Ballots damaged after USPS mailbox lit on fire in Phoenix: Police

(NEW YORK) — Saving Our Daughters brought star power into the recording booth to help empower some young women working on the group’s first album.

The nonprofit, founded in 2014, is dedicated to supporting young girls of color in overcoming barriers. The girls, known as “Student Cinderellas,” are a part of the collaborative album called “Cinderella Sweep.”

They’re teamed with women of color from the entertainment industry who play the role of “Celebrity Godparents.” Saving Our Daughters recruited musician Megan Piphus, the first Black female puppeteer on “Sesame Street,” who wrote a song called “Stop Me Now” as she started work on her next children’s music project.

“After writing it, I immediately thought of the work that I’ve gotten to do with Saving Our Daughters,” she said. “And so, we then thought, what if we made this entire project for young girls, and then partnered with Saving Our Daughters to get the girls to actually be on the album.”

She noted that there were no women who looked like her doing puppetry when she started doing it as a 10-year-old, but she still drew inspiration from people she admired.

“Now I’m in a position to be able to mentor young girls and provide them a view, a representation of what it looks like for a girl of color to be in the entertainment industry, to be a producer, to be a singer,” she said.

Piphus also brought her puppet Mini to the session, adding an extra layer of fun to the girls’ vocal warmups.

“I want the girls to listen to this album and really think past any limits in their mind and dream beyond their wildest dreams,” Piphus said.

Saving Our Daughters also got Broadway actress Jasmine Forsberg, star of the musical “Six,” to join the group.

“Music is all about finding your voice,” Forsberg said. “It is a universal language, and it’s a beautiful opportunity for girls around the world to be able to come together and express themselves through song.”

She’s thankful for the “incredible artistic mentors” she had when she was a little girl.

“I always knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be able to pay that forward,” Forsberg said.

The initiative seemed to inspire some of the girls.

“My dream is to be a professional dancer or be a CEO of finance or beauty,” one said.

Another suggested she has multi-pronged ambitions.

“I want to be a singer, a doctor and a fashion designer when I grow up,” she said.

One appeared to want to follow in Forsberg’s footsteps.

“When I get older, I think maybe like a Broadway star, because they sing and sometimes also dance,” she said at the session.

Regardless of where their paths lead, Piphus is hopeful that this experience sticks with them.

“There’s so much memory, I think, involved in music, and so I’m hoping that the sound and the messaging is something that they will remember for a lifetime,” she said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(ALBUQUERGUE, N.M.) — A school bus attendant for Albuquerque, New Mexico, Public Schools has been arrested after she was seen in surveillance video repeatedly hitting an autistic student.

Debbie Chavira, 64, is accused of striking the child dozens of times over the course of 10 days, according to an incident report.

Police said Chavira struck the student in his face, torso and arms a total of 59 times between Aug. 26 and Sept. 4. On Sept. 4, school officials reported her after the child showed up “with fresh scratch marks on the back of his neck,” the incident report states.

While investigating the alleged abuse, officials viewed additional surveillance footage, where they say Chavira was seen repeatedly hitting the child over the span of 10 days.

Chavira struck the child “open-handed, closed fisted, and with a plastic (yellow) ‘child check’ sign,” and did so “intentionally and without justifiable cause,” according to the incident report.

Investigators were unable to interview the child due to him “being autistic and non-verbal” and unable to “communicate through writing either,” the report states.

Chavira resigned from her job Sept. 5, according to Albuquerque ABC affiliate KOAT, and was arrested on Oct. 4. She has been released from jail and is now under pretrial supervision.

She has been charged with five counts of abandonment or abuse of a child. A representative could not immediately be found for Chavira.

In a statement to ABC News, Martin Salazar, a spokesperson for Albuquerque Public Schools, said the school district does “not tolerate this kind of behavior.”

“Upon discovering what was happening, we immediately placed bus attendant Debbie Chavira on leave and notified the APS Police Department. APS Police launched an investigation and filed criminal charges. Ms. Chavira resigned shortly after being placed on leave,” Salazar said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(AUSTIN, Texas) — A 28-year-old Texas woman died in 2021 after her abortion care was delayed for over 40 hours as she was having a miscarriage, according to a new story from ProPublica.

Josseli Barnica was told that it would be a “crime” to intervene in her miscarriage because the fetus still had cardiac activity, despite her 17-week pregnancy already resulting in a miscarriage that was “in progress,” according to medical records obtained by ProPublica.

The medical team told Barnica that she had to wait until there was no heartbeat due to Texas’ new abortion ban, Barnica’s husband told ProPublica.

Despite Texas enacting several abortion bans after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, it was the first state to restrict the procedure by enacting a law that permitted citizens to sue physicians who provide abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy — before most women know they are pregnant — for $10,000.

Anyone who “aided and abetted” an abortion, by actions such as driving a woman to obtain abortion care, could also be sued.

Forty hours after Barnica had arrived at a Texas hospital, physicians could not detect fetal cardiac activity and she was given medication to speed up her labor, according to the report. She was discharged about eight hours later, according to ProPublica.

She continued bleeding but when she called the hospital she was told that was expected, the story said. When the bleeding grew heavier two days later, she rushed back to the hospital, according to ProPublica.

Three days after she passed the pregnancy, Barnica died of an infection, according to ProPublica.

More than a dozen medical experts who reviewed the medical records told ProPublica that her death was preventable.

“These experts said that there was a good chance she might have survived if she’d been treated earlier,” Kavitha Surana, the reporter who wrote the story for ProPublica, told ABC News Live. “No one can say for sure where the sepsis developed. But 40 hours with your cervix wide open in a hospital, that is not the standard of care to require someone to take that risk.”

After Roe was overturned, a stricter ban went into effect, penalizing doctors found guilty of providing abortions with up to 99 years in prison and fines up to $100,000.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.