Gun violence in the US is a human rights crisis: Amnesty

Gun violence in the United States has become a human rights crisis, Amnesty International said in a new report that points the finger at the US government.

“The sheer volume of people killed or injured each year in the USA by gun violence is staggering,” said the report, released on Tuesday. “Our government has allowed gun violence to become a human rights crisis.”

According to the international human rights organisation, an average of 106 individuals died a day from firearm-related incidents in 2016.

Of the 38,658 firearm-related deaths that year, nearly 23,000 were suicides and more than 14,400 were homicides, Amnesty said. There were another 1,305 deaths that were unintentional, undetermined or from legal interventions.

The report noted that more than 116,000 people suffered from non-fatal firearm injuries.

“For many gunshot survivors, the mental, physical, emotional, familial and financial consequences of their injuries shape their lives irrevocably,” the report said, adding that the toll gun violence has is a “public health crisis of astonishing proportion – with remarkably little government response”.

Calls for stricter gun control were again amplified this year after mass shootings in Maryland, Texas and Florida, among other places.

Seventeen people – the majority of whom were students – were killed when 19-year-old Nicolas Cruz opened fire on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February.

Ten people were killed just three months later when a teenager opened fire at Santa Fe High School outside Houston, Texas.

Since the shootings, students have held marches and rallies throughout the US to call for stricter gun control.

In 2016, more than 1,600 children died from firearm-related violence, according to Amnesty [Nacho Doce/Reuters]

Last year, the US witnessed the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s modern history after 58 people were killed at a music concert in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Although the report noted the “profound emotional and psychological effect on survivors, families and communities” public mass shootings have, it said they accounted for less than one percent of the gun deaths in the US.

Disproportionately affects communities of colour

Amnesty’s report instead focused much of its attention on other types of violence, including urban gun violence and domestic violence, as well as how gun violence affects children.

The report noted that gun violence disproportionately affects urban communities of colour, particularly young black men.

According to Amnesty, black men aged 15-34 were almost 20 times more likely to die from firearm homicide than a white male in the same age group.

“The causes of gun violence in communities of colour are multi-faceted and there are deep-seated issues around poverty, discrimination and economic, social and cultural rights,” Amnesty said, noting such issues were beyond the scope of the report.

The report told the story of a Shirley Chambers, who lost all four of her children to gun violence in separate incidents in Chicago.

Background checks

The report made several key recommendations to address gun violence and protect human rights.

“Despite the huge number of guns in circulation and the sheer numbers of people killed by guns each year, there is a shocking lack of federal regulations that could save thousands,” Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.

According to Amnesty, although more than 100 pieces of legislation relating to gun violence have been introduced since a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 26 people, including 20 school children, dead in 2012, no “meaningful” federal law regulating firearms has been passed.

It noted that some laws have been passed at the state-level, however, including the banning bump stocks in eight states and laws aimed at improving background checks. The Department of Justice has also submitted a regulation that would ban bump stocks, a type of fun modification that increases the rate of fire for semi-automatic rifles.

Among its recommendations, Amnesty called on the federal government to pass legislation requiring background checks on all firearm purchases and transfers, ensuring records are reported accurately and setting a number of minimum conditions that should be met before one is allowed to buy a firearm.

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting this year, President Donald Trump urged politicians to defy the National Rifle Association, the largest gun-lobby group in the US, suggesting he would back raising the minimum age to buy certain guns and enacting laws for more expansive background checks. But the president, who received more than $30m from the gun lobby group during his 2016 presidential campaign, spoke at the NRA’s annual convention just two months later, saying “Second Amendment rights are under siege, but they will never, ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”

Last month, a US federal judge extended a ban on the online distribution of 3D-printed gun blueprints, blocking a settlement between the Trump administration and Defense Distributed, a group that argues access to online blueprints is guaranteed under the US Constitution.

Amnesty’s report also comes as the US Senate Judiciary committee is set to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who has been endorsed by the NRA and who gun control advocates fear could tip the balance in favour of gun owners and manufacturers.

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Trump tries to rewrite history on Maria as Hurricane Florence approaches

A pen sits on President Donald Trump’s desk. — From the moment Donald Trump ascended to the presidency, he has made a habit of rewriting history, challenging the public to ignore what people can plainly see with their own eyes. | Eric Thayer-Pool/Getty Images

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The president has made repeated claims about the success of his administration response to last year’s deadly storm in Puerto Rico.

Facing renewed criticism of his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, President Donald Trump lashed out again on Wednesday, grousing about his administration’s “unappreciated great job” on the Puerto Rico recovery – despite the remoteness of the island, poor access to electricity and the “totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan.”

“We are ready for the big one that is coming!” an exuberant Trump concluded, as a new storm spun toward the East Coast.

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The president’s tweets, posted as cable news flipped almost entirely to tracking preparations in the Carolinas for Hurricane Florence, followed Trump’s claims on Monday that his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria was an “incredible unsung success” despite the thousands who died – and the massive power failures that persisted for months after the storm, hobbling Puerto Rico’s already-struggling economy.

From the moment Trump ascended to the nation’s highest office, the former reality TV boardroom brawler has made a habit of rewriting history, challenging the public to ignore what people can plainly see with their own eyes – often on television, where Trump is watching it, too.

“If he doesn’t like the reality, he changes it,” said former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res. “He’s able to take a reality and modify it and convince himself of that modified reality.”

Over the last 20 months, Trump, who in his past life branded and sold steaks, vodka, neckties, perfume, wine, gold-leaf sconces and water, has often peddled statements that contradict his own previous remarks.

Trump insisted this spring that former FBI director James Comey “was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation” even though the president told NBC News last year he was thinking about the probe when he decided to finally drop the hammer.

Trump also asserted in July that the Russians “don’t want Trump” to stay in the White House, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin having said publicly he wanted Trump to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. U.S. officials have said Russia tried to sway the election in Trump’s favor.

At an August 2017 rally, Trump took the media to task for not giving him enough credit for denouncing neo-Nazis in the wake of the fatal clashes in Charlottesville, Va., last year. “The words were perfect,” Trump said, papering over his initial comments that appeared to equate counter-protesters and white nationalists.

White House aides and people close to Trump have grown accustomed to the president’s frequent exaggerations and distortions, according to interviews with a half-dozen of the president’s allies.

They acknowledge privately that Trump has, in the favored phrasing of those who know him, a “complicated relationship with the truth.” White House lawyers have even cited Trump’s frequent falsehoods as a rationale for him not sitting for an in-person interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

“If he’s got an insecurity, if there’s something that he worries about, those are often the times he’s even more adamant,” said an outside adviser to the president.

Res said Trump’s penchant for writing his own reality dates back to the 1990s, when his business empire was facing financial difficulties. “He managed to convince himself that he had nothing to do with it,” she said.

Perhaps the most illustrative version of a presidential embellishments came early in his tenure. Confronted with the fact that the crowd size at his January 2017 inauguration paled in comparison to former President Barack Obama’s, Trump flew into a rage and instructed his then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, to attack the press for reporting on the notable contrast.

“[P]hotographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall,” Spicer said in those first fateful remarks from the briefing room, one day after the inauguration.

In actuality, the president himself sought to distort his crowd size. Internal documents first obtained by The Guardian showed that both Trump and Spicer called the National Park Service to complain about the crowd size photos, leaving the “impression that President Trump wanted to see pictures that appeared to depict more spectators in the crowd,” according to one National Park Service official.

Trump’s claims this week that his administration did a “great job” in Puerto Rico stand in contrast to the ongoing recovery efforts and data suggesting Maria’s death toll was much larger than initially understood. More than 3,000 people died from the storm, according to a recent report sponsored by the Puerto Rican government, far more than the prior official death toll that the federal government had maintained for months.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz earlier this week, juxtaposed the 3,000 deaths with Trump’s professed success, offering a stinging rejoinder: “Can you imagine what he thinks failure looks like?”

When it comes to his response, Trump is deeply sensitive about comparisons to Hurricane Katrina – and he has never been able to let Cruz’s sharp criticism go. A POLITICO investigation found the Trump administration’s response to Harvey, in Houston and along the Gulf coast, was faster and greater than its response to Maria.

Trump’s anger at Cruz stems from his belief that she unfairly politicized the storm and helped cement the narrative that the federal response was ham-fisted from the beginning. “He genuinely, legitimately feels that was unfair,” a former Trump administration official said.

The latest storm appeared to uncork the president’s lingering resentment.

“All he sees on cable news is reporting on how he failed in the aftermath of the hurricane,” a second ex-White House aide told POLITICO. Of Trump’s inability to tamp down his rage, the person added: “Zero discipline.”

Trump’s latest spat, which comes less than two months before the midterm elections, is part of a political calculation that voters will internalize his sunnier retelling of events and overlook what really happened. But some Republicans close to Trump acknowledge it risks alienating Puerto Rican voters, whom Democrats are targeting ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump and his administration’s response to Maria left a majority of Puerto Rican respondents with a negative impression, according to a survey released Wednesday by The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation. Some 52 percent of respondents rated Trump’s performance as “poor,” with 28 percent calling it “fair.” Just 15 percent gave him a positive rating.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who frequently criticizes the Trump administration over its Maria response, said he’s planning a visit to Florida this weekend after traveling to several small towns in Pennsylvania to organize Puerto Ricans.

“Let me just say to the president, he should understand there are going to be ‘electoral consequences,’” Gutierrez said in an appearance late Tuesday on MSNBC.

“Because hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans had to flee the island, because of what this government did and how it did not intervene. They now live in Florida, they now live in Pennsylvania, and, Mr. President, you should know they are registering to vote, they are mobilized, they are organizing.”

FEMA Administrator Brock Long defended his agencies Maria recovery efforts in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.

“EMA put 100 percent into Puerto Rico, and these people back here are incredibly dedicated around the clock and stepped on all of the time,” he said. “And the bottom line is that I know and they know that we kept Puerto Rico from total collapse as a result of Maria.”

Others who worked on the response to Maria disagreed, adding that they were frustrated, but not shocked by Trump’s insistence that the federal government did a stellar job.

“I was not surprised,” said Kenneth McClintock, the former secretary of state of Puerto Rico. “I was not insulted. If anything, I was sorry for the nation – that the nation has to put up with those attitudes.”

McClintock blamed the federal government, including FEMA, for “significant mistakes” and a lack of urgency in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and he worried Trump’s attitude will prevent agencies from conducting a serious stock-taking of its flawed response.

“The fact that it took [Trump] 13 days to come is an example of how we’re not at the top of the list and we’re not at the forefront of the agenda for this White House and for the agencies that had to wait for White House decisions,” he said, referring to the nearly two-week gap between the hurricane decimating Puerto Rico and Trump’s visit to the island.

Already, McClintock said, the federal response to Hurricane Florence appears more robust.

The president echoed that sentiment. Trump said on Tuesday that the administration was “totally prepared” for the storm, releasing a video online and warning his Twitter followers to be attentive to local authorities, adding that with “Mother Nature, you never know. But we know.”

Other presidents paid dearly with their reputations for launching premature victory celebrations, including George W. Bush in 2003, for standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier to announce the end to major combat in Iraq. Thousands more died in the war.

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Watch Hurricane Florence unfold from space

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Mashable is investigating how science affects our daily lives. From the chemistry of cilantro to why we fear clowns, you’ll always learn something new.

Kevin Urgiles

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Hurricanes are scary, especially if you happen to find yourself in one’s path. The International Space Station was able to send us down some footage of Hurricane Florence from space. It might appear more “pretty” than “scary,” but it’s still a chilling reminder of how powerful nature is.

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How iPhone XS compares to Pixel 2, Galaxy S9, and Huawei P20 Pro

The new iPhone XS is packed with the latest and greatest, plus it comes in a new gold color.

The XS features 5.8-inch Super Retina OLED display with a resolution of 2436 X 1125. It keeps the familiar screen size of 2017’s iPhone X, but has more pixels and sharper resolution to make the screen look even clearer.

Inside the iPhone XS is the new A12 Bionic Chip, which is the world’s first 7-nanometer chip — an impressive feat. Expect this phone to be speedy, and iOS 12 to run as smooth as butter.

The iPhone XS will cost you $999 for the 64 GB, $1,149 for the 256 GB, and $1,349 for the 512 GB.

Here’s how the iPhone XS stacks up against stiff competition like the Pixel 2, Galaxy S9, and Huawei P20 Pro.

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Pakistan military ‘quietly’ stifling press with intimidation

Freedom of the press is under threat in Pakistan where its powerful military has used fear, intimidation, and even violence to push journalists into self-censorship, a media rights group said.

A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Wednesday said the Pakistani army has “quietly but effectively set restrictions on reporting” by establishing “lines of control” to gag the media.

The strategy includes “barring access to regions … to encouraging self-censorship through direct and indirect methods of intimidation, including … allegedly instigating violence against reporters”, CPJ said.

“Privately, senior editors and journalists say the conditions for the free press are as bad as when the country was under military dictatorship, and journalists were flogged and newspapers forced to close.”

The military, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, routinely denies interference in politics or with the media.

While the army has not responded to the report, Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said the government has not received any complaints of intimidation from journalists.

‘Controlling narrative’

For its report, CPJ spoke to journalists and media organisations, including Geo News, Pakistan’s most popular television news channel, and the English-language newspaper Dawn.

The report said cable distributors had stopped distributing Geo’s programmes, cutting off about 80 percent of Pakistan’s households ahead of general elections.

Reuters news agency reported at least two sources at Geo News said in April the army asked them to refrain from reporting on alleged military involvement in the incarceration of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted from office in July by Pakistan’s Supreme Court.

Similarly, the editor of Dawn said the circulation of the newspaper was blocked in several places at the behest of the military.

“They’re clearly not happy with Dawn’s policies. They want Dawn to stay away from certain subjects,” its editor Zaffar Abbas said.

The CPJ report said a journalist was beaten in a brazen attack in the capital Islamabad, while another alleged he was assaulted by members of the security forces in civilian clothing in the southern city of Karachi.

“The mindset [of the military] now is to control the total narrative and reduce the diversity of opinion, so anything that is going against their narrative, they see as a threat,” a director at a news broadcaster said.

Indirect pressure

The CPJ report said the army, intelligence service, or groups with ties to the military were linked to half of the 22 journalists killings in the past decade in Pakistan.

While that number is on a decline, the report adds that the military has found indirect ways of intimidation.

“People in the military and sometimes in government have discovered that there are indirect ways of putting influence on the press,” said CPJ Asia coordinator Steven Butler, who wrote the report, citing unexplained abductions and assaults as examples.

The report comes out after the general election, in which the victory of former cricket hero Imran Khan triggered widespread allegations of the Pakistani army fixing the vote.

Some of Pakistan’s biggest media outlets had alleged they were pressured to tilt their coverage towards Khan during the campaign, an accusation the military denied.

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Even Ivanka’s liberal New York haters like her on Instagram

Instagram has become a politically fraught place for Ivanka Trump, who manages her own social media feeds, according to people familiar with her habits. | Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

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The first daughter still enjoys a regular stream of little red hearts from prominent Democrats and anti-Trump activists on social media.

During the 2016 election, YouTube sensation Casey Neistat posted a rare endorsement video, encouraging his legions of followers to support Hillary Clinton.

“This has to do with morals and principles,” he said.

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His moral opposition to Trump, however, hasn’t stopped Neistat from being a fan of Ivanka Trump’s – online, at least.

Neistat is a frequent “liker” of the First Daughter’s posts on Instagram, doling out little red hearts of endorsement to everything from pictures of her son Theodore’s second birthday to a photo of Ivanka Trump working with Kim Kardashian on criminal justice reform – and even a post in which she wished Donald Trump a happy birthday.

Ivanka Trump has been widely criticized by progressives for positioning herself as a moderating force in the White House with little to show for her efforts. But despite a pervasive sense that she has burned her bridges to New York society by joining her father’s administration as a senior official, Instagram offers some evidence that she might be able to go home again.

“I am a vocal opponent of the Trump administration,” Neistat said in an email. “Ivanka and I knew one another prior to her father’s entry into politics.”

Ivanka Trump’s other “likers” include billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, a major Democratic donor and a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Lasry opposes Trump and remains influential in Democratic politics. Yet on Instagram, he has liked some of Ivanka Trump’s posts, including a photo of the First Daughter at a town hall in Bucks County, Pa.

“Ivanka and Jared are old friends and I like seeing pictures of her and her kids,” Lasry said.

“It has nothing to do with politics, but with being friends with someone for a long time.”

Even so, those “likes” from Democrats have become a point of fascination among those in her old Manhattan social set. “There is a cocktail party game where everyone opens Ivanka’s pictures to see who in their contact list liked a photo,” said one major New York socialite. “It’s always a surprise.”

One surprise: Ali Webb, the founder of blowout chain DryBar, who has posted online that she feels “helpless and distraught” over the Trump administration’s child separation policies. But Webb has also liked multiple personal photos on Ivanka Trump’s feed, including a “happy birthday” post dedicated to Jared Kushner and a picture of Ivanka Trump dressed in black tie with her daughter crawling in the folds of her skirt.

It might be a stretch to say that admiring a photo online counts as a blanket endorsement of a person, or of the policies that the administration they work for supports. A “like” can be interpreted as a quiet little wink of recognition that could represent nothing more than admiration for the composition of a photo, or just a way to acknowledge that you’re up to date on the day-to-day of a friend you don’t see very often.

But Instagram has become a politically fraught place for the First Daughter, who manages her own social media feeds, according to people familiar with her habits.

Ivanka Trump’s photographs consistently rack up ugly comments about her father and her role in his administration, mixed with messages of support to tune out “all the haters.” Since entering the White House, she has also modulated what she posts there, in recent months tending toward more official photos of her work at the White House, and fewer intimate shots of her life at home with her kids.

A “Dear Ivanka” letter has recently been circulating online targeted at people whom Ivanka Trump follows, with the goal of getting them to post it so she’ll see it in her feeds. The letter demands that she call for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen after the family separation crisis at the border.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on whether Ivanka Trump had seen the letter designed to grab her attention.

But even as Democrats and figures in the art and fashion worlds push her to join what is quickly becoming known as “The Resistance” inside her father’s administration after an official anonymously published a sharply critical New York Times op-ed last week, others are offering her casual public support.

The socialite and fashion blogger Colby Mugrabi is another frequent “liker” of Ivanka Trump’s photos who has been noticed double tapping by people in her social set, as is the designer Stefano Gabbana, of Dolce & Gabbana fame, who often leaves a row of hearts under Ivanka Trump’s photographs.

David Geffen, known as one of Hollywood’s biggest Democratic donors, “liked” a photo of the Kushner family gathered at Blair House during inauguration weekend in 2017.

Television producer Desiree Gruber, who is married to the actor Kyle MacLachlan, who co-hosted a fundraiser for Clinton in 2016, is a frequent supportive commenter on Ivanka Trump’s feed.

Rachel Haot, an entrepreneur who has worked in senior positions in the New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration and worked for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – two vocal Trump critics – “liked” a photo of Ivanka Trump throwing a football that she posted online on May 31. She declined to comment on what a like was meant to express.

Some celebrities are more cautious about what a “like” online could mean for their public profiles. Notably absent from the thousands of likes and comments that Ivanka Trump’s pictures collect: any nod of approval from her future sister-in-law, the model Karlie Kloss, who last year attended the Women’s March in Washington with her now-fiancé, Joshua Kushner.

“At the end of the day, I’ve had to make decisions based on my own moral compass — forget what the public says, forget social media,” Kloss told Vogue in the latest issue of Vogue. “I’ve chosen to be with the man I love despite the complications.

For Ivanka Trump, who has been stung by how the coverage she receives has changed from her private sector to public sector life and the vitriol she has received from once-friendly social circles, “likes” appear to be noticed and appreciated.

One fan account, IvankaVogue, which posts flattering pictures of the First Daughter that are often “liked” by the First Daughter herself, includes in its bio: “Followed and noticed by Ivanka Trump.”

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Lana Del Rey And Jack Antonoff Team Up For The Dreary, Sweet ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’

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Last week, Lana Del Rey promised she’d have “two end of summer jams for ya” out soon. The first one has officially arrived via a dreamy video that dropped Wednesday (September 12) for a song called “Mariners Apartment Complex.”

In it, Lana’s voice gets to breathe over lush piano and string orchestration that sounds a little like Chris Isaak’s immortal “Wicked Game.” It’s melancholy as hell, but it sounds good, produced and co-written by pop maestro Jack Antonoff, who helmed both Taylor Swift‘s Reputation and Lorde‘s Melodrama in 2017.

The accompanying video — created with Lana’s sister, Chuck — is simple: a swirling shot of rocks in a rush of ocean interspersed with black-and-white film footage of Lana herself and some associates doing mundane things like hanging out by a fence and cradling a butterfly. But paired with the music, it’s like staying in and listening to a really good song on repeat during a thunderstorm.

The second of the aforementioned jams is apparently called “Venice Bitch,” set to drop on September 18 ahead of a new Lana album due out in 2019.

Until then, we’ve got a lot of romantic, woozy, rainy-day goodness to dig into here. Watch the full video above.

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How one newspaper is helping kids during a teen suicide epidemic

The Deseret News hosts a screening of the film ‘Angst’ as part of its series exploring teen anxiety.

Image: James Wooldridge / Deseret News

By Boyd C. Matheson2018-09-12 19:21:49 UTC

During the past several years, my colleagues at the Deseret News have researched, reported, and highlighted the challenges of America’s growing suicide and opioid epidemic.

Like many journalists around the country, we discovered that the gut-wrenching stories of promising lives ended in tragedy were all too common. In our state, it was particularly severe: between 2007 and 2015, the youth suicide rate nearly quadrupled, with 44 teens in Utah dying by suicide in 2015. Preliminary data shows that 42 died by suicide in 2017. One high school alone experienced seven suicides in one year.

We learned that many of these problems, including depression, opioid abuse, and suicide grew from anxiety and all its complications. The complexities that emerged from our reporting included the detrimental influence of social media, fear of missing out, unrealistic expectations, and helicopter parents as well as disengaged parents.

“The more we looked into it, the more critical it became for us to seek answers to why anxiety was having such a crippling effect on teenagers and students,” said editor Doug Wilks, who has led the charge to cover this epidemic.

“The more we looked into it, the more critical it became for us to seek answers”

In June, the Deseret News launched “Generation Vexed: How anxiety stalks teens in Utah and across the nation.” The series is an ongoing initiative to help our state’s teens better deal with anxiety by providing tools, research, resources, and conversations to enable them to address their worries and maximize their potential.

We are working with community members, our solutions journalism team, and our events staff to create a space where people can get comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. By bringing together families, churches, educators, LGBT advocates, legislators, doctors, healthcare providers, and drug companies, we are collectively able to engage in this important topic and ask the hard questions and have the difficult conversations.

Good questions to ask a struggling teen include the frequency, intensity, and duration of their anxiety. If it is happening with more and more regularity, if the intensity is becoming truly debilitating, and if the duration lasts longer and longer, there is likely a need for more help — even professional help to find effective tools and resources. Medicine also can play an important role along the way, but need not be the first solution.

Remember that you’re awesome. There is no one else exactly like you in this world, and that makes you incredibly special. Embrace who you are, and remember to love who you are.

— MentalHealthAmerica (@MentalHealthAm) September 5, 2018

When parents avoid or gloss over anxiety or depression it sends all the wrong messages. Too often when parents hear their teen say they are “stressed out” the response is, “buck up.” Or “you will be fine.” Or “this will pass.” Instead, parents should listen with empathy and show courageous vulnerability, sharing their own issues with anxiety or awkward situations. Having a parent say something like, “I can see how that interaction with your teacher could stress you out. Today I had a tough conversation with my boss and wanted to go curl up under my desk I was so frustrated.” This shows a teen that stress and anxiety come to everyone and there are skills you can learn to deal with them.

Our initiative includes in-depth reporting and coverage that has explored anxiety and medication, anxiety in girls, anxiety in boys, and how both educators and teens are coping with the issue, among other stories. Our journalists’ research has led us to potential solutions for anxiety found through in-patient care, licensed therapists, resource counselors, school principals, tech experts, world-class athletes, and even filmmakers.

We also set up the Deseret News Anxiety Community Facebook group along with a full anxiety page for questions, answers, and resources. As questions come in, our in-depth team sources them to local and national experts for response.

We launched a series of film screenings and discussion events for parents and teens in Utah and Washington, D.C. around the movie Angst: Raising Awareness Around Anxiety. The film, an IndieFlix documentary, addresses what anxiety is, its causes and effects, and what can be done about it.

After each screening, I moderate a panel featuring Karin Gornick, producer of Angst, Jenny Howe, a licensed therapist with degrees in psychology and child and family studies, and a mental health expert from the community or school. We engage the audience in a discussion about how to begin breaking the stigma of anxiety, the role of social media in teen anxiety, and what parents can do to help their kids.

The response has been overwhelming. At one recent event at Salem Hills High School in rural Utah, 1,000 people attended the evening screening. That school experienced four suicides in the last five years, leaving the community reeling. In nearly every screening at least one handwritten question contains a plea for help from a teen, or a parent, who feels isolated and alone in their battle with anxiety.

In Park City a very courageous teen stepped up to the mic, in front of a group of parents and peers, and shared her struggle. You could feel the empathy in the room. You could sense the relief the teen felt by speaking the truth and asking for help. Everyone left more confident that there was a path to a brighter future.

Doing nothing is not an option at the Deseret News — nor is just hoping that the situation will improve.

Some question whether a newspaper can make a difference in preventing teen suicide. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we know that convening people in a space where they can ask the right questions may be the most important work we ever do. Doing nothing is not an option at the Deseret News — nor is just hoping that the situation will improve. While hope is important, it is not a strategy, or a solution. We will never be content with merely reporting on the tragic end. We believe we must be part of the solution that prevents a bad ending and ensures a better beginning for teens.

In some ways America’s approach to the suicide and opioid problem is similar to the famous poem written by Joseph Malins in 1895, “Ambulance Down in the Valley.” You may remember the story of the tiny town, which boasted of a mountain lookout with magnificent views of the valley. While the scenes were spectacular, the cliff was unacceptably dangerous. Many local citizens and passing visitors alike had tragically fallen from the cliff to the valley below.

Some of the citizens in the town advocated for putting a fence around the cliff, but others more persuasively made the case for simply parking an ambulance down below in the valley. So the citizens relied on the ambulance to deal with the ever-present and potentially lethal problem, repairing the results instead of preventing the cause.

As it relates to our suicide and opioid cliff, communities have added many new tools to the ambulance down in the valley, including vital overdose reversing injections, needle exchanges, counseling, and rehabilitation programs for those who have become addicted. But we have done far too little to build the fence at the top of the cliff.

Millions of youths struggle with anxiety — the keep-you-up, leave-you-immobile variety.

Since January, Deseret News reporters have talked with dozens of experts and teens about it. Here’s what we’ve found. https://t.co/IVhsLJ8AQQ

— Deseret News (@DeseretNews) July 1, 2018

Interventions and solutions relating to teen suicide have proven elusive for many families and communities. “Generation Vexed” is our attempt to build those fences in our own community, and the series has already had a transformational impact on individual teens in our state.

The Deseret News will continue to be a local and national voice on youth suicide prevention because it is our responsibility as solutions-driven journalists to lead, shape, foster, and highlight critical conversations on issues that matter. We encourage other news and media organizations to do the same.

Communities must realize they can never be content with ambulances parked in the valley. We will continue to share valuable resources and rigorous reporting to empower communities to build strong fences of safety at the top of the cliff, reduce the havoc of anxiety on today’s teens, and arm students with the tools and skills they need to succeed.

Boyd C. Matheson is opinion editor of the Deseret News.

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.

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Here’s all the milestones Tim Cook boasted about at the 2018 Apple Event

It’s that time of the year again: Apple just held its special media event where it announced a bunch of new iPhones. And this year, we were also treated to a company update of various milestones and records being broken by the company.

At the start of today’s event, after a pre-taped Mission Impossible-themed comedy sketch that preluded the event, Apple CEO Tim Cook stepped onstage.

In his keynote speech, Cook announced that more than 500 million people visit the Apple store each year. While photos of Apple’s physical retail locations appeared on the screen behind him, it’s unclear whether or not this includes visitors to Apple’s online stores as well.

“We’re about to hit a major milestone,” said Cook before announcing what is probably the biggest milestone unveiled at today’s event: the 2 billionth iOS device is about to ship. This number includes devices such as iPhones, iPads, and the iPod Touch. Back in Q1 of 2015, Apple had announced it sold ots 1 billionth iOS device in November 2014.

The first product up, the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch is “not only the #1 smartwatch in the world, but also the #1 watch period,” said Cook. “For millions of people around the world, the Apple Watch has been an indispensable part of their lives,” he added. However, no specific sales numbers were given for the Apple Watch.

Then the event than moved onto the iPhone. “The iPhone X defined the future of the smartphone” said Cook before going on to mention that it’s the #1 smartphone in the world with 98% customer satisfaction. Another interesting tidbit, according to Apple, the iPhone is also the “world’s most popular camera.”

The newest members to the iPhone family — iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max — which were announced at the event are already making a little history. The new chip found in the phones, the Apple A12 Bionic, is the industry’s very first 7-nanometer chip according to Apple. Basically, these phones are blazing fast. Not only are they fast, but according to the company they also feature the best worldwide roaming as they have more bands than any other smartphone out there.

These new iPhones also bring with them a few company firsts as well. It marks the first time Apple rolls out a 512GB model phone. The iPhone XS Max, specifically, will feature the largest display ever on an iPhone as well as the longest battery life — lasting 90 minutes longer than the iPhone X.

Apple’s final announcement, a third slightly lower-end model phone called the iPhone XR, made a bit of splash within the company too. The iPhone XR has what Apple called the “most advanced LCD ever in a smartphone” with a 6.1” screen, 1792 x 828 display, and 1.4 million pixels. They’ve dubbed this LCD the liquid retina display.

While skimpy on specific sales numbers and zero mentions of any app store related records, Apple still had a few milestones to boast about this time around.

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Russell Westbrook Undergoes Surgery to Repair Knee Injury, May Miss Preseason

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook (0) during of an NBA basketball game between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, April 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee, ESPN.com’s Royce Young reported Wednesday.

Young described the procedure as “maintenance” for Westbrook after the All-Star guard was feeling stiffness in the knee. Young added that doctors will re-evaluate Westbrook in four weeks to determine when he’ll be healthy enough to suit up for the Thunder.

Because Westbrook’s return date is unclear, he could be unavailable for the start of the preseason.

Despite playing a bruising, attacking style, Westbrook has been seemingly indestructible over the past few seasons. In fact, he’s missed a grand total of five games since the start of the 2015-16 season.

Given Westbrook’s status as the engine of OKC’s offense, it’s safe to say some adjustments will have to be made if his recovery lingers into the regular season, which starts Oct. 16 against the Golden State Warriors.

Fortunately for Thunder head coach Billy Donovan, he has a capable backup in Dennis Schroder who can help steady the backcourt while Paul George would assume an even heavier share of the on-ball playmaking responsibilities.

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