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A consumer advocacy group is warning parents of what it calls "dangerously high" levels of a chemical called boron in popular slime toys marketed to children -- although an expert disputed the findings and said the warning is overblown.The warning was contained in the annual report by the?US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. The "Trouble in Toyland" safety survey was published Tuesday ahead of the major holiday shopping season.The group noted "toys are safer than ever before," but that more work needs to be done to make them safer. PIRG's report highlighted the potential hazards of slime, toys with possible choking hazards and ones that could violate children's privacy by sharing data."With hundreds of new toys hitting the market every year, our survey of only 40 toys suggests there may be other potentially dangerous toys slipping through existing protections or worthy of further investigation," the group said.The group singled out six popular slime products for what it described as containing "dangerously high boron content." Boron is a nonmetallic element, and compounds of it, such as borax, have been used in products for decades, ranging from detergents to roach poison. The US PIRG Education Fund said it found that "significant concentrations of boron, as high as 4,700 parts per million (ppm) in popular slime toys.""Young kids are known to put everything in their mouths and when it comes to slime that could have serious consequences," said Adam Garber, the lead author of the report. "These high levels of boron can cause nausea, vomiting and long term reproductive health issues. Parents should closely monitor their kids when playing with this toy and call poison control if any is eaten."Garber added, "We should protect children by ensuring every package has appropriate labels moving forward and determine health-based standards to ensure children don't end up in the emergency room from their holiday gift."The United States does not have established standards on limits for boron in products. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says exposure to large amounts of boron -- about 30 grams of boric acid -- "over short periods of time can affect the stomach, intestines, liver, kidney, and brain and can eventually lead to death." Fatal doses for children are estimated to be 5 to 6 grams, according to the?Environmental Protection Agency.PIRG noted the European Union has a limit of 300 ppm for boron and that there should be a "full-fledged investigation to determine if limits should be established" in the US. "Policymakers should continue to evaluate new threats, such as boron, and ensure the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the funding and authority to protect the public," the report said.However, Rick Sachleben, a member of the American Chemical Society who has experience with boron, said it's important to distinguish the fact that "all forms of boron are not equally toxic." He said sodium borate, the known component used in slime, has "very low toxicity.""You'd almost have to do something beyond reason to make it toxic," he said, adding that a child would need to eat "multiple containers" before it reached toxic levels."The health risks are relatively low and can be controlled by telling your kid: 'If you eat the slime, I'm not going to buy you any more," Sachleben said.Sachleben wasn't the only one to take issue with the PIRG report.Wonder Workshop CEO Vikas Gupta told CNN that information about his company's product in the report was categorically false. The PIRG report, citing an investigation by the Mozilla Foundation, said Wonder Workshop's Dash robot "shares your information with third parties.""That is absolutely incorrect," Gupta said. "We don't collect any personal identifiable information from children, and we do not share any information from the apps or the software or robots to any third-party ever. None of that happens."Amazon, which had its Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition cited for its possible sharing of data, said the product is in full compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. "We do not share children's data with third parties," Amazon said in a written statement.The report also said another popular toy -- the Hatchimals Fabula Forest; Hatching Egg with Interactive Tigrette -- had "no choking hazard label" in its listing on Walmart.com, although the photograph of the product has a choking warning on the front of the box.Garber said that wasn't good enough, that the "law requires online sites to provide warning labels directly on the site, not just on pictures or on the packaging, so parents are warned prior to purchase."According to PIRG, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled more than 40 children's products in the last year, totaling more than 2.7 million units.Balloons cause more choking deaths among children than any other toy, according to the PIRG report. The group found three balloon packages that are either marketed to young children or are not labeled properly with choking hazard warnings.The six slime products mentioned in the report were:-- Kangaroos Original Super Cool Slime, which was found to contain "4700 ppm boron concentration. The EU limit is 300 ppm."-- Kidsco Glow in The Dark Slime with "4600 ppm boron concentration."-- Toysmith Jupiter Juice Slime with "1900 ppm boron concentration."-- iBaseToy Fluffy Slime with "1500 ppm boron concentration."-- Haniex Soft Magic Crystal Slime with "1400 ppm boron concentration."-- Meland Fluffy Slime with "1100 ppm boron concentration."Garber said 5 grams of boron could prove fatal for a child, although "health impacts with boron appear at much lower levels" than that. He acknowledged "you'd likely have to ingest multiple containers to reach the fatal level" of boron, but he doesn't believe that should be the standard. 5896

A burned vehicle rests along Pine Canyon Rd. as the Lake Fire burns in the Angeles National Forest, Calif., north of Santa Clarita on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) 189

A German cruise line is facing outrage after one of its employees shot and killed a wild polar bear in Norway after the animal attacked another of its employees.Hapag-Lloyd Cruises said its ship was docked at Spitsbergen, the largest island on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, on Saturday when the bear attacked a guard hired to go on shore before passengers to ensure there aren't any polar bears in the area.The guard suffered non-life-threatening head injuries and was airlifted out, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises said in a statement on Facebook. 545

A Black man who says he was unjustly arrested because facial recognition technology mistakenly identified him as a suspected shoplifter is calling for a public apology from Detroit police. And for the department to abandon its use of the controversial technology.The complaint by Robert Williams is a rare challenge from someone who not only experienced an erroneous face recognition hit, but was able to discover that it was responsible for his subsequent legal troubles.The Wednesday complaint filed on Williams' behalf alleges that his Michigan driver license photo — kept in a statewide image repository — was incorrectly flagged as a likely match to a shoplifting suspect. Investigators had scanned grainy surveillance camera footage of an alleged 2018 theft inside a Shinola watch store in midtown Detroit, police records show.That led to what Williams describes as a humiliating January arrest in front of his wife and young daughters on their front lawn in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills.Related: Detroit demonstrators calling for city to cease use of facial recognition technology“I can’t really even put it into words," Williams said in a video announcement describing the daytime arrest that left his daughters weeping. "It was one of the most shocking things that I ever had happen to me.”The 42-year-old automotive worker, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, is demanding a public apology, final dismissal of his case and for Detroit police to scrap its use of facial recognition technology. Several studies have shown current face-recognition systems more likely to err when identifying people with darker skin.The ACLU complaint said Detroit police “unthinkingly relied on flawed and racist facial recognition technology without taking reasonable measures to verify the information being provided." It called the resulting investigation “shoddy and incomplete," the officers involved “rude and threatening,” and said the department has dragged its feet responding to public-information requests for relevant records.Detroit police and Wayne County prosecutors didn't immediately return emailed requests for comment Wednesday.Related: Detroit police board votes to approve DPD's use of facial recognition technologyDataWorks Plus, a South Carolina company that provides facial recognition technology to Detroit and the Michigan State Police, also couldn't immediately be reached for comment.Police records show the case began in October 2018 when five expensive watches went missing from the flagship store of Detroit-based luxury watchmaker Shinola. A loss-prevention worker later reviewed the video footage showing the suspect to be a Black man wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap.“Video and stills were sent to Crime Intel for facial recognition,” says a brief police report. “Facial Recognition came back with a hit" — for Williams.At the top of the facial recognition report, produced by Michigan State Police, was a warning in bold, capitalized letters that the computer's finding should be treated as an investigative lead, not as probable cause for arrest.But Detroit detectives then showed a 6-photo lineup that included Williams to the loss-prevention worker, who positively identified Williams, according to the report. It took months for police to issue an arrest warrant and several more before they called Williams at work and asked him to come to the police department. It's not clear why.Williams said he thought it was a prank call. But they showed up soon after at his house, took him away in handcuffs and detained him overnight. It was during his interrogation the next day that it became clear to him that he was improperly identified by facial recognition software.“The investigating officer looked confused, told Mr. Williams that the computer said it was him but then acknowledged that ‘the computer must have gotten it wrong,’” the ACLU complaint says.Prosecutors later dismissed the case, but without prejudice — meaning they could potentially pursue it again.The case is likely to fuel a movement in Detroit and around the U.S. protesting police brutality, racial injustice and the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Detroit activists have presented reforms to the city's mayor and police chief that include defunding the police department and ending its use of facial recognition.Providers of police facial recognition systems often point to research showing they can be accurate when used properly under ideal conditions. A review of the industry’s leading facial recognition algorithms by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found they were more than 99% accurate when matching high-quality head shots to a database of other frontal poses.But trying to identify a face from a video feed — especially using the ceiling-mounted cameras commonly found in stores — can cause accuracy rates to plunge. Studies have also shown that face recognition systems don't perform equally across race, gender and age — working best on white men and with potentially harmful consequences for others.Concerns about bias and growing scrutiny of policing practices following Floyd's death led tech giants IBM, Amazonand Microsoft to announce earlier this month they would stop selling face recognition software to police, at least until Congress can establish guidelines for its use. Several cities, led by San Francisco last year, have banned use of facial recognition by municipal agencies. 5490

A California fire department has been rocked by COVID-19 in recent weeks, enduring the heartache happening in communities all across the country."They all had on the required PPE, personal protective equipment, the mask, the gloves, the goggles, but again we're not always going to get that exposure and that risk out 100 percent," said Patrick Russell, Fire Chief of Anaheim Fire and Rescue.Chief Russell says 20 firefighters were quarantined, and seven tested positive for COVID-19. They believe the exposure happened on a call in May."This is by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I would say even professionally, from all my time being a firefighter. To see one of our brothers in the bed they have to be in when they're on a ventilator," said Rob Lester, a fire captain and President of the Anaheim Firefighters Association.A 27-year veteran of the department, Captain Dave Baker is still fighting for his life on a ventilator. Lester says Baker is beloved beyond the department."He's probably the most iconic member of our fire department, the big guy in the Disney picture, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse," said Lester.Baker posed for the Disney sketch in 1993 as a rookie. Printed on t-shirts and postcards, it was a tribute to all firefighters, and the only time Mickey is looking up at a human."We're people who go out and make a difference, help people. And we're helpless in this situation," said Lester.Also still in the hospital, 19-year veteran Joe Aldecoa, who at one point was in the ICU with a 105-degree fever.The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is tracking members impacted by the virus; the newest numbers from the U.S. and Canada show more than 20,800 have reported being exposed.The labor union advocates on behalf of fire departments, some of which are still struggling to afford enough personal protective gear.And now, some states are requiring firefighters to help with COVID-19 testing in nursing homes, a job they may not have been trained to do before the pandemic. The IAFF is offering guidance on how departments can safely conduct testing."All firefighters, all of us around the world, keep us in your thoughts and prayers. And when you see us driving by, wave and give us a big smile, we'll wave back," said Lester.He wants the community to know that despite the risk, they'll continue serving the community, answering every call. 2399