Category: Worldwide

It’s been a historic day in the world of professional sports. After much discussion in recent days about the possibility of NBA players sitting out upcoming games as a form of protest to the latest police shooting involving an unarmed black man, players formed a unified front and decided to postpone Wednesday’s playoff games.

The Bucks kicked things off when they refused to play Game 5 against the Orlando Magic, and the Rockets and Thunder quickly followed suit, marking a historic moment in the fight for social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement across America that has taken hold the past several months. Some MLB teams in the Brewers and Mariners followed suit, and as the WNBA prepared for games in the Wubble at IMG Academy there were various reports of how they would proceed.

After initially planning to play and protesting by stopping play every seven minutes, players decided to join the NBA in sitting out the night’s games, as teams joined each other on the court to take a knee in shirts spelling out Jacob Blake’s name.

The scene from the WNBA bubble, where no games will be held tonight pic.twitter.com/PvM4OFJSXT

— Kelyn Soong (@KelynSoong) August 26, 2020

Elizabeth Williams then read an official statement about the cancellation on ESPN.

Center @E_Williams_1 reads statement on @espn as the representative for all @WNBA players. Tonight’s games have been cancelled. pic.twitter.com/xDz4uCQSiD

— Atlanta Dream (@AtlantaDream) August 26, 2020

It’s a watershed moment for the NBA, the WNBA, and the world of pro sports in general. We’ll learn more about what the NBA plans to do moving forward after a player meeting on Wednesday night, but it’s clear that across the country, players are in lockstep with the importance of this moment and movement.

With NBA players going on a wildcat strike after the Bucks refused to take the floor in protest of a police officer shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin, TNT held a 30-minute special with the Inside the NBA crew being joined by Chris Webber and Stan Van Gundy from the Bubble.

Kenny Smith chose to walk off set in solidarity with the players at the start of the show in a powerful moment. Webber, meanwhile, explained that he wanted to come on to be a voice that isn’t often heard. What followed was one of the most powerful three minutes you’ll see on the topic of racism on any TV network.

“Well EJ, it was reported that four years ago today in a preseason game that Kaepernick first took a knee. No this has never happened before, but I’m sure Dr. Harry Edwards, Dr. John Carlos, Arthur Ashe, Jackie Robinson, and others have been praying for this day. Shout out to Kenny that walked off. I wanted to have a voice in this because I feel like we only have the same couple voices talking during these times, so it’s very important for me to come over here. I keep hearing the question, “What’s next? What’s next?” Well, you’ve got to plan what’s next. You have to figure out what’s next. I’m very proud of the players. I don’t know the next steps. I don’t really care what the next steps are because the first steps are to garner attention, and they have everybody’s attention around the world right now. Then leadership and others will get together and decide the next steps. We know it won’t end tomorrow. We know that there’s been a million marches and nothing will change tomorrow.

“We know vote. We keep hearing vote. Everybody vote. But I’m here to speak for those that are always marginalized. Those that live in these neighborhoods where we preach and tell them to vote and then walk away. Charles Barkley came to my high school. Just seeing him in the locker room, seeing his hands and seeing his body, that inspired me. You can’t see something — you can’t be something til you see it. And when I tell you the little kids that have called me, upset — I have a godson with autism and I just had to explain to him why we aren’t playing. I have young nephews that I’ve had to talk to about death before they’ve even seen it in a movie.

“If not now, when? If not during a pandemic and countless lives being lost. If not now, when? That’s all I want to hear from the rest of the night when everybody’s pontificating and thinking and soapboxing and all of that, we know nothing is going to change. We get it. If Martin Luther King got shot and risked his life, Medgar Evers, and we’ve seen this in all of our heroes constantly taken down. We understand it’s not going to end, but that does not mean young men that you don’t do anything. Don’t listen to these people telling you don’t do anything because it’s not going to end right away. You are starting something for the next generation and the next generation to take over. Do you have to be smart? Yes. Do you have to make sure you have a plan? Yes. Do you have to be articulate about that plan? Yes. All of those things, but that’s what you’re going to do. They’re professionals, they know how to be the best of themselves. So I applaud it. I applaud it because it’s the young people, the young people leading the way. And I applaud them.”

In three minutes, Webber dives into so much, eloquently expressing the frustration and exasperation of Black people around the country to continuing to see police violence and racism, to seeing their protests and calls for justice ignored, time and time again. At the same time he expresses optimism and a call to action to young people to never give up the fight, no matter how often people tell you it’s a fruitless venture. It’s a powerful message and one that, hopefully, everyone takes heed of. His presence on Wednesday night’s airwaves were vitally important, as his perspective was much needed and what he said got into issues that are rarely presented.

The NBA’s players led a strike on Wednesday afternoon. The Milwaukee Bucks kicked things off, refusing to play their game against the Orlando Magic in response to the police shooting of 29-year-old Black man Jacob Blake of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The remaining four teams in the league scheduled to play on Wednesday followed suit, and now, a meeting is scheduled for 8 p.m. among players where they are expected to discuss next steps in the aftermath of this demonstration.

A pair of MLB teams, the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds, have joined in as of this writing. A pillar of the NBA on TNT crew decided to join in on the movement, as Kenny Smith explained how he was feeling, took off his microphone, and left the set for the evening.

“For me, I think the biggest thing now is to kind of — as a black man, as a former player — I think it’s best for me to support the players and just not be here tonight,” Smith said. “And figure out what happens after that.”

It was a powerful moment, and it is unclear if Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and those involved in producing the show were aware that this was coming.

Hurricane Laura is 2020’s latest blow to humanity and, as of this writing, it hasn’t even made landfall yet. Currently classified as a Category 4 storm (but with Category 5 potential), it’s set to make landfall near the border of Louisiana and Texas Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. The Weather Channel advises residents of those areas to prepare for a major strike. Some sources are even blunter about the destruction en route. Even a local New Orleans news meteorologist was just barely able to hold it together while delivering a dire warning to viewers during a live shot.

Margaret Orr, Chief Meteorologist at WDSU-TV, found herself having to interrupt her colleagues on the air after receiving still more alarming news. The message came from the National Hurricane Center, and before she read it aloud, Orr’s introduction didn’t exactly inspire confidence. “It truly reminds me shades of Katrina,” Orr said, looking back at the devastating 2005 hurricane that destroyed large swaths of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

The message Orr relayed was made public by the National Hurricane Center’s Twitter account.

“Unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Calcasieu and Sabine Lakes,” the message read. “This surge could penetrate up to 30 miles inland from the immediate coastline.”

After reading the words — among them “unsurvivable storm surge” — aloud on-air, Orr simply took a deep breath and told viewers, “That’s all I have to say,” then walked off.

As per the Associated Press, Hurricane Laura grew in size by nearly 70% in just 24 hours, with winds currently estimated to go as high as 145 mph. AP estimates that the storm is “capable of sinking entire communities,” and authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders in places that are expected to be directly hit.

Even well before the hurricane was expected to hit, harrowing footage has been appearing on social media.

Stay safe, everyone.

It appears that George Hill was one of the leaders in the Bucks’ locker room who helped corral his teammates in their decision to strike instead of playing Game 5 of their first-round series against Orlando.

Bucks reporter Zora Stephenson laid out how she could sense that Hill felt powerless being in the Bubble, so far away from the protests of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin this week. The community that has been protesting since police paralyzed the unarmed Blake by shooting him seven times in the back, and on Wednesday, the Bucks decided how they could impact change even though they were not currently in the area.

“He was angry and emotional and felt like he couldn’t do anything and then realized he could do everything,” Stephenson reported on Fox Sports Wisconsin shortly after the Bucks’ strike led the NBA to postpone Game 5. “That he wasn’t powerless.”

Stephenson then went on to detail her own experiences with institutionalized racism in Milwaukee, explaining how her husband was overcome with panic about a broken tail light out of fear for the police pulling them over. Stephenson also told the story of her father’s arrest in New York in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

“It is not on us to educate everybody but I’m willing to share that information,” Stephenson said, “and I hope you’re willing to receive it.”

Whatever the next steps are for the NBA players in their strike, which will be determined in a meeting on Wednesday night, they have if nothing else successfully shifted full focus onto this issue and led every major basketball outlet and television partner to have some conversations that are so important to have in a public forum. It’s been a day in which many of these media voices have stepped up to tell their own stories, like Stephenson and Sam Mitchell and Mike Wilbon and many others, furthering this conversation and helping to further amplify and strengthen the players’ message.

For the second time this year, the sports world saw at least one league abruptly shut down on Wednesday when the Milwaukee Bucks walked away from Game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That strike extended into Major League Baseball as well.

The Bucks’ strike caused the postponement of three NBA playoff games on Wednesday, and shortly after word of the Bucks’ strike spread, the Milwaukee Brewers decided they would not play, either. Kenosha sits about an hour away from Milwaukee, where the Bucks and Brewers call home. And while the Bucks are in the NBA’s Bubble in Orlando, the Brewers were slated to host a fan-less game at home on Wednesday night against the Cincinnati Reds.

According to other reports, the Brewers may not be alone in striking in Major League Baseball, either.

Baseball’s season was suspended during spring training amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a number of games have been postponed due to positive coronavirus cases amid several teams, but this kind of labor unrest in response to police brutality against a Black man is unprecedented in the sport’s modern era. The Brewers join the Bucks in deciding the situation in their home state is much more important than sports right now, and though it’s unclear what happens next in the NBA and MLB, what is certain is athletes are stressing to the league and fans that they will not provide entertainment that could distract from yet another episode of police brutality unfolding on a national stage this summer.

One of the common reasons homophobic people give for being against homosexuality is that it’s “unnatural.” However, they are totally wrong. Research shows that homosexuality doesn’t just occur among humans, but throughout the animal kingdom.

According to Yale University, homosexuality has been observed in approximately 10% of “prevailing species throughout the world.”

At first glance, the prevalence of homosexuality seems to work against Darwin’s theory of evolution. Animals that prefer same-sex relationships are likely to reproduce and pass their genetic traits to the next generation.

But according to Yale, same-sex partnerships can have a positive effect on a species’ survival because of their social benefits.

“Same-sex pairing in many species actually alleviates the likelihood of divorce and curtails the pressure on the opposite sex by allowing members to exhibit more flexibility to form partnerships, which in turn strengthens social bonds and reduces competition,” Arash Fereydooni writes.

Given the inherent naturalness of same-sex coupling, the Oceanogràfic València aquarium in Spain allowed a pair of female Gentoo penguins, Electra and Viola, to adopt another penguin’s egg after employees saw them displaying nesting behaviors.

Caregivers at the aquarium noticed the couple gathering stones in preparation for an egg so they knew they’d be perfect parents. After the couple received the egg, they took turns standing over the egg, incubating it until after a little over a month, it hatched a healthy chick.

Caregivers at the aquarium have called the two an “an exceptional pair.”

The penguins will work together to raise the baby bird for about 75 days until it becomes independent.

via faith / Twitter

The same-sex penguin adoption is a first for Oceanogràfic València, but the aquarium says it’s fairly common.

In 2018, a pair of gay male penguins at the Sydney Sea Life Aquarium caught the world’s attention by raising an egg together. After noticing that Sphen and Magic had built an intense relationship together, caregivers gave them a fake egg to incubate.

They knew the relationship was real when the penguins sang to each other.

“You would see Magic standing in his spot looking for Sphen, and he would call and Sphen would come running over and give Magic a little bow and sing as well,” Tish Hannan, head of penguin supervision at the aquarium, told The Independent. “They’ve chosen each other. That’s it. They’re bonded now.”

The pair did such a good job they were given a real egg to incubate and they raised it until it successfully.

The gay penguins’ relationship was even more important because it happened while Australia was having a heated political debate over gay human marriage. Eventually, same-sex couples won the right to marry Down Under.

In the end, love is love, and whether human or penguin, a portion of the population is going to be gay. So, if anyone ever tells you that same-sex relationships are unnatural, let ’em know that being gay is not only natural, but beneficial to the survival of the species.

A seismic moment occurred in the basketball world on Wednesday afternoon. The Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out of their locker room prior to their playoff game against the Orlando Magic in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man from Kenosha. That led to a chain reaction in which the Magic made their way into their locker room, the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder decided to follow suit in not playing, and the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers game was shelved as well.

By the time the NBA announced that the games were postponed, a full-blown player strike in the name of combatting social injustice was underway. As for what’s next, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that players will convene for a meeting to map out a plan.

Adrian Wojnarowski confirmed this report, mentioning that every NBA player has been invited to join in on the call.

It is unclear what will happen, although some players, it had been mentioned, were considering leaving the Bubble altogether. In addition to the three games on Wednesday, it was reported that members of the Boston Celtics and the Toronto Raptors were considering not playing on Thursday night, when the two sides are slated to being an Eastern Conference Semifinal series.

The Milwaukee Bucks’ refusal to take the court on Wednesday afternoon against the Orlando Magic for Game 5 of their first round series led to the Thunder, Rockets, Lakers, and Blazers to reach the same conclusion that games cannot be played right now following a police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

As word was emerging that the other four teams were planning to sit out as well, the NBA decided to postpone all three games officially, saying in a release that they would be rescheduled for a later date. Those plans are not officially made yet. It should be made clear that while the league postponed games, it was reactionary to a player movement that forced them to make this decision, as games weren’t going to be played no matter what the league’s plans were.

What comes next for the NBA Playoffs is unknown, as players reportedly will meet on Wednesday night to discuss the next steps they want to take in what has become a seemingly league-wide player strike. They may not be fighting for workers demands, but are withholding their work in an effort to pressure the league and Board of Governors to use and wield its influence at a state and national level to enact change. The Bucks were trying to contact the Wisconsin attorney general in the locker room as they sat out their game to demand justice for Blake, and on Tuesday, Norman Powell had noted that a player strike would provide pressure on owners to do more than just donate some money, but to use their immense influence to actually create some change and demand action.

The full demands of players of what they need to see from the NBA and ownership will likely be revealed after their meeting tonight, but make no mistake, players have taken a massive step here in pushing for actionable change.

The Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder will boycott their playoff game on Wednesday evening. The news comes via Shams Charania of The Athletic, and soon after, the NBA announced that all games on Wednesday will be postponed and rescheduled.

The two sides were slated to tip off their game after Game 5 between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Orlando Magic. However, prior to tip in that game, Bucks players refused to come out of their locker room, followed by the Magic players heading back into their locker room. It was soon announced that the game would be boycotted by the two sides.

There had been plenty of conversation over the last few days about how players viewed playing basketball following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake was shot in the back multiple times as he was getting into his car, where his three children were sitting. According to a report, while the Bucks were in their locker room, they were attempting to contact the Wisconsin attorney general.

Multiple players mentioned how difficult it was to focus on basketball following the shooting, with players on the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors meeting to discuss a potential boycott ahead of Game 1 of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series that tips off on Thursday. There is no word on whether the teams previously scheduled to play on Wednesday consulted with one another ahead of their decisions.