A moment of forgetfulness by a distracted or sleep-deprived parent can be devastating. Experts and child-safety advocates have called for interior motion sensors in all vehicles.Ever since Tyler Cestia left his son Thomas in his truck on a hot morning in June two years ago, he has felt, he said, like a cork bobbing in the ocean.It was June 14, 2021, and Mr. Cestia was preparing for a stressful audit at work when he forgot to drop off Thomas at the babysitter on the way to his office in New Iberia, La.At lunchtime, he drove to a restaurant with the auditor and then back to his office.That afternoon, it occurred to him that he didn’t remember seeing the babysitter that morning. He ran to his truck where he found Thomas in his car seat behind the driver’s seat. Thomas, who was 2 and a half years old, was pronounced dead at the scene.“It was just a total utter shock,” said Mr. Cestia, 37, who lives in New Iberia with his wife, Pam, and their two other children. “It’s almost like a nightmare that’s not real. I’m living in a makeshift world that’s not real. And once you come down off that, it’s a daily grind.”Mr. Cestia said he has coped with the extreme grief with help from his religious faith and therapy. He has also had the support of his wife.“People think, ‘Oh, how does somebody do that?’” Pam Cestia said. “You don’t forget your cellphone. You don’t forget this. But he was hyper-focused on something else. He’s not a bad parent. He’s not a bad father.”The aftermath in other cases has been more dire. Marriages have fallen apart. Caregivers have been prosecuted and faced prison time. In one case last year in Chesterfield, Va., a father who realized what he had done immediately went home and killed himself.And still the deaths come. Just this week in Houston, a 3-month-old died after he was left unattended in a car, the police said. About 40 children a year die from heatstroke in cars, either because they are left in the vehicle or because they become trapped, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.That averages out to a child dying in a hot car every 10 days in the United States. The deaths are more frequent in summer but happen in every month of the year.Child-safety advocates said that new technology could help prevent these recurring tragedies. Vehicles with interior motion sensors, for example, can sound the horn and send alerts to a driver’s phone if they detect a child in the back seat after the car has been turned off.But automakers and regulators have not made the technology standard equipment in new vehicles, frustrating safety experts. According to Kids and Car Safety, a nonprofit group, 1,050 children have died in hot cars nationwide since 1990 and at least another 7,300 have survived with varying injuries.“It should really be embarrassing for the automakers and to the government that this has not already been taken care of,” said Janette E. Fennell, the founder and president of Kids and Car Safety. “When you have the technology to prevent these deaths, and it’s not expensive, what are we waiting for?”Federal regulators said they were developing rules that would require new vehicles to have lights and chimes to remind drivers to check the back seat after they turn off a car, as required under the $1 trillion infrastructure law that President Biden signed in 2021. But that requirement won’t take effect until 2025.New cars on display at the New York International Auto Show in April. Some automakers have started installing reminders for drivers to check the back seat before leaving a car. But child-safety advocates say sensors would save more lives.Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire, via picture-alliance, via dpa, via Associated Press ImagesMajor automakers have also pledged that by 2025 all new vehicles will include basic back-seat reminder systems. As of last October, more than 150 models offered the reminders, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which said in a statement that the industry was making “major progress” toward its goal of universal back-seat reminders.But higher-tech systems that use radar or ultrasonic sensors to detect a child in the back seat remain relatively rare.“It’s a matter of cost and demand,” said Emily A. Thomas, the manager of auto safety at Consumer Reports, which holds the position that child-detection systems should be standard in new vehicles. “People don’t know this is what they need, so there’s not a huge demand for it and, unfortunately, the auto industry responds to what’s required. So if it’s not required, they won’t put it in as standard equipment.”About half of all hot-car deaths lead to criminal charges ranging from child endangerment to murder, according to Kids and Car Safety. Many parents and caregivers take plea deals to avoid jail time and because they are unwilling to face a court battle after the death of a child, the group said.The psychological underpinnings of the problem have been discussed for years, at least since 2009, when Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning article exploring whether criminal charges are really appropriate for parents who accidentally kill their children by leaving them in cars.David M. Diamond, a neuroscientist at the University of South Florida who was quoted in that story, has been patiently explaining the issue ever since, including for a documentary film, “Fatal Distraction,” that was released in 2021.Dr. Diamond said that many of the deaths happen when parents drive to work and go into “autopilot mode and lose awareness of the child in the back seat.”During the drive, the part of the brain that handles habitual behaviors like commuting “outcompetes and suppresses” the conscious memory system, which is responsible for reminding a parent to stop and drop off the child at day care, Dr. Diamond said. Stressed and sleep-deprived parents are particularly susceptible to this problem, he said.“That’s why we need technology because, frankly, we are so forgetful,” Dr. Diamond said in an interview. “I try to emphasize to people that it’s not negligence, it’s not bad parenting, it’s just part of being human.”The reminder lights and chimes installed in many newer vehicles advise drivers to check the back seat when the car is turned off. Those systems are usually triggered by a rear door being opened before or during a trip, but they cannot actually detect whether a child is in the car.Ultrasonic sensors, found in some Kia and Hyundai vehicles, can detect a child (or a pet) moving in the back seat after a vehicle has been locked and then blow the horn and send text messages to the driver. But ultrasonic sensors may not detect a child sleeping in a rear-facing car seat, Dr. Thomas said.Radar-based systems can purportedly detect even slight movements like the rise and fall of the chest of a child sleeping in a car seat. At least one vehicle, the Genesis GV70, features that technology.In March, the Federal Communications Commission approved a specific frequency for short-range radar, which automakers say will make it much easier to deploy child-detecting radar inside cars. Before that, companies had to seek waivers from the F.C.C.While radar technology is not widely available, safety advocates said that drivers could remind themselves to check the back seat by putting something important next to the child, like a purse, phone, wallet or even one of their shoes.The Cestias have their own system. Every morning at 8:05 they text each other to make sure that their 1½-year-old was dropped off at the babysitter.They have also spoken out strongly in favor of mandatory child-detection technology in cars.“This is my opportunity to be Thomas’s mom and to advocate for him,” Pam Cestia said. “His story can help save other people’s lives.”

One expert said the blood-clotting syndrome was estimated to occur in one in 50,000 people under 40 and one in 100,000 over 40 who received AstraZeneca’s vaccine.A 32-year-old psychologist in Britain developed blood clots and died 10 days after he took his first dose of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, a report released by a London coroner on Wednesday found, in a highly rare case of a fatal reaction to the vaccine.The inquest, which was requested by Charlotte Wright, the widow of Dr. Stephen Wright, found that he died on Jan. 26, 2021, as a result of “unintended consequences of vaccination.” Ms. Wright is suing AstraZeneca.According to the report, Dr. Wright, of Kent, England, had a stroke and bleeding in the brain, as well as vaccine-induced thrombosis, or blood clots, and thrombocytopenia, a condition that occurs when the platelet level in the blood is abnormally low.Since 2021, researchers have cited rare cases in which people have developed the blood-clotting syndrome known as TTS after receiving the Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca Covid vaccines, which are similar. The cases typically occur within weeks of vaccination.Experts still strongly recommend vaccination, saying that although vaccines are associated with certain rare side effects, those risks are dwarfed by the risks of the coronavirus itself.“It’s really quite rare and, at the end of the day, you need to consider the risks versus the benefits with anything you do,” said Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And when you look at the vaccines, they’re very safe and very effective.”He added: “Nothing is risk-free. And if you choose not to get the vaccine, then you’re at greater risk for getting the disease and serious consequences.”Researchers have estimated that coronavirus vaccines have saved millions of lives, including an estimated 507,000 in the United Kingdom in the first year they were administered.Dr. Beverley Hunt, a thrombosis expert in London, said that the blood-clotting syndrome was a “very rare event” following the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, estimated to occur in one in 50,000 people under 40 and one in 100,000 over 40. Dr. Adam Finn, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol, said that very approximate figures suggest that about 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been given in the United Kingdom, with about 200 cases and 40 deaths linked to the blood-clotting syndrome.Britain curbed the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine for people under 30 in April 2021, citing the risk of rare blood clots.In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration limited the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in May 2022 to adults who cannot or who refuse to get the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, also citing the risk of rare blood clots. AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine has not been approved for use in the United States, and last year the company withdrew its application for F.D.A. approval.In Australia, the country’s Department of Health and Aged Care described TTS as a rare syndrome that had occurred in around two to three people per 100,000 who had been given the AstraZeneca vaccine.Symptoms — including severe, persistent headache and blurred vision — typically occur between four and 42 days after a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the department said.Australia stopped the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine last month, saying newer vaccines better targeted current strains of the virus.In an analysis released last month of immunization and death records in Britain, researchers found that young women who received at least one dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine might have been more likely to die of a heart problem in the 12 weeks after their vaccination.The researchers did not find a significantly elevated risk of death in any other subgroup or with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was also widely used in Britain. And the study did not prove that the vaccines caused the deaths.Andrew Harris, a senior coroner who presented the results of Dr. Wright’s inquest at London Inner South Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, described Dr. Wright’s death as a “very unusual and deeply tragic case,” the BBC reported.The inquest found that Dr. Wright was a “fit and healthy man” who received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Jan. 16, 2021. He awoke with a headache on Jan. 25, 2021, and later developed left arm numbness, the inquest found.He went to a hospital emergency room just after midnight and was found to have high blood pressure and sagittal sinus venous thrombosis. He was transferred to another hospital at about 6:30 a.m. but was unfit for surgery because of bleeding and a very low platelet level. He died at 6:33 p.m.Ms. Wright said in a message on Instagram that she had asked for the inquest so that she could change her husband’s death certificate, which said he had died of “natural causes,” including a stroke. She said she wanted it to list the vaccine-induced blood syndrome as his cause of death.“The inquest yesterday confirmed this change, over 2 years later,” Ms. Wright said.Ms. Wright also said the inquest “allows us to be able to continue our litigation against AstraZeneca. This is the written proof,” the BBC reported.Mr. Harris told the court that it was “very important to record as fact that it is the AstraZeneca vaccine — but that is different from blaming AstraZeneca,” the BBC reported.Ms. Wright, who has described herself as a “vaccine widow,” indicated that she was not opposed to vaccines in general. “I think they should be given with appropriate informed consent,” she said.AstraZeneca, which has named its vaccine Vaxzevria, said in a statement: “We are very saddened by Stephen Wright’s death and extend our deepest sympathies to his family for their loss.” The statement said that patient safety was the company’s highest priority.“From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, Vaxzevria has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects,” the statement said.Derrick Bryson Taylor

The guidance builds on growing evidence, after decades of sometimes conflicting research, that even small amounts of alcohol can have serious health consequences.Canadian health officials have overhauled their guidelines for alcohol consumption, warning that no amount is healthy and recommending that people reduce drinking as much as possible.The new guidelines, issued Tuesday, represent a major shift from the previous ones introduced in 2011, which recommended that women consume no more than 10 drinks per week and that men limit themselves to 15.The experts who developed the guidelines said the new approach builds on growing evidence, after decades of sometimes conflicting research, that even small amounts of alcohol can have serious health consequences.Instead of recommending that people limit themselves to a specific number of drinks per week, the guidelines outline a “continuum of risk” associated with drinking even a few glasses of wine or beer over a seven-day period.The risk is “low” for people who consume two standard drinks or fewer per week; “moderate” for those who consume between three and six standard drinks per week; and “increasingly high” for those who consume seven or more standard drinks per week, according to the guidelines, which were issued in a report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.The report defines a standard drink as a 12-ounce bottle of beer that is 5 percent alcohol, a five-ounce glass of wine that is 12 percent alcohol or a 1.5-ounce shot glass of a spirit that is 40 percent alcohol.“Research shows that no amount or kind of alcohol is good for your health,” the report states. “It doesn’t matter what kind of alcohol it is — wine, beer, cider or spirits. Drinking alcohol, even a small amount, is damaging to everyone, regardless of age, sex, gender, ethnicity, tolerance for alcohol or lifestyle. That’s why if you drink, it’s better to drink less.”Recent research has found that even low levels of drinking slightly increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, and the risk goes up significantly for people who drink excessively.Research published in November revealed that between 2015 and 2019, excessive alcohol use resulted in roughly 140,000 deaths per year in the United States. About 40 percent of those deaths had acute causes, like car crashes. But a majority were caused by chronic conditions attributed to alcohol, such as liver disease, cancer and heart disease.Dr. Catherine Paradis, interim associate director of research at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, said that consumption of even two drinks per week has been associated with an elevated risk of seven types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, as well as cardiovascular disease.Dr. Paradis, who was a co-chairwoman of the panel that developed the new guidelines, noted that the World Health Organization had recently declared that the harms associated with drinking alcohol had been “systematically evaluated over the years and are well documented” and that “when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”The good news, the report said, is that any reduction in alcohol consumption is beneficial. This is true even for those who do not cut their drinking to low or moderate levels. In fact, those consuming high levels of alcohol have much to gain by reducing their consumption by as much as possible, the report states.“We have this line: Drink less, live more,” said Dr. Alexander Caudarella, chief executive of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. “The idea is that any reduction of alcohol will significantly reduce your risk.”The new guidelines depart from the specific drink limits called for in other Western countries.Australia, for example, recommends no more than 10 drinks a week and no more than four drinks on any one day. Britain recommends drinking no more than six medium glasses of wine or six pints of beer per week. The guidelines in the United States call for two drinks or fewer a day for men and one drink or fewer per day for women.Canadian health officials said they hoped their less prescriptive approach would encourage consumers to make healthier choices.“The guidance is really a fundamentally different way of looking at alcohol and saying we need to be much more open and transparent about what are the risks associated with it and what the science has shown us,” Dr. Caudarella said. “It’s really putting it out there in a way that lets people assess their own risk level and work toward it.”To encourage consumers to cut down on their drinking, the report recommended that all alcoholic beverages sold in Canada come with warning labels, similar to those on cigarettes. Evidence shows that adding health warnings to alcohol labels can increase public awareness of the link between alcohol consumption and cancer, the report states.Beer Canada, a national trade group trade that represents than 50 Canadian brewing companies, said that it continued to support the 2011 guidelines and that the process of updating those guidelines “lacked full transparency and, to date, has not included the essential rigor of an expert technical peer review.”“Beer Canada and Canadian brewers have a long history promoting moderation and responsible consumption,” the group said in a statement. “Beer Canada believes the decision whether to drink, and if so how much, is a personal one. Responsible, moderate consumption can be part of a balanced lifestyle for most adults of legal drinking age.”Dan Paszkowski, president and chief executive of Wine Growers Canada, which represents the country’s wineries, said the group had introduced a campaign, “The Right Amount,” in 2021 to promote “responsible consumption of wine.”“It’s essential for Canadians to have confidence in public health institutions and the messaging must be informative, not persuasive, and based on sound science,” Mr. Paszkowski wrote in wrote in an opinion piece published this week in The Hill Times, a news outlet focused on Canadian politics and government. “From some to none, the right amount is different for every person.”

The F.D.A. said the likely source of the outbreak was fresh organic strawberries that were sold under the FreshKampo and H-E-B brands in March and April.Public health officials said they were investigating an outbreak of hepatitis A in the United States and Canada that is potentially linked to organic strawberries.American health officials said the outbreak most likely came from fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo and H-E-B that were bought between March 5 and April 25.The strawberries were sold at stores including Aldi, H-E-B, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Weis Markets, the Food and Drug Administration said.The strawberries are now past their shelf life, and people who bought them between March 5 and April 25 should throw them out, even if they froze them to eat later, health officials said.In the United States, the F.D.A. said it had identified 17 cases of hepatitis A linked to the strawberries — 15 in California and one each in Minnesota and North Dakota. Twelve people have been hospitalized, the agency said.In Canada, health officials said they had confirmed 10 cases — four in Alberta and six in Saskatchewan. Four people have been hospitalized in that country.No deaths linked to the strawberries have been reported in the United States or Canada, according to officials in both countries.Hepatitis A is a contagious virus that may cause liver disease. It can be transmitted when food is consumed after it was handled by someone who did not follow proper hand-washing hygiene, the F.D.A. said.Symptoms usually develop 15 to 20 days after eating the contaminated food and can include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, jaundice, dark urine and pale stool, the F.D.A. said.People who believe they may be infected or may have eaten the tainted strawberries in the last two weeks should talk to their health care provider, the F.D.A. said.In a statement, H-E-B, which is based in Texas, said that it had not received or sold organic strawberries from the supplier under investigation since April 16.“All strawberries sold at H-E-B are safe,” the company said. “No illnesses from strawberries related to the F.D.A. investigation have been reported at H-E-B or in Texas.”FreshKampo said it was no longer shipping fresh organic strawberries linked to the outbreak. Those that were sold between March 5 and April 25 came in a plastic clamshell package with a label that read, “Distributed by Meridian Fruits,” the company said in a statement.“FreshKampo wants consumers to know that it will continue to work with health officials and supply chain partners to determine where a problem may have occurred along the supply chain and take necessary measures to prevent it from happening again,” the statement said.

Shane McInerney, 29, was charged after his disruptive behavior aboard a flight from Dublin to John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 7.A passenger who refused to wear a mask on a flight from Dublin to New York pulled down his pants and exposed his buttocks, threw a can at a passenger and put his cap on the captain’s head and told him, “Don’t touch me,” prosecutors said in a case unsealed on Friday.After the Delta flight from Dublin to John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 7, the passenger, Shane McInerney, 29, of Galway, Ireland, was charged with intentionally assaulting and intimidating a crew member, prosecutors said. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.On Saturday, Mr. McInerney’s lawyer, Benjamin Yaster, declined to comment on the charges. Mr. McInerney made an initial appearance in federal court in Brooklyn on Jan. 14 and was released on a $20,000 bond, prosecutors said.The charges represent the latest example of the unruly and sometimes violent behavior that has surged on airplanes since the start of the pandemic. Many of the disturbances have involved passengers who refused to wear masks, as required by the federal government.On Wednesday, an American Airlines flight from Miami to London turned around about an hour into its journey because of a passenger who refused to wear a mask, the airline said.In October, a passenger was accused of punching an American Airlines flight attendant in her nose, giving her a concussion, after a mask dispute. And in December, a California woman pleaded guilty to repeatedly punching a flight attendant on a Southwest Airlines flight, bloodying her face and chipping three teeth.“Over the past year, we had seen a dramatic uptick in unruly passenger incidents, and we’ve undertaken a number of measures to get that under control,” Steve Dickson, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said during an online discussion this week.“And I’m happy to say that the rates are down significantly, year over year, but we’ve still got more work to do,” Mr. Dickson said. “And this is, again, something that we need to continue to stay focused on.”In a statement filed in court, an F.B.I. agent said that Mr. McInerney had refused to wear a mask despite being asked to do so “dozens” of times during the eight-hour flight. He threw an empty beverage can, hitting another passenger in the head, and kicked the seat back in front of him, disturbing the passenger there, the statement said.At one point, he walked from his seat in the economy section to the first-class section and complained to a flight attendant about the food. While being escorted back to his seat, Mr. McInerney “pulled down his pants and underwear and exposed his buttocks” to the flight attendant and passengers sitting nearby, the statement said.About two hours into the flight, the captain, while on a break, spoke to Mr. McInerney, the statement said. During the conversation, Mr. McInerney twice took off his cap, put it on the captain’s head and then removed it again, the statement said.He also put a fist close to the captain’s face and said, “Don’t touch me,” the statement said.At least one of the passengers found Mr. McInerney’s behavior to be “scary,” and members of the flight crew considered diverting the plane to another airport so that Mr. McInerney could be removed from the plane, the statement said.The flight continued to New York. As the plane was making its final approach to J.FK. and everyone was buckled in their seats, Mr. McInerney again disobeyed the orders of flight attendants, according to the statement, which said he stood up, walked into the aisle and “refused to sit back down.”