Will Smith banned from Oscars?

Will Smith, a very distinguished actor, recently attaining an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in King Richard, has been banned from the Oscars gala and any other event that would be held by the Academy in the future. Smith exhibited a violent response to Chris Rock after he had attempted a comedic joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, regarding her hair loss condition alopecia. The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the award ceremonies met to discuss the consequential, disciplinary plans against Smith. Through thoughtful considerations, such as retracting his newly won Oscar, revoking his candidacy for future awards and banning Smith altogether for future events held by the Academy, which was the final decision. The academy’s aim by banning Smith is to protect the performers and the guests to ‘restore the trust in the Academy.’ Smith will also be facing a series of consequential responses due to his behavior, starting with different studios like, Sony and Netflix, pausing their projects with Smith. An incredibly advanced and eminent career has started to disintegrate due to a potential lapse in judgement. 

source: BBC

Will it ever end?

February 27th, a man was seen punching a 57 year old Asian woman in the face. In the preceding hours, 6 more Asian women will be assaulted by the same man. Steven Zancoj, 28 years old was arrested 3 days after the multiple assaults that he had committed. Zancoj is facing 13 hate-crime charges, 6 for felony assault and 7 for aggravated harassment. He is now being held in Rikers Island. These attacks that Zancoj had initiated is one of many that the Asian community has been facing in recent times. Due to the ongoing pandemic, there was an average increase of 260.5% in hate crimes against Asians in comparison to 2020, and New York is one of the battle grounds for the increasing hate crimes again the Asian community, with a 357% increase in hate crimes throughout the year. Due to the constant increase in rates of hate crimes against the Asian community, there has been a growing fear within the community that will reside for an unprecedented period of time.  

Source: The Washington Post

The importance of the game or the importance of a life?

Doha, a small state in Qatar has been selected to host the 2022 World Cup for the first time, however, they are receiving immense amounts of criticism due to their underlying problematic features. There were multiple migrant workers that were killed or seriously injured due to the necessary construction for the stadiums. With other concerns regarding the treatment LGBTQ supporters are receiving due to the fact that homosexuality is still considered illegal. Even with these considerable factors, FIFA, ‘soccer’s world governing body,’ won’t be interested in withholding the tournament even with the incredible amounts of backlash. The president of the Norwegian soccer federation, Lisa Klaveness, took a stand to discuss the consequences that must be considered if the tournament was to be held in Qatar. Considering that the injured migrant workers, and the relatives of the deceased due to their contribution to the World Cup should be respected and looked after. Jose Ernesto Meija, the general secretary of the Honduran soccer federation responded with the fact that though those issues are important, football must be the central focus. Must the focus be on those who lost their lives due to their contributions to the building up of the World Cup, or, football?   

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Forced labour could limit supplies exported by China

This week, there were a line of human rights activists and labor leaders encouraging the Biden administration to express support to prohibit products that were produced as a result of forced labor in Xinjiang region of China. Considering that, forced labor is going against the fundamental rights of one’s free will. President Biden had signed a law back in December which will be starting to run in June, which is the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to ban all materials produced in Xinjiang unless it can proved that the production of these goods had no correlation with forced labor. However, it needs to be considered that, there is a possibility that far more companies and materials would be halted from imports to the US as there are a lot more considerable factors within the law. 

Source: New York Times

Poverty that made death much more dreadful 

A mother died weeks ago in the covid-19 red zone while being dragged to three different public hospitals weeks leading up to her death. The room she has finally placed in, a nursing home in Pennsylvania, did not seem to be deemed fit for it to be considered a room at all. It looked like as if it was a storage room, with supplies, unused furniture stored, no forms of entertainment, no dresser for her to utilize, while also sharing the room with 3 different patients. Like many fellow Americans, the woman was poor and was on Medicare and this was the best possible option that was offered to her. Considering the daunting pandemic that still clouds over us, it forced the speaker to realize that there are two different health care systems in the United States. Those that have the money and those that don’t have the same advantages. 

Source: The Washington Post

French Bulldogs the new money?

Lady Gaga, a pop sensation, had recently faced a traumatic event… A traumatic event for her dogs. A gunman was accused of shooting and wounding Lady Gaga’s dog walker, while also stealing her two precious French bulldogs. James Howard Jackson, 19 years old, is facing an attempted murder charge, however, he was wrongly released from jail because of a ‘clerical error.’ Prosecutors have stated that Jackson and two other gang members were in search of French bulldogs to take, considering that this dog breed is quite expensive. The dog walker, Ryan Fischer was shot by the assailants as an attempt to steal the two dogs, and Fischer lost a piece of his lung. To summarize, an individual was gravely injured because a young man wanted to steal someone else’s dog. 

Source: AP News

Political Commentary 

Attack on Ukraine

Russia began its long-anticipated invasion of Ukraine on February 23rd. In the weeks before the invasion, Vladimir Putin suggested there were genocides occurring in Ukraine and began a massive military build-up along the border. Putin claimed that he only planned to "liberate" the Donbas region-- a separatist zone armed by Russia after the 2014 conflict-- but when troops extended beyond that region and toward the Ukrainian capitol of Kyiv it became clear Russian troops intended to go beyond the Donbas. Russia currently holds military control in southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, but Ukrainian forces have fought off Russia far more successfully than expected. 

The Story

Usually experts can point to a clear reason why invasions occur, but that's not necessarily the case with Russia. There are two leading possibilities as to why Putin invaded: to restore the old Soviet Union or increase his domestic power through propagandizing the war. At the peak of the Soviet Union, which was largely lead by Russia, it contained 20 states-- one of them being Ukraine. NATO was created by western European nations as a military alliance to provide security from the Soviet Union, and countries began to leave the Soviet Union and join NATO. This lead to its collapse, and Putin has been vocal of his nostalgia of the old "Mother Russia". 

Explain

Reuters estimates that there have been at least 24,000 deaths and 11 million people displaced since the start of Russia's invasion.

Commentary - Liberal Perspective 

The war between Russia and Ukraine is a humanitarian tragedy. The US and NATO nations clearly had to respond somehow-- but there's a delicate balance between reasonable involvement and war-inducing behavior. Considering the situation, President Biden did the best he could. We know that because of the NATO "war against one is war against all" agreement, sending troops would lead to a world war so that's out of the question. The economic sanctions imposed by NATO nations is as far as we can go without risking international safety. The sad truth is that the humanitarian cost of a (likely nuclear) world war is higher than sending the military into Ukraine. 

While it's true sanctions are the best way to go, it's important to consider who these sanctions are hitting the hardest, and what the purpose really is. Sanctions should be deterring military aggression instead of clearing the minds of Western politicians. Unfortunately, too many of the sanctions imposed hurt the average Russian citizen far more than the politically powerful. There is little reason for independent companies like Twitch to cut off service in Russia other than to look good. Profiting off of a war is shameful, and there's no reason to harm the Russian people because they are not the ones pushing this conflict, Russia's dictator is. 

We are at a crossroads where we have the opportunity to change our policies here at home as well. Because we have almost completely phased out Russian oil, gas, and coal, turning to clean energy is within our grasp. Now is the perfect opportunity to begin a nationwide effort to switch to clean energy. In addition to energy issues, it's clear that we also need to examine our attitudes regarding refugees. Since the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Western nations have rightfully welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms-- all while continuing their denial of people fleeing war-torn countries in Latin America and the Middle East. The energy being shown to Ukrainian refugees is the energy we should have been showing refugees from Latin American and Middle Eastern nations from the beginning. 

With all of that being said, Ukraine deserves sovereignty as every nation does, and the West may have something to learn out of this conflict as well. 

Commentary - Conservative Perspective

The Ukrainian and Russian war could possibly escalate given the new discoveries of Russian cruelty in Bucha, Ukraine. The Ukrainians were able to regain control of the city and discovered atrocities committed upon the residents.

Ukrainian President Zelensky has accused Russians of trying to commit genocide in Ukraine after videos and photos of civilians being killed and haphazardly buried by Russians have surfaced (Macias and Meredith). If this were proven to be true, the European Union and its allies could be forced to directly intervene. United States President Joe Biden is quoted as saying “This guy is brutal.” and the simple vernacular states more sternly how many members of the United Nations feel but are hesitant to act upon( Troianovski and Stevis-Gridneff).

The sanctions against Russia by the United Nations are likely to increase with the main proponents of these increased sanctions being France’s President Emmanuel Macron as well as Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands(Norman and Provenski). The main countries against these increased sanctions are Germany as well as Austria and Hungary that are more reliant on Russian exports, especially Russian natural gas (Stevis-Gridneff).

Although, with so many instances of brutality by the Russians to Ukrainian civilians it seems that those inclined to maintain their economic status quo with lighter sanctions may have their hands forced to increase the sanctions against Russia in a ploy to hinder them enough economically that they cease the war. It seems the court of public opinion has already tried Russian president Putin as a war criminal and 6 European nations have expelled Russian diplomats from their borders(Timsit and Noack).

Russia is denying any alleged war crimes and President Putin has threatened to prosecute those accusing them(Timset and Noack). In addition to this President Putin has claimed the videos, pictures and stories about the killing of civilians are all fabricated by those against Russia( Stashevski and Qena). As the war progresses it seems diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia is becoming more critical to the peace of Europe. 

Startups 

An educational startup Mathpresso has announced that they had raised $14.5 million in Series B funding. Qanda is the app that was able to make them this fortune, an app that provides students with the support in math and science that they need. Mathspresso expressed that Qanda stands for Q and A, and is being utilized by a third of the student population in South Korea. Qanda has also been launched in multiple countries and is operated in more than 50 countries. ‘Qanda uses AI-based optical character recognition to solve math problems,’ and it’s able to provide the student with the instructions on how to solve the questions. And due to the school lockdown that was initiated in April of 2020, Qanda’s online activities had increased by almost 5 times its previous active users. Ray Lee, a co-CEO of Qanda has stated that the company’s mission is "segmenting and connecting all education content in the world.” And with their newfound series C investment, they aim to break down the borders of only providing quality education to the few that are privileged to receive it. 

Why would it to be the next unicorn startup?

• It’s aiming to provide students with the quality education that all deserve to receive the best results that could brighten up their futures. 

• The AI learning app allows students to receive an all-in one educational package, offering quality resources, tutors, efficient answers to problems and etc.

• It already has over 9.8 million users in the 7 years of its operations, proving that with a new wave of students, it will hit bigger achievements

Economy 

In a positive sign for the US economy, the government's most recent report showed that 431,000 new jobs were added in March. This boom in hiring lowered the US unemployment rate to 3.6%, which is the lowest rate since the start of the pandemic in 2020. While the employment rate isn't quite as high as it was before COVID hit, the hiring increase in recent months is certainly an encouraging sign of economic health. (Source: AP News)

Predictably, Russia's economy is suffering as a result of the war in Ukraine. Sanctions by Russia's neighbors and the rest of the world have almost cut Russia from international business and trade entirely, causing imports and exports to drop. Before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy had been growing steadily, meanwhile, it is now set up to shrink by 15% by the end of the year (Source: Business Insider)

Federal Reserve officials have been tossing around raising the key rate by half a percentage point in hopes of fighting inflation in the US. The key rate-- the interest rates charged to banks who borrow from the Federal Reserve-- is typically raised during periods of inflation to reduce the money supply and lower prices. The mortgage market reacted quickly after learning of the Fed's plans, raising their interest rates last week by almost 5%. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

The global bank Citi often forecasts expected GDP increases or decreases, and has recently raised its growth prediction for China from 4.7% to 5% for 2022. China has enjoyed a larger-than-expected growth in retail and kept their real-estate related sectors going as well, which is estimated to account for 25% of the nation's economy. Citi's projected growth is still lower than China's goal for this year, which is 5.5%. (Source: CNBC)

Open Coffee Youth is an organization devoted to building a culture of networking for young people around the world. Through networking meet-ups devoted to high school and university students, they enable young people to make connections and help them gain early project-based experience. Since the beginning of October 2020, Open Coffee Youth has hosted meetings for more than 1000 students, online and offline on 4 continents with their leaders operating in Poland, Finland, the USA, Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong, UAE, the Netherlands, and India. 

In the near future, they expect to grow their chapters and help them spread the vision even more impactfully to their local communities. Moreover, they are preparing to start an education program that will help teachers understand soft skills' importance better so they can help in sharing the idea of networking for youth. Because of that, they are looking for more team members, local leaders and partners. If you want to join them on their journey, feel free to apply by filling out the form below. Visit their website!

If you have any queries about Open Coffee Youth, contact: [email protected]

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