Camila Cabello, who immigrated from Cuba at the age of six, recently visited the U.S./Mexico border so she could get a deeper understanding of the situation there. Speaking to People, she calls the visit, conducted alongside the organization This Is Humanity, “transformational.”
Camila visited the Caritas migrant shelter in Tijuana, and she tells People, “Without a doubt, these are some of the most resilient people I have ever met. Many of them are fleeing life-threatening situations and experiencing unspeakable traumas just for the chance to live a safe life with more opportunity.”
“These parents have some of the same hopes and dreams for their children as my mom had for me when we left Cuba,” the singer notes. “Our stories started out in search of a better life but timing created two completely different outcomes. This realization will always stay with me.”
“There are so many articles in the news about policies and crises at the border, but it is important to remember that these are stories about real people,” says Camila.
She adds, “Spending time with and hearing the stories of these families and children during our trip was transformational for me….the visit helped me better understand…the heartbreaking realities that so many migrants and asylum seekers are facing at our borders.”
Camila explains that watching the young children at the shelter was “a simple but heartbreaking reminder that they are all just kids.”
“The difference is that these children are forced to deal with incredible challenges and trauma that no child or person should ever have to face,” Camila notes.
(TUCSON, Ariz.) — A family of colorless and tasteless man-made chemicals — largely unregulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — has become a growing concern for drinking water safety in thousands of American communities, as scientists increasingly see links to liver damage, high cholesterol, weakened immune systems and cancer.
“They basically fulfill the characteristics of a ticking time bomb,” said Dr. Bo Guo, a University of Arizona hydrologist and expert on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are commonly used in hundreds of consumer products and in firefighting foams, a top source of PFAS contamination.
“They’re very dangerous and they’re migrating very slowly,” Guo said of the heat-resistant chemicals.
While the health concerns around PFAS are not new, greater detection of the chemicals in water systems nationwide in recent years has begun to alarm state and local leaders and prompted Congress to consider urgent action.
Last month, the city of Tucson, Arizona, abruptly shut down a major water treatment facility that delivered drinking water to 60,000 residents because of a sudden surge in PFAS contamination that threatened to overwhelm groundwater filtration systems.
“We don’t have enough confidence to go to drinking water supply at this time,” said John Kmiec, interim director of Tucson Water. “We know that there’s this contamination out there. We don’t know exactly what it does, but we know it’s not going away.”
Some level of PFAS, widely known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment, have been found in water samples of 2,790 communities across 49 states, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an independent research and consumer watchdog organization pushing to limit exposure to chemicals through water, food and household products.
The contamination is likely much more widespread, experts said, because the EPA does not require testing for the chemicals and has not set a mandatory limit for how much PFAS are safe to drink in tap water.
“It’s likely an issue in every community, and that’s why we need testing to find out,” said Sydney Evans, an EWG water quality analyst who has conducted PFAS testing across the country.
In 2016, concerned by emerging health study data, the EPA issued an advisory to local water systems warning that prolonged exposure to the chemicals over 70 parts-per-trillion (ppt) may result in “adverse health effects.” The agency encouraged utilities to voluntarily monitor and filter to below that level, but does not enforce a standard.
President Joe Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign to accelerate the study and regulation of PFAS, but his EPA has yet to designate the class of substances as hazardous under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
There is growing momentum in Congress to pressure the agency over the issue. In a bipartisan vote last month, the House approved a bill that would force the EPA to establish mandatory national limits for PFAS in drinking water within two years, requiring more water systems to start filtering the chemicals out. The Senate’s pending bipartisan infrastructure bill would include billions to help communities get the job done.
“The thing that gives me the greatest concern is not every community or every water company in the U.S. is actively testing for PFAS,” said Kmiec. “So, there’s a lot of small to medium sized utilities that may have no idea if they even have a problem in their watershed.”
The chemicals have been detected on the shores of Michigan lakes, in the neighborhoods around old Naval Air Stations in Pennsylvania and even in the groundwater of a New Mexico dairy farm whose owner alleges in federal court documents that PFAS has poisoned the cows.
Water samples Evans collected and tested in March found elevated PFAS levels in the taps of some Virginia suburbs around the nation’s capital. A firefighting foam spill at a small regional airport is a suspected source of the contamination.
“It’s in the backyard of the people who are working on these issues,” Evans said.
Groundwater contamination, like that in Tucson, has often been linked to industrial sites, landfills, airports and military bases where the chemicals may have seeped into the ground years ago. Analysts with EWG estimated that more than 200 million Americans could be drinking some amount of PFAS in their tap water every day.
“We don’t want them in our bodies because we know that they can make some people sick,” said Dr. Jamie DeWitt, an East Carolina University toxicologist and pharmacologist leading cutting-edge research into how PFAS affect human bodies.
“Some of the effects that have been uncovered through studies of people who are exposed are different types of cancer. The ones that are most strongly linked are kidney and testicular cancer,” DeWitt said. “We know they can produce negative effects on the liver; affect levels of cholesterol in the body; affect your body’s immune system. They can also have effects on developing babies and on women while they are pregnant.”
The EPA declined ABC News’ request for an interview but said in a statement that addressing PFAS in drinking water is “a top priority” and that the agency is “developing a multi-year strategy to deliver critical public health protections.”
The agency said it is moving “as expeditiously as possible” while balancing the law, industry interests and the science. The EPA recently announced steps to collect more data on PFAS in drinking water systems and said they plan to move forward with regulations on two specific, older types of the chemicals linked to known health problems.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group representing PFAS manufacturers, said in a statement responding to this ABC News report that it’s “committed to the responsible production, use and management” of the substances and supports the EPA consideration of national drinking water standards for two of the more than 4,000 types of PFAS chemicals.
“Most health effects that have been attributed to PFAS related to legacy substances that have been voluntarily removed from the market,” the group said in a statement.
Many environmental and consumer advocates said the EPA’s delay in regulating the chemical class more broadly is highly troubling.
“I think that the EPA — we need to hold their feet to the fire because nothing is going to change, nothing will go forward until they set those limits,” said Yolanda Herrera, a longtime Tucson community advocate for safe drinking water. “It’s going to take all of us together to go to Congress, to go to the EPA to make major changes that need to be done.”
Remediation of PFAS in water systems can be time-consuming and costly. The lack of an EPA-mandated drinking water standard complicates the process, state and local officials told ABC News, because there is not a clear benchmark for how much needs to be cleaned up and what resources governments need to meet it.
“We have no way of removing PFAS from the body,” said Dr. Philippe Grandjean, a top environmental health expert and leading researcher on PFAS at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “We need to do everything we can to protect women … against these compounds so that they are not burdening the next generation.”
Estimates for eliminating the toxins in soil and water at sites nationwide exceed tens of billions of dollars.
“We have been cleaning and remediating PFAS with our own dime,” said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, “but the residents of our community should not be left holding the bag of something that they did not create.”
Arizona state and local officials believe PFAS-laden firefighting foam deployed in training exercises and emergencies decades ago at Tucson’s International Airport and Air National Guard complex is only now reaching groundwater wells miles away.
“The firefighting foam — (the Air Force) has told us that they either, if it was used on the runway, they’d hose this stuff into the soil. If it was used in the hangars, they’d dilute it and dump it down the sewer system,” said Tucson Councilman Steve Kozachik about the facility, which is home to one of the largest F-16 training installations in the world.
The base is one of an estimated 687 military installations with known or suspected PFAS contamination, according to Pentagon data published by the Government Accountability Office in June.
A June 2021 report by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality found PFAS concentrations in groundwater samples around the Tucson airport at 10,000 ppt — far above the EPA’s 70 ppt advisory. Scientists believe a plume of PFAS in the soil has been slowly migrating underground north and west toward wells that feed into the city’s now-shuttered water treatment plant.
“The PFAS people see in groundwater is just a little fraction of the total PFAS at those contamination sites,” Guo said.
The Defense Department said it is investigating the scope of known or suspected contamination at or near hundreds of facilities but needs more time before it can launch a large-scale clean-up plan. Five years ago, the military began deploying what it calls a “new, environmentally responsible” firefighting foam, however it is not yet PFAS-free.
“Tucson is a bellwether. We’re the canary in the coal mine right now,” said Kozachik. “We’re saying to every other city in the country, this is an issue if you’ve got a military base in your community.”
The indefinite shutdown of the water treatment facility on Tucson’s south side because of PFAS has resurfaced old fears.
In 1983, the EPA listed Tucson as a Superfund site after the city’s tap water was poisoned by an industrial spill of the chemical solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE. The pollution, which went undetected for years, is linked to cancer cases and deaths across the city’s south side.
Hundreds of residents received financial settlements in major lawsuits, and state and local governments later funded construction of the water treatment facility. It has been cleaning up the water ever since — until PFAS arrived.
“How is this being allowed to happen?” said Tucson native Pattie Daggett, 47, who was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer in 2014 that her doctor linked to TCE exposure in the water.
“They haven’t even finished cleaning up the chemicals that were in the water before,” said Daggett. “We’ve got PFAS now. Like, what? I wish I could tell you how worried I am.”
The Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam, scheduled for September 3-5 in Panama City Beach, Florida, will not take place this year after all. Instead, the festival has been moved to June 3-5, 2022, according to a statement from festival organizers.
The postponement comes amid the current uptick in COVID-19 cases in Bay County, where the festival was set to be held, as well as across the country.
It’s the second time the Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam has been postponed. It originally rescheduled its 2020 lineup to 2021, keeping previously-booked headliners Lynyrd Skynyrd, Luke Bryan and Brad Paisley on the lineup for the makeup dates. It’s not yet clear whether those artists, or the others scheduled to perform, will be a part of the event in 2022.
The news from Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam comes as many festivals and events are implementing different levels of COVID-19 safety protocols. Last week, Live Nation announced they’ll give touring artists the option to mandate proof of vaccination or a current negative test from anyone attending their shows.
This week, Milwaukee’s all-genre Summerfest and Bonnaroo both decided to enact that policy for their events this year. A few artists, such as Jason Isbell, are also beginning to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test at their shows.
Tickets for this year’s Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam will be honored in 2022; alternately, concertgoers can request a refund on the event’s website.
Following the news that Alessia Cara had recorded a new song for the upcoming animated film PAW Patrol: The Movie, the song has now been officially released.
Called “The Use in Trying,” the song carries a message of encouragement, urging the listener not to give up, because you’ll learn a valuable lesson if you keep on pushing.
“Hold your head up/You’ll find your way home/You won’t get what you give sometimes,” Alessia sings. “When the dust all settles/And the smoke all clears up/There’s pieces of yourself you’re gonna find/Maybe that’s the use in trying.”
As previously reported, Alessia wrote the song for a specific scene in the movie that emphasizes “the importance of courage.”
“I wanted to write something that could not only teach kids that they’re not always going to win, but that there’s real value in trying anyways because of the lessons you find on the other side,” she explained. “That’s a sentiment we can all understand, the further into life we go. Navigating life is never easy, but it is always worth the shot.”
PAW Patrol: The Movie, based on the preschool series, arrives in theaters and on streaming on Paramount+ on August 20. Adam Levine also has a song in the movie, titled “Good Mood.”
Alessia’s no stranger to movie songs, of course: She sang “How Far I’ll Go,” which appears over the end credits of the 2016 Disney film Moana, and the song “I Choose,” which appeared in the 2020 Netflix animated film The Willoughbys. She voiced one of the characters in that film.
Tinashe is sharing why she’s “so excited” about her fifth studio album, 333.
In an interview with Billboard prior to the album’s release on August 6, Tinashe says she couldn’t “wait to finally” have her fans hear her completed work.
“Especially thinking about shows and performing these songs live,” she says. “The best part is always before a project drops, when the anticipation is building.”
It’s safe to say that this album is extremely meaningful for Tinashe, who reveals that she actually finalized her album in 2020 amid the pandemic.
“There were things I learned out of having time to sit with myself and my thoughts and I think that led to creating this music,” she explains.
After ending her record deal with RCA Records in 2019, and releasing 333 independently under her own label, Tinashe Music, the independent singer-songwriter says it’s been “awesome” to have “full creative control.”
“The majority of the songs, I wrote myself in my studio in my house where I feel the most in tune,” she says. “It’s empowered me and feels good to have that thread of continuity in my work, it’s been a game changer.”
As an independent artist, Tinashe also is managed by Jay Z‘s Roc Nation. She says working on Jay’s imprint “has been a great home” for her.
“They’ve allowed me the space to have creative freedom and given me that confidence, because they really support all of my creative decisions,” she adds.
(WASHINGTON) — Twitter has suspended Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account for the violation of the social media platform’s policy in posting COVID-19 misinformation, again.
The tweet prompting the action falsely claimed that vaccines are “failing” and don’t reduce spread.
Nearly all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in recent weeks have been among the unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health experts continue to warn that vaccines are the most effective way to curb the spread of the coronavirus and the highly contagious delta variant.
The Georgia congresswoman’s tweet is still on the platform, but now stamped with a warning that it “may be misleading.”
A Twitter spokesperson told ABC News that the tweet “was labeled in line with our COVID-19 misleading information policy.”
“The account will be in read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rules,” the spokesperson said.
According to Twitter, “read only” mode enables the following:
“If it seems like an otherwise healthy account is in the middle of an abusive episode, we might temporarily make their account read-only, limiting their ability to Tweet, Retweet, or Like content until calmer heads prevail. The person can read their timelines and will only be able to send Direct Messages to their followers,” the website says.
It’s not the first time the platform has taken action against Greene.
Back in June, Greene’s accounted was suspended for 12 hours for COVID-19 misinformation. Monday’s tweet appears to be her fourth strike.
Another violation could get her kicked off the platform for good.
(WASHINGTON) — Racquel McCray grew up with two Navy parents, so when she turned 18 she decided she wanted to follow in their footsteps. This year, she got the rare chance to be able to see her mother in action after being assigned to her ship, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
When she joined the Navy in May, Racquel chose to pursue the same logistics specialty as her mother. When she realized that she could have the opportunity to watch her mother, Tonya McCray, in the field, she reached out to her chain of command to be assigned to her mother’s ship.
Even though she was in the Navy, Tonya never pushed Racquel to follow in her footsteps, Tonya told “Good Morning America.” However, watching her father and mother inspired her to follow the same path.
“I chose to join because I watched my parents for my entire life,” Racquel told “GMA.” “They both served, so watching them every day go to work made me actually want to follow in their footsteps, with how successful they were and what they were able to provide for my sister and I.”
When Racquel first discussed the idea with her parents, they “didn’t believe her or take her seriously,” Tonya said. Once she realized how serious Racquel was about enlisting in the Navy and pursuing the logistics speciality, though, she warmed up to the idea.
“I was a proud mother,” Tonya said. “It took a while for her to get everything situated to come in, but that was my baby and I was so proud.”
Soon after enlisting, Racquel realized that she wanted to work alongside her mother, Tonya said.
“I shared some pictures with her and I talked about the experience, and she told me that was why she wanted to join the military — to be able to participate in things like that,” Tonya explained. “I talked to my chain of command, she talked to her chain of command and we thought it could be used as a training opportunity.”
For the four weeks that Racquel and Tonya worked on the same ship, Tonya enjoyed getting to share her profession with her daughter, describing the experience as “great.”
“I was able to share what I did with my daughter every day. She saw what respect that someone of my pay grade gets on a day to day, how they look up to me, and it just felt great to be able to share that experience with her, and also, just to see her hard work,” Tonya said.
While Racquel said she was disappointed about not having more time with her mother, she found her time on the ship valuable. Now, she knows that she made the right decision in choosing her specialty.
“It was a great experience for me, even though it only lasted four weeks,” Racquel said. “I would have liked for it to be a little bit longer, but it was really nice to be able to see the benefits of all of [my mom’s] hard work, how people looked up to her and respected her.”
Netflix has just dropped the trailer for the final season of Lucifer, which stars Tom Ellis as Lucifer Morningstar, aka The Devil, — yes, the actual Devil — who works as a consultant for the LAPD. When we last saw Lucifer, he’d won the right to become God — yes, the actual God — after his Father, played by Dennis Haysbert, abdicated the throne to be with the woman he loves.
In the new trailer, Lucifer appears to be dragging his heels on actually taking the throne, and as a result, the world begins to unravel. Meanwhile, there’s a female angel in Hell who’s plotting to destroy Lucifer, and in one scene, he’s engaging in hand-to-hand combat with his girlfriend, Det. Chloe Decker, who apparently wants to stab him to death.
However, there’s also a hint that we’re getting an animated episode, as well as more singing and dancing, to follow last season’s fully musical Lucifer episode. And we also see several glimpses of Lt. Dan Espinoza, who — spoiler alert — died last season. It appears as though he’s returned from the dead, which happens a lot in this show.
The final season of Lucifer hits Netflix September 10.
The Scorpions have given fans a taste of one of the new songs that’s expected to appear on the band’s upcoming studio album. A video clip of the veteran German rockers rehearsing a tune, apparently called “Seventh Son,” has been posted on the official social media sites of the group and of drummer Mikkey Dee.
Commenting about the song, Dee writes in an Instagram post, “Scorpions — rehearsing new songs for [upcoming] Tour. Pretty damn heavy.”
There’s been no official announcement about when the album will be released or what its title is, although frontman Klaus Meine revealed in a video message posted on May 29 that The Scorpions “were in the mixing process,” adding, “We can’t wait to get the album out for you guys to hear it.”
Then, on June 7, Meine and guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs appeared in another video clip from The Scorpions’ Peppermint Park studio in Hanover, Germany, and played a snippet of one of the new tracks.
The Scorpions’ most recent studio album, Return to Forever, was released in 2015. According to The-Scorpions.com, the band’s next scheduled shows will be part of a nine-date Las Vegas residency next year at The Zappos Theater at Planet Hollywood that runs from March 26 through April 16.
Richard Marx recently released his memoir, Stories To Tell, and he says putting it out was far more nerve-wracking than any album he’d ever released. Richard tells ABC Audio that he felt so much “anticipation and tension” about it that he was grateful he and his wife were overseas when it came out.
“It was better than just sitting at home and and telling myself, ‘Don’t click on reviews!'” he laughs. “But the reaction has been so heartwarming. And when I look through social media and people are posting pictures of them reading my book or with their feet up next to my book, it’s been amazing.”
He laughs, “Even some people who maybe have voiced, ‘You know, I never really was that into his music,’ [are saying] ‘Man, I loved this book and I laughed out loud!'”…yeah, it’s really nice to be hearing that stuff.”
But why did Richard think people wouldn’t like the book in the first place?
“One of my concerns was people who were hoping for a real tell-all, sort of tawdry, detailed [book about] my exploits with women in bed…, like, that was never going to happen,” he explains. “And I thought, ‘Are people going to be disappointed?'”
“And it’s been the complete opposite,” he admits. “If anything, I’ve been complimented for that!”
In fact, the only complaints Richard’s gotten seem to be from his three adult sons, who yelled at him for not sharing one particular story with them.
“For whatever reason, I guess I never told them about this horrendous situation I was in in Taiwan in the early days of my career, where we were basically held captive by these Chinese mafia guys,” he laughs. “And my sons were all like, “How could you have not told us this?!?”
