Slash, Paul McCartney, Queen‘s Brian May, Rush‘s Alex Lifeson, The Rolling Stones‘ Keith Richards and Ron Wood,and Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale are just some of the artists who are helping raise money for the Ukraine war relief effort this weekend.
Gibson created several limited-edition “Guitars for Peace” Les Paul custom guitars in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. They sent those guitars on tour with the various artists this summer, along with autograph books.
Through November 13, the guitars and the autograph books — which were also signed by artists and bands like Mark Knopfler, My Chemical Romance, Nile Rodgers and Madness — are being auctioned off by Juliens Auctions. Visit JuliensAuctions.com and navigate to their Icons & Idols: Rock ‘N’ Roll auction page for all the details.
Bidding on one of the guitars played onstage by Slash was up to $12,600 the last time we checked, while one played onstage by McCartney is at $22,500. One that’s signed by several of the artists — including Richards, Wood and May — comes with an autograph book with all the artists’ signatures. Bidding on that one is up to $9,000. Don’t want a guitar? You can bid on just an autograph book starting as low as $500.
One hundred percent of the money raised from the auction will go toward humanitarian aid for the people of Ukraine and the rebuilding efforts once the conflict ends.
“I’m happy to auction this beautiful guitar of mine to benefit the fine people of Ukraine,” says McCartney in a statement. “Hopefully it will help them through this aggressive Russian invasion.”
While the anticipated sequel only officially opened Friday, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has already made nearly $60 million worldwide.
Ryan Coogler‘s Marvel Studios film opened on Wednesday and Thursday in a handful of overseas markets; foreign ticket sales, plus $31 million from Thursday sneak peeks Stateside, have pushed the movie’s take to $59.9 million as the movie heads into its debut weekend, Deadline reports.
The original Black Panther debuted to $192 million back in 2018 — the fifth-highest-grossing opening ever.
It remains to be seen if Wakanda Forever can top this year’s biggest debut, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which earned $182 million when it opened in May.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — A Michigan pediatric hospital is reporting it is completely full due to a surge of cases linked to respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor — which is about 44 miles west of Detroit — said it has seen 259 children sick with RSV this season, a 46% spike from the same number seen this time last year.
Hospital officials said they are worried that this surge — coupled with an earlier flu season and a potential new COVID-19 wave — could put more stress on the health care system.
“We have been 100% full, I think we’re going on our sixth week, and RSV seems to have emerged earlier this year and in higher numbers this year,” Luanne Thomas Ewald, chief operating officer at Mott Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “And the fact that we’re already full is concerning to us because we’re just starting to see flu in our emergency room.”
She continued, “Some reports have told us that we will also see an increase in COVID in kids during this flu season. So we haven’t really even seen the full impacts of the flu and COVID — and we’re already at capacity.”
The situation in Michigan is just the latest example of some hospitals across the country reporting they have reached capacity due to a high number of RSV cases.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, weekly RSV cases nationwide have risen from 5,872 the week ending Oct. 1 to 8,597 the week ending Nov. 5.
In Michigan, the 5-week average of positive RSV tests has increased from 95.7 the week ending Oct. 1 to 257 the week ending Oct. 29, the latest date for which CDC data is available.
Because of this, officials say wait times in the emergency department at Mott Children’s Hospital are much longer than usual.
To ease the burden on emergency room staff, Ewald said she and other hospital officials are asking parents to call their children’s primary care physician first to determine whether they need such treatment.
“Most pediatricians can diagnose RSV and can treat RSV, and most kids recover really, really well with rest and hydration,” Ewald said. “We’re really trying to tell the community throughout the state of Michigan, please partner with your pediatrician. Let’s use our urgent cares as well and only come to the emergency room when absolutely necessary.”
Although it’s rare, between 100 and 500 pediatric deaths occur from RSV every year, according to the CDC. Deaths among children from RSV have already been reported in states including Michigan and Virginia.
Ewald said the hospital is working to increase capacity by treating children in rooms traditionally used to draw blood and in stretchers lined up in the hallway, and they’re doubling up stretchers in private rooms. The hospital is also looking at transferring patients to local medical centers.
“We are working very closely with our community hospitals. Some of our community hospitals do have some pediatric beds available,” Ewald said. “So we’re really trying to take a statewide approach to make sure we’re taking care of these kids in our state.”
She also encouraged parents to make sure their children are up to date on their flu and COVID-19 vaccines, practice good hand hygiene and to consider masking indoors.
(NEW YORK) — The Jewish community has been reeling from recent anti-Semitic comments made by Ye, formerly known as Kayne West, that have brought the rapper and designer into a storm of controversy.
Ye has been outspoken and controversial for decades. Yet his recent actions, including a string of anti-Semitic remarks and a stunt in which he showed up to a fashion show wearing a shirt that read “White Lives Matter,” have led to even his most devoted fans and collaborators, including designers Balenciaga and Adidas, taking a step back.
The rapper has also been spreading misinformation about the murder of George Floyd, leading the family to consider filing a lawsuit against the artist earlier this fall.
“Since this has happened, it’s been very, very tough for me,” Israel-based rapper Nissim Black told ABC News correspondent Ashan Singh.
The rapper, who is an orthodox Jewish Black man, spoke with Singh on the latest episode of “IMPACT x Nightline” about Ye’s downfall.
“It’s been very tough for me because he was one of my favorites, all-time,” said Black. “I felt very let-down.”
A number of activists within the Jewish community spoke in a roundtable discussion about the intersections of Jewish identity, Black identity and the impact of Ye’s inflammatory comments.
“I would say that I was a fan of Kanye West and I grew up on his music,” said Israeli-rights activist Rudy Rochman.
“I’m not wearing his shoes anymore and I’m not listening to his music,” said Rochman. “That is my personal choice. I think there’s a certain level where you have to decide how much respect you have for yourself.”
“I think it’s really important for us to call out hurtful, anti-Semitic rhetoric and then look at the individual as well,” said Yolanda Savage-Narva, assistant vice president of Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the Union for Reform Judaism.
“We have to understand how these things manifest themselves,” she said, “and how as activists at this table, we do what we need to do to root them out and to move our communities, our collective communities, in the right direction.”
Kosha Dillz, a Jewish rapper known for his appearances on MTV’s Wild ‘n Out, released a diss track last month in response to Ye’s comments called “Death Con 3.”
“It was a big bummer,” Dillz told ABC News about the remarks. “Cause– I play Kanye. You know?” And now, he said, “he’s gone.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. are at an all-time high, up 34% from 2020 to 2021 with more than 2,700 incidents happening last year.
“Did I ever hear him say racist things about people? Never,” Jason Lee, one of his former employees who quit this fall, told ABC News. Lee was the head of media and partnerships for Ye’s latest album.
But, Lee said, he noticed the rapper “didn’t have a regard for the impact of his words on social media because he was blinded with emotion from his divorce or for other things.”
Beth Kean, the CEO of the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, pointed out that “Kanye has over 30 million social media followers. That is twice as many Jews living on this Earth.”
“How can you use your platform to fuel hatred like that?” she said.
The Holocaust Museum extended an invitation for Ye to visit and to “understand just how words can incite horrific violence and genocides,” they wrote in a public statement. Ye declined the invitation publicly on a podcast.
Participants in the roundtable recounted the ongoing impact of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the deadliest antisemitic attack on U.S. soil.
“My brother and my niece and nephew live down the street from the Tree of Life Synagogue,” said arts and culture journalist Justin Joffe. “I remember in the aftermath of that shooting it felt very real to me.”
“To know at that age that a sector of the country hates you and doesn’t think you have a right to exist,” he said, referring to his young nieces, “is not something anybody in this country should have to grow up with.”
Fifty years ago this month, WAR’s classic album The World Is a Ghetto was released, hitting number one on the Billboard chart and going on to become the bestselling album of 1973. Now there’s a whole new way to listen to it.
Avenue/Rhino has released a new Dolby Atmos mix of the album, which features the top-10 title track and the number-two hit “Cisco Kid.” The World Is a Ghetto was WAR’s fifth album. The band was first formed in the late ’60s by ex-Animals frontman Eric Burdon and producer/songwriter Jerry Goldstein.
The set, limited to 5,500, includes both albums Burdon and the band made together: Eric Burdon Declares War and the two-LP set The Black-Man’s Burdon, plus Love Is All Around, a 1976 collection of songs Burdon recorded with WAR but didn’t put on their albums. This marks the first time the albums are being released on vinyl since the ’70s. “Spill the Wine” and “They Can’t Take Away Our Music” are the best-known tracks on those albums.
The Toy Hall of Fame has announced this year’s inductees, and while its experts always look back at what people have played with over the years, this year they went way back — thousands of years, in fact.
That’s why the humble spinning top made the list this year — along with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the classic Lite-Brite.
Christopher Bensch, the chief curator at the Strong Museum of Play, which unveiled the winners, noted, “The top is one of the oldest toys and an integral part of many cultures, where it developed independently as a plaything. With more than 5,000 years of history behind it, it’s about time that the top spun its way into the National Toy Hall of Fame!”
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe began as an ’80s phenomenon, which recently saw a resurgence with new toys aimed at adult Gen Xers who grew up on the action figures and their cartoon tie-in. The well-muscled hero and his super-powered friends also came to Netflix in 2021 with the animated Masters of the Universe: Revelation; the streaming service previously reimagined the He-Man spin-off She-Ra, Princess of Power. A new live-action big-screen He-Man adventure is also in the works.
Curator Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, commented, “Masters of the Universe characters had the strength, weapons, and power to defeat the villain—and give kids confidence. He-Man, after-all, regularly asserted ‘I have the power!'”
Lite-Brite was launched in 1966, allowing kids to make mosaics using just light and colored pegs. “Hasbro [once] declared Lite-Brite a ‘magic light box,’ and that magic continues more than 50 years later,” noted curator Nicolas Ricketts.
(NEW YORK) — Nicole made landfall along Florida’s east coast as a Category 1 hurricane early Thursday before weakening to a tropical depression later that night.
It was the second-latest hurricane landfall in a calendar year on record in the United States.
Nicole formed as a subtropical storm in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean on Monday, becoming the 14th named storm of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends later this month.
Latest headlines:
-Remnants of Nicole race up East Coast
-Nicole weakens to tropical depression
-Evacuations ordered of ‘unsafe’ buildings in Florida county
-Four dead in Orange County, Florida
Here’s how the news developed. All times Eastern.
Nov 11, 3:31 PM EST
Artemis rocket suffered minor damage
NASA’s new moon rocket Artemis suffered minor damage when Nicole’s powerful winds blew through Cape Canaveral, Florida, Wednesday night, according to Jim Free, associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA.
Free said the damage can be repaired easily.
NASA is targeting Nov. 16 at 1:04am ET for the launch. The uncrewed mission to the moon will last 25 days, with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
ABC News’ Gina Sunseri
Nov 11, 3:20 PM EST
Remnants of Nicole race up East Coast
The remnants of Nicole are racing up the East Coast, bringing rain to the central Appalachian Mountains, the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Flash flooding is possible from the central Appalachians into western Pennsylvania and New York state.
A tornado watch remains in effect for parts of eastern Virginia and North Carolina until 6 p.m.
The heavy rain will persist in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast through the night. Winds will be gusty at times, especially along the coast.
The rain will mostly wrap up Friday night, lingering into early Saturday morning across New England.
ABC News’ Dan Peck
Nov 11, 6:45 AM EST
Nicole churns over Georgia with ‘heavy’ rain
Tropical Depression Nicole was churning over Georgia early Friday morning, wielding maximum sustained winds of 35 miles per hour with higher gusts, according to the National Weather Service.
The center of Nicole is forecast to move across central and northern Georgia on Friday morning and over the western Carolinas later in the day. Nicole is expected to become a post-tropical cyclone later Friday, then dissipate overnight as it merges with a frontal system over the eastern United States.
In a public advisory early Friday, the National Weather Service said that Nicole will continue to bring “heavy” rainfall to portions of the southeastern U.S. There are currently no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
Nov 10, 11:28 PM EST
Here’s where Nicole is headed next
Areas of heavy rain and gusty winds will continue to impact parts of the Southeast overnight as the system begins its move up the East Coast.
A tornado threat continues for portions of Georgia, South Carolina and now southern North Carolina as of Thursday night.
A tornado watch is in effect until at least 1 a.m., including in Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Philadelphia police are investigating an armed home robbery involving Temple University students that occurred Friday morning at an off-campus apartment, school officials said.
Some of the victims recounted the harrowing experience to ABC Philadelphia station WPVI-TV, which they said started when one of the roommates responded to a knock at the door.
The roommate let the two young men in the apartment, believing they knew someone inside, the students told the station.
Several of the roommates were then woken up by an armed man, who took one of them to wake up the rest, the students said.
Eleven people were in the home at the time, including six female residents, three boyfriends and two female friends who had stayed over, WPVI-TV reported. They were all locked in the apartment’s basement for over an hour, the students said.
While in the basement, some of the victims were able to get their laptops and messaged anyone they could think of to call 911 and report that they were being held up, they told WPVI-TV.
The victims told WPVI-TV they believe the suspects were at the wrong address because the two men repeatedly asked, “Where are the drugs?”
The students were ultimately forced to hand over their cellphones, car keys and debit cards along with their PINs, they told WPVI-TV. Police said the pair also stole a 2015 Infinity minivan, according to WPVI-TV.
Police responded to the apartment building around 7 a.m. and are looking for the suspects. Investigators were canvassing the area for surveillance footage, according to WPVI-TV.
No injuries were reported, though the students were left shaken.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you, but when it does, it’s like a shock,” one student told WPVI-TV.
“I think the sad part is, we all talked in the room — we all realized that once they came in the room, everyone was kind of, ‘Oh, it’s our time now,'” another student told the station.
The university confirmed in a statement to ABC News that Temple students “were robbed at gunpoint at an off-campus property,” located outside of the patrol zone of the Temple University Police Department.
“The most important thing is that no one was reported hurt or injured during this incident,” the university said. “The safety of the Temple community remains the university’s top priority.”
The Philadelphia Police Department did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Camila Alves, the 40-year-old model wife of Matthew McConaughey, is modeling a not-so-enviable look on Instagram: posing in a neck brace for a photo, she told her followers she took a nasty spill down the stairs.
She explained, “I am OK but… Don’t fall people…don’t fall. Ladies hold your long dresses up or lose pants up when going by down the stairs!!”
The mother of three noted, “Wind blew mine as I was midair, pant fabric wrapped around my shoe and down the floor I went…A silly fall, turned into not so silly neck situation, recovery time ahead.”
Alves, who is Brazilian, also repeated the warning in her native Portuguese for her nearly 970,000 followers.
(NEW YORK) — Twitter Blue, the newly revamped subscription service that allows users to access verification if they pay a monthly fee of $8, appeared to be unavailable on the company’s Apple iOS app for at least some users on Friday. A rise of fake accounts on the platform had coincided with the rollout of Twitter Blue two days earlier.
The flood of fake accounts impersonating public figures and brands on Twitter after the the launch of paid verification badges prompted the company to reinstate a second layer of “official” tags on Thursday, the company said in a statement.
Impostor accounts posed as a slew of well-known people and companies, including basketball star LeBron James, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, gaming company Nintendo of America and even Tesla, the electric vehicle maker run by Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk.
On Wednesday, the company said it had opted against a second layer of verification for some prominent accounts that would add an “official” tag as a means of distinguishing them from impostors. A day later, the company said that it had reversed course and would add the “official” label to some accounts.
Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, said Friday that his account was among the well-known users that had been impersonated.
“Safeguards like blue checks let users be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square,” Markey said. “Truth can’t be put on sale for $8.”
Previously, the company verified celebrities, politicians, journalists and prominent figures on a case-by-case basis in an effort to prevent impersonation.
Musk, who acquired Twitter late last month, has already made dramatic changes: firing top executives, laying off half of the company’s staff and forming a content moderation council that will review account reinstatements. The rise of fake accounts after the launch of the new subscription service marks a significant shift in the core product and user experience.
The company has vowed to permanently suspend accounts that take part in impersonation without clearly labeling it a parody account. But recent mass layoffs, which affected employees who work in content moderation, have raised concerns over Twitter’s capacity and willingness to police users.
In protest of the impersonation risks posed by the new subscription service, high-profile users like comedian Kathy Griffin over the weekend changed their usernames to “Elon Musk.” Griffin was suspended from Twitter and remained off the platform as of Tuesday afternoon.
Musk later said Griffin could regain access to her account by joining the revamped subscription service, but it was unclear if the offer was sincere.
The rollout of the new subscription offering was planned for Sunday but the company opted to delay the release until Wednesday, the day after the midterm elections, after some users and advocates raised fears over its implications for election integrity.
Amid changes on the platform, several advertisers have paused their presence on Twitter since Musk took ownership, including Pfizer, General Motors and United Airlines.
Musk, who said he overpaid for the platform at the purchasing price of $44 billion, faces pressure to boost the company’s revenue. Last week, he said that the company is losing $4 million each day.
