Shortly before the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union last Thursday, two of the countrys leading supporters of Brexit Boris Johnson, the Conservative former mayor of London, and Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right UK Independence Party argued that the vote could turn June 23 into Britains "Independence Day."
On Sunday, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver slammed the claim and mourned his countrys decision to leave the EU. "First, Britain was already independent. In fact, its what many other countries celebrate their independence from," Oliver said. "Second, the sequel to the movie [Independence Day] actually opened this week, and features the wholesale destruction of London, which is beginning to feel pretty f*****g appropriate right now."
Oliver pointed to the swift, destructive fallout of the UKs vote. Over the past several days, global and British markets have dropped, the British pound was historically weak, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who signed off on the Brexit vote, announced hes stepping down. And it could get worse, given that no one knows how, exactly, UK-EU negotiations for a British exit will end up.
"It seems like whoever the next UK prime minister is going to be, whether its Boris Johnson or a racist tea kettle, they are going to be in for a rough few years," Oliver said.
The situation also, Oliver pointed out, left many people living in the UK out in the cold. One such victim is a Portuguese mother, who took advantage of the EUs open border policies to live and work in the UK. "I have two daughters one was born in Portugal, the second one was born in UK," she said in a video played by Oliver. "They asked me this morning, Mom, what is going to happen to us? And I told them at this point no one knows. I dont know my future; I dont know how to explain [to] my children what is going to happen to their future."
Oliver responded, clearly upset with the situation: "Perhaps I can help you with that, because its easy. Just tell them that they might be screwed, because a pig f****r called for a vote, a bus had some bullshit written on it, and then two idiots named Nigel and Boris quoted President Bill Pullman. Theyll get it. Theyll totally understand!"
But lest Americans think theyre spared from the politics behind Brexit, Oliver finished the segment with a warning to the US regarding Donald Trump: "You might think, Well, that is not going to happen to us in America. Were not going to listen to some ridiculously haired buffoon peddling lies and nativism in the hopes of riding a protest vote into power. Well, let Britain tell you it can happen. And when it does, there are no f*****g do-overs."
As the WWE brand extension approaches, more information is slowly being released about how the company will be structured once Raw and SmackDown are separate entities.
Splitting up the shows may be the biggest thing on WWE"s plate, but there were still plenty of other headlines from the past week to keep us busy.
Roman Reigns Suspended
In a bit of shocking news, Roman Reigns was on Tuesday suspended for 30 days following a wellness policy violation according to WWE.com.
It"s been a long time since a top star has been suspended for a violation such as this, and it could seriously affect how he is booked when he returns.
Reigns was still mentioned as being part of the Battleground main event on SmackDown, so it appears he still has his top spot.
The former WWEworld heavyweight champion took to Twitter to apologize to his friends and family for letting them down:
WWE Bringing Back WCW Show Concept
WWE.com has a strange listing that seems to indicate a past WCW theme is returning. When you click on the page for Night of Champions, it shows Clash of Champions as the title.
With the brand extension coming up in a few weeks, we still have a lot of unanswered questions about how the pay-per-view schedule will be structured.
It"s possible Clash events will replace NOC moving forward, but there"s always the possibility WWE will use both names and give each one to a different brand.
For those who don"t remember, Clash of the Champions events were like PPVs, but they were aired for free on television instead of being available to purchase through cable and satellite companies.
Over the years, WCW produced 35 Clash events, and all of them are available on the WWE Network for anyone who has never seen one.
CM Punk"s UFC Debut
CM Punk revealed his official UFC debut will take place at UFC 203 in September during a recent interview with UFC Unfiltered.
This means Punk will enter the octagon just under two years after signing with the company. He would have had his first fight already had it not been for a few medical issues along the way.
Punk will be fighting Mickey Gall, who has won his first two professional fights with UFC. If Punk can secure a win, it will silence many of the critics who feel he isn"t cut out for MMA.
We have to remember, Punk is no longer a young man.At almost 38 years old, he is getting into MMA much later than most of his peers, but his years of taking bumps in the ring five nights a week should help him deal with the pain of being punched and kicked for real.
Kurt Angle Returning to WWE?
During an interview with Mark Madden on Monday (h/t Wrestling Inc), Kurt Angle revealed he has had talks with Triple H, and his return to WWE is more a matter of when than if.
Do you want Kurt Angle back in WWE?
He also revealed he has interest in managing Jason Jordan and Chad Gable once he decides to hang up his boots and focus on doing other things.
Jordan and Gable have drawn comparisons to Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haasthanks to their looks and patriotic gimmick.
It will be interesting to see whether anything comes of this. Angle has spent more time working for TNA than he ever did wrestling for WWE, but wanting to end his professional wrestling career where it started is understandable.
We have heard wrestlers go into business for themselves by talking about a possible return, only to see nothing come of it, so we will have to wait to see what happens.
WWE Announces Draft
WWE issued a press release on Monday (h/tWrestling Inc), and the main topic of discussion was the return of the draft.
TheRaw and SmackDown GMs will pick their rosters during the live debut of SmackDown on Tuesday, July 19, marking the first time the draft has taken place outside an episode of Raw.
Despite the issues the original brand extension had, the draft was always one of the best nights of the year because it shook things up for both shows.
This year"s draft is especially important because it will outline what the next year will look like for both Raw and SmackDown.
It"s also reasonable to assume a few NXT Superstars will be brought up to the main roster to add some surprises to the lineup and help fill out the rosters.
Which Superstars do you want to see end up on Raw, and who should go to SmackDown?
Thanks for reading, and follow me on Twitter: @BR_Doctor.
Of the 30 blue-chip stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, only Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is showing a gain in Friday trading, up about 0.5% in the noon hour. Other blue-chippers are down anywhere from 5.8% (Goldman Sachs) to 0.3% (Verizon).
Wal-Mart owns U.K. low-price supermarket chain Asda with more than 500 stores in the country. It is safe to say that the performance of those stores has been disappointing at best and dismal at worst. Same-store sales tumbled 5.7% in the first quarter of this year, with store traffic down 5% and average ticket size down 0.7%. It was easily the worst performer in Wal-Marts international empire.
The good news for Asda came earlier this week with a report that Britons discretionary income was at its highest level since 2008, helped along by lower costs for food. The report, compiled by Asda and called the Asda Monthly Income Tracker, cited falling costs of essential items, a lower unemployment rate, and an increase to the countrys National Living Wage as the reason for the rise in discretionary income.
And given the sharp drop in the British pound following the Brexit vote, U.K. consumers are going to need all the spare cash they can get to pay for more expensive imported goods. Thats where Asda and competitors like Tesco come in stretching those discretionary pounds further.
In the noon hour Friday Wal-Mart stock traded up 0.55% at $72.49 in a 52-week range of $56.30 to $74.14.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. >> Pat Summitts family said Sunday that the last few days have been difficult for the former Tennessee womens basketball coach as her Alzheimers disease progresses.
Amid reports of Summitts failing health, her family issued a statement asking for prayers and saying that the 64-year-old Summitt is surrounded by the people who mean the most to her. It also asked for privacy.
Former Tennessee player Tamika Catchings was flying to Knoxville to visit the coach instead of returning to Indiana with the WNBAs Fever. Other former players and those in the University of Tennessee and the womens basketball communities were issuing support on Twitter through the PRAYFORPAT hashtag.
Summitt stepped down as Tennessees coach in 2012, one year after announcing her diagnosis of early onset dementia, Alzheimers type. She went 1,098-208 with eight national titles. She has the most career wins of any Division I mens or womens basketball coach.
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Since her diagnosis, Summitt has played a leading role in the fight against Alzheimers. She launched the Pat Summitt Foundation, which is dedicated to researching and educating people about the disease while also providing services to patients and caregivers. The Pat Summitt Alzheimers Clinic is scheduled to open at the University of Tennessee medical center in December.
When she fights this disease, what she has taught all of us is how to do it with courage, former Tennessee womens athletic director Joan Cronan said at a 2015 charity event honoring Summitt. Shes done that from Day One. Its been about (how) we can find a cure for this disease, and she has done it facing it straight-on and shes done it giving back as she always has.
Summitt continues to hold a position as head coach emeritus of the Tennessee womens basketball team. She attended nearly every home game and many practices in the first year after stepped down as coach, though she had a less visible role in subsequent seasons. She cut back on public appearances in recent years.
When she won here last year, Williams held all four of the Grand Slam singles titles. Now she holds only Wimbledons.
Djokovic, her dancing partner at last years champions dinner, is the one on the history-making roll now. Hes the first man to hold all four major titles since Rod Laver in 1969 and the player with a chance to do what Williams could not quite manage last year by completing the Grand Slam and winning all four majors in the same calendar year.
Photo Novak Djokovic practicing on Sunday in preparation for the start of Wimbledon. Credit Ben Curtis/Associated Press
I asked Williams what she might tell Djokovic after her unsuccessful chase last year, which ended two rounds short of the Grand Slam when she was stunned in the United States Open semifinals by Roberta Vinci.
You know, he has every opportunity to do it, she said. I think h**l get it easy, so he should be fine.
Easy sounds unlikely, given the pressure and fatigue that will surely build up in a year that also features the Olympics.
Less than an hour after Djokovic won the French Open this month for his first Roland Garros title, the former star Henri Leconte walked past the Djokovic camp in the players lounge and said theatrically: Two to go! Two to go! Oh, my G*d! Two to go!
Marian Vajda, one of Djokovics coaches, laughed. This was Leconte, one of tenniss class clowns, after all. Vajda, in typical fashion, then acknowledged the reality.
Real Grand Slam, now we can think about it, Vajda said. This was a real mental breakthrough for Novak, to win in Paris. And now he needs to focus on going to Wimbledon fresh and going for the U.S. Open, and theres obviously the Olympic Games in the middle, so its too many goals in a row. It makes it more complicated.
More compelling, too, and all the more so because Djokovic surely never gave the Grand Slam too much serious thought earlier in his career. He was too preoccupied with leveling the playing field with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to think about outclassing the field to this degree.
Even Djokovics biggest supporters his family were not thinking about it. Vajda said he ran into Djokovics father, Srdjan, at a restaurant in Paris during the French Open. Srdjan was with a group of friends and asked Vajda to tell the group what Srdjan had told him when they first met.
You told me he will be No. 1, Vajda replied, and I started laughing because I thought you were joking with me. And Novaks father said: No, I was not joking. I knew he was going to be No. 1, knew it, but I forgot one thing. I didnt know he would be dominating so much in the tennis world one day.
But here Djokovic is, undoubtedly the worlds top player on all surfaces, with a 47-6 record against the top 10 during the past two seasons. He has done it, in part, by learning how to conserve his physical and emotional energy unplugging from the game when necessary, which he did again before Wimbledon.
Winning Roland Garros was obviously one of the most memorable and beautiful moments of my career, said Djokovic, who will face James Ward of Britain in the opening match on Centre Court on Monday. Also, it took a lot out of me. I thought that its more important for me to just rejuvenate and rest a little bit from tennis and then come back preparing for Wimbledon.
He does not plan to overplay. Defend his title at Wimbledon, and it is entirely possible that he will play only the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the United States Open in the two months that follow. But there are other temptations, including a Davis Cup quarterfinal versus Britain (and Andy Murray) in July and the Rogers Cup in Toronto, which could serve as a hardcourt warm-up for Rio.
The Grand Slam is such a rare prize that it bears sacrificing other worthy goals, as Williams is better placed than anyone to grasp. She has not been the same irresistible force since that loss to Vinci in September, and Wimbledon is full of ghosts as well as big victories for her.
Not that she remembers them all. On Sunday, she could not recall any of the details of her first appearance in 1998 (she retired in the third round versus Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain). But she surely remembers losing to Sabine Lisicki in the fourth round in 2013 and to Aliz Cornet in the third round in 2014, just as she surely remembers beating Muguruza in straight sets last year to win her sixth Wimbledon singles title.
This year, I dont feel as much tension as I usually do, she said. Well, theres some years that I havent felt any tension, either. Im feeling pretty good. I dont feel any pressure or stress.
In truth, it was a challenge to sense what Williams was feeling on Sunday, and she will now let her racket do the talking, beginning with her first-round match on Tuesday versus Amra Sadikovic of Switzerland, 27, who retired in May 2014 but is now back for more and making her Grand Slam debut.
Williams, at 34, knows too well that life is full of such surprises, and surprise has been the rule of late in the womens game, with the now-retired Flavia Pennetta, Kerber and Muguruza winning the past three major titles.
Think about how many women now know that they have an opening, said Pam Shriver, an ESPN analyst.
During most of the Serena era, the players have felt there was no opening for them, she continued, so the question is, who is big enough to walk through it, especially at Wimbledon, where theres more media and where you better have control of your breathing and know how to manage your nerves more than anywhere else? Because theres a quietness and an aura about the place, and if youre not firmly planted with two feet with your confidence, it will knock you off balance.
Desiigner takes the stage to perform his summer smash hit song Panda at the 2016 BET Awards held at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday (June 26) in Los Angeles.
The 19-year-old entertainer performed for the screaming crowd at the live show. Watch the video below!
Be sure to tune in now to catch all the action! The 2016 BET Awards are airing live on the BET network until 11:30 pm EST, and are hosted by Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross.
Click inside to watch the video for Desiingers Panda
Jesse Williams Steals the BET Awards With Impassioned Speech Calling for Justice and Equality
Its safe to say that 34-year-old Grey"s Anatomy star Jesse Williams stole the BET Awards on Sunday night with a wildly inspirational, confrontational speech that is bound to become a cornerstone ofthe Black Lives Matter movement. Later in the show, Samuel L. Jackson said he hadn"t heard a speech like it since the 1960s.
Williams has appearedin multiple films, but he was honored withBETs Humanitarian Award for his activism. In October 2014, he joined protests in Ferguson, Missouri to protest the shooting of Michael Brown. He was also an actor and executive producer of Stay Woke, a documentary about the movement that premiered in May. He has written extensively on Black Lives Matter and met with President Obama earlier this year to discuss his humanitarian work.
Watch All the Prince Tributes at the 2016 BET Awards
BET CEO Debra Lee presented his award for his continued efforts and steadfast commitment to furthering social change.
He began by thanking BET and all involved in the video that preceded his appearance, his wife and his parents for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, they made sure I learned what the schools are afraid to teach us.
This award is not for me, he continued. This is for the real organizers all over the country, the activist, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. Its kinda basic mathematics: the more we learn about who we are and how we got here the more we will mobilize.
This award is also for the black women in particular who have spent their lives nurturing everyone before themselves -- we can and will do better for you.
Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar Open the 2016 BET Awards
Now, what weve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So whats going to happen is were going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours. [Standing ovation.]
I got more, yall. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rices 14th birthday so I dont want to hear any more about how far weve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television, and then going home to make a sandwich.
Tell Rekia Boyd how its so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner, Sandra Bland.
The thing is though, all of us here are getting money, that alone isnt going to stop this. Dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back to put someones brand on our body -- when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies?
BET Awards Week: See All the Photos
There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There is no job we havent done, there is no tax they havent levied against us, and we have paid all of them.
But freedom is always conditional here. Youre free! they keeping telling us. But she would be alive if she hadnt acted so free. Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but the hereafter is a hustle: We want it now.
Lets get a couple of things straight. The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander -- thats not our job so lets stop with all that. If you have a critique for our resistance then youd better have an established record, a critique of our oppression.
If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do: sit down.
Weve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and were done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil -- black gold! -- ghettoizing and demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.
Just because were magic doesnt mean were not real. Thank you.
