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Over 1,000 Boston schools staffers call out for varying reasons as classrooms reopen

COVID-19

Over 1,000 Boston Public Schools teachers and staff members were out Tuesday for a variety of reasons, including being sick from COVID-19, as schools reopened from the holiday break, district officials said.

The total, or 1,074, is roughly a tenth of all district employees: Data from late 2019, the most recent available, shows BPS budgeted 10,380 staff positions for the 2020 school year.

“As the Mayor and Superintendent stated during their press availability this morning, we saw more than 1,000 school staff absences, which is inclusive of all people who work in schools — and not all of those are due to COVID, absences are being seen for a multitude of reasons,” Jonathan Palumbo, a BPS spokesperson, told Boston.com in an email. “Of that 1,000, approximately 450 are teachers.”

Palumbo wrote the district was in close contact with school leaders on Monday and into Tuesday as officials tried to cover as many absences as possible.

“We deployed 60 central office staff to cover core functions in schools and will stay in communication with schools and families all day,” he wrote.

Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, addressing reporters outside the Margarita Muñiz Academy in Jamaica Plain, didn’t rule out personally pitching in to help.

“We have our central office teams, many of us are licensed teachers, myself included. If I have to go out and teach in a classroom, I’m going to do that,” Cassellius reportedly said. “But our goal is to keep classes going and keep students in person.”

On Monday, BPS received and began to distribute 10,000 COVID-19 testing kits, according to WBUR. Teachers were also slated to receive 30 KN95 masks each as school officials work to navigate the surge in virus cases fueled by the omicron variant.

Cassellius said BPS has a pool of 105 stand-by replacement school bus drivers, but families should still check their “Where’s My School Bus” transportation app this week as the district anticipates delays and shortages.

He made Wordle for his partner. Now it’s an online hit.

NEW YORK — Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his partner loved word games, so he created a guessing game for just the two of them. As a play on his last name, he named it Wordle.

But after the couple played for months, and after it rapidly became an obsession in his family’s WhatsApp group once he introduced it to relatives, Wardle thought he might be on to something and released it to the rest of the world in October.

On Nov. 1, 90 people played.

On Sunday, just over two months later, more than 300,000 people played.

It’s been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right.

Few such popular corners of the internet are as low-frills as the website, which Wardle built himself as a side project. There are no ads or flashing banners; no windows pop up or ask for money. There is merely the game on a black background.

“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” Wardle said in an interview on Monday. “It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”

This is not Wardle’s first brush with suddenly capturing widespread attention. Formerly a software engineer for Reddit, he created two collaborative social experiments on the site, called The Button and Place, that each were phenomena in their moment.

But Wordle was built without a team of engineers. It was just him and his partner, Palak Shah, killing time during a pandemic.

Wardle said he first created a similar prototype in 2013, but his friends were unimpressed and he scrapped the idea. In 2020, he and Shah “got really into” the New York Times Spelling Bee and the daily crossword, “so I wanted to come up with a game that she would enjoy,” he said.

The breakthrough, he said, was limiting players to one game per day. That enforced a sense of scarcity, which he said was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee, which leaves people wanting more, he said.

Word games have proved immensely popular for The Times and other companies in recent years, and many such as the Spelling Bee have developed devoted fan followings.

But since Wordle was built originally for just Wardle and Shah, the initial design ignored a lot of the growth-hacking features that are virtually expected of games in the current era. While other games send notifications to your phone hoping you’ll come back throughout the day, Wordle doesn’t want an intense relationship.

“It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day,” Wardle said. “And that’s it. Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”

Wordle lacked the ability to share results until mid-December. Wardle noticed players sharing their results by typing out a grid of green, yellow and black emojis, so he built an automated way for players to brag about their successes in a spoiler-free way.

If he were optimizing the game to gain as many players as possible, he would have included a link at the end of the tweet that the tool generates, he said. But after looking into it, he said it would have looked “trashy” and not as visually compelling, and he liked the grid’s mysterious air, which he felt piqued people’s interest.

While Shah was the lucky recipient of the first game, she has played a key role in getting it ready for the public, Wardle said. An initial list of all of the five-letter words in the English language — about 12,000 — contained a lot of obscure words that would have been near impossible to guess.

So he created another game for Shah: This time, she would sort through those 12,000 or so words, designating whether or not she knew them. That narrowed down the list of Wordle words to about 2,500, which should last for a few years. (Already, a few words have riled up the fans: Some were upset by REBUS and TAPIR, saying they were not familiar enough.)

Shah says she wakes up every day with a new routine: She warms up with the Spelling Bee, which gets her mind right for Wordle. She also loves the New York Times Crossword and cryptic crosswords.

Though Wordle is now shared with the world, she said she appreciated that Wardle originally created it for her.

“It’s really sweet,” she said. “This is definitely how Josh shows his love.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

You can get vaccinated — or boosted — at Boston City Hall on Tuesday

As COVID cases continue to climb in Massachusetts and throughout the country, a free, walk-in vaccination clinic is being held at Boston City Hall on Tuesday, Jan. 4.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Boston Emergency Medical Services, in partnership with the City of Boston and Boston Public Health Commission, is offering Pfizer vaccine doses, including boosters. No appointments are needed.

While first and second Pfizer doses are available to anyone over the age of 5, booster doses are only available to those 16 or older, per current CDC guidelines.

If you are unable to make the clinic and want to be vaccinated or boosted, here is Mass.gov’s database of COVID-19 vaccine locations. To schedule an appointment online, visit the state’s VaxFinder website or call 211 for assistance.

Peter King predicted which team he thinks the Patriots will face in the playoffs

Tonight, the Bruins host the Devils at TD Garden at 7:30 p.m. Boston is trying to make it three wins in a row in 2022.

And tomorrow, the Celtics will be back in action at home against the Spurs at 7:30 p.m.

On Sunday, the Patriots will be in Miami to play the Dolphins in the regular season finale at 4:25 p.m.

Peter King’s prediction for the Patriots’ playoff opponent: With the NFL heading towards its first ever Week 18 of the regular season, many fans will have an eye on what the results mean for playoff match-ups.

The Patriots clinched a playoff spot in Week 17, but won’t know who the team’s postseason opponent will be until the end of the weekend.

One NFL writer, NBC Sports’ Peter King, has already made his prediction in his most recent “Football Morning in American” column. It’s an intriguing one for the Patriots.

“As of this moment, my money would be on a New England-Buffalo show for the first-ever Monday night wild-card game,” wrote King. “The AFC, in fact, is gold for first-round matchups, if form holds. Imagine Raiders or Chargers at Kansas City in the 7-2 game, Colts-(Joe) Burrow in the 6-3 game (Burrow’s going to be must-see as long as the Bengals are in it), and Patriots-Bills in the other one. Imagine three Buffalo-New England games in a 43-day span, with the rubber match on a frigid Jan. 17 night in the northeast.”

As King noted, the possibility of a Bills-Patriots matchup relies on each of the favorites winning in the final regular season slate of games.

Interestingly, the most likely Patriots opponent will be the Bengals, not the Bills, according to ESPN’s FPI:

Trivia: Earlier this season, Josh Allen became fourth all-time in Bills history for passing yards. Which quarterback did he pass?

(Answer at the bottom).

Hint: He has played for nine teams (and counting) in his NFL career.

More from Boston.com:

Anfernee Simons dedicated his career-best 43-point performance in a Trail Blazers win on Monday night to his late grandfather:

The Patriots’ postgame locker room scene:

On this day: In 2000, Bill Belichick resigned as head coach of the Jets one day after being named as Bill Parcells’ successor in New York. Belichick cited the uncertainty of the Jets’ ownership situation (with an ongoing bidding war) as his reason for quickly stepping aside.

Eventually—and after a protracted round of the Patriots-Jets “border war”—Belichick would end up in New England.

Bill Belichick Jets

Daily highlight: Entering the final play of the game, Florida A&M basketball was tied with Bethune-Cookman, 68-68 with 0.7 seconds remaining. Maleaha Bell banked in the buzzer-beater to give the Rattlers the win.

Trivia answer: Ryan Fitzpatrick

Snow Friday? Here’s what Boston meteorologists are saying.

Shiri Spear, Boston 25 News: ‘Right now it looks like much of MA could see 3-6” snow on Friday’

Cindy Fitzgibbon, WCVB: ‘Widespread accumulating snow is becoming more likely as a storm moves up the coast Friday’

Josh Wurster, 7News: ‘Precipitation is back this week Wednesday and Friday’

Zack Green, WBZ: ‘Some solid agreement in 3″+ potential for this coming Friday’

Jim Corsi, former Red Sox pitcher from Newton, dies at 60

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Jim Corsi, a former MLB pitcher from Newton whose professional stops included his hometown Red Sox, has died at age 60 after a battle with liver and colon cancer.

WBZ-TV’s Steve Burton broke the news that the longtime relief pitcher passed away Tuesday morning at his Bellingham home surrounded by family members.

The news of Corsi’s death comes just a day after the release of a WBZ interview in which he told Burton he was “at peace” with his diagnosis.

“I know if I die I’m going to a better place, that’s the No. 1 thing. I feel sorry for everybody I’ll leave behind,” he said.

Corsi starred at Newton North High School and Saint Leo University in Florida before being drafted by the New York Yankees in the 25th round of the 1982 MLB Draft.

He then went on to play 10 seasons in the major leagues, posting a 22-24 record with a 3.35 ERA and winning a World Series with the Oakland A’s in 1989 alongside former Red Sox star and current NESN analyst Dennis Eckersley.

“Jim was as friendly as anything to everybody. Everybody had a relationship with him,” Eckersley said of Corsi. “Everything was open with him. His life was an open book.”

Corsi came home to the Red Sox in the 1997 season and stayed there until he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 to finish out his career. The reliever had a 9-7 record with a 3.35 ERA, 103 strikeouts and just 12 walks in 139 games with Boston.

After his playing career, he worked as a studio analyst with local TV stations like NESN and UPN-38 before going into the construction business with his father and brothers, remodeling and rebuilding houses for Corsi Construction.

In the interview with Burton, Corsi lamented not being screened for colon cancer when he was younger and offered a last piece of advice: “Don’t wait.”

“I was a professional athlete and thought I was invincible, strong. You’re not. Cancer is not prejudiced to anybody,” he said. “That’s my message: Don’t wait. You don’t want to end up like this. If you get it soon enough, you’ll be all right.

What happens next to Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the failed blood testing startup Theranos, now awaits sentencing after being found guilty of four of 11 charges of fraud Monday.

Holmes, 37, left the San Jose, California, courtroom through a side door after the verdict was read in the case, which was closely scrutinized as a commentary on Silicon Valley. She was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was found not guilty on four other counts. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on three counts, which were set aside for later.

After the verdict was read, defense and prosecution lawyers discussed plans for Holmes’ sentencing, the status of her probation and the fate of the three hung charges. Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California, who oversaw the case, said he planned to declare a mistrial on those charges, which the government could choose to retry. The parties agreed that Holmes would not be taken into custody Monday.

A sentencing date is expected to be set at a hearing on the three hung charges next week.

Holmes can appeal the conviction, her sentence or both. She will also be interviewed by the U.S. Probation Office as it prepares a presentence report. A conference will be held next week on the three counts in which the jury could not reach a verdict.

Each count of wire fraud carries up to 20 years in prison, although Holmes is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence because she has no prior convictions, said Neama Rahmani, president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor.

But he said her sentence was likely to be on the higher end because of the amount of the money involved. Holmes raised $945 million for Theranos during the startup’s lifetime, and those investments were ultimately wiped out.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

One twin was born in 2021, the other in 2022 in ‘rare’ New Year’s Eve event

Just 15 minutes can make a big difference.

Newborn fraternal twins Aylin and Alfredo Trujillo came into the world 15 minutes apart – but will celebrate their birthdays on different days, months and years.

Baby boy Alfredo Antonio Trujillo was delivered first, at 11:45 p.m. on New Year’s Eve – Dec. 31, 2021. His younger sister, Aylin Yolanda Trujillo, entered the world exactly at midnight, on Jan. 1, 2022.

Alfredo weighed in at 6 pounds and 1 ounce, while Aylin weighed 5 pounds and 14 ounces, according to the Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, Calif.

“This was definitely one of the most memorable deliveries of my career,” said Ana Abril Arias, a family doctor at Natividad Medical Group. “It was an absolute pleasure to help these little ones arrive here safely in 2021 and 2022. What an amazing way to start the New Year!”

Although twin births in the United States are fairly common, “twins with different birthdays are rare,” the hospital said, citing estimates of the chance of twins being born in different years as 1 in 2 million.

The babies’ mother, Fatima Madrigal, said in a statement released by the hospital that the twins will join three older siblings, two girls and a boy. Madrigal said that her oldest son was especially excited to have a brother and that the whole family couldn’t wait to meet the newborn pair.

“It’s crazy to me that they are twins and have different birthdays,” Madrigal said. “I was surprised and happy that she arrived at midnight.”

Globally, twin birthrates have reached an “all-time high,” with 1.6 million twins delivered each year, according to research from Britain’s University of Oxford published in 2021. One in every 42 babies is now born a twin, it found.

The study also said 80% of all twin deliveries took place in Africa and Asia, while the use of fertility treatments such as IVF, was a factor in the global rise.

However, twin pregnancy can be more risky for mothers and babies, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with a higher risk of twin babies being born preterm or being admitted to neonatal intensive care units. There were about 120,000 twin births in the United States in 2019 and 3,000 triplet births, according to the latest CDC data, with twin births accounting for just over 3 percent of all births in the country.

BlackBerry’s classic smartphone stops working Tuesday

The classic BlackBerry is being forced to retire.

A pioneer of on-the-go email and paragon of corporate connectedness, it reigned supreme in the days when physical keyboards had yet to yield to touch screens. But come Tuesday, the cellphone turned status symbol will become one more relic of a bygone era as the transition to 5G wireless technology grinds forward.

After its “end of life date,” as BlackBerry calls it, devices running on BlackBerry’s legacy operating systems and software “will no longer reliably function,” the company – which has since pivoted to enterprise software and cybersecurity – reminded users in a news release in late December. Old devices won’t be able to send a text message or dial 911, placing them firmly in the realm of the arcane, in the company of floppy disks and rotary phones. You might still be able to play Brick Breaker though.

BlackBerry was among the first devices to introduce the tension that came with eroding the boundaries between home and the office. The devices were beloved and derided for how hard they were to put down, earning them the moniker of “Crackberries.” The wars waged over BlackBerry use – in the movie theater, at the dinner table, during ballet recitals and T-ball games, while crossing the street – foreshadowed the endless tug-of-war for attention and presence that many face in the age of ubiquitous smartphones, social media and Slack.

Now, the device’s demise is coming at a moment when the professional world is reckoning with the cost of being eternally reachable by your employer. More than a year and a half into the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom fatigue is rampant, and workers are leaving jobs in record numbers and reevaluating their relationships with work itself, citing burnout as one of the top reasons for quitting.

BlackBerry’s retirement is part of the so-called 2G/3G sunset, which is underway as carriers dismantle outdated and inefficient pieces of infrastructure – which were once the standard for connectivity – to make way for newer networks that are more secure, cost-efficient and easier to maintain. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are all slated to drop 3G services this year, but the road to 5G remains checkered with challenges and slowdowns, from regulatory hurdles to a lack of hardware and skilled professionals. The sunset will impact more than just flip phones: many devices on the “internet of things” from farming equipment to security systems to fire alarms still run on 3G, and adaptation had lagged.

In its earliest iteration, the BlackBerry was not a phone but essentially a glorified, two-way pager, a “breakthrough wireless solution for mobile professionals,” according to its maker, Research In Motion. When the first version that could be deemed a smartphone arrived, in 2002, it required use of a headset.

For years, BlackBerry was top of the totem pole for personal technology, indispensable to politicians, celebrities and professionals alike. Kim Kardashian used to have multiple BlackBerries, just in case one broke, and President Barack Obama refused to give up his BlackBerry after taking office.

Research In Motion enjoyed years as one of the world’s top smartphone makers, and it led the way with features like web browsing capability, predictive text, secure instant messaging and Bluetooth. It was seen as a leader in security. But the company was slow to realize the value of apps and touch screens. As late as 2014, former BlackBerry chief executive John Chen was still insisting that the company’s strategy would “center more and more on the qwerty keyboard.”

But the devices sometimes left kids frustrated with their distracting effect on parents: A 2006 story in the Wall Street Journal, “BlackBerry Orphans,” featured a 4-year-old who tried to flush her mother’s BlackBerry down to the toilet, and a ninth grader whose parents typed their way through her graduation ceremony and dance recitals. One Austin grade schooler said he was “very annoyed” with his mother’s BlackBerry: “She’s always concentrating on that blasted thing.”

The advent of the iPhone unleashed a tsunami of change in the smartphone market. Whereas BlackBerry had always catered to the corporate, work-addicted consumer that prioritized email, the iPhone offered an accessible interface that was appealing to those inside and outside the professional world.

After the iPhone debuted in 2007, BlackBerry’s stature eroded: its market share slumped from 20% in 2009 to just 5% in 2012, according to Business Insider. By 2016, when the company ceased manufacturing the BlackBerry and shifted its focus to software, its market share had dwindled to zero as customers were bombarded by touch-based options from competitors like Apple, Google and Samsung.

BlackBerry die-hards can sustain some hope for a comeback. Austin-based OnwardMobility is supposed to be releasing a 5G version of the BlackBerry, but it has been mysteriously delayed: Its website still says the revival is coming in 2021.

Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately?

Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately?

A couple of factors are at play, starting with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. Omicron is more likely to infect people, even if it doesn’t make them very sick, and its surge coincided with the holiday travel season in many places.

People might mistakenly think the COVID-19 vaccines will completely block infection, but the shots are mainly designed to prevent severe illness, says Louis Mansky, a virus researcher at the University of Minnesota.

And the vaccines are still doing their job on that front, particularly for people who’ve gotten boosters.

Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine still offer strong protection against serious illness from omicron. While those initial doses aren’t very good at blocking omicron infection, boosters — particularly with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — rev up levels of the antibodies to help fend off infection.

Omicron appears to replicate much more efficiently than previous variants. And if infected people have high virus loads, there’s a greater likelihood they’ll pass it on to others, especially the unvaccinated. Vaccinated people who get the virus are more likely to have mild symptoms, if any, since the shots trigger multiple defenses in your immune system, making it much more difficult for omicron to slip past them all.

Advice for staying safe hasn’t changed. Doctors say to wear masks indoors, avoid crowds and get vaccinated and boosted. Even though the shots won’t always keep you from catching the virus, they’ll make it much more likely you stay alive and out of the hospital.