The Dream-Crushing Reality of the U.S. Olympic Trials

You’re a basketball player, growing up in the United States. Your dream, you tell anyone who will listen, is to make the NBA. Plain and simple. 

It’s a long shot. But every year, the NBA holds its draft—this year, it starts on June 26. The league welcomes some 60 new players into its ranks. Sure, draftees still have to make their team’s roster and earn playing time to say they’ve really achieved their dream. And American players must compete with international talent for spots; those players seem to improve every year.

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But even if you’re not drafted, you can enter the league as a free agent, either right away or after playing overseas or in a minor league. During this past NBA season, 572 people played at least one game in the NBA. 

On the flip side, you’re a 100-m sprinter growing up in the United States. Your dream, you tell anyone who will listen, is to make the Olympics. Plan and simple.

Read More: Your Guide to the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics: When and How to Watch and What to Expect

The process for qualifying for the U.S. Olympic track-and-field team, however, couldn’t be more cutthroat. Once every four years—it’s worth repeating, every four years—three 100-m sprinters make the United States Olympic team for the individual Olympic race. No 60-round draft for the Olympics. 

What’s more, the United States holds trials to build its Olympic roster; the track-and-field trials start on Friday in Eugene, Ore, and go through June 30. Doesn’t matter if you’re the reigning world champion or if you’ve been setting record times all season. Or if you’re feeling a little sick on the morning of your race. Either you finish in the top three, or your dreams are deferred. If not totally destroyed.

“The dream math is so unfair,” says U.S. hurdler Kristi Castlin, who won 100-m bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “That’s why, every day you’re out there, you’ve just got to put your blood, sweat, and tears on the line. Because once you get to those Olympic trials, it’s like the Hunger Games.”

Both this week and next, four of the most-watched sports on the Olympic program—diving, swimming, gymnastics, and track and field—are holding their quadrennial trials. “I’ve talked about it with friends in other sports, and they’re like, ‘That’s insane,’” says U.S. heptathlete Anna Hall, the reigning world silver medalist, referring to the trials system. In diving, athletes are competing for position through June 23 in Knoxville, Tenn.; in the swimming trials, which also run through June 23, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the math is even crueler. In most races the top two finishers, at most, make the Games.

The U.S gymnastics trials begin on June 27, in Minneapolis. Only five women and five men make it.

Read More: Fred Richard Is Team USA’s Next Olympic Hope for Men’s Gymnastics

Talk about pressure. “It’s mental warfare,” says Castlin, who did not make the finals at trials in 2012. “Physically, we’re all on the same level. It’s the time walking from the warm-up track to where they stage you underneath the stadium till you walk out and then the gun goes off. That’s where the race is won or lost.”

In 2016, between the trials semifinal and final in Eugene, Castlin focused on fashion, in order to put her in a positive mind frame. “The first thing I did was change my clothes,” Castlin says, referring to her final outfit as her “Beyonce” uniform. “These folks are going to see you wearing this up on Hollywood Boulevard.” Feeling confident in her look, Castlin turned to visualizing her final race. It helped that she won her first round and semifinal. “I’m feeling good,” she says. “Negative thoughts couldn’t even enter my mind.” Castlin finished second, punching her ticket to Rio.

Track and field feeds off its tension. The runners line up in the blocks, and the packed stadium goes silent in the seconds before the gun goes off. Those moments build anticipation for the fans—and leave athletes vulnerable to counterproductive thinking. “We forget that in these types of sports, our bodies will tense up terribly,” says sports psychologist Shayne McGowan. “That just wrecks us.” Athletes need to find their way into a calm state, he says, when “you’re relaxed, you’re controlling the breathing, and as you’re standing there at that starting block, you’re looking down the line going, ‘I own this.’”

Read More: Sunny Choi Is Heading to Paris for Her Sport’s Olympic Debut. Just Don’t Call It ‘Breakdancing’

American Justin Gatlin, the 100-m Olympic gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Games, competed in four Olympic trials. He made the team in 2004, 2012, and 2016, but missed out on Tokyo three years ago after aggravating an injury during the 100-m trials final. (He was serving a doping suspension in 2008, and earned bronze in London and silver in Rio, behind Usain Bolt.) Gatlin, who currently hosts a track-themed podcast, practiced competing in the Olympic trials before actually competing in the Olympic trials. “I would put myself in scenarios where I would take a couple of my training partners, and I would say, ‘Oh, in my mind you’re Tyson Gay,’” says Gatlin. “In my mind, you’re whoever else at that point in time who is running fast. And I would think about how I’m going to compete against them in the finals.”

At the trials, he says, control the variables you can control. In the popular 2020 ESPN documentary The Last Dance, Michael Jordan’s camp floated a theory that Utah Jazz fans tampered with a pizza delivered to his Park City hotel room before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals. In the now-legendary “Flu Game,” Jordan got sick but still scored 38 points, leading Chicago to victory. “It was food poisoning,” Jordan said. 

While a Utah man, claiming he made the pizza, came forward and denied contaminating it—in fact, he said he was a Bulls fan—Gatlin says the point still holds. Get your food from trusted places. Try your best to stay out of public places, where you can catch a bug. 

“You’re going to Oregon, there’s a lot of trees,” says Gatlin of the track trials. “So there’s most likely going to be a lot of pollen. Make sure you pack Claritin, Zyrtec, or whatever you can.”

After all, every sniffle can cost you a millisecond—and an Olympic bid. 

Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do. Alysia Montaño entered the 2016 Olympic trials as a favorite to make her second consecutive U.S. Olympic team. But as she prepared her final charge in the 800-m final with some 75 meters to go, incidental contact with another runner sent her falling to the track, eliminating her chances altogether.

She did nothing to deserve to lose. But trials offer no do-over. 

“I think I still struggle with it every once in a while,” says Montaño, who crossed the finish line fifth in London, but was reallocated a bronze a dozen years later after a second Russian athlete who finished in front of her was stripped of a medal. Russia’s track-and-field athletes were barred from the Rio Games; that was Montaño’s last best shot at a true podium finish.

She did, however, find a way to cope. She published a book, Feel Good Fitness, in 2020. She leaned into advocacy work for female athletes. Montaño, who ran in the U.S. championships while eight months pregnant in 2014, penned a 2019 op-ed in the New York Times criticizing Nike’s sponsorship policies for pregnant athletes. After a public outcry, Nike expanded its protections. “I poured energy into the things that I’m really good at, which is a lot more than just running,” says Montaño.

And despite all the stress, most Olympic athletes will tell you that the pursuit is worth it. “The Olympic trials changed my life,” says Castlin. “It just allowed me to have the fortitude and the drive to continue to press on and achieve history. It prepared me for life after sport.”

The athletes who fall short at trials—the overwhelming majority, in fact—should have no shame. “There’s going to be a day when you are going to be able to talk about that experience, sitting down with either your colleagues or your friends or your family, and say, ‘Yeah, I qualified for the Olympic trials,’” says Castlin. “And not many people can say that. Just getting there and competing is an accomplishment in itself that everyone should be proud of. Because the United States of America is the hardest team to make.” 

True words. But little solace, over these next few days, to those fourth-place finishers in Eugene. 

source https://time.com/6990187/olympic-trials-2024-track-field-gymnastics/

How Doctors Came to Play a Key Role in the Abortion Debate

On June 13, The Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision in FDA vs. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, governing access to a critical drug used in medication (non-surgical) abortions and to manage miscarriages. The decision preserves access (for now) to the widely used drug mifepristone, currently legal in 36 states. The court decided the case on procedural grounds, concluding that the plaintiffs, a coalition of anti-abortion physicians and medical associations, lacked standing.

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Reproductive-justice advocates cautioned that challenges to the availability of the drug are likely to make their way back to the court, threatening access to a medication that has proved extraordinarily safe and effective.

Yet this case goes far beyond issues of legal standing and procedure. The plaintiffs explicitly deployed their authority as doctors and medical providers to frame their interests as rooted in safety, patient care, and public health, rather than in their religious or moral opposition to abortion.

The complex history of how physicians have organized to legitimate their authority over the reproductive lives of their patients is worth examining, as it reveals how anti-abortion forces are building on a well-worn path that has been at least partially cleared by abortion-rights advocates.

The familiar claim that the decision to have an abortion should be made “between a woman and her doctor” has long been associated with abortion-rights rhetoric as a right to privacy from the state. This principle was at the heart of the Roe majority opinion authored by Justice Blackmun. The “and her doctor” part of this formulation has received less attention, but is at the heart of the argument in the mifepristone case.

Read More: Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down Challenge to Abortion Drug Mifepristone

Physicians’ assertions of authority over the right to terminate a pregnancy and other issues of reproductive health did not begin with Roe. As the Roe opinion noted, in the late 19th century, the American Medical Association’s Committee on Criminal Abortion had denounced abortion and asserted that it should only be permitted if “at least one respectable consulting physician” also concurred with the decision. Thus, even when physicians took positions allowing for some access to abortion, they insisted that medical professionals hold an an outsized voice in the process.

In the early 20th century, elites associated with the American Eugenics movement advocated for laws permitting states to sterilize individuals without their consent, in their efforts to rid the population of those they deemed “undesirable” or “unfit.” Doctors were again critical to this effort to supervise and legitimate curbs on reproductive freedom.

In the 1930s, a group called the American Eugenics Society organized meetings of doctors to encourage them to play an active role in the eugenic sterilization programs as an extension of their responsibility as medical professionals. Having doctors on state eugenic boards gave these sterilization schemes the aura of respectability, as they were overseen by medical professionals. As one physician explained to his colleagues at a 1937 conference on the subject, “There is no longer any doubt but that the physician has a eugenic responsibility. In any eugenic scheme of society, the physician, and particularly those concerned with preventive medicine, must play an important part. He will function most in the therapeutic measures of sterilization and birth control.” Doctors thus framed their role not only as treating individual patients but as also having authority over policy and law, especially over issues related to reproduction.

Appeals to physicians to use their authority in this manner continued well after the public respectability of the American eugenics movement waned. In the 1950s and 1960s, some obstetricians and other doctors advanced similar arguments about their obligation to advocate for population control policies. Dr. C. Lee Buxton, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Yale School of Medicine argued in a medical journal in 1966 that “the medical profession should accept a major responsibility in matters related to human reproduction as they affect the total population and the individual family.” Doctors would play a significant role in the growing population control movement, again deploying their medical expertise and authority to advance laws rooted in social control.

Read More: ‘I Don’t Have Faith in Doctors Anymore.’ Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control

This authority was not just a legal right; by this logic it was a professional obligation that doctors could not refuse. Consequently, doctors served on state eugenics boards that oversaw systematic non-consensual sterilizations until into the 1970s. At least 60,000 documented involuntary sterilizations were approved and performed by state bodies in the 20th century.

Obstetricians like Buxton also supported the framework eventually enshrined in Roe that physicians, rather than the state, possessed the authority to determine whether a pregnancy should be terminated or carried to term. In 1970, an AMA committee revised its position opposing access to abortion but still cautioned against “mere acquiescence to the patient’s demand” for an abortion, a sentiment expressed elsewhere by doctors who also supported Roe. Again, we see skepticism from medical authorities that a pregnant person be trusted to make reproductive decisions for themselves.

Most state eugenic laws were repealed by the 1970s, but non-consensual sterilizations continued under certain circumstances. Notably, the federal government continued to approve the procedure for Native American women under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Elsewhere, physicians, rather than state authorities, oversaw non-consensual sterilizations.

For example, in the 1970s, doctors at Los Angeles County Hospital, the teaching hospital of the USC School of Medicine, performed hundreds of tubal ligations on Mexican-origin women, many of whom later stated they never provided their consent.

Ten of these women eventually sued the hospital, naming Dr. Edward Quilligan, the Chief of ob/gyn at the time, as the defendant. The women offered heart-wrenching testimonies about the profound damage these non-consensual sterilizations caused them and their families. Quilligan told a journalist at the time (and to producers of a documentary on the case 40 years later) that he had done nothing wrong: “We were practicing good medicine.”

The judge agreed. In other words, physicians were not only entitled to abridge the reproductive autonomy of their patients, but they were also sometimes required to do so in the name of “good medicine.” Indeed, Quilligan suffered few professional repercussions and he has been honored at the highest level by prestigious medical schools and professional associations.

Read More: Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too

When a group of anti-abortion medical providers incorporated as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine with the express purpose of filing a lawsuit to ban mifepristone, the briefs they submitted all built on this history. They too were doctors drawing on the principle valorized in Roe that decisions regarding the termination of pregnancy required their authority and involvement.

These briefs are largely free of religious and moral arguments, focusing instead on estimates of gestational development, safety of medication, and the efficacy of review processes, among others that fall under the authority of medical providers. And their language often centers on issues between a woman and her doctor, sometimes in paternalistic terms. One brief insisted that their interest in banning the drug stemmed from their ethical commitment to “protect women and girls from the documented danger of chemical abortion drugs,” against all evidence about the safety of the drugs. 

Such arguments draw on the troubling history of deference that (historically largely male) physicians have demanded to sometimes supersede the autonomy of their (female) patients.

Abortion and reproductive health providers do face significant legal, political, and personal threats for their work; their safety and professional right to practice must be protected vigorously. Nor should medical expertise and evidence-based research be dismissed. They are a vital part of reproductive health and care.

But a reliance on medical expertise need not be rooted in reflexive deference to that expertise, as Justice Blackmun envisioned. Indeed, the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s developed approaches to reproductive health, including contraception, access to abortion, care and support during pregnancy and delivery, and child raising that demonstrated how medical expertise and reproductive autonomy can work together. Many reproductive justice groups today advocate similar practices, including advocating for legal access to self-managed abortions that do not require a physician’s involvement.

But the framing of reproductive decisions as lying “between a woman and a doctor” has opened the door for foes of reproductive autonomy to advance their arguments in the neutral language of medical authority. To secure a more expansive vision of reproductive justice will require retiring this phrase in favor of a vision of reproductive justice that does not reject medical experience or advice, but guards against any potential coercion, even when it comes bearing a white coat, to any person’s reproductive autonomy.

Emma Peterson is a recent graduate of Yale University with a degree in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health. Daniel Martinez HoSang is a Professor of American Studies at Yale University with a secondary appointment in the Section of the History of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/6989501/physician-abortion-access/

How the Identity of the Only Black Woman to Serve in the U.S. Army in World War I Was Just Discovered

African-American heroines are everywhere in U.S. history — though they were often unseen by contemporaries. Sometimes, they simply hid.  

Juneteenth is a fitting occasion to celebrate one woman who did just that: Renee Messelin was a member of the first unit of American women soldiers who served in World War I. Yet her full identity remained hidden until just last week, more than a century after she served.

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In a famous photograph taken outdoors in Paris in March 1918, Messelin sits to the left of two other uniformed women and stares straight ahead. Thirty women soldiers stand behind them, many with eyes riveted skyward for incoming artillery. They had been bombarded the night before.

While the photo has long been famous, no one knew at the time that Messelin was Black. Instead, she hid her race, knowing that the Army would not accept Black women. Her deception reveals the lengths to which some citizens went to serve their nation at a time when women couldn’t vote and Jim Crow robbed Black Americans of the rights won after the Civil War. 

When the head of the American Expeditionary Forces arrived in Paris in 1917, he discovered that trained men needed a full minute to patch through a telephone call, so he cabled Washington. “On account of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified men, request organization and dispatch to France of force of woman telephone operators all speaking French and English equally well,” General John Pershing wrote in 1917. All “should be uniformed” and take the Army oath.

Read More: Why Four Black Women Stood Up to the U.S. Army During World War II

The Army responded with press releases to newspapers across the nation in November 1917, recruiting women. Seventy-six hundred volunteered for 100 spots.

As the Army soon found, female telephone operators patched through five calls per minute. Commands to advance, fire, and retreat were delivered mostly by phone in World War I. Five commands per minute, instead of only one, was a matter of life and death. 

During the fiercest fighting at the Battles of St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne, women combatants operated switchboards 24 hours a day. Six units of these “Hello Girls” patched through 26 million vital messages over the course of the war.

Messelin was one of these women, and one of their leaders. The child of two eminent Black Chicagoans, she was committed to making her mark. Her mother, Mamie Caldwell Rich, was a benefactor of the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Black women fleeing the South. Her father, Mack Caldwell — who had died a decade earlier — had been Grand Secretary for the United Brotherhood of Railway Porters, a union of African-American railway workers and the predecessor of the most influential Black union in the nation.

Although race was not a question on the Army’s form, Messelin would have known that African-American women need not apply. Of the 233 female soldiers who ultimately served in France, all were thought to be white until the recent revelation about Messelin’s race. 

Because operators could overhear every classified military call, Army Intelligence scrutinized applicants. This did not keep some from successfully hiding their own secrets, however. In Messelin’s unit, for example, two sisters from Berkeley tricked investigators into believing they were 18 and 21, rather than 16 and 18.

On her application, Messelin listed her hometown as Marseilles, taking advantage of the fact that she had married a Frenchman and learned his language. In reality, Messelin was born in Chicago and had moved to San Francisco. In a charming French lilt, she also lied that she did not know her mother’s address in France. 

Investigators had little incentive to push Messelin or probe her story further. Pershing urgently needed bilingual, educated, trustworthy women. Messelin fit the description to a tee. Even better, she was an experienced telephone operator with supervisory experience. 

Within three months, she had won appointment as one of four supervisors under Grace Banker, commander of the first unit. Each supervisor would manage a telephone exchange near the front or behind the lines. As Messelin boarded a troop transport for France, she asked the Army to record her emergency contact as a “friend” in Chicago, Mrs. Mamie Rich — who was actually her mother. 

In Paris, Messelin rose steadily in rank, and was among those women whom the Army refused to discharge until 10 months past the Armistice, long after most men returned home. They ran communications for the Versailles Peace Conference, U.S. occupation of Germany, and demobilization of the Army. When he finally let her go in August 1919, the Chief Signal Officer in France wrote to Messelin, “You personally have been of material assistance in proving the success of the experiment of utilizing skilled telephone women with the Army at War.”

Despite their invaluable service, the Army denied Messelin — and every other female soldier —veterans’ benefits upon return. In 1926, the Army even dropped her name from a strangely incomplete list of those who had served, despite that iconic 1918 photo. Perhaps some bureaucrat had privately guessed Messelin’s secret and silently denied her even that honor.

Read More: The Women Who Revolutionized Nursing During the American Civil War

The Hello Girls fought for 60 years, until 1977, to receive formal recognition as veterans. Messelin died that same year, before she could be buried with a flag on her coffin or an appropriate grave marker.

The truth about her race only came out this week, in time for Juneteenth, thanks to Diane Boettcher of Maryland, a retired Navy Captain and enterprising genealogist, who recently joined a nationwide team of volunteers advocating for the awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal for the Hello Girls and working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to properly designate their graves. Looking closely, Boettcher found that a few details in Messelin’s service record did not add up. Checking census and birth records, she found that Messelin was the daughter of Mamie Rich, not her friend, as earlier recorded, or aunt, as claimed on yet another Army manifest.

Boettcher contacted Jill Frahm and myself, both historians of the Hello Girls. Boettcher confirmed Messelin’s parentage while Frahm and I corroborated her leadership role.

The historical record shows that masquerading as white to subvert racial restrictions often came at the cost of family and friends. “Passing” sometimes meant abandoning precious relationships for a self-imposed exile. Historians may never know exactly why Renee Messelin decided to risk such a loss, but it was this daring ruse that allowed her to serve her country in its hour of need. 

The American Historical Association and 55 eminent scholars, including six winners of the Pulitzer Prize, have petitioned Congress to grant the Hello Girls a Congressional Gold Medal. Renee Messelin certainly deserves one. Stories like hers remind citizens — and our armed forces— of the value of pluralism and the critical contributions made by women and African Americans to national defense. They have long overcome significant discrimination to play critical roles in safeguarding the U.S. 

Elizabeth Cobbs is author of The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers and Dwight Stanford Emerita Professor at San Diego State University.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/6989875/only-black-woman-in-us-army-wwi/

How to Watch the U.S. Presidential Election Debates in the U.K.

The first debate of the U.S. presidential election, featuring President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, former President and current Republican nominee, will take place on June 27. This comes after the Biden campaign proposed an unusually early date for a debate. The second debate will take place on Sep. 10.

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Biden and Trump faced off previously for two debates in September and October during the 2020 presidential election, where they famously engaged in harsh attacks on each other. Trump repeatedly insulted Biden’s intelligence while Biden called Trump “the worst President America’s ever had.”

While viewers inside the U.S. will be the main audience for the debates, politically-minded people across the globe may also wish to tune in. Here’s what people in the U.K. need to know about the U.S. presidential debates.

How can viewers in the U.K. watch the first U.S. presidential debate?

CNN’s online streaming differs depending on which country you are in.

U.K. viewers who want to watch the debate online can subscribe to CNN Live’s U.K.-specific plan. It costs £1.99 per month or £19.90 per year. Once viewers are logged in, they can livestream the debate online.

Viewers can also watch the debate by tuning into CNN International, which can be found at channel 506 on Sky TV, per CNN International PR’s social media.

Join CNN as President Biden and former President Trump meet for their first highly anticipated debate of this election season.

🕑 Friday, June 28 at 2am BST, with replays at 7am and 7pm BST on @cnni pic.twitter.com/5CQH1uLvXL

— CNN International PR (@cnnipr) June 18, 2024

What time is the first U.S. presidential election debate? 

The first debate will take place on Thursday, June 27, at 9 p.m. ET, which will be 2 a.m. June 28 BST. The broadcast will go on for 90 minutes and is set to feature two commercial breaks. 

If you miss the live broadcast, CNN international will replay the broadcast at 7 a.m. and 7.pm on June 28 BST. 

Who is moderating the first U.S. presidential election debate? 

The first debate will be moderated by CNN journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Tapper is the lead Washington D.C. anchor for CNN and hosts the show The Lead with Jake Tapper. Dana Bash is a CNN news anchor and host of the show Inside Politics. Tapper and Bash also co-host the Sunday CNN talk show State of the Union, which features interviews with prominent politicians and analysts. The second debate will be hosted by ABC news. Further details on that debate have yet to be announced.

What are the rules of the first U.S. presidential debate of 2024?

This debate will feature new rules that were not implemented in previous presidential debates. Microphones will be muted throughout the debate, unless it is the candidate’s allotted time to speak. It will also not have a live audience, to minimize disruptions. Pre-written notes will also be prohibited, though candidates will be given a pen and a pad of paper. “[CNN] will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network said.

source https://time.com/6989938/how-to-watch-us-presidential-debates-in-uk-biden-trump/

Grand Slam Champions Osaka, Raducanu, Wozniacki, Kerber are Wimbledon Wild Cards

WIMBLEDON, England — Former Grand Slam champions Naomi Osaka, Caroline Wozniacki, Angelique Kerber and Emma Raducanu have all been awarded wild cards for Wimbledon.

The grass-court tournament starts on July 1.

Osaka — a four-time major champion and former No. 1 player — and three-time Grand Slam winner Kerber returned from maternity leave at the start of this season.

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Currently ranked 113th, Osaka was the only player to take a set from top-ranked Iga Swiatek at the French Open and followed that up with a quarterfinal spot last week in ’s-Hertogenbosch, a warm-up event for Wimbledon.

Former U.S. Open champion Raducanu made her breakthrough at Wimbledon by advancing to the fourth round in 2021. She will be playing there for the first time in two years after undergoing wrist and ankle surgery in 2023.

Kerber won the 2018 Wimbledon title and was runner-up at the All England Club in 2016. She is also a former top-ranked player.

Wozniacki returned from maternity leave last August. She’s never got past the fourth round at Wimbledon, where she will be playing for the first time since 2019.

British players Francesca Jones, Heather Watson and Yuriko Miyazaki were also included in the initial list of invitations. One main draw wild card remains to be allocated. Seven British players have been invited to play in the men’s draw, including last year’s junior champion Henry Searle.

source https://time.com/6989942/wimbledon-wild-cards-2024-osaka-raducanu-wozniacki-kerber/

Ukrainian Drone Attack Sparks Huge Blaze at Oil Facility in Southern Russia

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine claimed responsibility Tuesday for an overnight drone attack on a Russian oil facility that started a massive blaze in the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.

Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow down the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is pressing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has made defenders vulnerable.

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The attack set fire to an oil reservoir in Russia’s Rostov region and more than 200 firefighters were at the scene, according to Rostov Gov. Vasily Golubev.

The blaze covered an area of 5,000 square meters (55,000 square feet) but there were no casualties, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said.

A Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give the information to the media, said the attack was a special operation of Ukraine’s Security Service, known as SBU. The drones targeted two Rostov oil depots that have 22 oil reservoirs, the official said.

It was not possible to independently confirm the claim.

Kyiv officials normally decline comment about attacks on Russian territory, though they sometimes refer obliquely to them.

Ukrainian drone developers have been extending the weapons’ range for months, as Kyiv attempts to compensate for its battlefield disadvantage. The unmanned aerial vehicles are also an affordable option while Ukraine waits for the arrival of more Western military aid.

source https://time.com/6989684/ukraine-drone-attack-russia-oil-facility/

Thailand’s Senate Overwhelmingly Approves Landmark Bill Legalizing Marriage Equality

BANGKOK — Thailand’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to approve a marriage equality bill, clearing the last legislative hurdle for the country to become the first in Southeast Asia to enact such a law.

The bill passed its final reading with the approval of 130 of the 152 members of the Senate in attendance, with 4 voting against it and 18 abstaining.

Read More: Thousands Celebrate Pride in Bangkok With Historic Marriage Equality Law on the Horizon

The bill now needs the pro forma endorsement of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, followed by its publication in the Government Gazette, which will set a date within 120 days when it becomes effective.

Thailand will become the third place in Asia, after Taiwan and Nepal, to allow same-sex marriage. The marriage equality bill, which grants full legal, financial and medical rights for marriage partners of any gender, sailed through the House of Representatives right before the previous parliamentary session concluded in April.

source https://time.com/6989661/thailands-senate-approve-same-sex-marriage-bill-lgbt/