May 15, 2019

The NBA's draft lottery reform worked. Instead of rewarding teams that lose on purpose to increase their chances at getting a higher pick, the new rules — which decrease the odds for the league's three worst teams — allowed the New Orleans Pelicans, who were not a good team this year, but at least tried to be, to receive the number one pick.

That means the Pelicans, not the league-worst New York Knicks (despite fan attempts to will the ping pong balls their way), will get to draft this year's grand prize, phenom Zion Williamson. The Pelicans and their fans are undoubtedly thrilled, but the addition of Williamson to the team will provide some interesting fallout — both for the franchise and the NBA as a whole.

The Pelicans already have a bona fide superstar, Anthony Davis, himself a former no. 1 overall pick. But Davis requested a trade during the season, believing he'd have better opportunities to win a championship elsewhere. Now that Williamson is in the fold, though, could Davis change his mind and stay? A combination of Davis, Williamson, and elite guard Jrue Holiday would likely turn some heads.

But The Athletic's Shams Charania said he doesn't believe Davis has changed his stance.

While basketball fans may not get to watch Williamson and Davis play together, New Orleans is still basking in riches. If Williamson lives up to the hype, trading Davis will no longer set the franchise back as drastically. Instead, the young players and draft picks they would acquire in a Davis trade will be paired with Holiday and Williamson, accelerating New Orleans' rebuilding project. Not a bad problem to have. Tim O'Donnell

4:01 a.m.

John Oliver used his last Game of Thrones lead-in to discuss death. "Specifically, this story is about the people who investigate deaths when they happen," he explained on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "And if you're thinking, 'I don't want to see that on TV,' are you completely sure about that? Because death investigators aren't just supporting characters on some of the most popular shows."

"In real life, every year about 2.8 million Americans die," Oliver said, and while doctors identify cause of death on most death certificates, "if someone dies under suspicious or unnatural circumstances, their body may be sent for further examination and possibly a forensic autopsy. That's what happens to about a half a million bodies each year, and those investigations are incredibly important. A death certificate isn't like a degree from USC — it actually means something." Autopsies are important in murder investigations, but they also highlight trends in drug deaths, help identify defective products, and warn of infectious disease outbreaks.

"So tonight, let's learn about our death investigation system, specifically how it works, why it's such a mess, and what we can do about it," Oliver said. First, medical examiners and coroners aren't synonymous — medical examiners must be doctors, coroners are often elected, with shockingly few qualifications. That's "frankly weird enough," he said, but "in some jurisdictions, the coroner is also the county sheriff, and that has led to some serious problems."

The medical examiner system is better, but there are problems there, too, Oliver said. "The resources crunch is so bad that some offices wind up outsourcing work to private contractors, and this is where this story gets absolutely incredible." He focused on one contractor. "Look, I know this issue is tempting to ignore — it combines two things that people hate thinking about the most: Death and municipal funding," he said. But he tried to make it palatable, roping in Beyoncé, Glenn Close's spleen, and Tracy Morgan. (There's NSFW language.) Peter Weber

2:25 a.m.

All the major players in the intensifying standoff between the U.S. and Iran say they do not want war, usually with a caveat. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs minister and and the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps both reiterated that their countries aren't looking for war but aren't afraid to fight, either. President Trump has similarly said he doesn't want war with Iran, but.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump tweeted: "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!" Trump's threat to obliterated Iran may have been in response to initial reports of a rocket fired into the Green Zone in Iraq — the State Department confirmed Sunday night that a "low-grade rocket" landed harmlessly about a mile from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — but Matthew Gertz at Media Matters has another theory:

Gertz had more evidence Trump was live-tweeting Fox News, including Trump's tweet attacking his favorite network for hosting Democrat Pete Buttigieg. Still, it's not like Trump has been silent about Iran over the past week. In a Fox News interview broadcast Sunday night, but recorded last week, Trump said he's "not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly." But, he said, "I just don't want them to have nuclear weapons and they can't be threatening us."

"The current tensions are rooted in Trump's decision last year to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers and impose wide-reaching sanctions," The Associated Press reports. "Iran has said it would resume enriching uranium at higher levels if a new nuclear deal is not reached by July 7. That would potentially bring it closer to being able to develop a nuclear weapon, something Iran insists it has never sought." Peter Weber

12:18 a.m.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, did a Fox News town hall on Sunday, and he took a few moments to criticize the network's own prime-time opinion hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. President Trump didn't tweet about that, but he did criticize host Chris Wallace for noting that the 37-year-old mayor, a war veteran and Rhodes Scholar who speaks several languages, "has a lot of substance" and a "fascinating biography," while never saying the same things about Trump.

Now, if you were an outside journalist, like The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey, you might recap Trump's tweet as: "The president openly tells a news network they are not doing enough to favor him." A Fox News stalwart like Brit Hume had a slightly different angle, but he also found the tweet offensive enough to merit a rare rebuke of Trump.

Trump, who had his own one-on-one interview air on Fox News Sunday night, was retweeting Hume sticking up for him a few hours later, so no bad blood there. Former Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), now a conservative talk show host, tweeted that the whole episode highlights an "under-reported" fact about Trump: "He really doesn't do much. People assume that, as president, he's really busy. He's not. He watches TV, he tweets, he does rallies. About it." Peter Weber

May 19, 2019




May 19, 2019





May 19, 2019

JoJo, ScarCo — whatever you want to call them, celebrity couple Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost are engaged.

Johansson's publicist Marcel Pariseau shared the news with The Associated Press on Sunday. The actress met the Saturday Night Live comedian two years ago. Pariseau told AP they have not yet set a wedding date.

Johansson, 34, has been married twice; she wed actor Ryan Reynolds in 2008, divorcing in 2011, and French journalist Romain Dauriac in 2014, divorcing in 2017. Johansson and Dauriac have a 4-year-old daughter, Rose. Jost, 36, has never been married. Catherine Garcia

May 19, 2019

Robert F. Smith gave a commencement speech on Sunday that won't ever be forgotten by Morehouse College's Class of 2019.

The billionaire founder of investment firm Vista Equity Partners announced that he is creating a grant that will cover the cost of every single student loan held by all 396 graduating seniors. "On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we're going to put a little fuel in your bus," he said.

The graduates erupted in cheers and gave Smith a standing ovation. Morehouse President David A. Thomas told CNN Smith's "liberation gift" will cover about $40 million worth of loans. "When you have to service debt, the choices about what you can go do in the world are constrained," he said, adding that Smith's generosity "gives them the liberty to follow their dreams, their passions." Smith encouraged the graduates to pay it forward, so other students can benefit and "have all the opportunities of the American dream."

After commencement, students — and their parents — were still in a daze. Graduate Elijah Nesly Dormeus is the first of nine siblings to graduate from college, and he told CNN that after his dad died when he was a kid, his mother sacrificed and worked hard to provide for her family. He has $90,000 in student loans, and his mother also took out a loan to help him. Smith's gift benefits both tremendously, and "all of her serving, all her giving was not in vain," Dormeus said. Catherine Garcia

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