Guitarist Gary Rossington, the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, recently underwent “emergency heart surgery,” according to a message posted late Friday on the band’s official Facebook page.
“Gary is home resting and recovering with his family,” the message reads. “He wants everyone to know he is doing good and expects a full recovery.”
The note continues, “After this past year, the country being shut down and everything we have all been thru, The [Rossingtons] encouraged the band to go perform in his absence. Music is a powerful healer! We all felt playing the shows and bringing the music to y’all was a better option than cancelling the performances.”
In the message, the band also asks fans to “say some prayers for the Rossington family and if you would like to leave [Gary] a (positive) message please do! He will look forward to reading them!”
Accompanying the Facebook post is a video clip from a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Minnesota this past week featuring frontman Johnny Van Zant explaining to the audience that Rossington had to have “an emergency stent put in his heart.”
Van Zant also told the crowd, “Gary said, ‘Go up to Minnesota and kick some a** in my honor,’ and that’s what we’re here to do tonight.” In addition, he revealed that former Alice Cooper guitarist Damon Johnson was standing in for Rossington.
Rossington has experienced numerous heart issues over the years, and has revealed in past interviews that he’s had many stent operations.
(TOKYO) — China’s Qian Yang wins 1st gold medal for shooting
Qian Yang, 21, received the first gold model of the 2020 Games in the 10 meter air rifle event, where competitors have 75 minutes to shoot 60 rounds at a target.
U.S. women’s soccer team bounces back to dominate New Zealand
The U.S. women’s soccer team defeated New Zealand 6-1, a strong showing after losing to Sweden 2-0 in their previous game. The women’s team has one more game left in the group round.
Coronavirus cases increase to 127 among Olympic athletes and personnel
Among the new cases, which have increased by 17 since yesterday, only one infected person was staying at the Olympic Village. In the greater Tokyo area, officials have reported 1,128 new cases on July 24, a 133% increase in the 7-day rolling average. U.S. Olympic & Paralympic medical director Dr. Jonathan Finnoff said at a press conference on July 23, that an estimated 83% of the U.S. athletes competing at the games are vaccinated.
Youngest Olympian eliminated from competition
Twelve-year-old Hend Zaza of Syria was eliminated from her women’s single preliminary round table tennis match.
3-on-3 basketball debuts at 2020 Games
Three-on-three basketball made its Olympic debut today with the U.S. women’s team defeating France 17-10. This Olympic version of a street game is won by being the first to 21 points, or leading after the 10-minute game clock has expired. The United States is solely represented by the U.S. women’s team, as the men’s team failed to qualify.
Formerly retired pitcher leads U.S. softball team to 3-0 start
Cat Osterman, 38, led the U.S. softball team to their third victory, a 2-0 win over Mexico on July, 24, 2021. Osterman was on the 2008 Olympic team that received the silver medal after losing to Japan.
(NEW YORK) — Maryland Gov. Hogan announced earlier this month, the launch of the $1 million VaxU scholarship program. The effort is to incentivize those eligible, kids between 12-17 to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the governor said. Anyone between those ages who was vaccinated in the state is automatically entered to win.
Winners will receive a $50,000 scholarship for any public, in-state institution of higher education. As of July 12, the state began randomly selecting two winners and will continue with weekly drawings through Labor Day, when they will then pick four winners.
“The virus, and its variants are a dangerous threat to you,” Hogan said. “Getting vaccinated is the only way to protect yourself and to continue on our recovery.”
“The winners will receive a Maryland 529 prepaid college trust contract, which locks in today’s tuition rates for the future, or a Maryland 529 College invest plan,” said Gov. Hogan. “And the winner, if they decide down the line…. [that they] would like to attend a private institution or school that’s outside of the state of Maryland, they can actually transfer the scholarship to the school of their choice.”
The funding behind these scholarships comes from the American Rescue Plan which distributed more than $360 billion in emergency funding to state and local governments.
“Promotions like these are just one more way that we are reinforcing the importance of getting every single Marylander that we can vaccinate against COVID-19, especially our young people,” said Gov. Hogan. “But those who are unvaccinated do remain at risk, especially with the new highly transmissible variants, including the delta variant which is currently circulating.”
“According to our state health department, 95% of all new COVID cases reported last month were people who have not been vaccinated [and] 93% of all new covid deaths in the month of June were Marylanders who were unvaccinated,” said Gov. Hogan.
The incentive comes as the delta variant spreads rampantly throughout the U.S. and vaccination rates across the nation continue to fall.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told lawmakers Tuesday that the delta variant now makes up 83% of COVID cases, up from 50% at the beginning of this month.
Since vaccinations have become widely avaiable states have used lotteries, college scholarships and other rewards as ways to intice people to get vaccinated.
In May, Joseph Costello was announced the winner of a full-ride scholarship in Ohio’s Vax-a-Million lottery. Costello’s name was randomly drawn from nearly 105,000 entries among vaccinated 12 to 17-year-olds.
That same month, the mayor of Lancaster, California, offered a raffle scholarship that included a grand prize of $10,000 for teens who get the COVID-19 vaccine.
(TOKYO) — Novak Djokovic could be on his way to making men’s tennis history with this year’s Olympic Games.
Every year, tennis players have the opportunity to achieve a Grand Slam by winning all four majors: the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.
But every four years — or, well, five years, in this case — they have the opportunity to achieve a “Golden Slam.” That means winning all four majors and the Olympics.
It’s only ever been achieved once, by Steffi Graf in 1988. No man has ever completed a Golden Slam.
Djokovic, at the very least, is close to it. So far this year, he has won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. The U.S. Open takes place at the end of summer.
A Grand Slam is rare enough. No men’s tennis player has done it in a calendar year since Rod Laver in 1969 — though Djokovic did hold all four titles simultaneously from 2015 to 2016.
After debating whether he would attend the game due to COVID-19 restrictions, the world No. 1 confirmed on July 15, “I booked my flight for Tokyo and will proudly be joining #TeamSerbia for the Olympics.”
Despite that — and despite the Serbian athlete’s general dominance over the last two years — it won’t exactly be a walk in the park as Djokovic’s competition will include Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, Germany’s Alexander Zverev and Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, representing the Russian Olympic Committee, among others.
Djokovic has made no secret of his ambitions, recently telling Montenegro’s MINA news agency, according to USOpen.org, “I am inspired to play my best tennis and confident that I can win the gold medal after a tremendous run so far this season.”
While he acknowledged the Olympics and U.S. Open would be “demanding,” he added, “But I am full of confidence and motivated to represent Serbia in the best possible way. I am yearning for a medal in Tokyo, hopefully gold, and then I’ll go to New York aiming to complete it all.”
(NEW YORK) — Some of the best colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing backlash over the extent of their commitment to classroom diversity.
Several high-profile Black academics have been denied tenure at esteemed higher-learning institutions, sparking a new debate about racism and privilege in academia. This comes as data has shown that as student demographics changed to have more people of color, while the racial makeup of professors and instructors remains the same at these institutions: predominately white.
After decades of teaching at schools including Yale and Princeton, activist and scholar Dr. Cornel West’s name made headlines this year in a very public conflict with Harvard Divinity School. West resigned from his position at the school in June.
In his resignation letter, he attributed his decision to “spiritual rot” after he was denied tenure.
“I’ve been a Black man in America for over 60-something years. … I know what’s going on. It has nothing to do with academics,” West said in his letter.
West has said he believes race was a factor in his not getting tenure. He had previously held tenure during his last stint at Harvard and has also held a tenured position at Princeton University. He said his teaching has been significantly limited by Havard’s failure to grant him that protection.
Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, spoke with ABC News about tenure standards and policies for higher education.
“[Tenure] provides job security, but it’s really about academic freedom,” Mulvey said. “[With tenure], you’re not worried about your job security for teaching the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, or because somebody doesn’t like what you’re researching.”
Harvard administrators offered West a five-year contract with consideration of a future tenure bid following public outcry from student protestors, but West declined.
“Harvard offered me more money. It offered me a big chair … and I said it’s not about that. You can’t even undergo a tenure process. You can’t negotiate respect in that regard,” West said in an interview with ABC News’ Deborah Roberts.
The Harvard Divinity School issued a statement thanking West for his “enormous contribution to … issues of racial justice” adding: “We had hoped to retain him on our faculty for many years to come.”
During the three-month dispute over West’s tenure debate with Harvard, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones publicly announced her withdrawal from tenure negotiations with her alma mater, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
UNC recruited her to be the Knight Chair in race and investigative journalism, a position which is endowed at schools by the Knight Foundation to lead journalism in the digital age.
However, the board of trustees at the school initially refused to vote on her tenure. It would have made her the first person to hold the position without tenure in the Knight Chair’s history at the school.
“I think it showed that there was not a respect for what Black faculty go through on campus,” she told ABC News in a recent interview. “If they were able to do this to me — I work at the New York Times. I have a huge megaphone, I have a huge platform — what do they think they could get away with when it came to lesser-known scholars?”
Though the school’s board of trustees did eventually vote in her favor for tenure, she declined the offer, instead announcing her decision to accept the first Knight Chair position at Howard University, a historically Black college.
UNC said it is “disappointed” that Hannah-Jones won’t be joining the faculty” and that the school is working “toward a more inclusive and equitable campus,” in a statement released on July 6.
ABC News’ data team analyzed U.S. Department of Education reports on more than 4,000 schools and found that there has been a dramatic change in the demographic makeup of students, while instructors’ demographics remained stagnant.
Overall, they found the student population on the nation’s college campuses have become majority non-white, while faculty has remained about 70% white.
“Nikole Hannah-Jones’ situation is particularly egregious because what you can see is a Black woman not getting what was given automatically to everyone that came before her,” Mulvey said.
Research shows non-white professors are less likely to receive tenure. Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows professors of color make up 30% of the overall faculty, but only 10% of tenured professors are people of color. Of that 10%, 3.7% are Black and 4.8% are Hispanic/Latino.
Overall about 41% of all faculty are tenured, but among Black and Hispanic faculty, the percentage of those who are tenured is lower.
Hannah-Jones will join faculty members at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University, alongside author and Howard alumnus Ta-Nehisi Coates.
West says there are “barriers” that non-white professors face on the path to tenure.
He noted the “invisible” responsibilities that professors of color take on that typically fall outside of their job description on paper. In large part, he said, this stems from their relationship with students of color. These professors fulfill the role of a mentor and encourage professional development.
“When you have students coming in who are hungry and thirsty for a quest for truth and they themselves feel disrespected, many Black professors feel that we want to spend some time with them. Some of us spend a lot of time with them to empower them. Why? Because we had Black professors who empowered us. So that takes extra time. It takes extra effort. It takes extra energy,” West said.
According to Mulvey, the glass ceiling for nonwhite professors in higher education is nothing new.
“Higher education is not immune to systemic and institutional racism,” Mulvey said. “Faculty of color will talk to you about the Black tax, which is well-known in that faculty of color are always asked to serve on diversity, inclusion and equity task forces. And as a result, when a faculty of color comes up for tenure, they may have found they didn’t have the same amount of time for research as their white colleagues.”
The racial disparities within higher education reach beyond the realm of faculty, influencing students’ experiences in the classroom.
ABC News’ data analysis has found that non-white students at universities with more diverse faculty have higher graduation rates.
It’s a correlation not lost on Georgetown University senior Yaritza Aguilar. She is the first in her family to go to college and says professors of color have been crucial throughout her education.
“When I have a Latino professor, I feel more confident. Latin professors have been in my shoes, being the first to kind of lift your family out of a difficult situation and there’s a lot of trauma that comes with that,” said Aguilar.
ABC News’ data team found racial disparity is present across schools, which can cause students to feel isolated and discouraged to continue their education, affecting graduation and retention rates.
“For a student to come on a campus and not see anyone else that looks like them, the message is you’re an outsider. If they see faculty that looks like them, the message they get is that, I can succeed here, I can succeed in this field,” Aguilar said.
Early last year, Aguilar was involved with a group of student volunteers who pushed an initiative to help the school hire two more Latino professors in the history and American studies department. She is also starting a petition to help create a Latino studies minor.
“After the murder of George Floyd, I think Georgetown has been more responsive and critical of the way they’ve dealt with diversity. They created a racial justice initiative and hired another professor of color. But we want that rhetoric to be turned into action,” Aguilar said.
Though progress has been made among universities and colleges, many academics say there is still more to be done for faculty and students.
“Racism is still operating in these institutions,” West said. “The racism is still at work at each and every one of these institutions. Yet there’s decent people of all colors willing to fight against it. That’s the good news. That’s the good news.”
(TOKYO) — The first gold medal of the 2020 Olympics was officially won Saturday in Japan
China’s Qian Yang earned gold in the women’s 10-meter air rifle to take home the long-awaited first medal. The 21-year-old is a rising star in the sport.
She defeated Russian Anastasiia Galashina — competing under the Russian Olympic Committee moniker — in the final. Nina Christen took the bronze for Switzerland.
The first medal events took place Saturday in Tokyo, with opportunities to win in archery, men’s cycling, fencing, judo, shooting, taekwondo and women’s weightlifting.
Although the opening ceremony just took place Friday, competition has been underway for several days, including in soccer, softball, baseball and shooting. Competition will continue through Aug. 8, when the closing ceremony will be held.
The United States won the most medals during the last Summer Olympics in 2016, coming home with 121, 46 of which were gold. China and Great Britain followed shortly after the U.S., taking home 70 and 67 medals, respectively.
Shooting takes place in several disciplines, based on different distances from targets. In the 10-meter air rifle, athletes have 75 minutes to fire 60 shots at a target. Ginny Thrasher of the U.S. won gold in 2016. Thrasher did not qualify for the 2020 Games, though American Mary Tucker finished in sixth.
The men’s 10-meter air pistol competition will be taking place later in the day.
While this is the first gold medal of the Tokyo Games, there are other notable first medals coming up. The first medals ever will be awarded over the next two weeks in skateboarding, karate, surfboarding and sport climbing, four sports that are making their Olympic debut this year.
Meanwhile, American greats like gymnast Simone Biles and sprinter Allyson Felix are competing to make medal history as individuals in their sports, and Serbian tennis icon Novak Djokovic is going for gold on his hunt for an elusive Golden Slam.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Friday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL:
INTERLEAGUE
Final N.Y. Mets 3 Toronto 0
Final Baltimore 6 Washington 1
Final Milwaukee 7 Chicago White Sox 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Final Tampa Bay 10 Cleveland 5
Final Boston 6 N.Y. Yankees 2
Final Kansas City 5 Detroit 3
Final Minnesota 5 L.A. Angels 4
Final Houston 7 Texas 3
Final Seattle 4 Oakland 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Final Chicago Cubs 8 Arizona 3
Final Philadelphia 5 Atlanta 1
Final San Diego 5 Miami 2
Final Cincinnati 6 St. Louis 5
Final Pittsburgh 6 San Francisco 4
Final Colorado 9 L.A. Dodgers 6
(TOKYO) — It was one of the most lopsided losses in Olympic basketball history: Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Team USA thrashed the Nigerian men’s basketball team by 83 points in London in 2012, with a final score of 156-73.
“I remember that game,” said 21-year-old Precious Achiuwa, who was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States in eighth grade. “It wasn’t good.”
Fast forward nine years, and Achiuwa, now a forward for the Miami Heat and Nigeria’s national team, helped pull off a surprising upset against Team USA, 90-87, in an Olympic exhibition game two weeks ago — playing highlight-reel defense against American superstar Kevin Durant.
It was the first time an African team has ever defeated Team USA. It was a coming-out party of sorts for the Nigerian team, called D’Tigers, who are hunting for Africa’s first basketball medal in the upcoming Olympics.
“Hopefully it brings a lot of attention to us from younger athletes that are Nigerian, that may be interested in being a part of Nigerian basketball now,” said Gabe Nnamdi Vincent, a Nigerian American guard who, like Achiuwa, plays for the NBA’s Heat and the Nigerian national team.
Stephen Bardo, a former NBA player and college basketball analyst who has run basketball clinics across Africa, told ABC News he wasn’t surprised by Nigeria’s victory.
“Over half that team has NCAA or NBA experience,” he said. Eight players on the team’s 12-man Olympic roster are currently playing in the NBA.
The team also has a top-flight coach in Mike Brown — a former NBA coach of the year who helmed teams with some of the world’s top stars, including LeBron James and Bryant.
“I’ve been a head coach in the NBA Finals. I’ve been an assistant coach in multiple finals with multiple different teams. And I’ve won a couple,” he told ABC News. “Being a coach in the Olympics, I’ve never done that. So why not experience that now?”
While he doesn’t have any personal ties to Nigeria, Brown sees the role as an opportunity to build something bigger than a strong national team — and is working for the Nigerian Basketball Federation without pay.
“I got 10 toes in. I got both arms in. I got my big ole head in, every part of my body is in — to uplift Nigeria as a country through the game of basketball,” he said.
With a team of stars, the USA men’s team is still the favorite for the gold medal in Japan. But after dropping consecutive exhibition games to Nigeria and a powerhouse Australian team, the Americans are entering their first game in their shakiest position since 2004, when a team of NBA stars struggled to play together and wound up with the bronze medal at the Athens Olympics.
Brown said “the rest of the world is catching up” to Team USA.
That shrinking skills gap has been on full display this summer, as Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks superstar born in Greece to Nigerian parents, led his team to victory in the NBA Finals, through the playoffs filled with teams anchored by stars from Cameroon, Slovenia, Serbia, France and the Bahamas.
“We all fought so hard to make sure that we opened the door for the next generation to come and compete in this game,” said Dikembe Mutombo, the Congolese American Hall of Fame basketball player-turned-philanthropist.
He was one of three African-born players in the NBA when he was drafted in 1991. Last year, the NBA season began with 107 international players from 41 countries — including 14 from Africa.
Now, he’s excited to watch the Nigerian team perform in Tokyo, and said they have a good shot at ending up on that medal stand.
“This will be a great celebration for everyone on the continent of Africa. We can say that we did it — not just Nigeria,” he said. “They are representing a big flag, not just the green flag of Nigeria.”
Ekpe Udoh, a veteran on Team Nigeria who played in the NBA for eight years, expressed optimism for the future of the national team.
“The core of our team [is] pretty young,” he told ABC News. “So if we can start now and continue to build a culture, I know we’ll be successful for years to come.”
“I don’t think there’s any one or two countries that would dominate something like the Olympics forever,” Vincent told ABC News. “I think it’s only a matter of time that Africa itself will step up.”
The Stray Cats‘ Brian Setzer has released a second advance track from his forthcoming solo studio album Gotta Have the Rumble, a revved-up surf-rock-influenced tune called “Smash Up On Highway One.”
The song is available now as a digital download and via streaming services, while a music video for the tune has premiered at Setzer’s official YouTube channel.
The clip offers up a montage of black-and-white video segments featuring such evocative images as a belly dancer, a burning cigarette, a burning $100 bill, a slithering snake, an animal’s skeleton, a hissing cat, a snarling dog, a solar eclipse, piano keys lit aflame, an iguana, a spider in its web, a tornado, a graveyard and a burning car out in a desert.
Setzer says he got the idea for “Smash Up On Highway One” after he and The Stray Cats played surf-rock legend Dick Dale‘s classic instrumental “Misirlou” with Dale himself.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to write something as cool as that riff.’ So I came up with something out of left field,” he explains. “I don’t know what you would call it — Middle Eastern or Eastern-European…I had that riff laying around. I guess you could say I’m always collecting cool guitar parts. [Frequent collaborator] Mike Himelstein sent me those lyrics and they just fit right in. I think it’s really cool.”
As previously reported, Gotta Have the Rumble will be released on August 27 on CD and digitally, while a vinyl version will arrive in the fall.
The new collection, which you can pre-order now, features 11 original tunes written or co-written by Setzer. Brian previously released the album’s first song, “Checkered Flag,” as an advance track.
(WASHINGTON) — COVID-19 vaccinations rose 14% over the past week, White House officials said Friday, as the more contagious delta variant is quickly spreading in under-vaccinated areas.
“In the past 7 days 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%),” Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 data director, said on Twitter Friday.
“The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US,” he added. “Get vaccinated!”
Friday just in: +600K doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, incl. 363K newly vaccinated. In the past 7 days, 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%). The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US. Get vaccinated!
The delta variant now makes up over 80% of cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, up from 50% at the beginning of July.
It’s unclear at the moment whether the increase in vaccinations is a blip or a trend. An ABC News analysis of CDC data shows that, as of Thursday, the number of COVID-19 vaccinations had plateaued at about 530,000 total shots administered per day. Over the last week, on average, 297,202 people initiated vaccination per day — 9.6% higher than the previous seven days.
On average, 236,791 adults initiated vaccination each day in the last seven days — 7.4% higher than the previous seven days, the analysis found. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, that number rose nearly 20%.
The five states that currently have the highest COVID-19 case rates are seeing their vaccination numbers increase, according to the White House. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are seeing a higher rate of people getting their first shots compared to the national average, Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on COVID-19, told reporters Thursday.
“This is a very positive trend,” he added.
Visits to the website vaccines.gov from users in Alabama — the least-vaccinated state — have gone up three times in the last two weeks, according to epidemiologist and ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein. Meanwhile, people in Louisiana and Missouri have doubled visits to the site, he found, suggesting people there are seeking information on where to get a shot.
On Friday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called on people to get vaccinated, as the daily average of new COVID-19 cases has tripled over the last two weeks in the state.
“Let’s get it done, and we know what it takes to get it done — get a shot in your arm,” she said during a press briefing. “I’ve done it, it’s safe, it’s effective, data proves that it works, it doesn’t cost anything, it saves lives.”
Just under 34% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey said. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that let us down.”
Louisiana’s health department issued new COVID-19 guidance Friday, recommending mask-wearing indoors regardless of vaccination status “in light of Louisiana’s troubling COVID-19 trends in cases and hospitalizations,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Twitter.
“Louisiana is undeniably in a fourth surge of COVID,” the governor said during a press briefing Friday afternoon, as the state reported 3,127 new cases. The state’s average daily cases per 100,000 residents has increased 208% over the past 14 days.
“Louisiana now has the highest growth rate in cases per capita in the United States of America. I want to let that sink in,” Bel Edwards said, attributing that to widespread transmission of the delta variant and the “very low percentage of people who have been vaccinated.”
About 48% of residents ages 12 and up have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the governor.
“That number is far below where we need to be to have the protection that we need in order to slow the spread and move toward ending the pandemic,” he said.
One encouraging sign, and one the governor noted he hopes continues, is that vaccinations have been on the rise over the past two weeks, state officials said, going from an average of 2,000 vaccine initiations per day to about 5,000 per day.
“This surge is on us,” Bel Edwards said. “How bad it gets, how long it stays bad, how many people ultimately die — on us.”
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
