Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

John Oliver Went HAM On Israel And Accused It Of Committing ‘War Crimes’ And ‘Apartheid’ Against Palestinians, While Also Blasting The U.S. For Enabling The Atrocities

Much like Seth Rogen questioning why the state of Israel exists last year, John Oliver isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers on the subject (starting around the 1:00 minute mark above). This is especially the case in light of the current situation between Israel and Palestine. Oliver tackled the subject on the heels of Israel’s recent air strikes against Hamas fighters in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire, in many cases losing their lives and their homes. And let’s just say that Oliver is more than “deeply underwhelmed” by the Biden administration’s response, and for that matter, several previous U.S. administrations, while he addressed the subject on Sunday night.

In particular, the Last Week Tonight host was incensed by the misleading vocabulary used by the Israeli government to disguise human rights violations (including “planned expulsions”) as something altogether different. “Is it not hard to see why sanitized terms like ‘evictions’ and ‘property disputes’ rankle those who live there,” he says, as does the term “airstrikes on militants” translate as “a little disingenuous,” Oliver declared. “What you’re describing is forcing people from the homes they’ve lived for decades and killing civilians and children.”

Oliver also took great issue with Israel’s claims that a heads-up on airstrikes somehow rendered them humane. That’s a big nope to the host: “Destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime, regardless of whether you send a courtesy heads-up text.” He added that such an attitude leads to a lie-by-omission, much like “Matt Gaetz Reaches Out To Florida Youth,” because “it’s missing some pretty crucial details about the exact nature of that interaction.” Further, Oliver called out Israel for their atrocities against Gaza-residing Palestinian citizens, who are “at a significant disadvantage” due to not being able to count on an “Iron Dome” of missile defense like their Israeli counterparts can do. Further to that point, there’s the whole matter of Israel Defense Forces “meme-ing” the bombing of apartments in a before-after manner.

“In general, you should probably never meme a war crime,” declared the host. He then pointed toward how Palestinians are “essentially being governed by a form of apartheid.” This makes their “life in Gaza… hard even when they’re not being bombed,” and Oliver is aghast at how “the U.S. government has implicitly co-signed on the brutally hard line Israel’s been taking.” To that end, the host dragged Biden’s recent “Israel has the right to defend itself” response, which is a word-by-word echoing of several presidents (including Obama and Trump, under whom Jared Kushner claimed to “bring peace” to the Middle East) before him. “By constantly refusing to criticize the indefensible,” Oliver said, the U.S. is enabling (and complicit within) the exponentially larger suffering of Palestinian citizens over their their Israeli counterparts.

Even though there’s no winner in the situation, Oliver urges his viewers to accept that although civilians, including children, have been killed in Israel, too, the playing field isn’t level. “Both sides are firing rockets,” Oliver pointed out. “But one side has the most advanced military in the world.” And “one side is suffering them exponentially.”

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Kathryn Hahn And Elizabeth Olsen Are Being Called The ‘Most Iconic Duo’ Following Their MTV Awards Acceptance Speeches

In this house, every week is the Week of Kathryn Hahn. But it was especially true this past week, which began with Hahn being cast in Knives Out 2 (along with Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, and Edward Norton) and culminated in the WandaVision actress winning Best Fight, Best Villain, and Best Show at the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards.

“This is my childhood, people,” she said while gesturing towards the golden popcorn trophy, adding, “This really is the bee’s knees. When I was in high school, I was in The Wizard Of Oz, and I played the Tin Man. And I really, really, really wanted to be Dorothy because I wanted those red slippers. And so it took a long, long time for me to realize that deep in there was also that wicked witch.” It truly was Agatha All Along.

Hahn and her WandaVision co-star Elizabeth Olsen accepted the award for Best Show together, joining previous winners Adam Sandler vs. Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore, Yoda vs. Christopher Lee in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and Ben Stiller vs. Puffy the Dog in There’s Something About Mary (the MTV Movie Awards are wild). “Oh, my god! Thank you so, so, so much, MTV and beautiful fans for voting for us. We are so proud the two of us on behalf of the show and this crew for this incredible honor. Thank you,” she said, while Olsen left everyone with the “immortal words” of Des’ree: “You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser. You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger. You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together. All I know, all I know, love will save the day.” It’s either love, or hand fighting.

No wonder they’re being called the most iconic duo.

You can watch the other acceptance speeches below.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Nicki Minaj Celebrated Her Late Father’s 65th Birthday With A Touching Post

These past few days have made for one of the more active weekends for Nicki Minaj in recent years. The rapper made her return by adding her mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty, to streaming services. The project was re-uploaded with new songs for fans like “Seeing Green” with Drake and Lil Wayne. That song made for the first record in almost three years from the original Young Money trio. Unfortunately, it hasn’t only been high moments for Minaj as this weekend also marked what would’ve been the 65th birthday of her late father, Robert Maraj. It comes three months after he was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident.

Minaj took to Instagram to celebrate her father in a touching post. “Happy Birthday Daddy,” she wrote under an image of her father. “Miss u so much. So much. So so much. Rest in peace. Oh my God.”

The hit-and-run occurred in February as Maraj walked between Roslyn Road and Raff Avenue in Long Island, New York. The vehicle that hit him, which was driven by a 70-year-old man named Charles Polevich, immediately fled the scene. Officers later arrested Polevich after they discovered the car in his garage. As a result, he was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of a fatal car accident and tampering with evidence. The latter charge came after officers concluded that Polevich tried to alter the car’s appearance to avoid being arrested.

You can view Nicki Minaj’s post above.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The NBA Playoff And Play-In Matchups Are Set After A Wild Final Day Of The Regular Season

The 2020-2021 NBA regular season has officially come to a close and it did so in rather spectacular fashion, with a wild final day that saw teams battling for play-in positioning, playoff seeding, and some outright tanking into different matchups.

The day started out with some phenomenal games including three furious comebacks: one actually completed by the Wizards to beat the Hornets and earn the 8-seed in the East, another other by the Grizzlies, briefly taking the lead on Golden State before Stephen Curry happened and the Warriors won, and another by the Celtics to scare the Knicks who held on to earn the 4-seed in the East.

The night slate wasn’t nearly as competitive for all the reasons one might expect, as teams rested and positioned themselves to be healthy and ready for the playoffs. Out West, the Nuggets were playing guys but clearly weren’t invested in their game in Portland the same way the Blazers were, as Portland ran away early to secure the 6-seed in the West and push the Lakers into the play-in, despite L.A. getting a win in New Orleans (although with a bit of a scare from LeBron apparently tweaking his ankle). Meanwhile, the Jazz started slow but eventually pummeled the Kings to lock down the 1-seed, keeping Phoenix in second out West.

With Denver losing, the Clippers would move to the 3-seed with a win, but they clearly wanted no part of that as they did the unthinkable, out-tanking the Thunder to lose in Oklahoma City (after losing to Houston) and getting into the 4-seed to face Dallas (who lost to Minnesota trying to possibly tank their way to the 6 to dodge the Clippers). All in all, it was a wild day and at the end of it all, here is how the play-in and playoffs will shake out.

EAST

PLAY-IN
7. Boston Celtics vs. 8. Washington Wizards (Tuesday, TNT, 9:00 p.m. ET)
9. Indiana Pacers vs. 10. Charlotte Hornets (Tuesday, TNT, 6:30 p.m. ET)

PLAYOFFS
1. Philadelphia 76ers vs. 8. Winner of Play-In Game 2 (loser BOS/WAS vs. winner IND/CHA)
2. Brooklyn Nets vs. 7. Winner of BOS/WAS
3. Milwaukee Bucks vs. 6. Miami Heat
4. New York Knicks vs. 5. Atlanta Hawks

WEST

PLAY-IN
7. L.A. Lakers vs. 8. Golden State Warriors (Wednesday, ESPN, 10:00 p.m. ET)
9. Memphis Grizzlies vs. 10. San Antonio Spurs (Wednesday, ESPN, 7:30 p.m. ET)

PLAYOFFS
1. Utah Jazz vs. 8. Winner of Play-In Game 2 (loser LAL/GSW vs. winner MEM/SAS)
2. Phoenix Suns vs. 7. Winner of LAL/GSW
3. Denver Nuggets vs. 6. Portland Trail Blazers
4. L.A. Clippers vs. 5. Dallas Mavericks

Once the play-in games are done and the full matchups are set for the playoffs, the complete TV schedule for the first round will be released.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

LeBron James Checks Out Of Lakers Regular Season Finale With Possible Ankle Injury

LeBron James hasn’t had the smooth follow-up to the Lakers title season that he wanted. Injuries and some inconsistent play on the court caused Los Angeles to enter the final night of the NBA season in need of some help to avoid the play-in tournament. Unfortunately for the Lakers they didn’t get that help and will be the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference play-in seed. They’ll be taking on Stephen Curry and the Warriors which will require a full strength team to overcome.

Los Angeles entered their regular-season finale against the Pelicans assuming they would be at full health no matter the final result. That was until LeBron James took possession, spun into the lane, and came up limping after the play. He wasn’t in serious pain by the looks of it, but he was clearly annoyed at the outcome of the play. He immediately checked out of the game and began pacing the sidelines. Replays made it appear like Likely trying to walk off whateve

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The Lakers And Warriors Will Officially Meet In The Play-In On Wednesday Night

The first year of the NBA’s new play-in tournament may go down as it’s best as the NBA has managed to get two of its top stars matched up in the 7-8 game out West. Early on Sunday, the Warriors beat the Grizzlies to lock in the 8-seed thanks to another sensational 46-point performance from Stephen Curry, who locked down the NBA scoring title early in the game himself. All that was left was to determine whether the Lakers or Blazers would be their opponent in the first play-in game.

With the Blazers dominating a Denver team with nothing to play for on Sunday in a 132-116 win, the Lakers were officially locked into the 7-seed in the West despite beating the Pelicans in New Orleans thanks to the Blazers earning the tiebreaker over L.A. this season. What that sets up is a LeBron James vs. Stephen Curry matchup that the NBA and ESPN, which has the West play-in games this year, have to be salivating over.

The two have met numerous times in high stakes games in the past, including in four straight Finals from 2015-2018, but this time rather than a series, the two will have one game to decide who takes the 7-seed to face the Phoenix Suns in the first round. The rest of the West playoff standings are also set, with the Clippers out-tanking everyone to get themselves to the 4-seed, where they’ll get a rematch from last year’s first round with Dallas. L.A. lost to the Rockets and Thunder in succession, a nearly impossible task but one they pulled off, making sure they avoided the Lakers in the first round should there have been some shenanigans with the Nuggets and Blazers finale. Denver and Portland will meet once again in a playoff series, as they produced a classic series in 2019, while the Jazz took down the 1-seed and will await the winner of the second play-in game later in the week.

Here is how the West seeding finished up:

1. Utah Jazz
2. Phoenix Suns
3. Denver Nuggets
4. L.A. Clippers
5. Dallas Mavericks
6. Portland Trail Blazers
7. L.A. Lakers
8. Golden State Warriors
9. Memphis Grizzlies
10. San Antonio Spurs

The first round of the West play-in games will be Wednesday night on ESPN, with Spurs-Grizzlies at 7:30 p.m. ET and Warriors-Lakers at 10 p.m. ET.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Tacko Fall Couldn’t Help But Laugh At Mike Breen Accidentally Calling Him ‘Taco Bell’

It has been a long season for everyone in the NBA, as the crazy, condensed regular season came to an end on Sunday. For Mike Breen, who pulls double duty on Knicks broadcasts for MSG and as the lead play-by-play man for ESPN’s NBA coverage, he’s called a lot of games in not a lot of days, and it’s understandable that at some point a slip-up might happen.

Breen is a pro’s pro and one of the absolute best in the business, but even he has the occasional error on a broadcast. Sometimes that’s calling the wrong player — an issue that has been exacerbated for play-by-play folks calling games remotely this year — but other times it’s a little Freudian slip, as happened in Sunday’s Celtics-Knicks game in which Tacko Fall snagged an errant save by the Knicks and Breen called him “Taco Bell.” Breen immediately recognized his error and laughed at himself, and after the game Tacko had a good laugh about it on Twitter.

It was a very funny moment in a game that got shockingly tense for the Knicks, who needed a win to take the 4-seed in the East. Boston came back from a massive second half deficit to cut the Knick lead to as few as one, but New York prevailed and will now take on the Hawks. Breen will now get a couple deserved days off before he calls ESPN’s play-in game on Wednesday night, and before then hopefully he gets that Cheesy Gordita Crunch he must be craving based off of his Tacko mishap.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

‘60 Minutes’ Aired A Segment In Which Navy Pilots Detailed Encounters With UFOs And Maybe The Truth Is Out There After All

While most people will admit earthlings are almost certainly not alone in the vast expanses of the universe, UFOs — which is to say sightings of possible alien aircrafts within the boundaries of our planet — have long been the purview of conspiracy theorists. Indeed, every now and then Tucker Carlson takes a break from floating white supremacist propaganda and defending the failed MAGA insurrection to try and scare his viewers about them. But after decades of secrecy, there’s a big government report about UFOs coming out, and on Sunday night, 60 Minutes gave us a taste of what we’re in for — and it’s pretty freaky.

The segment finds correspondent Bill Whitaker chatting with a number of government employees, most notably two former Navy pilots who describe an unsettling run-in with a UFO — or, as per the official government lingo, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, aka UAPs for short. In 2004, Cmdr. Dave Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who were in training at the time, were tasked with investigating what were deemed “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles,” about 100 miles southwest of San Diego.

What they found remains hard to describe. Fravor called it a “little white Tic-Tac-looking object,” which he said was about the size of his F/A-18F. Dietrich, in a separate plane, said it had “no predictable movement, no predictable trajectory.” Fravor claims that as soon as he tried to cut it off, it accelerated quickly, disappearing off his radar. When it reappeared on his system mere seconds later, it was 60 miles away.

Later, another crew happened upon what they believed was the same UAP, which they captured via infrared photography. The footage shows…something. What’s more, Fravor and Dietrich later learned a ship had been tracking this UAP for days.

Whitaker also spoke to Christopher Mellon, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, who said he believes the UAP Fravor and Dietrich saw displayed demonstrated advanced technological capabilities. He also spoke about the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which was formed in August of 2020 with the aim of exploring these types of phenomena.

“What [the Pentagon is] acknowledging is that there are indeed aircraft that are… violating restricted airspace. This has been happening and continues to happen,” he said, “and we don’t know where they’re from, and we don’t understand the technology.”

Next month a report from the force will be presented to Congress.

When the 60 Minutes segment aired, some pointed out what appears to be a sharp 180 the U.S. government has taken on UFOs and extraterrestrial phenomena, especially after decades of secrecy, as well as cultural fascination with things like Area 51.

Some believers in UFOs felt vindicated.

Others, though, dwelled on a little surprise at the segment’s end: the appearance of Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who’s often ridiculed for his beliefs, or his inability to stand up for them. That he’d take an interest in UFOs but not other serious matters did not escape some viewers.

Mind you, no one in the segment says they witnessed alien technology. Everything they said remains “unidentified.” Still, the report due to Congress next month should be fascinating…unless it’s fascinatingly uninteresting.

You can watch the full segment in the video above.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

‘Black Widow’ Debuted An Action-Packed Car Chase Clip Ahead Of Its Looming Release

On Sunday, Scarlett Johansson played a big part in the 2021 MTV Movie Awards. She received the show’s Generation Award, and in the middle of acceptance speech, she was rudely interrupted by her husband, Colin Jost, who doused her in green slime, joking that he’d gotten the ceremony confused with the Kids’ Choice Awards. The actress then paid it forward, gifting those watching with a little something: a minute-long, action-packed clip from her long-promised, then long-delayed, MCU solo venture, Black Widow.

The clip presents but a slither from a larger, longer chase, which finds Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and her sister-figure, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, pursued by armed, motorcycling baddies. It doesn’t appear to be going so hot, but then Yelena has an idea: Ditch Natasha’s plan — basically “to drive us away,” she says — and improvise. Cue Yelena taking the wheel, forcing a u-ey, and taking out one of their foes with a kicked-open side door.

Of course, in a better timeline we would have all seen this scene about a year and two weeks ago. It was originally scheduled for May 1, 2020, but we all know what happened there. And yet we’re still just shy of two months before it drops simultaneously on theaters and, for a hefty fee, on Disney+, on July 9. But perhaps this will tide you over.

You can watch the clip in the video above.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The Nets Clinched The 2-Seed In The East As Kyrie Irving Finished The 13th 50/40/90 Season In NBA History

The Brooklyn Nets locked up the 2-seed in the East on Sunday, dominating the Cavaliers in a 123-109 that secured that second spot and a matchup with the winner of the first play-in game between Washington and Boston. That also locks the Milwaukee Bucks into the 3-seed and a highly anticipated rematch in a playoff series with the 6-seed Miami Heat.

It was a game that went according to the script, albeit with a brief moment of concern for Brooklyn when Kevin Durant got elbowed in the face by Collin Sexton (who was tossed for a Flagrant 2). Happily for the Nets, Durant didn’t need to leave the game, staying in to help push Brooklyn out to a 20-plus point advantage behind a 23-point, 13-assist, 8-rebound effort from the superstar forward — and the finish on the play of the year for the Nets.

While Durant had the biggest stat line of the night, it was Kyrie Irving whose efficiency fro the game helped push him over an historic threshold, becoming the ninth player to record a 50/40/90 season after going 7-of-11 from the field and a perfect 3-of-3 from deep, moving him just over 40 percent for the season. His final shooting splits are 50.6 percent from the field, 40.2 percent from three, and 92.2 percent from the free throw line.

It’s a tremendous achievement from Irving and is representative of the incredible growth he’s shown in terms of becoming an efficient scorer over the course of his career. Once thought of as a bit of a chucker, Irving has become an elite three-level scorer and when sharing the floor with fellow superstars is more than happy to play his role and find shots within the flow. He can still take over, as he’s shown plenty of times in the past, but the way all of the Nets stars work off of each other and play within each other is remarkable, with Irving’s historic shooting season offering the best example of how that works in their favor as a team and individually.