mr. Zelinsky 's allegations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on his own interpretation of events and hearsay ( at best ) , not first-hand knowledge , '' Kupec added .
Attorney General Bill Barr said at the time of Stone 's sentencing that he 'd acted on his own to get involved with the submission of a second memo asking the judge in the case to impose a lighter sentence than contemplated in the first one .
But Trump also wrote about the case on Twitter , which brought criticism about the perception that the president was calling the shots .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ asking Trump not to comment on Justice Department matters .
The president has n't complied .
Ahead of the hearing , Zelinsky 's prepared testimony said that he understands the Justice Department may wish to shield certain facts about the case against Stone , a longtime political adviser to Trump .
And in many cases , Zelinsky said , he will respect the DOJ 's assertions of legal privileges .
But , he added , `` the deliberative process privilege does not apply when testimony sheds light on government misconduct , or when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and misleadingly . ''
A second Justice Department attorney , John W. Elias , intends to tell House lawmakers that he was so concerned about antitrust investigations launched under Barr that he reported his fears to the department 's inspector general , according to his prepared testimony .
Elias said he feared possible `` abuse of authority , a gross waste of funds , and gross mismanagement . ''
Elias , who has worked as a career lawyer at the Justice Department for presidents of both political parties , said he had two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a directive by Barr to launch 10 full-scale reviews of mergers taking place in the marijuana industry , a step Elias said did not meet `` established criteria '' for such probes .
The second , Elias said , is an investigation that the antitrust division initiated four days after tweets from Trump criticizing an arrangement between California and four automakers on fuel emissions .
Elias said that investigation was opened under atypical process and without considering what defenses the auto companies might raise .
It was closed , without charges , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that Barr `` has and will continue to approach all cases at the Department of Justice with that commitment to the rule of law and the fair and impartial administration of justice . ''
It 's unusual for current Justice Department lawyers who are not supervisors to testify before Congress .
In fact , the department told the U.S. House of Representatives in a 2000 letter that it generally barred line attorneys and agents from appearing on Capitol Hill to protect their independence .
But the official who wrote that letter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's hearing is a different matter altogether for the Justice Department .
`` It is being accused of using enforcement as a political weapon , '' Raben said .
`` It has no standing in this context to cry 'politics . '
The normal thing to do would be for Barr to testify and hold himself politically accountable , which he is .
But we are not in normal times . ''
Nadler , the committee chairman , told MSNBC this week that Democrats expected to issue a subpoena to the attorney general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House majority and Barr have long been sour ; last year Nadler 's committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress .

Politics Influenced Justice Department In Roger Stone Case, DOJ Lawyer Tells Hill
Enlarge this image toggle caption Evan Vucci/AP Evan Vucci/AP
Updated at 7:14 p.m. ET
A current Justice Department prosecutor is planning to tell lawmakers on Wednesday that in his many years in the government, "I have never seen political influence play any role in prosecutorial decision making. With one exception: United States v. Roger Stone," according to a copy of his prepared testimony.
Aaron Zelinsky, who has worked at the department since 2014, is scheduled to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday as one of two "whistleblowers" set to describe politicization at the Justice Department, said Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D–N.Y.
In his written statement, Zelinsky said he heard that Stone received different treatment "because of his relationship to the president."
Zelinsky said the person in charge of the U.S. attorney's office at the time was "receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break."
And, he said: "I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was 'afraid of the President.' "
Zelinsky described "significant pressure ... to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in [Stone's] trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction."
Eventually, higher-ups in the office overrode the original recommendation about how stiffly to punish Stone and filed a new memo "at odds with the record and contrary to Department of Justice policy."
Zelinsky ultimately withdrew from the case, along with three others, after the department refused to heed their objections that "such political favoritism was wrong and contrary to legal ethics and department policy."
A judge eventually sentenced Stone to serve 40 months in prison. He had been due to report there next week. But Stone's lawyer filed an unopposed motion to delay his surrender until September, citing a "heightened risk" of COVID-19 in the "close confines" of a prison.
DoJ: Witness didn't talk with Barr
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec called it notable that Zelinsky had no discussion with the attorney general, the U.S. Attorney and other members of political leadership at Justice about the Stone sentencing.
"Instead, Mr. Zelinsky's allegations concerning the U.S. Attorney's motivation are based on his own interpretation of events and hearsay (at best), not first-hand knowledge," Kupec added.
Attorney General Bill Barr said at the time of Stone's sentencing that he'd acted on his own to get involved with the submission of a second memo asking the judge in the case to impose a lighter sentence than contemplated in the first one.
But Trump also wrote about the case on Twitter, which brought criticism about the perception that the president was calling the shots. Barr eventually reached the point of publicly asking Trump not to comment on Justice Department matters. The president hasn't complied.
Anticipating questions from lawmakers
Ahead of the hearing, Zelinsky's prepared testimony said that he understands the Justice Department may wish to shield certain facts about the case against Stone, a longtime political adviser to Trump.
And in many cases, Zelinsky said, he will respect the DOJ's assertions of legal privileges.
But, he added, "the deliberative process privilege does not apply when testimony sheds light on government misconduct, or when the government has disclosed deliberative information selectively and misleadingly."
A second Justice Department attorney, John W. Elias, intends to tell House lawmakers that he was so concerned about antitrust investigations launched under Barr that he reported his fears to the department's inspector general, according to his prepared testimony.
Elias said he feared possible "abuse of authority, a gross waste of funds, and gross mismanagement."
Elias, who has worked as a career lawyer at the Justice Department for presidents of both political parties, said he had two sets of concerns. The first involved a directive by Barr to launch 10 full-scale reviews of mergers taking place in the marijuana industry, a step Elias said did not meet "established criteria" for such probes.
The second, Elias said, is an investigation that the antitrust division initiated four days after tweets from Trump criticizing an arrangement between California and four automakers on fuel emissions.
Elias said that investigation was opened under atypical process and without considering what defenses the auto companies might raise. It was closed, without charges, in February 2020.
The Justice Department spokeswoman said that Barr "has and will continue to approach all cases at the Department of Justice with that commitment to the rule of law and the fair and impartial administration of justice."
Unusual testimony
It's unusual for current Justice Department lawyers who are not supervisors to testify before Congress. In fact, the department told the U.S. House of Representatives in a 2000 letter that it generally barred line attorneys and agents from appearing on Capitol Hill to protect their independence.
But the official who wrote that letter, Robert Raben, told NPR that Wednesday's hearing is a different matter altogether for the Justice Department.
"It is being accused of using enforcement as a political weapon," Raben said. "It has no standing in this context to cry 'politics.' The normal thing to do would be for Barr to testify and hold himself politically accountable, which he is. But we are not in normal times."
Nadler, the committee chairman, told MSNBC this week that Democrats expected to issue a subpoena to the attorney general in the coming days. Relations between the House majority and Barr have long been sour; last year Nadler's committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.


npr--2020-06-23--After 'Missteps' And Controversies, Museum Of The Bible Works To Clean Up Its Act

After 'Missteps ' And Controversies , Museum Of The Bible Works To Clean Up Its Act When the Museum of the Bible opened three years ago , its founders aimed to engage a wider audience with the Bible and its thousands of years of history .
But the museum 's ambitious goals have been overshadowed by a series of scandals , still unfolding , over antiquities — acquired in a five-year international shopping spree — that have turned out to be looted or fake .
Now the museum is trying to clean up its act .
Museum executives have embarked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ due diligence in authenticating the institution 's holdings .
The stricter policies , mandated by U.S. federal authorities , include going through the museum 's entire 40,000-piece collection and returning potentially looted goods to their countries of origin .
But some antiquities experts question why it has taken so long .
The controversial purchases began years before the museum opened .
Steve Green , the evangelical president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and the museum board 's chairman , started acquiring artifacts in 2009 for what would become a $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ D.C. , real estate .
( Museum officials have long said the institution has no sectarian or evangelical agenda . )
He has said he knew little about collecting at the time .
`` I trusted the wrong people to guide me , and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers in those early years , '' Green said in a statement in March .
He insisted this was no longer the case .
The same year the museum opened its doors , Hobby Lobby paid a $ 3 million fine in a Justice Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acquisitions .
The judgment directed the forfeiture of 5,500 clay tablets and other illegally imported items to the Iraqi government .
`` After some early missteps , '' Green said in March , he decided he `` would only acquire items with reliable , documented provenance .
Furthermore , if I learn of other items in the collection for which another person or entity has a better claim , I will continue to do the right thing with those items . ''
Even so , fresh controversies — over previously acquired objects , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be fake and items from Iraq , Afghanistan and Egypt — have continued to dog the museum .
Chief curator Jeffrey Kloha , who was hired in 2017 , after the controversial acquisitions were made , tells NPR that the museum is discussing the return to Iraq of another 8,106 pieces .
Hobby Lobby acquired them so haphazardly for the museum , he says , that it may never be known how they came onto the market .
Archaeologists say some of these items may have even come from Iraq 's national museum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invaded Iraq in 2003 and troops failed to protect cultural sites .
`` All we have is paperwork , and very vague paperwork , '' says Kloha , a former professor of the New Testament at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis .
`` Obviously , there are multiple sources for items from Iraq over the past 30 years .
So we have no way of knowing where these came from . ''
Kloha says Hobby Lobby acquired the items , most of them clay tablets , between 2009 and 2014 from sources in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Another 5,000 items , Egyptian papyri and textiles , acquired during the same period , also lack proper documentation .
None of these have been displayed in the museum .
Kloha describes them as `` nothing remarkable . ''
`` They were purchased with scant descriptions , '' Kloha says .
`` We ca n't even tell sometimes which particular item belonged to which acquisition , because it just was n't documented either at the acquisition point or at the delivery point . ''
Kloha says a museum investigation conducted by staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 5 % and 10 % of the roughly 8,000 objects now being returned to Iraq are fake .
Most were purchased in lots — as many as 2,000 pieces at a time .
Kloha says it 's not clear whether the buyers commissioned by Hobby Lobby even saw the items before purchasing them .
He declined to disclose how much the chain paid for the objects .
The museum announced in March that it would return more than 11,000 of those items to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments .
( In subsequently packing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there were 2,000 more Iraqi artifacts , making the total about 13,000 . )
Kloha says the museum is awaiting confirmation from Iraq that it wants its 8,000-plus pieces returned .
Another batch of antiquities that Hobby Lobby handed to the Iraqi Embassy two years ago is still in the United States .
To save on insurance costs , the hope is that they can be sent back on an Iraqi plane during an official visit to the United States , according to the embassy .
Kloha says once it became clear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all-important records of ownership that help prove antiquities are authentic and were legitimately acquired — museum officials stopped research into all the Iraqi and Egyptian artifacts it intends to return .
After inviting scholars to examine one of its prized possessions — purported fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls , pieces of one of the first known bibles — the museum announced in March that these had been found to be modern forgeries .
Kloha says the museum has decided to return the items to their previous owners and could seek legal action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
Last month , U.S. authorities ordered the museum to forfeit the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet , a roughly 3,500-year-old cuneiform fragment from one of the earliest known creation epics .
Authorities said it had been stolen from Iraq and sold by a major auction house with unsupported provenance .
Hobby Lobby has since filed a suit against the Christie 's auction firm , alleging that Christie 's provided inaccurate documentation when Hobby Lobby bought the tablet for $ 1.6 million in 2014 .
Christie 's did not respond to NPR 's request @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It said later that it had not known that the documentation was fraudulent when it sold the tablet .
The Museum of the Bible 's latest issue is over an ancient Jewish prayer book from Afghanistan .
The museum says it was `` legally exported '' from the U.K. and `` acquired in good faith '' with provenance information dating from the 1950s .
Now , Kloha says , museum staff believe the book was taken out of Afghanistan after 1998 — decades after a UNESCO convention made it illegal to export @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which controls many parts of the country today , is accused of widespread trafficking in antiquities .
`` We 've found quite a bit about that item , and we 'll continue to work with external researchers , experts in Afghan culture and history who have been on the ground in Afghanistan , '' Kloha says .
He says the museum is consulting with scholars from Israel , England and Germany and is `` still working on the best resolution '' for the item .
`` There 's a pretty strong legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
The museum 's early acquisitions of thousands of items of uncertain provenance and dubious relevance to the Bible point to both a lack of expertise and lack of policy at the time , Kloha says .
`` It seems to have been just one or two individuals who were acting as agents and purchasing things for what was , at that point , just the idea of a museum , '' he says .
`` It was a handful of advisers who would literally travel the world , make contacts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Greens for acquisition . ''
Green , though , personally carried out some transactions .
The U.S. government 's 2017 complaint against Hobby Lobby notes that Green was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010 while carrying a $ 1 million Bible without a customs declaration .
The following year , U.S. Customs agents seized misidentified cuneiform tablets being shipped to Hobby Lobby from the United Arab Emirates .
`` From late 2010 to early 2011 , the government seized several of the shipments to [ Hobby Lobby ] ... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buy more things , they continue to ship them in , '' Patty Gerstenblith , the director of DePaul University 's Center for Art , Museum & Cultural Heritage Law in Chicago , tells NPR .
`` Here you are in the middle of an investigation by the government for illegally importing artifacts — and yet you continue to do the same thing . ''
Gerstenblith was asked in 2010 by Hobby Lobby 's chief counsel to brief him about the laws on importing antiquities .
According to the 2017 U.S. judgment against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything of Iraqi origin would incur considerable risk , given that up to 500,000 objects had been looted from Iraq since the 1990s .
She warned specifically that cylinder seals were easily looted .
Up to 5,000 were believed to have been stolen from the Iraqi national museum in 2003 , she says .
`` They are small .
They are lightweight .
They are easily portable , '' Gerstenblith explains .
According to the U.S. complaint , Gerstenblith 's report was never shared with Green or other Hobby Lobby management — something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the complaint .
Hobby Lobby returned some of its cylinder seals to Iraq two years ago .
`` Part of all our heritage '' As Washington gradually reopens during the coronavirus pandemic , Kloha says the Museum of the Bible is ready .
It 's one of two private museums in the city to reopen its doors this week .
Even with a roughly $ 20 admission fee in a city full of free museums , it has become a popular tourist attraction .
Visitors have praised its immersive experiences , including museum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are likely to have little interest in issues of provenance .
But the museum 's reputation among scholars has made it difficult to arrange loans of works from other institutions .
Still , Gerstenblith and other heritage experts say the museum appears to be working to overcome past mistakes .
`` There 's no question to me that the museum is trying to be extremely careful in what they 're buying now .
They 're buying only the best and then making sure that the provenance is squeaky-clean , '' Sharon Liberman Mintz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jewish Theological Seminary library , told The Washington Post .
`` They do n't want to repeat any of the mistakes that they made in the past . ''
Kloha says it has been difficult dealing with the legacy of previous acquisitions , but the museum 's original mission remains the same : `` You know , we really are hoping to educate the public about the history of the Bible , the basic stories in the Bible and the impact of the Bible . ''
In addition to conducting due diligence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he says , the museum has tightened its acquisition policy .
And going forward , he says , the museum is focusing on what it hopes will be less problematic collections .
Among those are what Kloha describes as a very large group of early printed books from a collector in Louisville , Ky. , including early Puritan thought and writings on slavery and abolition .
Kloha says the museum has transferred legal ownership of roughly 13,000 disputed items to Iraq and Egypt .
It is still discussing their physical return and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these objects to the museum for further study .
Iraqi 's ambassador to the U.S. , Fareed Yasseen , tells NPR that he would personally like to see Iraqi artifacts exposed to as wide an audience as possible .
`` To me , the Elgin Marbles should be in Greece , not in the British Museum , because a lot of people will see them in Greece , '' he says .
`` But if you look at the massive winged bulls [ from ancient Iraq ] you have in the British Museum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ honestly , if they were in Iraq , so few people would go there to see them .
To be fair , looking at the issue as a world citizen , if you will , these are part of all our heritage .
Anybody who has read the Bible can relate , right ? ''

After 'Missteps' And Controversies, Museum Of The Bible Works To Clean Up Its Act
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR
When the Museum of the Bible opened three years ago, its founders aimed to engage a wider audience with the Bible and its thousands of years of history.
But the museum's ambitious goals have been overshadowed by a series of scandals, still unfolding, over antiquities — acquired in a five-year international shopping spree — that have turned out to be looted or fake.
Now the museum is trying to clean up its act. Museum executives have embarked on a campaign to comply with basic due diligence in authenticating the institution's holdings. The stricter policies, mandated by U.S. federal authorities, include going through the museum's entire 40,000-piece collection and returning potentially looted goods to their countries of origin. But some antiquities experts question why it has taken so long.
The controversial purchases began years before the museum opened. Steve Green, the evangelical president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and the museum board's chairman, started acquiring artifacts in 2009 for what would become a $500 million museum on prime Washington, D.C., real estate. (Museum officials have long said the institution has no sectarian or evangelical agenda.)
He has said he knew little about collecting at the time.
"I trusted the wrong people to guide me, and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers in those early years," Green said in a statement in March. He insisted this was no longer the case.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jacquelyn Martin/AP Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The same year the museum opened its doors, Hobby Lobby paid a $3 million fine in a Justice Department settlement for not exercising due diligence in acquisitions. The judgment directed the forfeiture of 5,500 clay tablets and other illegally imported items to the Iraqi government.
"After some early missteps," Green said in March, he decided he "would only acquire items with reliable, documented provenance. Furthermore, if I learn of other items in the collection for which another person or entity has a better claim, I will continue to do the right thing with those items."
Even so, fresh controversies — over previously acquired objects, including Dead Sea Scroll fragments found to be fake and items from Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt — have continued to dog the museum.
"Very vague paperwork"
Chief curator Jeffrey Kloha, who was hired in 2017, after the controversial acquisitions were made, tells NPR that the museum is discussing the return to Iraq of another 8,106 pieces. Hobby Lobby acquired them so haphazardly for the museum, he says, that it may never be known how they came onto the market.
Archaeologists say some of these items may have even come from Iraq's national museum, which was looted after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and troops failed to protect cultural sites.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the Museum of the Bible Courtesy of the Museum of the Bible
"All we have is paperwork, and very vague paperwork," says Kloha, a former professor of the New Testament at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. "Obviously, there are multiple sources for items from Iraq over the past 30 years. So we have no way of knowing where these came from."
Kloha says Hobby Lobby acquired the items, most of them clay tablets, between 2009 and 2014 from sources in the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. Another 5,000 items, Egyptian papyri and textiles, acquired during the same period, also lack proper documentation. None of these has been displayed in the museum. Kloha describes them as "nothing remarkable."
"They were purchased with scant descriptions," Kloha says. "We can't even tell sometimes which particular item belonged to which acquisition, because it just wasn't documented either at the acquisition point or at the delivery point."
Kloha says a museum investigation conducted by staff and independent scholars has determined that between 5% and 10% of the roughly 8,000 objects now being returned to Iraq are fake. Most were purchased in lots — as many as 2,000 pieces at a time. Kloha says it's not clear whether the buyers commissioned by Hobby Lobby even saw the items before purchasing them. He declined to disclose how much the chain paid for the objects.
The museum announced in March that it would return more than 11,000 of those items to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments. (In subsequently packing up these objects, it became clear that there were 2,000 more Iraqi artifacts, making the total about 13,000.) Kloha says the museum is awaiting confirmation from Iraq that it wants its 8,000-plus pieces returned.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Another batch of antiquities that Hobby Lobby handed to the Iraqi Embassy two years ago is still in the United States. To save on insurance costs, the hope is that they can be sent back on an Iraqi plane during an official visit to the United States, according to the embassy.
Kloha says once it became clear there were problems with provenance — the all-important records of ownership that help prove antiquities are authentic and were legitimately acquired — museum officials stopped research into all the Iraqi and Egyptian artifacts it intends to return.
Forgeries and forfeitures
After inviting scholars to examine one of its prized possessions — purported fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, pieces of one of the first known bibles — the museum announced in March that these had been found to be modern forgeries. Kloha says the museum has decided to return the items to their previous owners and could seek legal action to recover the money it paid for them.
Last month, U.S. authorities ordered the museum to forfeit the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, a roughly 3,500-year-old cuneiform fragment from one of the earliest known creation epics. Authorities said it had been stolen from Iraq and sold by a major auction house with unsupported provenance.
Hobby Lobby has since filed a suit against the Christie's auction firm, alleging that Christie's provided inaccurate documentation when Hobby Lobby bought the tablet for $1.6 million in 2014.
Christie's did not respond to NPR's request for comment on the tablet's forfeiture. It said later that it had not known that the documentation was fraudulent when it sold the tablet.
The Museum of the Bible's latest issue is over an ancient Jewish prayer book from Afghanistan. The museum says it was "legally exported" from the U.K. and "acquired in good faith" with provenance information dating from the 1950s. Now, Kloha says, museum staff believe the book was taken out of Afghanistan after 1998 — decades after a UNESCO convention made it illegal to export antiquities without government approval. The Taliban, which controls many parts of the country today, is accused of widespread trafficking in antiquities.
"We've found quite a bit about that item, and we'll continue to work with external researchers, experts in Afghan culture and history who have been on the ground in Afghanistan," Kloha says.
He says the museum is consulting with scholars from Israel, England and Germany and is "still working on the best resolution" for the item. "There's a pretty strong legal case for holding it," he says.
Warnings ignored
The museum's early acquisitions of thousands of items of uncertain provenance and dubious relevance to the Bible point to both a lack of expertise and lack of policy at the time, Kloha says.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR
"It seems to have been just one or two individuals who were acting as agents and purchasing things for what was, at that point, just the idea of a museum," he says. "It was a handful of advisers who would literally travel the world, make contacts, find things and then bring them to the Greens for acquisition."
Green, though, personally carried out some transactions.
The U.S. government's 2017 complaint against Hobby Lobby notes that Green was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010 while carrying a $1 million Bible without a customs declaration.
The following year, U.S. Customs agents seized misidentified cuneiform tablets being shipped to Hobby Lobby from the United Arab Emirates.
"From late 2010 to early 2011, the government seized several of the shipments to [Hobby Lobby] ... yet we find out they continue to buy more things, they continue to ship them in," Patty Gerstenblith, the director of DePaul University's Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law in Chicago, tells NPR. "Here you are in the middle of an investigation by the government for illegally importing artifacts — and yet you continue to do the same thing."
Gerstenblith was asked in 2010 by Hobby Lobby's chief counsel to brief him about the laws on importing antiquities. According to the 2017 U.S. judgment against Hobby Lobby, she warned that importing anything of Iraqi origin would incur considerable risk, given that up to 500,000 objects had been looted from Iraq since the 1990s.
She warned specifically that cylinder seals were easily looted. Up to 5,000 were believed to have been stolen from the Iraqi national museum in 2003, she says.
"They are small. They are lightweight. They are easily portable," Gerstenblith explains.
According to the U.S. complaint, Gerstenblith's report was never shared with Green or other Hobby Lobby management — something she didn't learn until she read the complaint.
Hobby Lobby returned some of its cylinder seals to Iraq two years ago.
"Part of all our heritage"
As Washington gradually reopens during the coronavirus pandemic, Kloha says the Museum of the Bible is ready. It's one of two private museums in the city to reopen its doors this week. Even with a roughly $20 admission fee in a city full of free museums, it has become a popular tourist attraction. Visitors have praised its immersive experiences, including museum staff dressed in period costume.
But the museum's reputation among scholars has made it difficult to arrange loans of works from other institutions.
Still, Gerstenblith and other heritage experts say the museum appears to be working to overcome past mistakes.
"There's no question to me that the museum is trying to be extremely careful in what they're buying now. They're buying only the best and then making sure that the provenance is squeaky-clean," Sharon Liberman Mintz, curator of Jewish art at the Jewish Theological Seminary library, told The Washington Post. "They don't want to repeat any of the mistakes that they made in the past."
Kloha says it has been difficult dealing with the legacy of previous acquisitions, but the museum's original mission remains the same: "You know, we really are hoping to educate the public about the history of the Bible, the basic stories in the Bible and the impact of the Bible."
In addition to conducting due diligence, investigating potential forgeries and hosting academic conferences, he says, the museum has tightened its acquisition policy. And going forward, he says, the museum is focusing on what it hopes will be less problematic collections. Among those are what Kloha describes as a very large group of early printed books from a collector in Louisville, Ky., including early Puritan thought and writings on slavery and abolition.
Kloha says the museum has transferred legal ownership of roughly 13,000 disputed items to Iraq and Egypt. It is still discussing their physical return and the possibility of Iraq loaning some of these objects to the museum for further study.
Iraqi's ambassador to the U.S., Fareed Yasseen, tells NPR that he would personally like to see Iraqi artifacts exposed to as wide an audience as possible.
"To me, the Elgin Marbles should be in Greece, not in the British Museum, because a lot of people will see them in Greece," he says. "But if you look at the massive winged bulls [from ancient Iraq] you have in the British Museum ... or the Louvre, I mean honestly, if they were in Iraq, so few people would go there to see them. To be fair, looking at the issue as a world citizen, if you will, these are part of all our heritage. Anybody who has read the Bible can relate, right?"


npr--2020-06-24--Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

Coronavirus World Map : Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak Since the new coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan , China , in December , the infectious respiratory disease COVID-19 has spread rapidly within China and to neighboring countries and beyond .
The first confirmed coronavirus cases outside China occurred on Jan. 20 , in Japan , Thailand and South Korea .
On Jan. 21 , the first case in the U.S. was identified in Washington state .
On Jan. 24 , the first two European cases were confirmed in France .
By Feb. 1 , eight European nations had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month later that count had risen to 24 countries with at least 2,200 cases , most of them in Italy .
On March 11 , Italy eclipsed 10,000 cases and the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic — the first since H1N1 in 2009 .
That 's also when China , the original epicenter , began seeing drops in daily counts of new cases .
March also saw exponential spread of the virus throughout the U.S. , with all 50 states reporting cases by March 17 .
This particular virus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the third strain of coronavirus known to frequently cause severe symptoms in humans .
The other two strains cause Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome .
Click here to see the state-by-state breakdown of cases in the United States .
This story was originally published on March 30 , 2020 .

Coronavirus world map: We've now passed the 600 million mark for infections
Editor's note: This page is no longer being updated. The last update was Sept. 5, 2022. For current data about COVID-19 cases and deaths around the world, Johns Hopkins University and Our World in Data are useful resources.
In late January 2020 only a few dozen COVID-19 infections had been identified outside of China. A year later, the world tallied its first 100 million cases. It took the globe just 7 more months to pass the 200 million mark— then another 5 months to hit 300 million, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Now the virus has spread to every corner of the globe and has been blamed for more than 6 million deaths.
The United States, India and Brazil in that order have had the most COVID cases and the three nations collectively account for almost half of all recorded infections so far in the pandemic.
Explore the chart below to find a country-by-country breakdown of new and total cases since January 2020.
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Explore how the number of coronavirus cases have shifted in different parts of the world over time. The first chart compares each continent to each other, while the next charts highlight the number of cases in select countries by region.
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This story was originally published on March 30, 2020.


npr--2020-06-24--Tracking The Pandemic: Are Coronavirus Cases Rising Or Falling In Your State?

Tracking The Pandemic : Are Coronavirus Cases Rising Or Falling In Your State ?
More than 2 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 115,000 have died .
The growth in new cases overall had slowed in late spring but new hot spots began to emerge as others subsided .
By mid-June new cases began to trend upward nationally as several states saw surges .
In the graphics below , explore the trend in new cases in your state to see whether cases are rising , falling or staying level .
To jump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaths by state , click here .
The following chart displays states ' trends in new daily case counts , total cases , and per capita totals .
To compare state outbreaks , the trend lines for average new daily cases are graphed against each state 's total case count to date .
This highlights a state 's daily growth relative to the overall size of its outbreak .
When both new and total case counts grow quickly , the curve bends upward .
As cases slow , the curve levels or bends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the country 's largest outbreak , the state 's curve rose sharply before reaching over 170,000 total cases in April .
Since then , new cases have fallen from about 10,000 per day in mid-April to fewer than 700 per day in late June .
Some states , such as Hawaii , have declined to just a dozen new cases per day , while others are growing .
Arizona , which had leveled off at around 15,000 total cases in May , saw a sudden sharp spike in new cases in June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much harder than others .
For much of the pandemic , a large share of U.S. cases have been centered around New York City .
As of early June , New York state , Connecticut and New Jersey accounted for about 30 % of total cases in the nation and 42 % of deaths , although new cases have been dropping in these three states .
Across the country , other large , populous states such as California , Illinois and Texas have high totals as well .
Some smaller states have had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their population size , such as Nebraska and Iowa , which have high case counts per capita , and Louisiana and Michigan which have a high death count per capita .
Explore the map below to see totals and per capita figures around the country .
Click here to see a global map of confirmed cases and deaths .
For more detail on your state , the table below shows the change in average new cases per day in each state , week over week .
States marked in shades of red are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ green , are showing declines .
The data used here are compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University from several sources , including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ; the World Health Organization ; national , state and local government health departments ; 1point3acres ; and local media reports .
The JHU team automates its data uploads and regularly checks them for anomalies .
State-by-state recovery data are unavailable at this time .
There may be discrepancies between what you see here and what you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ website .
Figures shown do not include cases on cruise ships .
In early June , Michigan health authorities started including probable cases in its totals .
This resulted in a brief spike in the state 's daily numbers until the JHU team was able to reconcile the historical data .
This story was originally published on March 16 , 2020 .
Elena Renken was a co-author on that version .
Sean McMinn contributed to and Carmel Wroth edited this story .

Tracking the coronavirus around the U.S.: See how your state is doing
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Note: This page was last updated on Feb. 1, 2023. It will no longer be updated. For current data on COVID cases and deaths, demographics, and hospitalizations, consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Feb. 1, there have been more than 101 million confirmed coronavirus infections in the U.S. and more than 1 million people have died of COVID-19. In the graphics below, explore the trends in your state.
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The above charts show average new cases per 100,000 people for each state over the last 12 months.
Note: Actual cases may be substantially higher, since many who test positive with at-home tests don't report their cases.
For additional data about COVID-19 in the U.S, including cases and deaths, demographics, and hospitalizations, consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
To show trends, the table below shows the change in average new cases per day in each state, week over week for the last 28 days. States marked in shades of red have growing outbreaks; those in shades of green, are declining.
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Methodology
The graphics on this page pull from data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University from several sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the World Health Organization; national, state and local government health departments; 1point3acres; and local media reports.
The JHU team automates its data uploads and regularly checks them for anomalies. This may result in occasional data discrepancies on this page as the JHU team resolves anomalies and updates its feeds. There may be discrepancies between what you see here and what you see on your local health department's website. Figures shown do not include cases on cruise ships.
Fluctuations in the numbers may happen as health authorities review old cases, process testing backlogs or update their methodologies. The JHU team maintains a list of such changes.
This story was originally published on March 16, 2020. Elena Renken was a co-author on that version. Sean McMinn and Audrey Carlsen contributed to this story. Carmel Wroth edited this story.


npr--2020-06-24--'The Computer Got It Wrong': How Facial Recognition Led To A False Arrest In Michigan

'The Computer Got It Wrong ' : How Facial Recognition Led To A False Arrest In Michigan Police in Detroit were trying to figure out who stole five watches from a Shinola retail store .
Authorities say the thief took off with an estimated $ 3,800 worth of merchandise .
Investigators pulled a security video that had recorded the incident .
Detectives zoomed in on the grainy footage and ran the person who appeared to be the suspect through facial recognition software .
A hit came back : Robert Julian-Borchak Williams , 42 , of Farmington Hills , Mich. , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In January , police pulled up to Williams ' home and arrested him while he stood on his front lawn in front of his wife and two daughters , ages 2 and 5 , who cried as they watched their father being placed in the patrol car .
His wife , Melissa Williams , asked where her husband was being taken. ''
'Google it , ' `` she remembers an officer telling her .
Robert Williams was placed in an interrogation room and police put three photos in front of him : Two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the store and a photo of Williams ' state-issued driver 's license .
`` When I look at the picture of the guy , I just see a big Black guy .
I do n't see a resemblance .
I do n't think he looks like me at all , '' Williams said in an interview with NPR .
`` [ The detective ] flips the third page over and says , 'So I guess the computer got it wrong , too . '
And I said , 'Well , that 's me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my previous driver 's license , '' Williams said of the interrogation with detectives.
`` 'But that guy 's not me , ' `` he said , referring to the other photographs .
`` I picked it up and held it to my face and told him , ' I hope you do n't think all black people look alike , ' `` Williams said .
Williams was detained for 30 hours and then released on bail until a court hearing on the case , his lawyers say .
At the hearing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charges against Williams were being dropped .
Civil rights experts say Williams is the first known example of an American wrongfully arrested based on a false hit produced by facial recognition technology .
What makes Williams ' case extraordinary is that police admitted that facial recognition technology , conducted by Michigan State Police in a crime lab at the request of the Detroit Police Department , prompted the arrest , according to charging documents reviewed by NPR .
The pursuit of Williams as a possible suspect came despite repeated claims by him and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artificial intelligence was faulty .
The alleged suspect in the security camera image was wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals hat .
Williams , a Detroit native , said he would under no circumstances be wearing that hat .
`` They never even asked him any questions before arresting him .
They never asked him if he had an alibi .
They never asked if he had a red Cardinals hat .
They never asked him where he was that day , '' said lawyer Phil Mayor with the ACLU of Michigan .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ filed a complaint against the Detroit Police Department asking that police stop using the software in investigations .
In a statement to NPR , the Detroit Police Department said after the Williams case , the department enacted new rules .
Now , only still photos , not security footage , can be used for facial recognition .
And it is now used only in the case of violent crimes .
`` Facial recognition software is an investigative tool that is used to generate leads only .
Additional investigative work , corroborating evidence and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can be made , '' Detroit Police Department Sgt .
Nicole Kirkwood said in a statement .
In Williams ' case , police had asked the store security guard , who had not witnessed the robbery , to pick the suspect out of a photo lineup based on the footage , and the security guard selected Williams .
Victoria Burton-Harris , Williams ' lawyer , said in an interview that she is skeptical that investigators used the facial recognition software as only one of several possible leads .
`` When that technology picked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there , it framed and informed everything that officers did subsequently , '' Burton Harris said .
Academic and government studies have demonstrated that facial recognition systems misidentify people of color more often than white people .
Williams : `` Let 's say that this case was n't retail fraud .
What if it 's rape or murder ? ''
According to Georgetown Law 's Center on Privacy and Technology , at least a quarter of the nation 's law enforcement agencies have access to face recognition tools .
`` Most of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face recognition are not told face recognition was used to arrest them , '' said Jameson Spivack , a researcher at the center .
While Amazon , Microsoft and IBM have announced a halt to sales of face recognition technology to law enforcement , Spivack said that will have little effect , since most major facial recognition software contracts with police are with smaller , more specialized companies , like South Carolina-based DataWorks Plus , which is the company that supplied the Detroit Police Department with its face-scanning software .
The company did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DataWorks Plus has supplied the technology to government agencies in Santa Barbara , Calif. , Chicago and Philadelphia .
Facial recognition technology is used by consumers everyday to unlock their smartphones or to tag friends on social media .
Some airports use the technology to scan passengers before they board flights .
Its deployment by governments , though , has drawn concern from privacy advocates and experts who study the machine learning tool and have highlighted its flaws .
`` Some departments of motor vehicles will use facial recognition to detect license fraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common use is law enforcement , whether it 's state , local or federal law enforcement , '' Spivack said .
The government use of facial recognition technology has been banned in half a dozen cities .
In Michigan , Williams said he hopes his case is a wake-up call to lawmakers .
`` Let 's say that this case was n't retail fraud .
What if it 's rape or murder ?
Would I have gotten out of jail on a personal bond , or would I have ever come home ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife , Melissa , worry about the long-term effects the arrest will have on their two young daughters .
`` Seeing their dad get arrested , that was their first interaction with the police .
So it 's definitely going to shape how they perceive law enforcement , '' Melissa Williams said .
In his complaint , Williams and his lawyers say if the police department wo n't ban the technology outright , then at least his photo should be removed from the database , so this does n't happen again .
`` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and look me up , '' Williams said , `` who wants to be seen as a thief ? ''

'The Computer Got It Wrong': How Facial Recognition Led To False Arrest Of Black Man
Updated 9:05 p.m. ET Wednesday
Police in Detroit were trying to figure out who stole five watches from a Shinola retail store. Authorities say the thief took off with an estimated $3,800 worth of merchandise.
Investigators pulled a security video that had recorded the incident. Detectives zoomed in on the grainy footage and ran the person who appeared to be the suspect through facial recognition software.
A hit came back: Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, 42, of Farmington Hills, Mich., about 25 miles northwest of Detroit.
In January, police pulled up to Williams' home and arrested him while he stood on his front lawn in front of his wife and two daughters, ages 2 and 5, who cried as they watched their father being placed in the patrol car.
His wife, Melissa Williams, wanted to know where police were taking her husband.
" 'Google it,' " she recalls an officer telling her.
Robert Williams was led to an interrogation room, and police put three photos in front of him: Two photos taken from the surveillance camera in the store and a photo of Williams' state-issued driver's license.
"When I look at the picture of the guy, I just see a big Black guy. I don't see a resemblance. I don't think he looks like me at all," Williams said in an interview with NPR.
"[The detective] flips the third page over and says, 'So I guess the computer got it wrong, too.' And I said, 'Well, that's me,' pointing at a picture of my previous driver's license," Williams said of the interrogation with detectives. " 'But that guy's not me,' " he said, referring to the other photographs.
"I picked it up and held it to my face and told him, 'I hope you don't think all Black people look alike,' " Williams said.
Williams was detained for 30 hours and then released on bail until a court hearing on the case, his lawyers say.
At the hearing, a Wayne County prosecutor announced that the charges against Williams were being dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Civil rights experts say Williams is the first documented example in the U.S. of someone being wrongfully arrested based on a false hit produced by facial recognition technology.
Lawyer: Artificial intelligence 'framed and informed everything'
What makes Williams' case extraordinary is that police admitted that facial recognition technology, conducted by Michigan State Police in a crime lab at the request of the Detroit Police Department, prompted the arrest, according to charging documents reviewed by NPR.
The pursuit of Williams as a possible suspect came despite repeated claims by him and his lawyers that the match generated by artificial intelligence was faulty.
The alleged suspect in the security camera image was wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals hat. Williams, a Detroit native, said he would under no circumstances be wearing that hat.
"They never even asked him any questions before arresting him. They never asked him if he had an alibi. They never asked if he had a red Cardinals hat. They never asked him where he was that day," said lawyer Phil Mayor with the ACLU of Michigan.
On Wednesday, the ACLU of Michigan filed a complaint against the Detroit Police Department asking that police stop using the software in investigations.
In a statement to NPR, the Detroit Police Department said after the Williams case, the department enacted new rules. Now, only still photos, not security footage, can be used for facial recognition. And it is now used only in the case of violent crimes.
"Facial recognition software is an investigative tool that is used to generate leads only. Additional investigative work, corroborating evidence and probable cause are required before an arrest can be made," Detroit Police Department Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood said in a statement.
In Williams' case, police had asked the store security guard, who had not witnessed the robbery, to pick the suspect out of a photo lineup based on the footage, and the security guard selected Williams.
Victoria Burton-Harris, Williams' lawyer, said in an interview that she is skeptical that investigators used the facial recognition software as only one of several possible leads.
"When that technology picked my client's face out, from there, it framed and informed everything that officers did subsequently," Burton-Harris said.
Academic and government studies have demonstrated that facial recognition systems misidentify people of color more often than white people.
One of the leading studies on bias in face recognition was conducted by Joy Buolamwini, an MIT researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League.
"This egregious mismatch shows just one of the dangers of facial recognition technology which has already been shown in study after study to fail people of color, people with dark skin more than white counterparts generally speaking," Buolamwini said.
"The threats to civil liberties posed by mass surveillance are too high a price," she said. "You cannot erase the experience of 30 hours detained, the memories of children seeing their father arrested, or the stigma of being labeled criminal."
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, said the case was dismissed over insufficient evidence, including that the charges were filed without the support of any live witnesses.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said any case sent to her office that uses facial recognition technology cannot move forward without other supporting evidence.
"This case should not have been issued based on the DPD investigation, and for that we apologize," Worthy said in a statement to NPR. "Thankfully, it was dismissed on our office's own motion. This does not in any way make up for the hours that Mr. Williams spent in jail."
Worthy said Williams is able to have the case expunged from his record.
Williams: "Let's say that this case wasn't retail fraud. What if it's rape or murder?"
According to Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, at least a quarter of the nation's law enforcement agencies have access to face recognition tools.
"Most of the time, people who are arrested using face recognition are not told face recognition was used to arrest them," said Jameson Spivack, a researcher at the center.
While Amazon, Microsoft and IBM have announced a halt to sales of face recognition technology to law enforcement, Spivack said that will have little effect, since most major facial recognition software contracts with police are with smaller, more specialized companies, like South Carolina-based DataWorks Plus, which is the company that supplied the Detroit Police Department with its face-scanning software.
The company did not respond to an interview request.
DataWorks Plus has supplied the technology to government agencies in Santa Barbara, Calif., Chicago and Philadelphia.
Facial recognition technology is used by consumers every day to unlock their smartphones or to tag friends on social media. Some airports use the technology to scan passengers before they board flights.
Its deployment by governments, though, has drawn concern from privacy advocates and experts who study the machine learning tool and have highlighted its flaws.
"Some departments of motor vehicles will use facial recognition to detect license fraud, identity theft, but the most common use is law enforcement, whether it's state, local or federal law enforcement," Spivack said.
The government use of facial recognition technology has been banned in half a dozen cities.
In Michigan, Williams said he hopes his case is a wake-up call to lawmakers.
"Let's say that this case wasn't retail fraud. What if it's rape or murder? Would I have gotten out of jail on a personal bond, or would I have ever come home?" Williams said.
Williams and his wife, Melissa, worry about the long-term effects the arrest will have on their two young daughters.
"Seeing their dad get arrested, that was their first interaction with the police. So it's definitely going to shape how they perceive law enforcement," Melissa Williams said.
In his complaint, Williams and his lawyers say if the police department won't ban the technology outright, then at least his photo should be removed from the database, so this doesn't happen again.
"If someone wants to pull my name and look me up," Williams said, "who wants to be seen as a thief?"


npr--2020-06-24--All You Wanted To Know About Coronavirus Vaccine Science But Were Afraid To Ask

All You Wanted To Know About Coronavirus Vaccine Science But Were Afraid To Ask Approximately 200 COVID-19 vaccines are being actively developed .
All vaccines have one main goal : to prepare a person 's immune system to fight off an invading organism should the body encounter it .
To accomplish that , a vaccine presents the immune system with something that looks like the invader and is essentially harmless , but nonetheless tricks the body into developing an immune response that would fight off the real virus if it appeared .
It 's a bit like showing someone a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person shows up at your door , do n't let them in . ''
There are lots of ways of making that viral `` picture , '' and COVID-19 vaccine developers are pursuing all of them .
This approach has been around for decades .
Jonas Salk used it in making his polio vaccine .
Researchers take the virus of interest and treat it with heat or a chemical like formaldehyde .
That makes it no longer capable of causing disease , but it can still display the proteins on its surface that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invader .
Four companies in China have already begun clinical trials using this approach : Wuhan Institute of Biological Products ; Beijing Institute of Biological Products ; the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences ; and Sinovac Research and Development .
One drawback to the inactivated-virus approach is that the vaccine does n't always generate a strong enough immune response to effectively fight off the virus and sometimes a second dose is needed to get protection .
This is also a well-known approach .
Here , the virus is modified , or attenuated , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still `` live '' in the sense that it 's still capable of infecting cells , but it is rarely capable of spreading rapidly and causing disease .
This is how the Sabin polio vaccine works .
These vaccines can generate a strong immune response , but in some cases they can also cause the disease they are trying to prevent , since the weakened virus can sometimes be harmful to someone who has a weakened immune system .
A list of vaccine candidates prepared by the World Health Organization includes only three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instead of killing or modifying a virus to use in a vaccine , researchers can use just the proteins a virus makes that stimulate the immune system .
Once researchers know a virus 's complete genetic sequence , it 's relatively straightforward to isolate the genes for those proteins .
But how do those genes get into someone 's cells without the actual or attenuated virus to carry it there ?
One approach involves turning to other viruses , not necessarily related to the virus that causes the illness at all .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cause little or no illness .
Researchers can take the genes from the coronavirus that make the proteins that stimulate the immune system and then put those genes into one of these harmless viruses .
Once inside cells , the harmless virus delivers the coronavirus 's genes ( which are , in essence , instructions ) , and the cells dutifully make the coronavirus proteins that will trigger the immune reaction .
As a safety measure , researchers can modify the harmless virus so that it can no longer make copies of itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cell .
The University of Oxford has teamed with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to make a vaccine candidate that works this way .
That candidate is already being tested for efficacy , i.e.
, to see if it actually prevents COVID-19 .
CanSino Biologics , along with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences ' Institute of Biotechnology , in China , also has a vaccine in human trials that works this way .
Similar to non-replicating viral vector vaccines , these vaccines employ viruses that are either naturally not harmful to humans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ non-replicating viral vectors , these replicating viral vectors are modified to contain instructions for making virus proteins that can stimulate someone 's immune system .
The difference is that these viruses do retain the ability to make copies of themselves .
That means they can continue to pump out coronavirus proteins , thereby keeping the immune system primed and ready to respond should the coronavirus turn up .
Merck used this technology successfully to make an Ebola vaccine that was approved last year and is trying it with a COVID-19 vaccine candidate as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus-like particle is an assembly of proteins that resembles a virus but has none of the genetic instructions for making copies of itself .
Several companies are using these virus-like particles to create their vaccines .
One , Medicago , located in Quebec City , uses plants to generate the virus-like particles .
DNA typically is the chemical that stores the genetic instructions that are passed from one generation to the next .
To make proteins from those instructions , DNA has to be converted into RNA — and specific proteins are made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the case of RNA vaccine candidates for COVID-19 , the specific strand of RNA is the one that makes a protein on the surface of the coronavirus called the spike protein .
The spike protein allows the virus to insert itself into cells in our bodies .
The idea behind this vaccine is to inject that RNA sequence into someone , and then the person 's cells start producing the spike protein that the immune system will recognize and produce antibodies to fight against .
An advantage of RNA vaccines is that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only a matter of days from the time in early January when Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus before the biotech company Moderna had a vaccine candidate ready for initial testing , and it was slightly more than two months before testing began in human volunteers .
Several other companies , including pharma giants Pfizer and Sanofi , are also in the RNA vaccine arena .
Although many scientists are impressed with the potential of RNA vaccines , such vaccines were relatively new when COVID-19 appeared on the scene @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to complete the testing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would require to license them for use in humans .
Creating a DNA vaccine is another new approach to vaccine-making .
The vaccine introduces directly into someone 's body the genetic instructions for making the protein of interest .
That person 's cells then use those instructions to make the RNA that makes the desired protein to stimulate the immune system .
However , it 's harder to get DNA into a person 's cells than it is to get RNA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start into human studies with its version , which requires an electric pulse to be administered with the vaccine to make sure the DNA is taken up .
Another vaccine approach is to inject people with copies of the actual protein against which you want them to make antibodies .
This is a well-explored approach , used to make pertussis , diphtheria and tetanus vaccines .
Several dozen companies are going down this path .
First out of the gate in human trials was Novavax .
It packages its proteins in a nanoparticle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which is a substance designed to enhance the response that the immune system makes to a protein .
Normally , it can take a decade or more to develop , test and license a new vaccine , but the coronavirus pandemic is likely to speed up that process considerably because developers are doing things in parallel that they would usually do in sequence .
Even before a vaccine candidate has been shown to work , companies are scaling up their manufacturing capacity with the intention of making hundreds of millions of doses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
About a dozen vaccines are already being tested in humans , and proof that a particular vaccine works — or does n't — may be available as soon as the end of this year .

All You Wanted To Know About Coronavirus Vaccine Science But Were Afraid To Ask
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images
Approximately 200 COVID-19 vaccines are being actively developed. All vaccines have one main goal: to prepare a person's immune system to fight off an invading organism should the body encounter it.
To accomplish that, a vaccine presents the immune system with something that looks like the invader and is essentially harmless, but nonetheless tricks the body into developing an immune response that would fight off the real virus if it appeared. It's a bit like showing someone a picture and saying, "If this person shows up at your door, don't let them in."
There are lots of ways of making that viral "picture," and COVID-19 vaccine developers are pursuing all of them.
Inactivated virus vaccines
This approach has been around for decades. Jonas Salk used it in making his polio vaccine. Researchers take the virus of interest and treat it with heat or a chemical like formaldehyde. That makes it no longer capable of causing disease, but it can still display the proteins on its surface that the immune system can recognize as an invader.
Four companies in China have already begun clinical trials using this approach: Wuhan Institute of Biological Products; Beijing Institute of Biological Products; the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences; and Sinovac Research and Development.
One drawback to the inactivated-virus approach is that the vaccine doesn't always generate a strong enough immune response to effectively fight off the virus and sometimes a second dose is needed to get protection.
Live attenuated virus vaccines
This is also a well-known approach. Here, the virus is modified, or attenuated, in the lab so that it is still "live" in the sense that it's still capable of infecting cells, but it is rarely capable of spreading rapidly and causing disease. This is how the Sabin polio vaccine works.
These vaccines can generate a strong immune response, but in some cases they can also cause the disease they are trying to prevent, since the weakened virus can sometimes be harmful to someone who has a weakened immune system.
A list of vaccine candidates prepared by the World Health Organization includes only three companies developing live attenuated virus vaccines.
Non-replicating viral vector vaccines
Instead of killing or modifying a virus to use in a vaccine, researchers can use just the proteins a virus makes that stimulate the immune system.
Once researchers know a virus's complete genetic sequence, it's relatively straightforward to isolate the genes for those proteins. But how do those genes get into someone's cells without the actual or attenuated virus to carry it there?
One approach involves turning to other viruses, not necessarily related to the virus that causes the illness at all. There are many viruses that infect humans but cause little or no illness. Researchers can take the genes from the coronavirus that make the proteins that stimulate the immune system and then put those genes into one of these harmless viruses. Once inside cells, the harmless virus delivers the coronavirus's genes (which are, in essence, instructions), and the cells dutifully make the coronavirus proteins that will trigger the immune reaction.
As a safety measure, researchers can modify the harmless virus so that it can no longer make copies of itself after it delivers its genetic payload to a cell.
The University of Oxford has teamed with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to make a vaccine candidate that works this way. That candidate is already being tested for efficacy, i.e., to see if it actually prevents COVID-19. CanSino Biologics, along with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences' Institute of Biotechnology, in China, also has a vaccine in human trials that works this way.
Replicating viral vector vaccines
Similar to non-replicating viral vector vaccines, these vaccines employ viruses that are either naturally not harmful to humans or engineered not to be. Like non-replicating viral vectors, these replicating viral vectors are modified to contain instructions for making virus proteins that can stimulate someone's immune system. The difference is that these viruses do retain the ability to make copies of themselves. That means they can continue to pump out coronavirus proteins, thereby keeping the immune system primed and ready to respond should the coronavirus turn up.
Merck used this technology successfully to make an Ebola vaccine that was approved last year and is trying it with a COVID-19 vaccine candidate as well.
Virus-like particle vaccine
As it sounds, a virus-like particle is an assembly of proteins that resembles a virus but has none of the genetic instructions for making copies of itself. Several companies are using these virus-like particles to create their vaccines. One, Medicago, located in Quebec City, uses plants to generate the virus-like particles.
RNA vaccine
DNA typically is the chemical that stores the genetic instructions that are passed from one generation to the next. To make proteins from those instructions, DNA has to be converted into RNA — and specific proteins are made by specific strands of RNA.
In the case of RNA vaccine candidates for COVID-19, the specific strand of RNA is the one that makes a protein on the surface of the coronavirus called the spike protein. The spike protein allows the virus to insert itself into cells in our bodies. The idea behind this vaccine is to inject that RNA sequence into someone, and then the person's cells start producing the spike protein that the immune system will recognize and produce antibodies to fight against.
An advantage of RNA vaccines is that they can be made rapidly. It was only a matter of days from the time in early January when Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus before the biotech company Moderna had a vaccine candidate ready for initial testing, and it was slightly more than two months before testing began in human volunteers. Several other companies, including pharma giants Pfizer and Sanofi, are also in the RNA vaccine arena.
Although many scientists are impressed with the potential of RNA vaccines, such vaccines were relatively new when COVID-19 appeared on the scene. They haven't been around long enough to complete the testing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would require to license them for use in humans.
DNA vaccine
Creating a DNA vaccine is another new approach to vaccine-making. The vaccine introduces directly into someone's body the genetic instructions for making the protein of interest. That person's cells then use those instructions to make the RNA that makes the desired protein to stimulate the immune system.
However, it's harder to get DNA into a person's cells than it is to get RNA in. Inovio is the first to start into human studies with its version, which requires an electric pulse to be administered with the vaccine to make sure the DNA is taken up.
Protein subunit vaccine
Another vaccine approach is to inject people with copies of the actual protein against which you want them to make antibodies. This is a well-explored approach, used to make pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus vaccines.
Several dozen companies are going down this path. First out of the gate in human trials was Novavax. It packages its proteins in a nanoparticle and injects them along with an adjuvant, which is a substance designed to enhance the response that the immune system makes to a protein.
Timeline
Normally, it can take a decade or more to develop, test and license a new vaccine, but the coronavirus pandemic is likely to speed up that process considerably because developers are doing things in parallel that they would usually do in sequence. Even before a vaccine candidate has been shown to work, companies are scaling up their manufacturing capacity with the intention of making hundreds of millions of doses of something that may never be useful. About a dozen vaccines are already being tested in humans, and proof that a particular vaccine works — or doesn't — may be available as soon as the end of this year.


npr--2020-06-24--What Parents Can Learn From Child Care Centers That Stayed Open During Lockdowns

What Parents Can Learn From Child Care Centers That Stayed Open During Lockdowns When Arizona schools shut down in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus , Tatiana Laimit , a nurse in Phoenix , knew she needed a backup plan .
Laimit is a single mother of a 6-year-old girl and had recently relocated to the area .
She did n't have any friends or family nearby to ask for help .
It was past 8 on a Friday night when she shot off an email to her local YMCA to ask if they were providing emergency care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ `` And immediately [ someone ] responded and let me know , 'Yes . '
`` Throughout the pandemic , many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks .
YMCA of the USA and New York City 's Department of Education have been caring for , collectively , tens of thousands of children since March , and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks .
As school districts sweat over reopening plans , and with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they 're comfortable with in-person school this fall , public health and policy experts say education leaders should be discussing and drawing on these real-world child care experiences .
The Y says that during the pandemic it cared for up to 40,000 children between the ages of 1 and 14 at 1,100 separate sites , often in partnership with local and state governments .
And in New York City , the pandemic 's national epicenter in March and April , the city 's Department of Education reports that it cared for more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in early days , and on very short notice , these two organizations followed safety guidance that closely resembles what 's now been officially put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
The Y says a few staff members and parents at sites around the country did test positive , but there are no records of having more than one case at a site .
This , among a population of essential workers .
In a separate , unscientific survey of child care centers , Brown University economist Emily Oster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , among 916 centers serving more than 20,000 children , just over 1 % of staff and 0.16 % of children were confirmed infected with the coronavirus .
The Y emphasized to NPR that its data is not comprehensive , and the availability of testing has varied across the country .
But experts say it 's worth taking these low numbers into account .
`` There are almost no recorded cases of child-to-adult transmission of COVID-19 , '' says Elliot Haspel , an education policy expert and child care advocate who wrote an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and schools as soon as possible .
`` It 's not zero risk , [ but ] we 're acting with a March 2020 understanding of COVID-19 and kids , and not with a June 2020 understanding of COVID-19 and kids . ''
In March , the CDC had yet to issue its official guidance about how to safely operate schools or group child care .
And yet , the protocols that the Y and New York City came up with were strikingly similar to the CDC 's May recommendations , as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and districts .
In order to slow the spread of illness , local YMCAs grouped `` pods '' of no more than nine children with each adult .
Heidi Brasher of the Y says this often meant using spaces such as basketball courts or even boardrooms , taking advantage of buildings that were otherwise closed .
`` They were very creative in the way they utilized space , '' Brasher says .
Pods did n't mix , but social distancing and use of masks were n't necessarily observed within each pod , especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cares for children as young as 1 year old .
Brasher says her organization consulted with the CDC to create a `` quick start '' guide for each location around the country to get up and running with emergency child care , going over everything from morning check-in procedures to food prep .
They did temperature checks and symptom screenings on each child coming in each day , with staff members wearing masks , gloves and gowns where available .
Children with symptoms were urged to stay home .
Staff came up with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand-washing .
Libby Corral is chief operating officer of the Valley of the Sun YMCA , which operated nine emergency child care sites across Arizona ( this month they expanded to regular camp programming ) .
She says that at the beginning of each 30-minute activity , such as sports or craft time , children get a stamp or marker doodle on their hands , which they have to wash off before moving on to the next activity .
`` We were teaching them not just 'rinse your hands , ' but 'scrub @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to dread washing their hands , they were able to get excited and laugh and have fun while they were doing that . ''
They also reinforce social distancing by having the kids make `` airplane arms '' when they 're standing in line or moving from place to place .
And children get their own materials , such as art supplies , to use from day to day , rather than sharing .
Having individual materials worked so well , says Corral , that they plan to make it a policy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things this way is expensive .
Even after emergency state aid , her YMCA locations ran at a deficit , Corral says .
In New York , which is still operating its city-run child care centers , the rules are similar , and in some ways stricter .
Face coverings are mandatory for all , whereas children at YMCA sites are n't required to wear them .
Social distancing is maintained as much as possible by everyone inside the building , reinforced with 6-foot-long posters .
And daily temperature checks of everyone coming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nurses , according to New York City Department of Education spokeswoman Katie O'Hanlon .
Officials with both organizations say they do n't know of any clusters of cases associated with a site .
Corral , in Arizona , says she knows of one case in which a staff member , who did n't work directly with children , tested positive , and another case in which a parent called in and volunteered to self-quarantine after an exposure .
Laimit , the nurse in Phoenix , credits the Valley of the Sun YMCA with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about health practices and her daughter 's social and emotional needs .
`` It takes a weight off of me as a parent , because when I 'm at work , especially providing care for others — and it 's absolutely chaotic right now , Arizona is on the rise with their COVID cases — not having to worry about my daughter and her safety ... it 's a savior for me .
It 's a weight off of my shoulders . ''
`` There are ways to substantially reduce the risks '' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about sending their kids off to camp and school , as long as a version of these guidelines is followed ?
Dr. Josh Sharfstein at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health says we can learn from the YMCA and New York City examples , but we should n't overgeneralize .
`` These experiences illustrate that it 's possible to bring kids together without a guarantee of an outbreak or a serious situation developing , '' he explains .
On the other hand , they do n't guarantee the opposite .
Sharfstein agrees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only from essential worker child care in the U.S. , but from the experiences of countries around the world where schools have already opened up .
`` There are ways to substantially reduce the risks when kids get together , '' he says .
He also agrees with Haspel , the child care advocate , in saying that `` there is converging evidence that the coronavirus does n't transmit among children like the flu — that it 's a lower risk . ''
There are two related reasons for this , Sharfstein explains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be less likely to get infected , and the second is that when they are infected they are much more likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic .
If they 're not coughing or sneezing , it 's harder for them to spread the virus to others .
The New Yorker reported that Iceland , which did extensive contact tracing , found only two examples of child-to-parent transmission .
Sharfstein says there are still some really important things we do n't know — and that we 'd like to know — as group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up .
He cites a May report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security .
It calls for a national research agenda to quickly address the outstanding questions about children and the coronavirus .
Among them , says the report : And then there 's the question of priorities .
Among all the steps organizations are taking — hand-washing , masks , temperature checks , pods , social distancing , and guidelines about staying home if sick — which are the most important ?
And crucially , how important is group size @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children small and separate imposes a particular burden on school districts .
In most places , reducing class sizes means reducing in-person class time , staggering schedules and continuing remote learning in parallel with in-class instruction .
That requires resources that not all students and schools have access to .
Right now , Sharfstein says , we just do n't know how important it is to limit group size .
`` I think it 's a failure that we have n't prioritized opening schools . ''
Prioritizing schools , he adds , means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus as soon as possible to inform the right policies to put in place .

What Parents Can Learn From Child Care Centers That Stayed Open During Lockdowns
Enlarge this image toggle caption Valley of the Sun YMCA Valley of the Sun YMCA
When Arizona schools shut down in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Tatiana Laimit, a nurse in Phoenix, knew she needed a backup plan. Laimit is a single mother of a 6-year-old girl and had recently relocated to the area. She didn't have any friends or family nearby to ask for help.
It was past 8 on a Friday night when she shot off an email to her local YMCA to ask if they were providing emergency care for the children of front-line workers. "And immediately [someone] responded and let me know, 'Yes.' "
Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City's Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks. As school districts sweat over reopening plans, and with just over half of parents telling pollsters they're comfortable with in-person school this fall, public health and policy experts say education leaders should be discussing and drawing on these real-world child care experiences.
The Y says that during the lockdowns it cared for up to 40,000 children between the ages of 1 and 14 at 1,100 separate sites, often in partnership with local and state governments. And in New York City, the pandemic's national epicenter in March and April, the city's Department of Education reports that it cared for more than 10,000 children at 170 sites.
Working in early days, and on very short notice, these two organizations followed safety guidance that closely resembles what's now been officially put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Y says a few staff members and parents at sites around the country did test positive, but there are no records of having more than one case at a site. This, among a population of essential workers.
In a separate, unscientific survey of child care centers, Brown University economist Emily Oster found that, as of Tuesday afternoon, among 916 centers serving more than 20,000 children, just over 1% of staff and 0.16% of children were confirmed infected with the coronavirus.
The Y emphasized to NPR that its data is not comprehensive, and the availability of testing has varied across the country. But experts say it's worth taking these low numbers into account.
toggle caption Valley of the Sun YMCA
"There are almost no recorded cases of child-to-adult transmission of COVID-19," says Elliot Haspel, an education policy expert and child care advocate who wrote an op-ed arguing for reopening full-time child care and schools as soon as possible. "It's not zero risk, [but] we're acting with a March 2020 understanding of COVID-19 and kids, and not with a June 2020 understanding of COVID-19 and kids."
Pods and "airplane arms"
In March, the CDC had yet to issue its official guidance about how to safely operate schools or group child care. And yet, the protocols that the Y and New York City came up with were strikingly similar to the CDC's May recommendations, as well as guidelines now being considered by states and districts.
In order to slow the spread of illness, local YMCAs and New York City grouped "pods" of no more than nine children with each adult. Heidi Brasher of the YMCA of the USA says this often meant using spaces such as basketball courts or even boardrooms, taking advantage of buildings that were otherwise closed. "They were very creative in the way they utilized space," Brasher says.
Pods didn't mix, but social distancing and use of masks weren't necessarily observed within each pod, especially with very young children — the Y cares for children as young as 1 year old.
Brasher says her organization consulted with the CDC to create a "quick start" guide for each location around the country to get up and running with emergency child care, going over everything from morning check-in procedures to food prep.
They did temperature checks and symptom screenings on each child coming in each day, with staff members wearing masks, gloves and gowns where available. Children with symptoms were urged to stay home.
Staff came up with creative ways to reinforce frequent and thorough hand-washing. Libby Corral is chief operating officer of the Valley of the Sun YMCA, which operated nine emergency child care sites across Arizona (this month they expanded to regular camp programming). She says that at the beginning of each 30-minute activity, such as sports or craft time, children get a stamp or marker doodle on their hands, which they have to wash off before moving on to the next activity.
"We were teaching them not just 'rinse your hands,' but 'scrub them.' And instead of having to dread washing their hands, they were able to get excited and laugh and have fun while they were doing that."
They also reinforce social distancing by having the kids make "airplane arms" when they're standing in line or moving from place to place. And children get their own materials, such as art supplies, to use from day to day, rather than sharing. Having individual materials worked so well, says Corral, that they plan to make it a policy in the future.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Valley of the Sun YMCA Valley of the Sun YMCA
Of course, running things this way is expensive. Even after emergency state aid, her YMCA locations ran at a deficit, Corral says.
In New York, which is still operating its city-run child care centers, the rules are similar, and in some ways stricter. Face coverings are mandatory for all, whereas children at YMCA sites aren't required to wear them. Social distancing is maintained as much as possible by everyone inside the building, reinforced with 6-foot-long posters of animals like sea turtles. And daily temperature checks of everyone coming in the building are done by school nurses, according to New York City Department of Education spokeswoman Katie O'Hanlon.
Officials with both organizations say they don't know of any clusters of cases associated with a site. Corral, in Arizona, says she knows of one case in which a staff member, who didn't work directly with children, tested positive, and another case in which a parent called in and volunteered to self-quarantine after an exposure.
Not having to worry about my daughter and her safety ... it's a savior for me. It's a weight off of my shoulders.
Laimit, the nurse in Phoenix, credits the Valley of the Sun YMCA with "really great communication," both about health practices and her daughter's social and emotional needs.
"It takes a weight off of me as a parent, because when I'm at work, especially providing care for others — and it's absolutely chaotic right now, Arizona is on the rise with their COVID cases — not having to worry about my daughter and her safety ... it's a savior for me. It's a weight off of my shoulders."
"There are ways to substantially reduce the risks"
Should parents across the country stop worrying about sending their kids off to camp and school, as long as a version of these guidelines is followed?
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health says we can learn from the YMCA and New York City examples, but we shouldn't overgeneralize.
"These experiences illustrate that it's possible to bring kids together without a guarantee of an outbreak or a serious situation developing," he explains. On the other hand, they don't guarantee the opposite.
Sharfstein agrees it's OK to extrapolate — not only from essential worker child care in the U.S., but from the experiences of countries around the world where schools have already opened up. "There are ways to substantially reduce the risks when kids get together," he says.
He also agrees with Haspel, the child care advocate, in saying that "there is converging evidence that the coronavirus doesn't transmit among children like the flu — that it's a lower risk."
There are two related reasons for this, Sharfstein explains: One is that children seem to be less likely to get infected, and the second is that when they are infected they are much more likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic. If they're not coughing or sneezing, it's harder for them to spread the virus to others. The New Yorker reported that Iceland, which did extensive contact tracing, found only two examples of child-to-parent transmission.
A question of priorities
Sharfstein says there are still some really important things we don't know — and that we'd like to know — as group child care and schools start to open up. He cites a May report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It calls for a national research agenda to quickly address the outstanding questions about children and the coronavirus. Among them, says the report:
"How vulnerable to severe illness are students who have underlying health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, or severe obesity? How safe is it for adults who themselves have serious underlying health conditions? ... How safe is it for teachers, administrators, and other school staff? ... Are certain school communities at greater risk than others relative to exposure, and should each school community be evaluated independently to determine level of risk?"
And then there's the question of priorities. Among all the steps organizations are taking — hand-washing, masks, temperature checks, pods, social distancing, and guidelines about staying home if sick — which are the most important?
And crucially, how important is group size? The recommendation to keep groups of children small and separate imposes a particular burden on school districts. In most places, reducing class sizes means reducing in-person class time, staggering schedules and continuing remote learning in parallel with in-class instruction. That requires resources that not all students and schools have access to.
Right now, Sharfstein says, we just don't know how important it is to limit group size. "I think it's a failure that we haven't prioritized opening schools."
Prioritizing schools, he adds, means doing lots of research on children and the coronavirus as soon as possible to inform the right policies to put in place.


npr--2020-06-24--Crews Begin Removal Of John C. Calhoun Statue In South Carolina

Crews Begin Removal Of John C. Calhoun Statue In South Carolina Crowds gathered early Wednesday in Charleston , S.C. , as crews began preparing to remove the statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun from Marion Square .
The removal comes less than 24 hours after the Charleston City Council 's unanimous vote on the statue 's fate .
Calhoun 's statue is the latest in a wave of statue removals throughout the nation following protests for racial justice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd .
The Charleston Police Department announced just before midnight that Calhoun Street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be closed for several hours for the statue 's removal .
Massive cranes were seen attaching straps to the statue as workers prepared to take it down .
The city 's mayor , John Tecklenburg , announced the resolution to relocate Calhoun 's statue last week at a press conference .
A special panel of historians will determine the statue 's new home .
The mayor said he wanted the statue to be preserved at a museum or educational institution where it could be displayed in its full historical context .
`` We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consideration of the facts of Mr. Calhoun 's life , '' Tecklenburg said .
He called Calhoun both `` South Carolina 's most prominent national statesman '' and `` its most consequential defender of slavery and white supremacy . ''
Tecklenburg also addressed the Heritage Act , which prohibits the removal of war memorials in the state .
Since the John C. Calhoun statue is not a war memorial , he said the state law does not apply .
Calhoun was born in 1782 in Abbeville , S.C .
He held a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including U.S. senator , U.S. secretary of state and seventh vice president of the United States , serving under President John Quincy Adams from 1825-1829 and President Andrew Jackson from 1829-1832 .
Calhoun died in 1850 , 11 years before the start of the Civil War .
His support of slavery did not waver during his lifetime .
In his press conference , Mayor Tecklenburg quoted a speech Calhoun gave on the Senate floor in 1837 , in which he called the institution of slavery a `` positive good '' instead of an @ @

Crews Begin Removing John C. Calhoun Statue In South Carolina
Enlarge this image toggle caption Meg Kinnard/AP Meg Kinnard/AP
Crowds gathered early Wednesday in Charleston, S.C., as crews began preparing to remove the statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun from Marion Square.
The removal comes less than 24 hours after the Charleston City Council's unanimous vote on the statue's fate. Calhoun's statue is the latest in a wave of removals throughout the nation following protests for racial justice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.
The Charleston Police Department announced just before midnight that Calhoun Street between Meeting Street and King Street would be closed for several hours for the statue's removal. Massive cranes were seen attaching straps to the statue as workers prepared to take it down.
The city's mayor, John Tecklenburg, announced the resolution to relocate Calhoun's statue last week at a press conference. A special panel of historians will determine the statue's new home. The mayor said he wanted the statue to be preserved at a museum or educational institution, where it could be displayed in its full historical context.
"We are taking this action only after careful consideration of the facts of Mr. Calhoun's life," Tecklenburg said. He called Calhoun both "South Carolina's most prominent national statesman" and "its most consequential defender of slavery and white supremacy."
Tecklenburg also addressed the Heritage Act, which prohibits the removal of war memorials in the state. Since the Calhoun statue is not a war memorial, he said the state law does not apply.
Calhoun was born in 1782 in Abbeville, S.C. He held a number of prominent offices during his lifetime, including U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of state and seventh vice president of the United States, serving under President John Quincy Adams from 1825-1829 and President Andrew Jackson from 1829-1832.
Calhoun died in 1850, 11 years before the start of the Civil War. His support of slavery did not waver during his lifetime. In his press conference, Tecklenburg quoted a speech Calhoun gave on the Senate floor in 1837, in which he called the institution of slavery a "positive good" instead of an evil.