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A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, officials there said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015. The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night, state officials said, amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties. The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The Lubbock hospital where the child had been treated didnt respond to a request for comment. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is watching cases, though he did not provide specifics on how the federal agency is assisting. He dismissed Texas’ outbreak as not unusual during a Wednesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members. We’re following the measles epidemic every day, Kennedy said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has told the AP it is providing vaccines as well as technical and laboratory support in West Texas, but the state health department is leading the response. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said through a spokesman that his office is in regular communication with the state health department and epidemiologists, and that vaccination teams are in the affected area. The state will deploy all necessary resources to ensure the safety and health of Texans, said spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, calling the child’s death a tragedy. The CDC has said it will only provide weekly updates on the measles outbreak, and has not yet updated its public webpage to reflect the childs death. Texas health department data shows that a majority of the reported measles cases are in children. The virus has largely spread among rural, oil rig-dotted towns in West Texas, with cases concentrated in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community, health department spokesperson Lara Anton said. Gaines County, which has reported 80 cases so far, has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine which is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old for the first shot, with the second coming between 4 and 6 years old. Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks. The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools nationwide. Last week, Secretary Kennedy vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases, despite promises not to change it during his confirmation hearings. Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to 9 out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most kids will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death. Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60. Devi Shastri, AP health writer AP writers Amanda Seitz, Jim Vertuno, and JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.
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He’s not a movie buff, so New York musician Larry Saltzman doesn’t always watch the Oscars. This year, however, he’s got a rooting interest. Saltzman taught actor Timothée Chalamet how to play guitar for the role of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. In turn, Chalamet earned a best actor nomination and the film is also up for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday. A guitarist who’s performed with Simon & Garfunkel, Bette Midler and David Johansen, as well as in the pit at Broadway productions Hairspray and Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, Saltzman has developed a specialty in teaching actors how to play music for their roles. Besides Chalamet, recent pupils have included Adam Driver and Sadie Sink of Stranger Things. On a fellow musician’s recommendation, Saltzman first got a call from a movie studio about a decade ago. He admits to being cranky as discussions dragged on. I almost did everything to talk them out of hiring me, he said. Not until the fifth phone call did the studio identify the client: Meryl Streep. She needed to learn the electric guitar for her starring role in the 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, where she portrayed an aging rocker trying to keep her career and life together in the wake of a series of disappointments. Working with Streep is a little like a political consultant’s first client being elected president. If she likes you and word gets around, other students will follow. Teaching actors now represents about 40% of his business, the 69-year-old said. My time spent with her was excellent, he said of Streep. She’s smart. She knows how to learn things. There was a steady progress over three or four months. She did very well. Faking it just won’t do for serious actors and film directors. It’s like lip-syncing the audience is going to tell the difference, and the characters will be less believable. That was especially true with Chalamet, who needed to sing and play at the same time for a character whose artistry is the centerpiece of the film. When the actors come to you, they’re kind of vulnerable, Saltzman said. They want to do a great job. Saltzman had more than 50 sessions with Chalamet, starting in person and retreating to Zoom during the pandemic. It wasn’t easy. Chalamet had to learn some 25 songs in the script. Sometime in 2018 I had my first lesson with this great guitar teacher named Larry Saltzman who at some point became less of a teacher and more a co-sanity artist through COVID, Chalamet recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press. I think we were keeping each other sane. We would Zoom three, four times a week and doing songs that never made it into the movie. It helped that Saltzman is a Dylan buff. Focusing on imparting the guitar playing of pre-electric Bob, he taught his charge so well that Chalamet was a musical guest as well as host on Saturday Night Live, performing obscure Dylan cuts last month. Saltzman says, in the course of their sessions, Chalamet went the extra mile and unearthed very early, obscure Dylan songs that weren’t even in the script. Saltzman generally likes teaching actors more than common folk, in part because there’s a specific goal: They need to learn certain songs to inhabit a particular character. When it’s open-ended someone just wants to learn the guitar it can be more of a challenge, he said. Saltzman also believes that it’s an advantage to not be a regular teacher, someone who may approach clients with a more rigid style. Actor Johnny Cannizzaro said he appreciated Saltzman’s calming bedside manner and felt welcome in an apartment filled with guitars. Cannizzaro has the role of E Street Band member Little Steven Van Zandt in the upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere. There was never really a moment where he expressed any sort of frustration or impatience with me during a session, said Cannizzaro, who has background playing keyboards but not guitar. If anything, he would express some excitement when you grasped something he was teaching. That put me at ease. Saltzman also studied films of Van Zandt so he wasn’t just teaching Cannizzaro guitar he was showing specifics of how Van Zandt plays, the actor said. Beyond teaching, Saltzman’s time is divided between studio work, playing in New York clubs accompanying different artists and Broadway he’s just about to begin Smash. It’s an eye-opening experience for him to later see his students on screen. That was particularly the case when he saw A Complete Unknown and marveled at Chalamet’s ability as an actor. All the more reason to watch the Oscars, and to take some pride in his own work. In my own humble way, I’m a small gear in that machinery, he said. What is rewarding is knowing that in some small way I’m contributing to making a better film. David Bauder, AP entertainment writer
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Nvidia forecast first-quarter revenue above market estimates on Wednesday, expecting robust demand for its leading AI chips to persist as businesses spend heavily to expand generative artificial intelligence infrastructure. Its shares rose about 1% in choppy extended trading, after closing up 3.7% in regular trading. Nvidia is the biggest beneficiary of a rally in AI-linked stocks, with its shares up more than 400% over the last two years. The company expects revenue of $43 billion, plus or minus 2% for the first quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $41.78 billion according to data compiled by LSEG. Demand has grown unabated for Nvidia’s advanced chips that can speedily process the large amounts of data used by generative AI applications, as companies race each other to emerge as leaders of the new technology. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can learn from data and improve over time. Nvidia’s optimistic forecast also helps allay doubts around a slowdown in spending on its hardware that emerged last month, following Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s claims that it had developed AI models rivaling Western counterparts at a fraction of their cost. This could add fuel to the sputtering AI rally after the Magnificent Seven stocks’ tumultuous retreat from their late-2024 peaks as Wall Street’s optimism waned under the shadow of DeepSeek’s innovations. Nvidia’s revenue for the fourth quarter grew 78% to $39.3 billion, beating estimates of $38.04 billion. Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters
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