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mattrenz16

Biden Visits Tulsa For Anniversary Of 1921 Race Massacre On Black Wall Street : NPR - 0 views

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  • President Biden traveled to Oklahoma on Tuesday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre amid a renewed reckoning over a long-overlooked attack that left as many as 300 people dead in a community once known as Black Wall Street.
  • On May 31 and June 1, 1921, an armed white mob attacked the all-Black district of Greenwood. The racist mob destroyed the area, leaving 40 square blocks in ruins and nearly 10,000 people homeless. A century later, it remains one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.
  • "But just because history is silent, it doesn't mean that it did not take place. And while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. It erases nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they can't be buried, no matter how hard people try."
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  • "Untold bodies dumped into mass graves," Biden said. "Families, who at the time, waited for hours and days to know the fate of their loved ones, are now descendants who have gone 100 years without closure.
  • In his inaugural address, Biden said he would help to deliver "racial justice" and promised that "the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer."
mattrenz16

Indiana Needle Exchange That Helped Contain Historic HIV Outbreak May Close : Shots - H... - 0 views

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  • In 2015, rural Scott County, Indiana, found itself in the national spotlight when intravenous drug use and sharing needles led to an outbreak of HIV.
  • In all, 235 people became infected with HIV over the course of the outbreak, most of them within the first year. In all of last year, there was one new case. Health officials credit the needle exchange for the dramatic drop-off in cases.
  • But with cases the lowest in years, Scott County's commissioners are considering shutting the program down. Two of three commissioners have said they plan to vote to end the program during their meeting June 2, arguing it enables drug use. (Neither would grant interviews to NPR.)
mattrenz16

A Daughter's Journey To Learn Mandarin Chinese At 30 : NPR - 0 views

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  • NPR Short Wave host and reporter Emily Kwong is a third generation Chinese American, but she's never spoken her family's language.
  • At age 30, she's trying to learn the language for the first time, and unpacking why she never learned it in the first place.
  • Emily's father, Christopher Kwong, stopped speaking his first language — Mandarin Chinese — when he was five-years-old. Born in New York City in 1958, he struggled to communicate with his kindergarten teacher and classmates.
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  • Emily's grandparents, Hui and Edgar Kwong, were worried he would fall behind. They stopped speaking Mandarin to Christopher at home, and dedicated themselves to teaching him English. "I realized I had to engage in a different world, a world in English," Christopher Kwong says. "You have to integrate, otherwise you're going to be really in a terrible place."
  • Emily will explore how being 'Chinese enough' gets tied up in language fluency and the feeling of racial imposter syndrome, in conversation with sociolinguist Amelia Tseng. She also discovers how language is a bridge that can be broken and rebuilt between generations — as an act of love and reclamation.
mattrenz16

The Pope Is Toughening Church Laws On Sex Abuse, Fraud And The Ordination Of Women : NPR - 0 views

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  • ROME — Pope Francis on Tuesday issued a major revision of Catholic Church laws regulating clerical sex abuse, fraud and the attempt to ordain women. It is known as an apostolic constitution with the title, Pascite Gregem Dei, or "Tend the Flock."
  • In the works since 2009, the revision is the first in four decades since the version Pope John Paul II approved in 1983. And it appears to be in response to numerous clerical sex abuse and financial scandals that have rocked the church and shaken the trust of the faithful across the world over the last quarter century.
  • After handling scandals secretively with murky decision-making, and treating sexual relationships between priests and consenting adults as sinful but not a crime, the revisions reflect a new understanding in the church that abuse of power is an underlying cause of sexual abuse.
mattrenz16

What Went Wrong With The Rollout Of The AstraZeneca Vaccine? : Goats and Soda : NPR - 0 views

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  • From the get-go, the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was different.
  • It was a nonprofit collaboration between top academic researchers at Oxford University in the U.K. and a major pharmaceutical company. It wasn't developed by a government to be used exclusively for the people or the political whims of one nation. The company billed it as the "vaccine for the world," costing one-tenth of what some of its rivals cost — and licensed it to other manufacturers around the globe to amplify its production. And it was going to be the backbone of the international vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX, making it the primary vaccine for low- and middle-income countries. The company AstraZeneca had the ambitious goal to get 2 billion doses into people's arms this year.
  • At times, the Oxford-AstraZeneca operation has appeared sloppy. During clinical trials, some participants were given only half a dose of the vaccine by mistake. This error would have been even more embarrassing for the researchers except it turned out that a smaller dose worked better than the full one.
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  • Like in so many smaller, less-wealthy countries in the world, Uganda's primary source of vaccines is the COVAX program run by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
  • Wakikona says if she could choose, she'd probably take the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
  • But Adam Finn, a vaccine expert at the University of Bristol, says concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine are overblown.
mattrenz16

Vaccine Data On Race Varies Widely Among States, Making Outreach Difficult : Shots - He... - 0 views

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  • Throughout the COVID-19 vaccination effort, public health officials and politicians have insisted that providing shots equitably across racial and ethnic groups is a top priority.
  • But it's been left up to states to decide how to do that and to collect racial and ethnic data on vaccinated individuals, so they can track how well they're doing reaching all groups. The gaps and inconsistencies in the data have made it difficult to understand who's actually getting shots.
  • Just as an uneven approach to containing the coronavirus led to a greater toll for Black and Latino communities, the inconsistent data guiding vaccination efforts may be leaving the same groups out on vaccines, says Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
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  • Now that the federal, state and local governments are easing mask requirements and ending other measures to stem the spread of the virus, efforts to boost vaccination rates in underserved communities are even more urgent.
mattrenz16

Benjamin Netanyahu's Reign As Israel's Prime Minister Could End Soon : NPR - 0 views

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  • Negotiations continued Monday in Israel over an unlikely political coalition poised to dethrone the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • The attempt to put an end to Netanyahu's rule, publicly announced Sunday night by hard-right party leader Naftali Bennett, has been welcomed by a surprising cross-section of left-wing and right-wing Israelis, as Netanyahu and his allies fight fiercely to keep him in power ahead of a looming Wednesday deadline for a new coalition to be reached.
  • If lawmakers succeed, Bennett, a one-time Netanyahu aide who now heads Israel's tiny Yamina Party, would take the prime minister's seat as head of a coalition government sharing power with centrist politician Yair Lapid, a former TV news anchor and finance minister whose Yesh Atid is the second largest of Israel's many political parties. The two would take turns as prime minister if the fragile coalition manages to hold for long enough, with Bennett going first.
mattrenz16

A New Mexico Special Election Is Posing An Early Test Of Democrats' 2022 Messaging : NPR - 0 views

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  • Democrats in New Mexico are hoping to keep control of the House seat in the state's 1st Congressional District when voters take to the polls Tuesday to fill the position vacated by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
  • A recent opinion poll by the Republican elections blog RRH Elections shows Democrat Melanie Stansbury with a comfortable double-digit lead — 49% to 33% — over Republican opponent Mark Moores.
  • The congressional seat has sat vacant since March, when Haaland, a Democrat, was confirmed as the first Native American to head the Department of the Interior.
mattrenz16

2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season's Storm Names : NPR - 0 views

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  • The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins Tuesday, June 1, and the National Hurricane Center has designated 21 storm names for the six-month period ending Nov. 30.
  • On the bright side, forecast accuracy and advance warnings have continued to improve. Now, some of the most lethal consequences of hurricane season are not the storms but their aftermath. As NPR's Greg Allen reports, since 2017 at least 39 people have died following storms because of carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly used generators.
  • Last year's record number of storms used up the 21 names that forecasters had chosen, forcing them for only the second time to switch to the Greek alphabet beginning with storm No. 22, named Alpha. The World Meteorological Organization recommended that the practice be stopped, and now the National Hurricane Center will have a different set of extra names on hand.
mattrenz16

Slavery Wasn't 'Long Ago': Clint Smith On The Disconnect In How We Tell History : NPR - 0 views

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  • Growing up in New Orleans, Atlantic writer Clint Smith was surrounded by reminders of the Confederacy. To get to school, he traveled down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. He took Jefferson Davis Highway when he went to the grocery store.
  • In May 2017, after the statue of Robert E. Lee near downtown New Orleans was taken down from its 60-foot pedestal, Smith began to think more deeply about how slavery is remembered and reckoned with in America — and about all the things he wishes someone had taught him long ago.
  • In his new book, How the Word Is Passed, Smith visits eight places central to the history of slavery in America, including Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation and Louisiana's Angola prison, which was built on the site of a former plantation. He says he wrote the book, in part, as a response to the negative messages he heard growing up in his majority Black hometown.
mattrenz16

A Video Shows A Man Suddenly Hitting An Asian Woman In NYC's Chinatown : NPR - 0 views

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  • A man has been arrested after an unprovoked attack on a woman of Asian descent on Monday in New York City's Chinatown.
  • Security camera video from Monday evening shows people walking on a sidewalk next to a restaurant's outdoor seating. A woman walks in from the right of frame while a man coming from the opposite direction swings his left arm wide, hitting her in the face. The force of the hit knocks her hat off. She is knocked off balance, collapses and sits motionless. The man lifts his arm, apparently at onlookers, says something and then continues to stand nearby while a crowd comes to the woman's aid.
  • Assembly Member Niou says the woman is now doing "OK."
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  • While reported hate crimes against people of Asian or Pacific Islander descent went up in several cities in 2020, the most marked increase was in New York City, where three incidents reported in 2019 rose to 28 reported in 2020. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino reported the numbers in New York City have increased again in the first quarter of 2021: from 13 in the first three months of 2020 to 42 in the first three months of 2021. The numbers could be an undercount, as authorities say many incidents are not reported.
mattrenz16

Autonomous Drone Strike In Libya Subject Of Recent United Nations Report : NPR - 0 views

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  • Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield.
  • Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system — or LAWS — has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone.
  • The Kargu-2 is an attack drone made by the Turkish company STM that can be operated both autonomously and manually and that purports to use "machine learning" and "real-time image processing" against its targets.
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  • The U.N. report goes on: "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."
  • Azerbaijan used armed drones to gain a major advantage over Armenia in recent fighting for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Just last month, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly used drones to drop tear gas on protesters in the occupied West Bank, while Hamas launched loitering munitions — so-called kamikaze drones — into Israel.
  • While this incident may or may not represent the first battlefield killing by an autonomous drone, the idea of such a weapon is disquieting to many.
mattrenz16

Here Are The Texas GOP's Reasons For Voting Restrictions - And Why Critics Disagree : NPR - 0 views

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  • Texas Republicans say their controversial move to tighten voter restrictions is sorely needed to prevent fraud. But the few examples of fraud they cite have been out of proportion to the sweeping changes included in their legislation, which seeks to reshape the way many Texans exercise their fundamental democratic right.
  • Senate Bill 7 is now effectively dead after Democrats walked out of the Texas Capitol in a quorum-busting maneuver that prevented a final vote on the bill. But Republicans plan to call a special session of the state Legislature to revive their push for new controls.
  • If Texas lawmakers want to help voters, the Texas Civil Rights Project says, they should turn their attention elsewhere. The group says that "we have no online voter registration, only a fraction of Texans have the right to vote by mail, and 750 polling places were closed between 2013 and 2019, predominantly in communities of color."
mattrenz16

Opinion: Just when you think GOP couldn't get more extreme, along comes Marjorie Taylor... - 0 views

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  • Despite the fact that there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding the events on January 6, it's likely McConnell is more concerned that a commission will hurt the Republican Party's chances in the upcoming 2022 midterm election. That's mainstream Republicanism in a nutshell: do whatever is necessary to protect the power of the party.
  • Then there is Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a track record of spewing anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, racist, and conspiratorial statements. She sunk to a new low this week when she compared the implementation of public health initiatives to steps the Nazis took as they sought to destroy the Jewish population during the Holocaust. When her comments were met with harsh criticism, Greene simply doubled down.
mattrenz16

Opinion: What happens next in Congress will determine future of country, writes Bernie ... - 0 views

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  • In this pivotal moment in American history, Democrats in the US House of Representatives and US Senate, working with the White House, have proposed several pieces of legislation which can strengthen working families, protect the planet and save American democracy from right-wing extremism.
  • We can create millions of good paying union jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, water systems and constructing the millions of units of affordable housing we desperately need. We can also end starvation wages in America by raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. At a time when real wages for American workers have been stagnant for decades, these actions will be a major step forward in improving the standard of living of a declining middle class.
  • Further, we can create millions more jobs by taking the global leadership in combating climate change -- the existential threat to our planet -- and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels.
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  • By extending the child tax credit, we can cut childhood poverty nearly in half and end the international embarrassment of the US having one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.Read More
mattrenz16

Opinion: The Trump-Netanyahu bromance deepened American Jews' divide on Israel - CNN - 0 views

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  • Two of the Jewish people serving in the US Senate -- Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jon Ossoff of Georgia -- have taken leading roles in calling for evenhanded American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and for an immediate cease fire, respectively. And the liberal Jewish lobbying group, J Street, has provided important political support for politicians, whether Jewish or not, to criticize Israel's relentless bombing of Gaza in response to Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel without the risk of being smeared as being anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic.
mattrenz16

Ambassador Motaz Zahran: Let this be the last Israel-Gaza ceasefire - Opinion - CNN - 0 views

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  • Egypt worked around the clock over the past two weeks to end the deadly fighting between our Palestinian and Israeli neighbors. Since the early hours of the conflict, Egyptian mediators led de-escalation talks with both Hamas and Israeli leadership. We supported humanitarian efforts on the ground, including by opening the Rafah border crossing for the provision of immediate medical care to the injured in Gaza. Ultimately, in close partnership with the United States and others, we were able to broker a ceasefire.
  • However, we will also never accept the notion that this cycle of bloodshed is inevitable. That is why we refuse to let this issue recede in international priorities -- as it has in the past -- until the next crisis emerges and imposes.
  • In turn, Cairo and Washington must impress on Palestinians the need to work for peace. While having the militants lay down their arms for good might seem a long way off, stopping further attacks is essential to move forward. Those factions rejecting peace efforts and seeking instability, whatever their name or affiliation is, have to be contained, including by undermining their international network of support and finance. After all, armed attacks and military operations, whatever their cause is, never serve the path towards peace and only sets back the ultimate objective of a two state solution.
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  • We must work to uphold and enable the Palestinian National Authority. Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, has a crucial role in furthering any future peace negotiations. His role as a national leader has been overshadowed by Hamas' recent conflict with Israel, yet he has all the credentials and willingness to return to the table for serious and meaningful discussions. Elevating Abbas in the eyes of the world will bring him back into his historic role as chief negotiator for the Palestinian people; after all, no one on the Palestinian side has worked more on the vision of a two state solution than President Abbas.
mattrenz16

Opinion: Millions of vacant jobs add up to a massive wake-up call - CNN - 0 views

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  • As life in the United States tiptoes back toward something resembling Before Times, many employers are facing an unexpected problem: they can't hire the workers they need. Despite unemployment numbers in the millions, some 8.1 million job vacancies remain. This problem is concentrated among America's low-wage workforce, hitting restaurants, warehouses, manufacturers and the service industry.
  • "We should not be in the business of creating lucrative government dependency that makes it more beneficial to stay unemployed rather than return to work," Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who is leading the Senate charge to cut off the benefit, wrote in the Kansas City Business Journal.
  • In reality, researchers have found that the unemployment benefit's impact on the labor shortage is fairly small.
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  • This should be a wake-up call for a country that has spent decades mistreating, neglecting and radically underpaying its workers.
  • Consider: The US has not raised the federal minimum wage in more than a decade, and $7.25 an hour was a paltry sum even then. If today's minimum wage were commensurate with productivity increases over the last 50 years, it would be $22 an hour. Workers' purchasing power has been stagnant for 40 years, and even though workers are more productive than ever, their compensation has barely budged since the 1970s. Even more egregious is the minimum wage for tipped workers, which is an insulting $2.13 an hour, a number that hasn't gone up in 30 years.
  • Some employers say that they simply cannot afford to pay a living wage. But that failure should fall on the business, not on would-be employees. Businesses have been badly hurt by the pandemic, and while they've received some governmental support, it's been wildly inadequate. But even outside of pandemic times, workers were struggling, while too many businesses felt entitled to a steady supply of poorly-paid workers, often assigning them unpredictable and exhausting schedules that came along with inconsistent income. That is not a good or sustainable business model, and it's not one we should return to.
  • But it's likely not just too little pay keeping would-be workers from surging into the workforce -- there is also fear of illness (Covid still isn't over), lack of affordable childcare and a general recalibration of priorities and goals after a once-in-a-century pandemic. That recalibration is happening at every level, as white-collar employees push for greater workplace flexibility and their employers navigate how to structure the return to the office.
mattrenz16

Opinion: Naomi Osaka's courageous choice - CNN - 0 views

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  • Twenty-three-year-old tennis player and four-time Grand Slam singles champion Naomi Osaka stunned the tennis community this week by dropping out of the in-progress French Open, one of the year's major tournaments, announcing on social media that she will "take some time away from the court."
  • That is why forcing her to choose between her mental health and a few media sound bites was entirely unnecessary. We don't need to hear from her to appreciate her skill on the court. We do not need to drive her out of her career in order to punish her for failing to perform.
  • Her decision was surprising, but not entirely out of the blue. Earlier, Osaka had announced that she would be opting out of the tournament's "mandatory" media interviews, citing mental health concerns, including a history of depression.
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  • But Open organizers didn't stop there, issuing a news release threatening to expel her from the tournament if she kept it up.
  • And so, she quit. Read More
  • In attempting to force her hand, they essentially forced her out. Enter email to sign up for the CNN Opinion newsletter. "close dialog"Get CNN Opinion's newsletter for the latest thoughts and analysis on today's news.Please enter aboveSign me upBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Thanks for Subscribing!Continue ReadingBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy."close dialog"/* effects for .bx-campaign-1376914 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1376914 *//* custom css from creative 52220 */.bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-row-image-logo img { height: 42px;}@media screen and (max-width:736px) { .bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-row-image-logo img { height: 35px;}}/*Validation border*/.bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-row-validation .bx-input { border-color: #B50000; /*Specify border color*/ border-width: 1px; box-shadow: none; background-color: transparent; color: #B50000; /*Specify text color*/}/* rendered styles .bx-campaign-1376914 */.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 220px;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative {border-color: #c1c1c1;border-style: solid;background-size: contain;background-color: white;border-width: 1px 0;border-radius: 0;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 200px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 780px;vertical-align: middle;padding: 10px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 340px;padding: 20px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {stroke: rgb(193, 193, 193);stroke-width: 2px;width: 24px;height: 24px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {width: 30px;height: 30px;padding: 0 0 10px 10px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-group-1376914-y4M7jyO {width: 660px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-group-1376914-y4M7jyO {text-align: center;width: 315px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-tVcUlRZ {padding: 0;width: auto;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-tVcUlRZ> *:first-child {background-color: transparent;background-size: contain;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-group-1376914-BpRQ7DR {width: 660px;text-align: left;padding: 25px 0 15px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-group-1376914-BpRQ7DR {width: 310px;padding: 15px 0 15px;text-align: center;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-oUX5Jvf {width: 100%;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-oUX5Jvf {width: auto;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-oUX5Jvf> *:first-child {font-family: CNN Business,CNN,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Utkal,sans-serif;font-weight: 400;font-size: 24px;line-height: 1.1em;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-element-1376914-oUX5Jvf> *:first-child {font-size: 16px;padding: 6px 0 0;line-height: 1.2;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1376914 .bx-group-1376914-PZ8dLrW {width: 660px;padding: 0;min-width: 550px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campa
  • Osaka first came into the spotlight at the 2018 US Open when her historic win against Serena Williams received boos from a crowd convinced that Williams was unfairly targeted by the umpire. What should have been an extraordinarily joyous occasion, her first major victory and the event that catapulted her into public recognition, was instead one that made her cry, both immediately following the match and when she went to collect her trophy. ESPN declared that "Naomi Osaka was denied her magic moment."
  • Simply put, it's because the world has unrealistic expectations of celebrities and athletes. We believe the public nature of their fame entitles us access to their private lives. In several recent interviews, such as one with podcaster Dax Shepard, Prince Harry has talked openly of his own mental health struggles and of the pressures he and his wife, Meghan Markle, have felt as objects of media fascination, pressures so severe that Markle thought of suicide.
  • Many of her fellow athletes agreed with her decision. Steph Curry tweeted, "you shouldn't ever have to make a decision like this -- but so damn impressive taking the high road when the powers that be don't protect their own. major respect @naomiosaka." Martina Navratilova tweeted her support of Osaka, noting that "as athletes we are taught to take care of our body, and perhaps the mental & emotional aspect gets short shrift. This is about more than doing or not doing a press conference." Serena Williams offered her support, too.
  • Some tennis players, of course -- including Rafael Nadal and Sofia Kenin -- have come out to say that speaking to reporters is part of the job. But just because something has been part of the job needn't mean it should be, or that it should be for everyone. Osaka didn't just decide she didn't feel like giving interviews. She was forced to make a choice, and she chose herself. That takes courage, courage that is a shame she had to muster at all. Because in the end, the tennis world has lost a great, at least for now -- a point that deserves much more attention.
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