The adorable little three-year-old, who tugged at America’s heart when her photograph looking up at the official portrait of former FLOTUS Michelle Obama went viral, has captured the moment further in a children’s book.
Now, the toddler, along with her mom, Jessica Curry, is the author of a book titled Parker Looks Up, which tells the story of two young friends visited a museum where they are enthralled by the paintings that they encounter.
“Parker’s every day moment became an extraordinary one, and my sincerest hope is that our book will continue to resonate that moment’s power and promise, its hope and dreams, its inspiration and indelible impact with Parker, her generation, and generations to follow,” Curry told Essence. “After all, with their inner and profound insight and wisdom, our children are truly our future.”
Parker rose to national attention when an image of her looking up at the Obama portrait, by artist Amy Sherald, captured the attention of many people across social media. Curry told media outlets that Parker was transfixed by Michelle’s portrait.
“In further discussion with (Parker) yesterday and today, I realized that she believes Michelle Obama is a queen, and she wants to be a queen as well …” Curry said, according to PEOPLE Magazine.
And then when the girl dressed as Obama for Halloween, in a custom-made gown by Alisha Welsh of Magnolia Lake Children’s Clothing, Obama tweeted her approval.
Curry now says she hopes the book will inspire children to dream big and to keep looking up.
The CEO of Instagram has expressed his disappointment that Selena Gomezdeleted the app after it made her ‘depressed’.
Gomez, once the most followed person on the platform and now the third (after Cristiano Ronaldo and Ariana Grande), has been honest about her struggles with social media, Instagram in particular, and mental health.
She recently announced she’d stopped personally using it after it left her feeling low and affected her self-esteem.
‘I used to use it a lot but I think it’s become really unhealthy for young people, including myself, to spend all of their time fixating on all of these comments and letting this stuff in,’ she told Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest on their show. ‘It would make me feel not good about myself and look at my body differently,’
Gomez has now deleted her Instagram account on a colleague’s phone instead of hers, so she can just access it when she wants to share something with fans.
Selena at Cannes Film FestivalTONY BARSONGETTY IMAGES
In response to her latest comments, Adam Mosseri – the CEO of the app – has said the singer’s criticism of Instagram left him feeling ‘disappointed’ but would love to talk to her about it to collaborate on ways to improve the platform.
‘I would love to hear from her,’ Mosseri told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat. ‘If there’s something specific that she thinks is working or not working about the platform, I’d love to hear. We like the criticism, we like to have the conversation.’
However, Mosseri also questioned whether Gomez’ experience of Instagram – where she currently holds 152 million followers, is inundated with comments and likes and looked to as a role model – can be compared to the average user’s experience.
Adam Mosseri at a Facebook conferenceJUSTIN SULLIVANGETTY IMAGES
‘She has over 100m followers,’ he said. ‘It’s a whole other world.’
The statue of the woman is nearly 23 feet tall. Her head is wrapped and she stares straight ahead while sitting barefoot, but regally, in a wide-backed chair, clutching a torch in one hand and a tool used to cut sugar cane in the other.
In Denmark, where most of the public statues represent white men, two artists on Saturday unveiled the striking statue in tribute to a 19th-century rebel queen who had led a fiery revolt against Danish colonial rule in the Caribbean.
They said it was Denmark’s first public monument to a black woman.
The sculpture was inspired by Mary Thomas, known as one of “the three queens.” Thomas, along with two other female leaders, unleashed an uprising in 1878 called the “Fireburn.” Fifty plantations and most of the town of Frederiksted in St. Croix were burned, in what has been called the largest labor revolt in Danish colonial history.
“This project is about challenging Denmark’s collective memory and changing it,” the Virgin Islands artist La Vaughn Belle, one of two principal forces behind the statue, said in a statement.
The unveiling comes at the end of a centennial year commemorating the sale by Denmark of three islands to the United States on March 3, 1917: St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas. The price: $25 million.
Though Denmark prohibited trans-Atlantic slave trafficking in 1792, it did not rush to enforce the ban. The rule took effect 11 years later, and slavery continued until 1848.
“They wanted to fill the stocks first” and ensure enough slaves would remain to keep plantations running, said Niels Brimnes, an associate professor at Aarhus University and a leading expert on colonialism in Denmark.
Three decades after slavery formally ended on what today are known as the United States Virgin Islands, conditions for the former slaves had not improved significantly.
That continued injustice fomented the uprising on St. Croix.
Mary Thomas was tried for her role in the rebellion and ferried across the Atlantic to a women’s prison in Copenhagen. The statue created in tribute to her, called “I Am Queen Mary,” sits in front of what was once a warehouse for Caribbean sugar and rum, just more than a mile from where she was jailed.
The only other tribute to Denmark’s colonies or those who were colonized is a statue of a generic figure from Greenland.
The two artists, Jeannette Ehlers, left, and La Vaughn Belle, were inspired by Mary Thomas, who with two other female leaders known as Queens unleashed an uprising in 1878 on St. Croix.CreditNikolaj Recke
The Danish artist Jeannette Ehlers, who teamed up with Ms. Belle to create the “Queen Mary” monument, said, “Ninety-eight percent of the statues in Denmark are representing white males.”
The torch and the cane bill held in the statue’s hands symbolize the resistance strategies by those who were colonized, the artists said in a statement. Her seated pose “recalls the iconic 1967 photograph of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party.”
And the plinth on which her chair rests incorporates “coral cut from the ocean by enslaved Africans gathered from ruins of the foundations of historic buildings on St. Croix.”
Henrik Holm, senior research curator at Denmark’s National Gallery of Art, said in a statement: “It takes a statue like this to make forgetting less easy. It takes a monument like this to fight against the silence, neglect, repression and hatred.”
He added: “Never before has a sculpture like this been erected on Danish soil. Now, Denmark is offered a sculpture that addresses the past. But it is also an artwork for the future.”
The preferred self-image of this country of 5.5 million is that of a nation at the forefront of democratization and a savior of Jews during World War II.
And even though the Vikings raped and pillaged their way around the shores of Britain and Ireland, the Viking Age is generally a source of national pride and amusement in Denmark.
Over the centuries, Danes have not undergone a national reckoning about the thousands of Africans forced onto Danish ships to work the plantations in Danish colonies in the Caribbean, historians say.
“It may have to do with the narrative of Denmark as a colonial power saying, ‘We weren’t as bad as others,’” Professor Brimnes said. “But we were just as bad as the others. I can’t identify a particular, humane Danish colonialism.”
In a speech last year, the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, expressed regret for his country’s part in the slave trade — but he stopped short of an apology.
“Many of Copenhagen’s beautiful old houses were erected with money made on the toil and exploitation on the other side of the planet,” he said.
“It’s not a proud part of Denmark’s history. It’s shameful and luckily of the past.”A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Nodding to a Colonial Past With ‘Rebel Queen’ Tribute. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
No fewer than 2,000 Nigerian women die of unsafe abortion annually with Northeast recording highest rate, says Dr Christopher Lamai, Head of Department, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe.
Lamai made the disclosure at the capacity building workshop for journalist on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (WSRHR) organized by Ipas Nigeria, an international NGO on Tuesday in Gombe.
He said the rate contributed to 13 per cent of mortality in the country as many women died from abortion more than malaria.
According to him, every eight minutes women die of unsafe abortion while an estimated 220,000 children are left motherless annually as a result of abortion related death.
He advised participants to fully sensitize the public on how to undergo safe abortion towards reducing the rate of mortality in the country.
Earlier in her remarks, Mrs Hauwa Shekarau, the Ipas Country Director said the objectives of the training were to equip journalist with international, regional and national legal framework for the protection of WSRHR.
Shekarau said the training would also transform the attitude of the media on issues around WSRHR.
She said that Ipas was working closely with legislatures and law enforcement among other stakeholders on importance of safe abortion to reduce high rate of mortality in Nigeria.
Media mogul and EbonyLife TV founder Mo Abudu has been announced as the Chair of the 47th International Emmy Awards Gala scheduled for November 25th, 2019 in New York.
Speaking on the announcement, Mo said: “As producers, we are in a unique position to share fresh, authentic, and original stories with a global audience. Our content is not limited by language or culture. Viewers want to see stories that reflect their everyday lives—which can be found everywhere.”
She continued: “At EbonyLife, we believe in changing the global African narrative. And like many, we connect the world with our stories. As a Nigerian television producer, I am honored to chair the 47th International Emmy Awards and be part of an organization that celebrates extraordinary television producers from all over the globe.”
The International Emmy Awards recognises and celebrates excellence in television produced outside of the U.S.
BET is set to honor Mary J. Blige with its 2019 Lifetime Achievement award at its awards show later this month.
The BET Awards announced on Wednesday it would recognize the nine-time Grammy award-winning music icon for being “a figure of inspiration, transformation and empowerment, making her one of the defining voices of the contemporary music era.”
“And in the ensuing years, the singer-songwriter has attracted an intensely loyal fan base, responsible for propelling worldwide sales of more than 50 million albums,” the BET statement continued.
Last year, Blige became a double Oscar nominee when she was nominated for two Academy Awards, supporting actress and original song, for 2017 film “Mudbound.”
Blige, affectionately referred to as the Queen of hip-hop soul, called the double nomination ‘really special’ in an interview with the Associated Press last year.
The veteran artist has also scored three Golden Globe and two SAG award nominations. Her debut album, “What’s the 411?” released in 1992 to critical acclaim, with timeless hits like “Real Love.” View image on Twitter
At only 27 years old, Ciara Sivels is the First Black woman to earn a doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan.
The Chesapeake, Virginia, native has accomplished a major win at the top nuclear engineering program in the country. In October, Sivels successfully presented her thesis on “Development of an Advanced Radioxenon Detector for Nuclear Explosion Monitoring,” but she didn’t always have a passion for science.
When she graduated from high school, the scholar wanted to study culinary arts. It wasn’t until her teacher encouraged her to try her hand at STEM that she developed interests in nuclear science and engineering.
“I remember the teacher from that class saying, ‘Oh, you’re really smart, you should think about doing something other than culinary,’” she shared in an interview with Huffington Post. “So that’s kinda how I switched over into engineering and eventually ended up at MIT and ended up in the nuclear program.”
The road to earning her Ph.D. was not easy, but Sivel received support from mentors like Dr. Sara Pozzi, the academic advisor for her thesis.
“This project was initiated by Ciara and represents a significant advance in nuclear explosion monitoring,” she told Huffington Post. Pozzi explained that representation matters, especially with the lack of diversity in science.
As the founder of Women in Nuclear Engineering in Radiological Science on her campus, Sivel feels its important to expose more Black women to the world of STEM.
It has been revealed that plans are underway for a museum to be built in Rihanna’s honor back home in her Bajan native.
The reveal came courtesy of the country’s first female Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, who shared the news during a recent speech in London.
Per Mottley, the space would be a permanent, interactive cultural tribute to the RiRi.
Speaking on the 31-year-old’s impact (which includes being an official ambassador for Barbados), she said:
“Anybody who could start going to school on a ZR [route taxi] from Westbury to Waterford and could now be the most successful woman entertainer in the entire globe in my view deserves to be recognised in her life as a living legend of Barbados as well.”
She continued…
“She didn’t say ‘I want to build a business’ or ‘when I build a successful business’, she said ‘when I build my empire’ – and I’ve never forgotten that – and she has built an empire and is still building it.”
On The museum specifically, Mottley added:
“We’ve been discussing with her [Rihanna] family – her brother in particular and her management – the need for them to establish a major museum with the government in Westbury Road so that people who leave the cruise terminal or who are at Kensington visiting for cricket have another iconic thing besides the Legends of Barbados Museum there at Herbert House.” [Source]
The news comes on the heels of the launch of Fenty – Rihanna’s luxury fashion house with LVMH, which is the first original label the latter has established since 1987.
Kim Kardashian has returned to the White House and stood alongside President Donald Trump as they announced further support for criminal justice reform.
Kim has made several visits to the highest office in US government, and returned on Thursday to announce a ride share partnership for former prisoners, who are given credit for car journeys to and from interviews.
‘Everyone wants the community to be safe, and the more opportunity we have and that they have and the support that we help give them, the safer everyone will be,’ she told reporters and guests, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, in the East Room.
Earlier she took to Instagram to reveal she was ‘heading to the White House to speak at the second chance hiring and reentry event’.
She added that she was ‘honored to be a part of the announcement that the administration and the private sector are stepping up to create opportunities for these men and women to succeed once home’.
‘While I have been able to offer support to some of the individuals I have met, the obstacles to success are an everyday struggle for thousands and more needs to be done,’ she said.
The pair are advocating for justice reform (Picture: Getty)Kim sat with Trump’s daughter Ivanka (Picture: Getty)
(TRepublican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill into law Monday that will require some sex offenders to undergo chemical castration one month prior to being released from custody, and will also ensure that offenders have to foot the bill for the treatment.
Under the law, offenders “convicted of a sex offense involving a person under the age of 13” will have to be chemically castrated a month ahead of release and would also be required to continue treatment “until the court determines the treatment is no longer necessary.” Offenders would also have to pay for the procedure, but a denial of their parole could not be based “solely” on an inability to pay.
Chemical castration is defined in the law as “the receiving of medication, including, but not limited to, medroxyprogesterone acetate treatment or its chemical equivalent, that, among other things, reduces, inhibits, or blocks the production of testosterone, hormones, or other chemicals in a person’s body,” according toAL.com.
If a given offender chooses to halt the treatment, the move would be treated as a violation of parole, forcing the offender to resume their incarceration.
“This bill is a step toward protecting children in Alabama,” Ivey said. The bill was passed by both houses of the Alabama Legislature last month.
