Emily S. Rueb

And now, a plane crash could be added to that list, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board filed this week.

A crop-dusting plane that dumped hundreds of gallons of pink water over a field in Turkey, Texas, about 300 miles northwest of Dallas, crashed to the ground in early September, according to safety board documents. No major injuries were reported.

The pilot, Raj Horan, had been “conducting a gender reveal flight for a friend” when, after releasing about 350 gallons of water, the single-seat plane “got too slow” and stalled, records show.

A passenger, identified as Jennifer Harrell, sustained minor injuries, according to the incident report. The aircraft, which struck the ground and flipped on its back, sustained substantial damage.

Attempts to reach Harrell and Horan on Friday were not successful.

The pilot told investigators there were “no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane.”

Cultural researchers have traced the origins of the so-called gender reveal party to the late 2000s. But those early attempts feel almost quaint by today’s standards.

Despite the possibility of attracting backlash for reinforcing gender stereotypes and schadenfreude should things go wrong, some couples have felt that confetti or cake sprinkles are not flashy enough to deliver their messages.

Last month, an Iowa couple trying to create a device that could shoot colored powder into the air inadvertently built a pipe bomb that killed one of their guests. A day later, authorities in the state investigated another explosion of a store-bought “gender reveal kit,” according to The Associated Press.

On Australia’s Gold Coast, a black car was rigged to spew thick clouds of blue smoke. But after drifting slowly and spinning its wheels on the road, the car burst into flames. (The driver managed to escape.)

And in 2018, a man shot a rifle at a target containing a highly explosive chemical mixed with colorful powder packets that were intended to create a pink or blue cloud. The resulting explosion, however, sparked a massive fire that took firefighters a week to extinguish and burned more than 45,000 acres in Arizona.

The man who shot the rifle, a Customs and Border Protection agent, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of U.S. Forest Service regulations and agreed to pay $220,000 in restitution.

This article originally appeared in

'Gender Reveal' Celebration in Texas Led to a Plane Crash

In recent years, expectant parents have gone to extreme lengths to create splashy, Instagrammable moments to announce the sex of their child. Some of the celebrations, however, have ended in calamity: a 45,000-acre forest fire, a flaming car, a deadly explosion.

The inmate, Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez, who had been incarcerated at Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia, about 65 miles west of Savannah, walked free Friday around 11:30 a.m., according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The department, one of the country’s largest prison systems with nearly 52,000 inmates, announced his release in a statement three days after the incident. It did not explain how the error had occurred or why it had not been revealed sooner.

A spokeswoman for the department, Lori Benoit, said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding his release and would carry out a “full internal investigation.”

“The priority of the Georgia Department of Corrections is apprehending the offender as quickly as possible, and at this time, we have all resources focused on the search,” Benoit said.

According to online corrections records, Munoz-Mendez, 31, was sentenced to life in prison for rapes that occurred in 2010 and 2012, as well as aggravated child molestation in 2010.

John Warr, the Gwinnett County prosecutor who handled the case, said that Munoz-Mendez had begun molesting the 7-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time, culminating in rape several years later.

Warr, who helped convict Munoz-Mendez in 2015, said by phone Tuesday that he had learned about the accidental release by reading an article online.

“He’d been out of prison, mistakenly, for about 60 hours by the time we heard about it,” he said.

Warr said that he “immediately” called the victim, who lives with a foster mother, and that they were both “shocked.”

Neither had been contacted by the corrections department, he said.

“Something needs to be done about the protocols, the procedures, about verifying who they’re releasing,” Warr said of the department.

Warr said the state had recently passed a constitutional amendment bolstering the rights of crime victims to be notified about updates in legal cases involving those who have harmed them.

“I don’t think those were adhered to,” he said, “definitely not in a timely manner.”

The corrections department asked for help in capturing the inmate, adding that he should not be approached.

“The public is reminded to call 911,” the department said, or call 478-992-5111.

Convicted Rapist in Georgia Is Released From Prison 'in Error'

A manhunt is underway in Georgia for a convicted rapist and child molester who is serving a life sentence and was released “in error,” the authorities said.

And according to a study published this week, about 1 in 10 older adults are considered binge drinkers.

“Binge drinking, even episodically or infrequently, may negatively affect other health conditions by exacerbating disease, interacting with prescribed medications and complicating disease management,” said Dr. Benjamin Han, the lead author of the study that was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Alcohol is also a risk factor for injury, Han said, but the consequences and recovery from a fall are much more serious for an 81-year-old than a 21-year-old.

The study defined binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in a sitting for men, and four or more drinks in a sitting for women. And a drink equaled a can or bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, a shot of liquor, or a mixed drink with liquor in it.

Han’s group analyzed data from the annual U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2015-17. In all, the findings included 10,927 adults aged 65 or older who reported their drinking habits in the previous 30 days.

The group did not include adults living in long-term-care facilities or nursing homes, Han added.

The prevalence of binge drinking among older adults is still relatively low compared with other age groups, Han said. More than 38 percent of college-aged adults, 18 to 25, had recently drunk excessively, the highest prevalence of any age group. Adults ages 26 to 34 had only slightly fewer binge drinkers, and the second-highest percentage, the study found.

While the drinking habits of teenagers and younger people has been a focus for clinicians and researchers, more attention should be paid to older adults, Han said.

Timothy S. Naimi, an alcohol epidemiologist and professor at Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health, said the 1 in 10 figure “is an impressive number and it’s concerning.”

The number is “undoubtedly an underestimate,” he added, because people tend to miscalculate how much they actually drink and heavy drinkers are less likely to be available or to be included in surveys for other reasons.

Han said he hoped the study would emphasize the importance for clinicians to screen older patients for alcohol use and to educate them about how their bodies become more sensitive to alcohol as they age.

The study did not examine the causes of excessive drinking or whether this number represents an increase or a decrease from previous years. However, Joseph J. Palamar, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and an author of the study, pointed to the cohort itself as a factor.

“I believe that this is driven in part by the baby boomers aging,” Palamar said, about a group that was more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol than the generation before it.

Dr. George F. Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the organizations that funded the study, said the findings confirmed trends they have been monitoring.

In 2017, epidemiologists at the institute published a study using data from 2001-02 and 2012-13 that showed that problem drinking was rising among older Americans.

And more women of all ages, who are more susceptible to alcohol-related problems than men, are drinking heavily, Koob added.

“In the old days, many, many more men drank than women,” he said. “And now the gap is closing.”

This week’s study crystallized a very real problem, Koob said, especially the pharmacological aspect.

“You can actually kill yourself much more easily with alcohol combined with one of these pills,” he said.

“This is the elephant in the room piece about alcohol that society doesn’t understand,” he said, that alcohol “is a drug and when it’s taken in excess, it can have some pretty harmful effects.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/health/binge-drinkers-adult-alcohol.html" id="add76e87-1ec2-34c3-a130-1fe6d2bc1f7a">The New York Times</a>.

One in 10 Older Adults Binge Drinks, Study Says

Excessive alcohol consumption is not safe for a person at any age, but it is particularly dangerous for older adults.

Duran, 23, accepted the offer. Just four days into the two-week trip, he was helping uncover parts of a skull belonging to a triceratops, most likely about 65 million years old.

In an interview Friday, Duran sounded a note of regret that he did not land the internship, at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles. Still, he said, he was happy with how things ultimately worked out.

“I think I found a more significant treasure in the Badlands,” he said.

On June 4, the pair spied what they first thought was petrified wood but later turned out to be a bone fragment — specifically, a roughly 3-foot horn that would have been attached to the dinosaur’s left brow. The discovery was made in the Hell Creek Formation, a series of rock formations that cover parts of Montana and the Dakotas dating to the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago.

According to Michael Kjelland, the professor who invited Duran on the dig, the area has produced bones from three separate triceratops — an unusually high concentration.

Kjelland, who teaches biology at Mayville State University in North Dakota, said it was too early to glean the significance of the bones, which might not be part of a complete skeleton. He has seen several triceratops skulls in the course of his studies, he said, including one belonging to an almost fully intact fossil called Gundy that was discovered in the region in 1992.

Duran said he had a childhood passion for dinosaurs that simply never dwindled.

“I’ve always found it fascinating that there are lost worlds to be discovered,” he said, adding that learning about the period before humans arrived was “very important for understanding life on Earth.”

Duran met Kjelland a few years ago at a biotechnology conference, and the two have since teamed up on several projects, including starting a nonprofit called Fossil Excavators.

One of the organization’s objectives, Kjelland said, is to provide opportunities for students like Duran.

“It’s not just digging fossils,” he said. “It’s being out in nature” and learning what the past can teach us about how to prevent extinction and the worst effects of global warming.

Before the dig, Kjelland warned Duran that they might have to eat rattlesnakes and live off the land to survive in the Badlands, a region known for its extreme temperatures, scorpions and swarming insects.

“You have to have patience, too, because these are multipiece, 3D jigsaw puzzles, and it’s quite a process to get them excavated and out,” he said.

It took about 10 days to extract the fragile skull and “engineering that rivaled SpaceX,” he joked. They used pickaxes to dig out the ground around it and elongated screwdrivers to pry the dirt and the mud apart from the bones.

To stabilize the bones for transportation, they used a glue specifically formulated to seep into the crevices and an accelerating agent to harden it. Once the skull, which, excluding its fan-shape frill, is about 5 feet long, was out of the ground, they wrapped it in strips of foil and burlap dipped it in plaster to make a cast. They built a makeshift crate out of two-by-fours and taped memory foam to a protruding cheekbone to reduce vibrations in transit. They used an excavator to hoist the skull, which they estimated weighed 750 to 1,000 pounds, onto a local cattle rancher’s truck.

Duran and the fossil excavators made a video of the expedition.

They named the skull Alice, after the landowner who had allowed them to dig on her property.

Alice’s skull is currently resting in a plaster jacket in Kjelland’s lab on the outskirts of Valley City, North Dakota.

“I’m not totally sure yet where she’s going,” Kjelland said Friday. “I want it to be somewhere where a lot of folks can visit her and see her and maybe do some research on her.”

For his part, Duran said he hoped to take some of the molds back to the Merced campus.

This summer, he is taking a course in organic chemistry in order to graduate in the fall. He is not sure yet what career he wants to pursue, but it will most likely be in biotechnology or paleontology, he said.

And he plans to keep digging in North Dakota.

“There are plenty of secrets that remain in the Badlands,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" id="c48146d8-6618-34e2-aff5-de9df9adf096">The New York Times</a>.

Triceratops Skull, 65 Million Years Old, Unearthed by College Student, 23

Harrison Duran, a biology student at the University of California, Merced, had just been rejected from a summer internship when he received an invitation from a professor to go fossil hunting in a remote area of North Dakota.

But a few months later, Elisabeth Milich said she received what seemed to be an unbelievable offer from a stranger in New York City: He would pay for the snacks and supplies she and her husband had been buying for her students with their own money.

“I thought it was a one-time thing,” Milich said Thursday.

Instead, the man, Ben Adam, has since supplied her classroom at Whispering Wind Academy with colored pencils, paper clips, books, crackers and big bags of Hershey’s Kisses for two semesters. He has also bought a butterfly farm for another teacher in Phoenix, and supplies for four other classrooms in the Phoenix area.

He started a website last month called Classroom Giving, which allows other people the chance to give necessities to teachers.

Adam, a freelance audio producer who owns a real estate company, learned about Milich on the HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher.” He said he was shocked that she was paying for cleaning supplies and paintbrushes on a salary of about $35,000.

“I was just really disappointed to see how little she makes,” Adam said.

For people like Milich, who are “doing the right thing,” he asked, “why do we nickel and dime them?”

Classroom Giving is best described as a gift registry for educators.

Teachers post a “wish list” of materials on Amazon, and donors can choose to buy a pack of markers or an entire semester’s worth of pencils and paper, which are delivered through the online retailer. So far about a dozen teachers in Arizona have received supplies, according to the site, and almost 20 teachers have made requests.

Since the local website azcentral wrote about Classroom Giving this week, Adam said he had received hundreds of messages from teachers in other states hoping to participate.

Milich said her class referred to Adam as “their New York friend,” and they sent him a thank you poster.

One of her students, Habiba, expressed gratitude.

“We are thankful because now we get to paint a lot and make lots of beautiful crafts,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/education/arizona-teacher-salary-facebook-post.html" id="28f028a5-c0e4-3c29-a9bc-025a9f717bc7">The New York Times</a>.

After an elementary schoolteacher in Phoenix posted her salary on Facebook in March last year amid a statewide protest for more education funding, she got a lot of calls from the media, and a lot of hate mail, too.

A Teacher Shared Her Salary, and a Stranger Started a School Supplies Wish List

But a few months later, the teacher, Elisabeth Milich, said she received what seemed to be an unbelievable offer from a stranger in New York City: He would pay for the snacks and supplies she and her husband had been buying for her students with their own money.

“I was just really disappointed to see how little she makes,” Adam said Thursday. “I would be homeless with that kind of money.”

Across the country, public schoolteachers have been protesting low wages, including in Arizona, where the recession, coupled with tax cuts, wiped out billions of dollars in state revenue. In 2017, Arizona’s spending per student and its average teacher salary were well below the national averages.

Hundreds of public schools in the state were temporarily shut down in April 2018 when teachers walked out of their classrooms to demand more funding.

The streets of downtown Phoenix were flooded with people wearing crimson clothing as educators and their supporters marched to the state Capitol wearing red T-shirts and chanting “Red for Ed,” as the movement became known there.

After a week of protests, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a budget bill to provide teachers with the 20% raises they had demanded, in addition to new funds for classrooms.

Although the movement has brought attention to the issue, Milich said the system is “broken.”

“People still have old textbooks and work in buildings that are falling apart,” she said. “I know educators in this state who are leaving the profession every day because they can’t afford to live or because they’re sick of the environment they’re working in.”

“It’s changing the culture of a classroom and a teacher,” she said of Adam’s work. “Unless you’re in teaching, you don’t understand the value of a brand-new box of paints that you don’t have to buy out of your own pocket and what a blessing that is.”

One of her students, Mina, told a reporter for azcentral that she thinks Adam “is the nicest person ever” and called him “our hero.”

Another student, Habiba, also expressed gratitude.

After an elementary schoolteacher in Phoenix posted her salary on Facebook in March last year amid a statewide protest for more education funding, she got a lot of calls from the news media, and a lot of hate mail, too.

On Tuesday, video streaming giant Netflix and the production house that made the film “Crazy Rich Asians,” SK Global Entertainment, announced the acquisition of the rights to the boys’ story. The project will be directed by Jon M. Chu, who directed “Crazy Rich Asians,” the first major Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast and crew since “The Joy Luck Club,” and Nattawut Poonpiriya, a Thai director known for his 2017 film “Bad Genius.”

John Penotti, president and co-chief executive of SK Global, said it has not been decided whether the project will be a feature film or a miniseries.

“We’re going to do our best to accurately represent what happened,” Penotti said, adding that the company plans to film in Thailand and to “cast appropriately.”

The goal, he said, is to “tell the story from a culturally correct point of view.”

In July, Chu expressed an interest in the project to make sure Asian actors and crew members would be adequately represented.

“I refuse to let Hollywood #whitewashout the Thai Cave rescue story! No way. Not on our watch,” Chu said on Twitter at the time. “That won’t happen or we’ll give them hell.”

Anyone thinking about the story had “better approach it right &amp; respectfully,” he added.

On Tuesday, the “Crazy Rich Asians” director said on Twitter that it had been “quite a journey to get the official rights,” but that he was “excited” for the project.

The “Bad Genius” director said in a statement that “this is an opportunity for me as a filmmaker — and also a Thai citizen — to write a thank-you letter to the rest of the world.”

Penotti said SK Global won a competitive bid to acquire the exclusive rights from 13 Tham Luang Co., which was partly established by the Thai government for the boys and their coach, who are shareholders.

Thailand’s Culture Ministry first announced the movie deal in March, according to The Associated Press, which reported then that a government spokesman said the families of the survivors would each receive 3 million baht (about $94,000). A request for comment to the culture ministry was not immediately returned Tuesday.

(In September, Universal Pictures had said it acquired the life rights for the film, according to Deadline Hollywood.)

“We look forward to working with all involved parties to ensure our story is told accurately,” Ekkapol Chantawong, a spokesman for 13 Tham Luang, said in a statement Tuesday, “so that the world can recognize, once again, the heroes that made the rescue operation a success.”

In July, 12 boys from the Wild Boar soccer team and Ekkapol, their 25-year-old coach, became trapped 1 mile underground after heavy rains flooded Tham Luang Cave, a large complex in the northern province of Chiang Rai where the team had taken an afternoon excursion.

For more than two weeks, rescuers attempted to find other entry points; they considered drilling through the mountaintop into the roof of the cavern where the group was believed to be.

Eventually, an international team of rescuers rigged a series of plastic cocoons, floating stretchers and a rope line that hoisted the players and coach over outcroppings. The boys, who were given anti-anxiety medication, endured long stretches underwater, in bone-chilling temperatures. (A child-size submarine designed by tech billionaire Elon Musk was not used.)

In all, 10,000 people participated in the rescue, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and representatives from 100 government agencies. One person died, but all the boys and their coach survived, with some licking water off the limestone walls.

The drama has inspired a handful of books for children and adults, television documentaries and a procession of projects, including one film due out this summer — “The Cave,” produced by a Bangkok-based film company.

In a statement Tuesday, Erika North, director of International Originals at Netflix, said, “Thailand is a very important country for Netflix, and we are looking forward to bringing this inspiring local but globally resonant story of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to life, once again, for global audiences.”

Penotti said he was instantly drawn to the story and flew to the province a few weeks after the incident. And he is confident his company has enough international experience to be “culturally aware and sensitive.”

“This is a Thai story at its core,” Penotti said, “but it’s clear this is a unique situation, and we feel a great burden to get it right. And we’re going to.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/arts/netflix-thai-cave-boys-rescue.html" id="932d7eeb-51dc-3727-a765-9c56a5f42503">The New York Times</a>.

Almost as quickly as the floodwaters rose in the cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach were trapped for more than two weeks in northern Thailand in July, filmmakers and authors raced to tell their story.

Netflix Project to Spotlight Thai Cave Rescue

“This has been a heartbreaking case,” Judge Joseph Marx said in sentencing the former officer, Nouman Raja, for the two counts a jury found him guilty of last month: manslaughter by culpable negligence and attempted first-degree murder with a firearm.

Raja, who had faced a maximum penalty of life in prison in the fatal shooting of Corey Jones, received a 25-year term for each count. The sentences will be served concurrently.

“This is a milestone in black America,” Benjamin Crump, one of the lawyers for Jones’ family, told reporters in front of the courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday afternoon.

Richard Lubin, who oversees Raja’s defense team, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The 2015 killing of Jones, 31, a church band member without a criminal record, became a flashpoint in a string of contentious shootings of black men by the police.

The encounter also highlighted Florida’s so-called Stand Your Ground law, which Raja’s lawyer had cited in his defense.

The Stand Your Ground law drew controversy in 2012 after George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager. Zimmerman was eventually acquitted, and the law ultimately did not figure into the defense strategy pursued by his legal team.

On Oct. 18, 2015, Jones was on the side of an Interstate 95 exit ramp in Palm Beach County at about 3:15 a.m. waiting for a tow truck when Raja, who worked for the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department and was on duty in plainclothes, approached Jones’ SUV in an unmarked van.

The Police Department said Jones had “confronted” Raja, who then fired his weapon.

Jones had a legally purchased handgun with him. Raja has claimed that Jones pointed it at him, but prosecutors say Raja fired shots even as Jones fled. Within moments of approaching Jones, Raja fired six shots and struck Jones three times, killing him.

The gun Jones had bought three days earlier was found on the ground, the police said.

The interaction was recorded on the phone line after Jones had called for roadside assistance. The audio recording, in which gunshots could be heard, was played repeatedly for the jury.

C.J. Jones, Jones’ older brother, told the local CBS station, CBS 12, this week that he blamed himself for not getting out of bed to help his brother when he called that night shortly before 3 a.m.

“It’s hard,” he said. “It’s really hard.”

“I never had a fight with him,”Jones said. “We never had to argue about nothing. It was the best feeling to have a brother like that because he looked up to me, he listened to me, he lived his life.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/nouman-raja-corey-jones-verdict.html" id="8feb3a21-655a-3a16-aa7f-990148ee8b02">The New York Times</a>.

A former police officer in Florida was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting a black man who had been awaiting help on a highway more than three years ago.

Former Florida Police Officer Is Sentenced to 25 Years in Fatal Shooting of Black Man

Limiting, and in some cases eliminating, screen time for children under the age of 5 will result in healthier adults, the organization, a United Nations health agency, announced Wednesday.

But taking away iPads and other electronic devices is only part of the solution, the researchers said. Children under 5 should also get more exercise and sleep to develop better habits that will stave off obesity and diseases in adolescence and adulthood, the guidelines said.

“Achieving health for all means doing what is best for health right from the beginning of people’s lives,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said in a statement. “Early childhood is a period of rapid development and a time when family lifestyle patterns can be adapted to boost health gains.”

Screen time has become shorthand for the amount of time spent interacting with TVs, computers, smartphones, digital tablets and video games. But there is limited data on its short- and long-term effects on brain development and overall health.

In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued guidelines that recommended children under 18 months avoided screen time other than video-chatting. And it recommended introducing only “high-quality programming” to children 18 to 24 months of age, and advised that parents and caregivers watch the program with them. Children between the ages of 2 to 5 should watch only one hour per day of approved programming.

The World Health Organization’s guidelines go further than those recommendations.

“Improving physical activity, reducing sedentary time and ensuring quality sleep in young children will improve their physical, mental health and well-being and help prevent childhood obesity and associated diseases later in life,” said Dr. Fiona Bull, a WHO program manager who led a team of experts who developed the guidelines.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/health/screen-time-kids.html" id="36104764-864b-3b27-a1d7-dd55a600eb88">The New York Times</a>.

In a new set of guidelines, the World Health Organization said that infants under 1 year old should not be exposed to electronic screens and that children between the ages of 2 and 4 should not have more than one hour of “sedentary screen time” each day.

WHO Says Limited or No Screen Time for Children Under 5

But taking away iPads and other electronic devices is only part of the solution, the researchers said. Children under 5 should also get more exercise and sleep in order to develop better habits that will stave off obesity and diseases in adolescence and adulthood, the guidelines said.

As previous generations worried about the effect of radios and televisions, researchers today are studying the effect of “screen time,” which has become a shorthand for the amount of time spent interacting with TVs, computers, smartphones, digital tablets and video games, on brain development and overall health. But there is limited data on the short- and long-term effects.

The National Institutes of Health has funded a $300 million project known as the ABCD Study (for Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development), which hopes to show how brain development is affected by a range of experiences, including substance use, concussions and screen time. But the study is tracking children ages 9 to 10 into young adulthood, and the data is preliminary.

In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued guidelines that recommended children under 18 months avoided screen time other than video-chatting. And it recommended introducing only “high-quality programming” to children 18 to 24 months of age, and advised that parents and caregivers watch the program with them. Children between the ages of 2 to 5 years should watch only one hour per day of approved programming.

Dr. Fiona Bull, a program manager for surveillance and population-based prevention of noncommunicable diseases at the WHO, led a team of experts who developed the guidelines.

“Improving physical activity, reducing sedentary time and ensuring quality sleep in young children will improve their physical, mental health and well-being and help prevent childhood obesity and associated diseases later in life,” Bull said in a statement.

The researchers also recommended that children under 5 not be restrained in strollers, high chairs or strapped to a caregiver’s back for more than one hour at a time. And children between the ages of 1 and 5 should get three hours of physical activity per day, and get at least 10 hours of sleep per night.

According to the WHO, the number of obese people worldwide has nearly tripled since 1974. Instances of childhood obesity, once considered a scourge of wealthy nations, are increasing dramatically in low- and middle-income countries, especially those in Africa and Asia.

The organization said that the failure to meet current physical activity recommendations is responsible for more than 5 million deaths globally each year across all age groups.

“What we really need to do is bring back play for children,” said Dr. Juana Willumsen, who works on childhood obesity issues at the WHO, in a statement. “This is about making the shift from sedentary time to playtime, while protecting sleep.”

In a letter to the police chief of New Hope, a town about 40 miles northeast of Philadelphia, District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub of Bucks County said the shooting of the man, Brian Riling, “was neither justified, nor criminal, but was excused.”

The officer violated a department rule that a Taser be worn on the opposite hip from a firearm, but he “did not possess the criminal mental state required to be guilty of a crime under state law,” Weintraub said in a statement that quoted his letter to the police chief.

The statement refers to a Pennsylvania law that states that a person cannot be charged with a crime “if he makes a mistake as a matter of fact for which there is a reasonable explanation or excuse.”

The officer, who was not identified because charges were not filed, did violate the department’s policy by wearing the Taser on his right side, in front of his firearm, the district attorney’s investigation found. Officers are required to wear Tasers on their non-dominant side, known as the “cross-draw position.”

Video of the March 3 incident, released by the district attorney’s office, showed Riling entering a holding cell and removing his belt in response to an officer’s instructions. In the process, “a white, rectangular object consistent with a drug baggie” fell from his waistband to the floor, Weintraub said. When Riling moved to cover the object with his foot, an officer pushed him onto a bench in the cell, resulting in a skirmish.

A second officer entered the cell and yelled “Taser!” before shooting Riling in the torso with his gun.

Riling was taken to a hospital in critical condition, where he spent several days before being released, according to the district attorney’s statement.

The officer who fired the gun was on paid administrative leave until he retired from the police department, three days before the district attorney released his findings.

“Given the totality of circumstances, the officer would have been justified in using his Taser to regain control of Riling inside the holding cell,” Weintraub said, “as the officer had a reasonable belief the scuffle posed a danger to his fellow officer.”

On the day of the shooting, Riling was in police custody on charges of intimidation and retaliation against a victim, simple assault and related offenses from an incident on March 3, Weintraub said in his statement. He was also charged with burglarizing the same victim’s home.

The officer “was aware of these two criminal episodes ahead of the holding cell incident, and had himself heard threats of violence made by Riling during a phone call between Riling and the previously mentioned victim,” Weintraub said.

William Goldman, a lawyer representing the officer, told The Intelligencer newspaper that the officer had acted “in defense of a fellow officer with a large man.”

The New Hope Police Department thanked the district attorney’s office for the investigation in a statement posted online.

Chief Michael V. Cummings of the New Hope police could not be reached for comment Sunday night.

Police departments have a complicated past with Taser stun guns, which shoot electrified barbs instead of bullets. The devices became a popular tool for police officers in the 2000s as a less-lethal weapon, like pepper spray or batons.

But some studies have shown there is no evidence that the adoption of Tasers reduces the use of firearms by police officers. And Tasers, too, can be deadly.

Cases of officers mistaking a Taser for a gun are rare, said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies the use of force.

It demonstrates that the officer isn’t “well-trained or is so hyped up he or she doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“In my estimation,” he said, “there’s no real excuse for it.”

In 2009, a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer fatally shot a young, unarmed man on New Year’s Day, while the man, Oscar Grant III, was lying face down on a transit platform. The officer said the killing was an accident and that he had mistaken his firearm for his Taser. He was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

In 2016, a former volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was convicted of killing a suspect when he accidentally fired his handgun instead of a Taser.

Robert J. Louden, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at Georgian Court University and a former chief hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, said Tasers are normally worn on the non-gun side of an officer’s belt to “minimize the probability or the possibility of drawing the wrong weapon.”

“In the heat of battle,” he said, “people do things that turn out not to be what they wanted to do.”

Using a Taser to “temporarily disable” a person is preferable to reaching for a gun, he said.

But, he added, the question remains: “Why do you say ‘Taser’ and then use your right hand to shoot somebody with a gun?”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/us/pa-police-taser-gun.html" id="936cfb01-6739-320c-a65f-9f518a0a55c3">The New York Times</a>.

Officer Who Used Gun Instead of Taser Won't Face Charges for Shooting Unarmed Man

A police officer in Pennsylvania will not be charged after shooting and wounding an unarmed man in the torso in the “honest but mistaken” belief he was using a Taser, authorities said.

But some studies have shown there is no evidence that the adoption of Tasers reduce the use of firearms by police officers. And Tasers, too, can be deadly.

Emily S. Rueb

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