Newsroom Roundup

This past week in news: 

Local:  On Thursday, Mary Baldwin University (MBU) responded to claims that one of their women’s basketball players used racial slurs during a January 30th game against William Peace University. In the MBU statement, ““During the investigation we carried out in conjunction with colleagues at WPU, our administrators carefully reviewed video from the game, interviewed the MBU player involved, and spoke to courtside witnesses, eventually determining that our student athlete, did not provoke the assault against her and never used a racial slur in airing her frustrations to officials or other players”. This received some backlash as MBU is not taking responsibility for the incident and did not mention any plans of solving any racial tensions in their community. 

Learn more about that story here! 

National: –   The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court late Friday to dismiss a dispute over a Trump era rule barring federally funded health care providers in the Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions. The rule in the case in question on Friday concerns Title X, a federally funded program that served about 4 million people a year in 2019. It provides resources including contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and preventive education and testing for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV — but not abortions.

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Global: 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a tell all interview about their life inside Buckingham Palace. Exactly 25 years after Princess Dianas tell all interview, we see how the former Duchess of Sussex and Lady D had parallel experiences while being a part of the Royal Family.  Meghan shared her battle with mental health and depression while living inside of Buckingham Palace.  She expressed her concerns for her overall well being, and the potential status of her unborn son, and was faced with racism and gaslighting. The Royal Family denied Meghan help in order to deal with her mental health and did not take her concerns seriously; instead concerns of what skin color her and Prince Harry’s son would be was a major concern amongst those a part of the Royal court. Lack of support, bullying, and betrayal from his own family, led Prince Harry to make the decision to step back from their Royal Duties and from the Royal Family as a whole. He emphasized the importance of not letting history repeat itself, he was aware of what was done to his mother, and refused to let it happen to his own family.

Learn more about that story here!