In the mini documentary — designed to look like a pop-up storybook — Selena explores her Mexican heritage and family history, and talks about the inspiration behind her Spanish-language EP Revelación.
“If I can speak to the Latinx community, I would say, ‘Be proud of who you are. You are meant to be exactly where you were meant to be, however it looks, whatever it may be. Don’t stop trying,’” Selena says in the doc.
Produced by YouTube Music, Selena Gomez: Artist Spotlight Stories is available on Selena’s YouTube channel now.
(NEW YORK) — There is a high school sophomore from Texas who wakes up at 6 a.m. on the weekends when she knows her parents are asleep, so she can secretly and quietly make calls as an ambassador for a teen pro-vaccine group, fighting off vaccine misinformation.
The reason for all the cloak and dagger secrecy? The 15-year-old, who asked to be called Rain (not her real name), is the daughter of QAnon followers who hold strident views against mask wearing, social distancing and the coronavirus vaccine.
Rain is part of a growing generational divide, experts say, in a nation where adults and their children are consuming two entirely different streams of information about the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, with many holding sharply different views about how they should respond to it.
“Students are thinking for themselves,” said Dr. Douglas Diekema, a University of Washington Medicine Professor of Pediatrics and Seattle Children’s Physician. “Kids spent an entire year, in most places, not being able to go out and now, they want to go to school, they want to see their friends and they know that the quickest way to do that and the safest way to do that is to get vaccinated.”
“And they’re mad about the fact that they can’t accomplish that without their parents’ permission,” Diekema said.
Rain works with Teens For Vaccines, an organization started in 2019 by Arin Parsa, a teenager from California who — as a sixth-grader– developed an interest in vaccine law and public policy at the height of the measles outbreak. The two connected after Rain took to social media publicly to express her frustration at local attitudes toward vaccination.
She said her social media post “was getting a lot of hate comments from conservatives when Teens For Vaccines reached out to me and said I was very brave,” Rain told ABC News. “And since joining them, I’ve seen that there’s a lot of teens in my shoes who can’t speak out, so I want to be a voice for them.”
Parsa’s interest in vaccine hesitancy predates the pandemic. He was inspired by Ethan Lindenberger, a teenager who gained national attention in 2019 when he posted on Reddit that he had never been vaccinated because his mother believed that vaccines are dangerous.
Lindenberger testified before a Senate committee about how misinformation that appears on Facebook, Twitter and other social media fuels the anti-vaccination movement.
Since then, Parsa began reaching out to teens with anti-vaccine and vaccine-hesitant parents on Reddit to answer their questions, guide them through state consent laws and help them educate and convince their parents to allow them to get vaccinated.
As misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine sentiment have consumed the debate over a global pandemic response, the rift between some teens and their parents has increased. Teens For Vaccines has 30 state ambassadors like Rain across the country and has partnered with GENup, another teen organization with more than 4,000 student members.
The work of the organization has garnered national interest, with most recently, Parsa being invited to a back-to-school virtual event with Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the White House and Douglas Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, to encourage youth vaccinations.
“We are seeing a groundswell of teens from across the nation speaking up for public health and science in an era where truth and facts are being combated from all sides,” Parsa said.
Youth vaccination across the country
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility in May to everyone in the U.S. 12 years and older. However, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey from August found that for parents of unvaccinated teens, their top concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine are around the potential for long-term or serious side effects.
The survey noted that the vaccination status of children “closely mirrors that of parents” with “larger shares” of Democrats, and those with higher incomes and college degrees saying their child is vaccinated, while nearly four in 10 Republican parents and half of parents who are unvaccinated themselves say they will not get their eligible children vaccinated.
And while 12-to-17-year-olds continue to be the least vaccinated eligible age group in the country, the vaccination rate among adolescents is growing faster than any other age group, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said in late August.
According to the White House, 50% of 12-to-17-year-olds now have at least their first shot.
But for the adolescents who are eligible to be vaccinated and cannot do so because their parents are vaccine-hesitant or anti-vaccine, there aren’t many options.
“Pretty much all states have created situations in which a minor can provide consent but they’re pretty limited to the treatment and diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases, the treatment and diagnosis of pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, the provision of psychiatric and substance abuse care,” said Diekema “But vaccinations have never fallen into that category or those categories.”
“So in most states, vaccinations require parental consent and the COVID vaccine today is no exception to that,” Diekema said. “It’s kind of messy and it’s definitely different from state to state.”
As of May, teenagers ranging from 11 to 16 can consent to being vaccinated in Alabama, the District of Columbia, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina, an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed. In Arizona, although parental consent is required, a child can be vaccinated if a court order is obtained.
A few states, said Diekema, have a “mature minor doctrine” in place that allows adolescents to give consent for medical care but not all include vaccination. Arizona, Idaho and Tennessee are among the states with mature minor doctrines in place.
In August, North Carolina, one of the states with a mature minor doctrine, passed legislation requiring minors to have approval from a parent before receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Generally speaking, if you are in a state where parental consent is required for medical treatment for vaccines specifically or medical treatment, generally, then you are kind of out of luck if your goal is to be vaccinated and your parents are opposed to it,” said Brian Abramson, a vaccine law professor at Florida International University.
Abramson told ABC News that from a legal perspective, he believes some state vaccine laws that don’t permit children to give their own consent to be vaccinated are “not based in reality” because in some cases, minors who have children or are married can make their own health decisions.
“If a minor gets married, that certainly doesn’t demonstrate that they have the capacity and the maturity to make those decisions,” Abramson said. “Sometimes it demonstrates the opposite. But that’s the way the law is.”
“If you have a minor of a relatively mature age and they are seeking to be vaccinated to protect themselves from an infectious disease that has spread all over the country,” Abramson added, “that by itself is kind of an indication that they have a degree of maturity sign that they understand the consequences of their actions because they’re seeking to receive a vaccine that’s recommended by all the federal agencies and state agencies and by science.”
Because of how difficult it is for an adolescent to get vaccinated without their parents’ consent, Parsa said that a lot of his work is focused on helping teens educate their parents and addressing concerns.
“We always try convincing parents first,” Parsa said. “If nothing works, we show them the minor consent laws for their state and help them find a local pharmacy. But ultimately, we need to be able to have a law that says high schoolers should be able to consent to all the vaccines.”
In Texas, where Rain lives, minors need parental consent to be vaccinated.
“I’m probably going to have to deal with the fact that I can’t get vaccinated for COVID until I turn 18,” Rain said. “Going to school is scary but I try my best to wear my mask, sanitize my hands after every class and stay away from large groups of people even though it’s hard.”
NEW YORK) — A Texas school district that included masks as part of its dress code has been hit with a temporary restraining order.
Paris Independent School District (ISD), which serves about 3,900 students in northeast Texas, amended its dress code in early August to include masks in a loophole to Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mandates, and was sued earlier this week by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to court documents.
Paxton announced Tuesday he filed lawsuits against Paris ISD and eight other districts — Diboll, Honey Grove, La Vega, Longview, Lufkin, Waco, Midway and McGregor — for violating GA-38, Texas’ law which bans governmental entities, including schools districts, from mandating face coverings or vaccines.
In total he’s sued at least 15 districts after seeking action against Elgin, Galveston, Richardson, Round Rock, Sherman and Spring districts last week over mask mandates.
A Lamar County district court issued the temporary restraining order, prohibiting Paris ISD from enforcing the mandate as a result. The court agreed that the district lacks “authority to issue or enforce a face mask mandate in light of Governor Abbott’s executive order GA-38,” Paxton’s office said in a release.
“The law is clear, and this superintendent knows this, yet he has no issue continuing to waste precious state resources on impossible lawsuits instead of providing for his students,” Paxton said. “This temporary restraining order is just the first step in restoring order to our great state and ending this disruption from rogue local officials.”
This was the second win for the controversial GA-38 law after a Fort Worth court of appeals reinstated a temporary injunction against Fort Worth ISD’s mask mandate.
Dennis Eichelbaum, Paris ISD’s district spokesperson and attorney, told ABC News the district has received several letters from the attorney general against the mandate. “We’ve emailed back to him saying, show us where the governor actually suspended the education code, which gives us the right to have dress codes. He hasn’t responded to that,” he said.
He said the district wasn’t given a copy of the lawsuit until after the restraining order was signed. There will be a hearing Sept. 21 where the court will consider whether or not to rescind the restraining order.
“The school district is complying as of right now, with the court order. Regardless of what the Attorney General does, please continue to wear masks. It’s what’s keeping our students and our faculty safe,” Eichelbaum said. “We’ve seen that it’s done a tremendous job in minimizing the spread of COVID-19. At our campuses, we have one of the lowest rates of COVID absence and we believe that’s partly because of masks.”
In Paris ISD, school started Aug. 19 but there haven’t been any major COVID-19 outbreaks. Currently there are eight active staff cases and 27 active student cases, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
That’s a tiny fraction of the thousands of virus infections reported in schools so far, according to state data. Overall, since Aug. 13 there’s been over 73,700 cumulative positive student cases and more than 16,200 staff cases reported throughout Texas Public Schools (TPS) for the 2021-2022 school year, according to the TPS COVID-19 dashboard.
Paxton has a list of over 80 school districts and other governmental entities that he deems in violation of GA-38.
Midway Independent School District, which is in the Waco area, was sued in Tuesday’s rash of lawsuits, but the district said that they don’t even have a mask mandate in place.
“At this point, we are aware of claims of a lawsuit, but we have not been directly notified or served,” district spokesperson Traci Marlin said to ABC News. “We have not received information of why or how we are considered out of compliance or considered for a lawsuit.”
“Midway ISD does not have a mask mandate,” she added. “We have respected the governor’s orders while implementing thoughtful, measured and temporary responses to clusters of COVID cases.”
One of those protocols is a 10-day “mask directive” that schools can issue to encourage mask-wearing if virus transmission reaches a concerning level, but even then masks are not required and there are no punishments for not abiding by the directive, she added.
Paxton has been ramping up the pressure on school districts after kids headed back to class last month, many of them wearing masks in defiance of the governor’s order.
“If districts choose to spend their money on legal fees, they must do so knowing that my office is ready and willing to litigate these cases,” Paxton said in a statement last week after the first wave of lawsuits.
Rachel Platten has given birth to her second child with husband Kevin Lazan: a baby girl named Sophie Jo.
The 40-year-old “Fight Song” singer announced the happy news on her Instagram Wednesday, revealing her daughter was born at home in a water birth on September 9 after “2.5 grueling days of labor.”
“When I thought I couldn’t take anymore, this amazing, wise little one kept whispering to me ‘we can do this mama, we can do this,’” Rachel writes, alongside photos of her snuggling in bed with the newborn.
“So i kept going one contraction at a time,” she continues. “I feel like a warrior and I will NEVER doubt my strength again. Thank you Sophie for showing me what I am made of and for completing our family.”
The singer concludes her Instagram post by thanking her fans.
“And Thank YOU all so much for your love and support and for allowing me the privacy these last couple of months to just be with my family and prepare for this new life,” she writes. “Sending you all the coziest new baby snuggles. please, please positive comments only.”
Rachel and Kevin are also parents to two-year-old daughter Violet Skye. They announced they were expecting baby number two back in April.
CHVRCHES has shared a cover of “Cry Little Sister,” the 1987 single by Gerard McMahon made famous by the film The Lost Boys.
Lauren Mayberry and company recorded their version for the new Netflix movie Nightbooks, which is out today. You can download the track now via digital outlets.
The “Cry Little Sister” cover is the latest movie-themed project from CHVRCHES. In recent weeks, they released a rendition of the Echo and the Bunnymen song “The Killing Moon,” which was famously used in Donnie Darko, and recorded a remix of a song by iconic horror director and composer John Carpenter.
Oh, and the new CHVRCHES album is called Screen Violence.
Jermaine Dupri will have to find another artist to go toe-to-toe with him in a Verzuz battle after Diddy says the So So Def founder is not on his level.
It all started when Dupri tweeted at Diddy during Tuesday’s night Verzuz battle between Fat Joe and Ja Rule.
“Somebody let @Diddy know I’m @thegarden right now !,” Dupri wrote, offering an invitation to Diddy for a potential battle. “And he gon need some training for me.”
A few hours later, Diddy responded, officially declining Dupri’s invitation.
“Beloved you my n**** but your arms too short to box with God!!!,” Diddy tweeted back. “You aiint got enough hits. I’ll smash you with just [Biggie] n [Mary J. Blige]. But I do have the upmost respect on you as a musical legend.”
The Bad Boy founder then noted which producer he felt was “worthy” of a Verzuz challenge. “[Dr.] Dre the only one can get in the ring w me,” Diddy declared.
Dre has yet to respond to Diddy’s apparent Verzuz invitation.
Rival Sons have announced a reissue of their 2011 album, Pressure & Time, in honor of its 10th anniversary.
The package will be available on standard CD and vinyl, due out November 12, as well as a limited edition deluxe version, which will be released in March 2022.
In the deluxe, you’ll find Pressure & Time on a gold vinyl LP, as well as a bonus single and a 48-page photo book. If you pre-order it before November 12, you’ll also get a signed print of the band.
Earlier this year, Rival Sons announced that they’d be reissuing some of their earlier work via their newly launched Sacred Tongue Recordings. Prior to Pressure & Time, the band’s 2009 debut album, Before the Fire, and their 2010 self-titled EP have also received the reissue treatment.
Meanwhile, Rival Sons are embarking on a 10th anniversary Pressure & Time tour starting September 29 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
(NEW YORK) — When U.S. gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman testified before Congress Wednesday, they painted a portrait of a system that failed them when they reported sexual abuse allegations against Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics team doctor.
The gymnasts also shared a vivid picture of what it is like to recover emotionally from sexual abuse, and described how the system’s failures delayed their ongoing recovery.
“I personally don’t think that people realize how much experiencing a type of abuse is not something that one just suffers in the moment,” said Raisman, who testified against Nassar shortly before he was sentenced in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison for sexually assaulting hundreds of girls and women. “It carries on with them, sometimes for the rest of their lives.”
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the FBI’s handling of the Nassar allegations, Raisman continued, “For example, being here today is taking everything I have. My main concern is I hope I have the energy even to just walk out of here. I don’t think people realize how much it affects us.”
Maroney, who testified Wednesday that the FBI delayed documenting her claims against Nassar and then made false claims, at one point apologized to the senators for not answering more questions, saying she was exhausted after sharing her experience with them.
When Biles, a seven-time Olympic medalist, began her testimony, she told the senators, “To be perfectly honest, I can imagine no place I’d be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you sharing these comments.”
Biles — who paused several times in her testimony to hold back tears — tied her performance at this summer’s Tokyo Olympics to her struggle to recover mentally after being abused by Nassar. She dropped out of several competitions in Tokyo because of a mental health issue.
“As a recent competitor in the Tokyo Games who was a survivor of this horror, I can assure you the impacts of this man’s abuse are not over or ever forgotten,” Biles said. “The announcement in the spring of 2020 that the Tokyo Games were to be postponed for a year meant that I would be going to the gym, to training, to therapy, living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.”
“As I have stated in the past, one thing that helped me push each and every day was the goal of not allowing this crisis to be ignored. I worked incredibly hard to make sure that my presence could maintain a connection between the failures and the competition at Tokyo 2020,” she continued. “That has proven to be an exceptionally difficult burden for me to carry, particularly when required to travel to Tokyo without the support of any of my family.”
Biles has also spoken previously about suffering from depression and having to take anxiety medication in the fallout of the Nassar abuse.
Raisman has said in the past that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being sexually abused. In her testimony before Congress, she described exactly how that has impacted both her physical and emotional health.
“I used to train some days, seven hours a day when I was training for the Olympics, and processing my abuse affected me so much and it is still something I struggle with,” she said. “When I first shared my story publicly … I didn’t even have the energy to stand up in the shower. I would have to sit on the floor and wash my hair because standing up was too exhausting for me.”
“I couldn’t even go for a 10-minute walk outside, and this is someone — I’ve competed in two Olympic games,” Raisman continued. “There are times where I feel like I forget what I’m saying. I feel like my mind isn’t working. I feel like I have no energy at all. I’m 27 years old and my 80-year-old grandfather has more energy than I do.”
Raisman said she has had to be taken by ambulance for medical care after passing out because she is “so sick from just the trauma,” noting that it can at times hit her, “out of the blue.”
“I think it’s important for people to understand how much — even if we’re not crying — we are all struggling and how much survivors are suffering,” Raisman said, adding that delivering her testimony on Wednesday may be something that will take her “months” from which to recover.
Surviving sexual abuse as a child or as an adult can have lasting mental health complications, experts say.
According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, around 70% of rape or sexual assault victims experience moderate to severe distress after the assault, which they say is a larger percentage than for any other violent crime.
Mental health complications from sexual assault may include everything from self-harm and eating disorders to panic attacks, depression, flashbacks, PTSD substance abuse and suicide, according to RAINN.
If you or someone you know is in need of help, the National Sexual Assault Hotline — 800-656-HOPE — is free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also use the hotline’s chat online option.
(NEW YORK) — The United Nations Human Rights chief on Wednesday called for a moratorium on the sale of and use of artificial intelligence technology that poses human rights risks — including the state use of facial recognition software — until adequate safeguards are put in place.
The plea comes as artificial intelligence develops at a rapid clip, despite myriad concerns ranging from privacy to racial bias plaguing the emerging technology.
“Artificial intelligence can be a force for good, helping societies overcome some of the great challenges of our times. But AI technologies can have negative, even catastrophic, effects if they are used without sufficient regard to how they affect people’s human rights,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement Wednesday.
Bachelet’s warnings accompany a report released by the U.N. Human Rights Office analyzing how artificial intelligence systems affect people’s right to privacy — as well as rights to health, education, freedom of movement and more.
“Artificial intelligence now reaches into almost every corner of our physical and mental lives and even emotional states,” Bachelet added. “AI systems are used to determine who gets public services, decide who has a chance to be recruited for a job, and of course they affect what information people see and can share online.”
The report warns of the dangers of implementing the technology without due diligence, citing cases of people being wrongly arrested because of flawed facial recognition tech or being denied social security benefits because of the mistakes made by these tools.
While the report did not cite specific software, it called for countries to ban any AI applications that “cannot be operated in compliance with international human rights law.” More specifically, the report called for a moratorium on the use of remote biometric recognition technologies in public spaces — at least until authorities can demonstrate compliance with privacy and data protection standards and the absence of discriminatory or accuracy issues.
The report also slammed the lack of transparency around the implementation of many AI systems, and how their reliance on large data sets can result in people’s data being collected and analyzed in opaque ways as well as result in faulty or discriminatory decisions. The long-term storage of data and how it could be used in the future is also unknown and a cause for concern, according to the report.
“Given the rapid and continuous growth of AI, filling the immense accountability gap in how data is collected, stored, shared and used is one of the most urgent human rights questions we face,” Bachelet said.
“We cannot afford to continue playing catch-up regarding AI — allowing its use with limited or no boundaries or oversight, and dealing with the almost inevitable human rights consequences after the fact,” Bachelet said, calling for immediate action to put “human rights guardrails on the use of AI.”
Digital rights advocacy groups welcomed the recommendations from the international body, especially as many nations lag in implementing federal laws surrounding artificial intelligence.
Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, told ABC News that the report further proves the “existential threat” posed by this emerging technology.
“This report echoes the growing consensus among technology and human rights experts around the world: artificial intelligence powered surveillance systems like facial recognition pose an existential threat to the future [of] human liberty,” Greer told ABC News. “Like nuclear or biological weapons, technology like this has such an enormous potential for harm that it cannot be effectively regulated, it must be banned.”
“Facial recognition and other discriminatory uses of artificial intelligence can do immense harm whether they’re deployed by governments or private entities like corporations,” Greer added. “We agree with the UN report’s conclusion: there should be an immediate, worldwide moratorium on the sale of facial recognition surveillance technology and other harmful AI systems.”
Multiple studies have indicated that facial recognition technologies powered by artificial intelligence have the potential of racial bias and false negatives. Just last summer, a Black man in Michigan was wrongfully arrested and detained after facial recognition technology incorrectly identified him as a shoplifting suspect.
A sweeping 2019 study from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology found a majority of facial recognition software on the market had higher rates of false positive matches for Asian and Black faces compared to white faces. A separate 2019 study from the U.K. found that 81% of suspects flagged by the facial recognition technology used by London’s Metropolitan Police force were innocent.
Cleveland Browns star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. will be held out against Houston this week, head coach Kevin Stefanski announced Wednesday.
“[I] just felt like that was the right thing to do,” he said. “Last week, I thought we had a good plan. He was close, working very hard on the side, but felt like it made more sense to have clarity early in the week from a game-planning [and] practice standpoint.
Stefanski said Beckham has not had a setback and will continue to practice this week on a limited basis.
Beckham has been recovering from knee surgery after he tore his left ACL last season.
He was a game-time decision for the team’s week one game against Kansas City but was ruled inactive for the game.
“He was pushing to get there, just didn’t feel like he could play a significant number of snaps,” Stefanski said. “I just felt like this for this week, the prudent thing to do was let those other guys get all those reps, although they got a bunch last week and, let’s game plan accordingly.”
