Steve Martin and Martin Short might not be related to Selena Gomez, but they’re certainly acting like proud parents after their Only Murders in the Building co-star hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Martin told Gomez of her hosting debut, “I thought you delivered the comedy so beautifully and so low key, but hilarious.” It should be noted the comedian crashed the singer’s SNL debut by starring in a prerecorded skit about the fictitious inventor of the whoopee cushion.
Added Short, “We said, ‘Go Selena!'”
The Grammy nominee said of the hosting gig, “It was so much fun. I had a blast,” and that she was thankful she “had their support.” She added hosting SNL was “a dream come true.”
The trio appeared onstage trading good-natured jabs in New York City Tuesday, promoting their Hulu show at the Disney Upfront presentation, and revealing Only Murders‘ second season trailer.
While Martin teases there will be “more crime, more murder,” his co-star Short helpfully added, “Crime and murder. And murder mixed with kind of an element of crime … and death permeates.”
Gomez added this season is “really funny” because they worked hard on making it the best season possible. “We want it to be the best one.”
The second season of Only Murders in the Building airs June 28 on Hulu.
Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Fivio Foreign delivered the official music video for his single “Hello,” which lands at #7 on his 17-track debut album, B.I.B.L.E, which dropped last month.
The Bronx rapper toned down his usual hype drill flow and look for a more subtle romantic visual featuring a love interest to whom he wants to say ‘hello.’
The track is laced with vocals by rising singer KayCyy and Grammy nominee Chloe Bailey, the latter of whom stuns in the visual, wearing a yellow and black motorbike-looking bodysuit and black thigh-high boots.
After singing the chorus with KayCyy, Chloe breaks out into her verse, which reads in part, “Talk to me nice / I just might make you go viral / Raising your price / Being with me is so vital / Oh, it look good, don’t it? / The whole damn world want it / So show me how you gon’ own it.”
To watch the full video for “Hello,” visit Fivio Foreign’s YouTube page.
If it’s good enough for The Beatles, it’s good enough for Elton John.
What’s being described as the “official feature” on Elton John is heading to Disney+. Called Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: The Final Elton John Performances and The Years That Made His Legend, the documentary features unseen concert footage from the past 50 years, modern-day footage of Elton and his family, and a look at his hand-written journals.
Ahead of its arrival on Disney+, the doc will have a limited theatrical run and will also screen at festivals.
Capturing Elton’s last months on the road on his farewell tour, with performance clips from Madison Square Garden, London and more, the film will culminate with the star’s final North American show at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium this November. It’ll also feature a special look at the first five years of Elton’s career, during which he scored seven #1 albums and became a global superstar.
Elton’s husband and manager, David Furnish, is a producer on the project. It’s directed by R.J. Cutler, who brought you the music doc Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry, as well as BELUSHI, The War Room, A Perfect Candidate and The World According to Dick Cheney.
In a statement, Furnish says, “Elton and I could not think of a better collaborator than R.J. Cutler for a film that represents more than just Elton’s career — it’s his life. From the Troubadour to Dodger Stadium, we knew that R.J. would help guide Elton’s story and its many layers in a way that feels authentic and evocative.”
Elton has been part of the Disney family since 1994, when his music for The Lion King became a massive hit.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a White House official.
The first daughter, 40, was scheduled to travel to Latin America this week with first lady Jill Biden.
The president and first lady are not considered a close contacts, according to the first lady’s spokesperson, Michael LaRosa.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reaffirmed in Wednesday’s briefing that the president was not considered a close contact of his daughter, who he hasn’t seen in “about a week.” She did not have guidance on when the president was last tested for COVID-19.
“[T]he president tests regularly throughout the week as part of a cadence as determined by his doctor,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “If his testing were to change because of the close contact, we’d let all of you know, but his cadence has not changed.”
Ashley Biden will no longer be joining the first lady on her trip to Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica, LaRosa said. Jill Biden was scheduled to depart Wednesday afternoon for Quito, Ecuador.
This is the second foreign trip Ashley Biden has had to drop out of in recent weeks. She was considered a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19 before the first lady’s trip to Poland, Romania and Ukraine earlier this month.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who is currently meeting with health officials from G-7 countries in Germany, also tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, the agency said. The president is not considered a close contact, it said.
As the BA.2 subvariant has spread around Washington, several people within the president’s inner circle have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, including Vice President Kamala Harris, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, former press secretary Jen Psaki and Jean-Pierre herself.
The president has never been deemed a close contact. When asked how this was possible, Jean-Pierre reiterated Wednesday that “extra precautions” are taken around meetings with the president. Because she had a meeting with the president today, Jean-Pierre said she was tested, masked and the meeting was socially distanced.
Masks are now optional at the White House campus, though meetings with the president are often socially distanced, officials said. White House officials have also stressed that the president is up-to-date on COVID boosters.
Someone is considered a close contact if the person was within 6 feet of an individual with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
(NEW YORK) — NASA’s Mars lander, called Insight, is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust and it will need to mostly shut down by the end of May.
NASA is being forced to end its Mars lander mission early because of dust.Officials announced Tuesday the InSight spacecraft is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust.Morever, the dust levels in the atmosphere are only increasing and sunlight is decreasing as Mars enters winter, which is speeding up the loss of power.
Power levels will likely die out in July — effectively ending operations — and, by the end of the year, project leaders expect InSight will be “inoperative.”
“People can obviously relate to, in their own homes, they have to dust because dust settles,” Chuck Scott, InSight’s project manager, told ABC News. “It’s the same sort of thing with these solar panels. We have dust in the Mars atmosphere that gets kicked up because of the local weather … storms where you get the dust kicked up because you have lot of wind.”
“Since Mars’s atmosphere is thinner, it goes up into the upper atmosphere and it can get distributed more widely than it would on Earth and it’ll deposit back down on whatever’s below including our spacecraft and the solar panels,” he added.
InSight is currently generating about one-tenth of the power it was when it landed on Mars in November 2018.
When the spacecraft first landed, the solar panels were producing 5,000 watt-hour for each Martian day, enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes, NASA said. Currently, the panels are producing 500 watt-hour per Martian day, only enough to power an electric oven for 10 minutes.
Project leaders had expected the gradual dust buildup on the solar panels, but had hoped passing whirlwinds on Mars might have cleaned some of it off, but none have so far.
“Two rovers we sent back in 2003, they both experienced what we would call ‘natural cleaning’ or ‘dust cleaning events,'” Scott said. “Those winds went over the vehicles and cleared a lot fo the dust off the solar panels of those vehicles. We were were kind of hoping this would occur with a stationary lander.”
Due to the lower power, the team will put InSight’s robotic arm in a resting position known as “retirement pose” later this month. Then, by the end of the summer, the lander’s seismometer will only be turned on at certain times, such as night when winds are not as high.
Because energy is being preserved for the seismometer, NASA said non-seismic instruments “will rarely be turned on” starting next month.
InSight has detected more than 1,300 quakes since its landing, the most recent of which occurred on May 4. The data gathered from the marsquakes have helped scientists understand the composition of Mars’s deep interior, including the planet’s crust, mantle and core.
NASA said the lander had completed its primary goals during its first two years on Mars and was currently on an extended mission.
“There wasn’t really anything known about the interior of Mars,” Scott said. “Why that’s important is NASA had been looking at how our own planets formed in the Solar System. especially the rocky ones like Venus, Earth, Mars and even our own Moon.”
This is not the first time NASA has ended a Mars lander due to dust.
Opportunity, a robotic rover, landed on the planet in 2004 and was in operation until June 2018, when a global dust storm completely covered its solar panels, which ended communications with project leaders.
Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images, FILE
(CHICAGO) — The mother of a Chicago student faces child endangerment charges after the student brought a loaded gun to school in a backpack and the weapon accidentally discharged, police said.
The incident occurred at Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Side shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Chicago Police Department.
“The weapon accidentally discharged in the backpack while inside a classroom, with a bullet striking the ground and ricocheting, resulting in a classmate being grazed in the abdomen,” the department said in a statement.
The classmate was taken to a local hospital in “good condition,” the department said. Information on the ages of the students involved was not given.
Following the incident, Tatanina Kelly, 28, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, police said.
Kelly appeared in court Wednesday, where a judge set bond at $10,000, Chicago ABC station WLS reported.
Her attorney, Rodger Clarke, argued that Kelly had no criminal record and that this was a “one-time incident, not soon to be repeated,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Walt Disney Magnet School has students in preschool through eighth grade.
In a letter obtained by WLS that was sent to parents on Tuesday, the school’s principal, Paul Riskus, addressed the incident.
“This morning during school hours, a gun was accidentally discharged on school grounds,” he wrote. “The gun discharged in a backpack and hit the floor, causing some damage and releasing debris.”
Riskus said no one was “seriously injured” and that school staff secured the gun and contacted police and and the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Safety and Security. Police confiscated the weapon.
“We are working closely with the CPS Office of Safety and Security to make a safety plan moving forward,” he wrote. “Please know that we are taking this situation extremely seriously, and CPD is investigating this incident.”
Worried family members of students who attend the school rushed to the campus in the wake of Tuesday’s incident.
“All I heard was there was a gun and I came flying,” Jennifer Uribe, whose daughter texted her about the incident, told WLS. “I wasn’t going to text her because if she had to hide, I didn’t want her doing that. So I said, ‘Stop texting me’ and I came here.”
Edwina Watkins, whose 12-year-old grandson attends the school, told WLS she was shocked.
“It is shocking for one, for a little kid to have a gun, something that should be hard for an adult to have at a school,” Watkins said.
Victor Garcia, whose son is in pre-K, told WLS he was “freaking out.”
“Gun shootings going all over the country,” he said. “This is crazy.”
Oscar nominee Sacha Baron Cohen is teaming up with Emmy-winning Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge for an HBO Max and Cartoon Network animated special.
Also in the mix for Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth is King of the Hill is co-creator Greg Daniels and SNL veteran Michael Koman.
The special has its roots in Yiddish folklore: Cohen will narrate the project, set in the mythical Town of Fools, and the show promises “a fresh take on the silly antics and exaggerated conflicts of the town, while also preserving the essence and heart of the classic folktales.”
Calling the trio’s pitch “so hilarious,” Amy Friedman, head of kids and family programming at Warner Bros., said, “This unique project will breathe new, hysterical life into the nonsensical Chelmic wisdom that originated from this imaginary city of folks who aren’t quite the sharpest tools in the shed.”
(WASHINGTON) — In the wake of the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shooting that left 10 Black people dead, the House on Wednesday is expected to pass a measure to beef up federal efforts to combat domestic terrorism and white supremacy.
The bill from Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, would create new offices within the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to “monitor, analyze, investigate, and prosecute domestic terrorism.”
Suspect fired 50 rounds in Buffalo supermarket hate crime shooting that killed 10: Police
The bill is expected to have broad support among Democrats for passage. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and other progressives were initially wary of the measure earlier this year but reached an agreement on language in talks with leadership and the American Civil Liberties Union to address concerns about the potential infringement on Americans’ First Amendment rights.
“I was proud to lead my colleagues in a successful effort to strengthen protections in this bill for protesters, narrow the domestic terrorism definition, and enhance the scope of Congressional oversight to ensure that civil rights and civil liberties continue to be protected,” Bush said in a statement to ABC News. “As an activist, I know first-hand the ways in which law enforcement agencies have targeted, surveilled and prosecuted marginalized communities.”
Republicans, however, are expected to oppose the bill, arguing that the measure is duplicative and could be used to target parents raising concerns at local school board meetings.
That could jeopardize its passage through the Senate, where Democrats have pledged to hold a vote but need the support of ten Republicans to advance legislation past the 60-vote threshold.
“By diverting resources that could be used to actually combat domestic terrorism and mandating investigations into the armed services and law enforcement, this bill further weaponizes and emboldens the DOJ to target Americans’ First Amendment rights and go after those who they see as political threats,” House GOP Whip Steve Scalise’s office wrote to Republican lawmakers in a memo encouraging them to vote against the measure.
The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland have said Republicans are mischaracterizing a memo issued last fall to the FBI and U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country encouraging them to meet with local law enforcement partners to address a rising number of threats against local school board officials.
Even Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who co-sponsored the original resolution introduced with Schneider, said he was “torn” on the bill and unsure how he would vote.
“Maybe for four months after I put my name on that bill, every meeting I went to, I had people upset I was on that bill,” he told ABC News. “They said, ‘Will I be investigated because I am pro-life?’ I heard overwhelming feedback.”
The Justice Department has already established a domestic terrorism unit, and the Biden administration has requested funding from Congress to support 60 attorneys focused on domestic terrorism cases.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has called domestic terrorism one of the greatest threats to the United States.
The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Wray told a Congressional panel in March of 2021. “At the FBI, we’ve been sounding the alarm on it for a number of years now.”
ABC’s Luke Barr and Alex Mallin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and two years into a global pandemic that has highlighted the need for increased access to mental health care, 570 counties across the United States still have no psychologists, psychiatrists or counselors.
They’re known as mental health care deserts.
Most are considered rural, meaning your ability to access care may differ greatly depending on where you live.
“While this country has given resources for healthcare over the decades, it has never been enough,” said Dr. Saul Levin, chief executive officer and medical director for the American Psychiatric Association.
Rural areas, in particular, Levin said, “have not gotten the resources to keep up.”
Seventy-five percent of rural counties across the country have no mental health providers or fewer than 50 per 100,000 people, according to an ABC News analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.
A majority of counties with no or few providers per capita are located in the Midwest and Southeast regions of the U.S.
ABC News data journalists developed this interactive map showing the ratio of patients to providers in counties across the nation.
Problem worst in Texas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
The ABC News analysis shows Texas has the highest number of counties with no providers.
Texas Health and Human Services Public Information Officer Kelli Weldon explained in an email that the state has 39 local mental and behavioral health authorities providing care to residents.
Of the state’s 254 counties, 172 are considered rural, according to Weldon.
She wrote that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission “places a high priority on identifying mental health and substance use service availability at the right time and right place.”
The state is currently working on increasing access to mental health care for residents in rural areas with an initiative called All Texas Access, which includes efforts to decrease costs to local government for crisis care services and address incarceration of and the number of emergency room visits by people with mental illness.
The ABC News analysis also found that Nebraska (49.5%), North Dakota (49.1%) and South Dakota (47%) have the highest percentage of counties with no providers.
Laurie Gill, Cabinet secretary for the Department of Social Services in South Dakota, said the state faces infrastructure issues that can complicate access to mental healthcare.
“We are, I think, classified as a frontier state, and we have this challenge across many, many different avenues,” Gill told ABC News. “When we come to talking about mental health services, we want all South Dakotans, regardless of where they live, to have access to at least short-term comprehensive behavioral and mental health crisis stabilization. Our goal is to try to keep people as close to home as possible in the least restrictive settings that we can.”
The mental health care system in South Dakota, Gill said, operates mainly through contracting with 11 nonprofit community mental health centers located across the state, which provide services including therapy and crisis intervention. Each center serves multiple counties, meaning residents may not always have a center nearby.
In communities where accessing care is more difficult, Levin says, people may find their illnesses progress before they are able to receive it and, “the comorbidity is a lot more severe.”
Gill acknowledged that sometimes a lack of options at the local level has sometimes led to people in the state needing more intensive, inpatient psychiatric care, but said her department has been doing a gap analysis to identify needs in the mental healthcare system and fill them.
Native Americans at higher risk
Native Americans are also more likely to live in a mental health desert. South Dakota is home to nine tribes, and Native Americans make up about 9% of the state’s population, according to U.S. Census data for 2021.
Gill said the state recognizes this population struggles with a disproportionately high rate of suicide and is working on increasing access to mental healthcare on reservations.
Dr. Karen Severns, Behavioral Health Director for the Indian Health Service Great Plains Area, explained that more resources are needed to meet mental health care needs on reservations.
“Just in the last 2 years, the need for mental health and substance abuse services, they actually surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Severns said.
She explained that the trauma of the pandemic compounds on the historical trauma this population struggles with, adding to the need for care. As is the case across much of the nation, however, Severns said COVID enabled expanded access to telehealth services on reservations.
“We just need more resources and now that behavioral health has become the forefront not only within our community, but also nationally,” Severns said. “The biggest [challenge] is the stigma. There’s rural challenges as well, but people don’t want to go into a clinic, so we have seen high success when there was an audio [option] allowed for them to just touch base with their therapist.”
Special focus on young people
Concern has also been heightened recently for the mental health of young people in America, with the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy telling the Senate Finance Committee in February that the obligation to act is, “not just medical, it’s moral.”
Some organizations are working to address mental health impacts on youth, particularly amid the last two years of increased stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Save the Children, a nonprofit organization focused on improving outcomes for children through education, health care, and other avenues.
“One of the components to ensure that children are able to survive and thrive is to provide for their mental health,” said Greta Wetzel, Senior Advisor of Psychosocial Support for Save the Children. “[It’s by] providing those psychosocial support, social-emotional learning opportunities, that they are able to develop into that strong and holistic child and have it be able to thrive.”
One of the programs the organization provides is a psychosocial support program called “Journey of Hope,” which was designed to help children build resilience.
Cathryn Miller, West Virginia State Director for Save the Children, explained that the program has been very beneficial in her state, where many children and families struggle with things like poverty and substance abuse.
“I think it’s really important to remember that kids aren’t just little adults,” Miller said. “And so, when we as adults are struggling through the pandemic and a lot of these challenges we’re facing, it’s amplified for children.”
Director of ABC News Digital Journalism John Kelly contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Parents of babies on specialized baby formulas are continuing to sound the alarm as the nationwide formula shortage in the U.S. persists, three months after major manufacturer Abbott temporarily shuttered production at their Sturgis, Michigan, facility and pandemic supply chain issues compounded the growing problem.
It’s an urgent issue Emily and Mac Jaehnert know all too well. Their daughter, MacKenzie, needs a special type of baby formula, Similac’s NeoSure (made by Abbott), that’s intended for babies like MacKenzie who were born prematurely.
Mac Jaehnert told “Good Morning America” he’s had to scour store after store in his local region of Richland, Washington, to try to track down much-needed formula for MacKenzie.
“Every morning, I go through and I search online for all of the stores in the area that have local inventory available,” Mac Jaehnert said. “If I see one of them, I go to that store first. A lot of times, it’s unreliable. It’s probably 50-50 at best.”
He went on, “I’ve gotten lucky one or two times where I have found NeoSure on the shelf … that is where I just start my six-store run. And I’ll do that three or four times a week. Just go and find a store and then hit as many as you can on the way home to make sure that you haven’t missed an opportunity to find this food for your kid or potentially the food that could keep your neighbor’s kid out of similarly dire straits.”
MacKenzie was born three months early, at 27 weeks, and had to spend over 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit before she became healthy enough to go home with her parents.
Mom Emily Jaehnert said the impact of the baby formula shortage on families like hers is not something many understand.
“If you’re not in the position that us and other parents are in, it’s really hard to understand just how serious and scary it is,” Emily Jaehnert said.
Mac Jaehnert put it another way. “Imagine all of the taps in your house have run dry, and now every bottle of water is off the shelf. It’s what it feels like,” he said.
People who assume MacKenzie can be breastfed or have substitute formula are not getting the full picture, Emily Jaehnert said.
“As a mom, as a woman, as somebody who, I have pumped and produced milk for MacKenzie, but I can’t anymore,” she told “GMA.” “And even if I could, she can’t have 100% breast milk. There’s a lot of people that do not understand the complexity behind feeding a medically complicated child.”
“Typical infant formulas, the ones that aren’t made for preemies will not provide her with the essentials that she needs,” she continued. “This is something that her doctors have put her on, it is not a choice we’ve necessarily made, it is something that is basically equivalent to a medication for her.”
The Jaehnerts, who live in Richland, Washington, have been on a mission to raise awareness for what MacKenzie and other preemies are facing ever since they brought their daughter home in March.
“There should be mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening,” Mac Jaehnert said. “Because this is mission critical for keeping this kid healthy and growing and out of the hospital right now.”
“It is one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever experienced in my life,” he added. “I mean, we get this kid home, after what she’s been through … and the problem is, we can’t keep something as basic as baby formula on the shelf. It is disappointing to the point of angering.”
The couple say they’ve been able to secure enough NeoSure for MacKenzie for the time being, with the help of social media and MacKenzie’s grandfather, who shipped them some formula from Milwaukee, but tell “GMA” they know other families need critical help.
“We were lucky enough to find fellow parents on Facebook who had a preemie who had recently transitioned onto solid foods, and had a month’s supply worth of NeoSure formula that they were willing to share with us,” Mac Jaehnert said. “That was incredibly generous. So we’re doing everything we can to track things down in the area and provide it to other families in need, because I know of at least 10 families who have less than a week supply of NeoSure in this area.”
For other families in need, the Jaehnerts recommend starting with family and friends, going online and checking local resources like food banks for formula.
“There are Facebook groups that are popping up, ‘Find My Formula’ groups,” Mac Jaehnert said, but he also warned parents to be careful too. “This is very dangerous stuff, not getting it through an approved source. But you know, these are the times we’re in right now and parents are doing it if you can.”
