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Thursday, February 12, 2015

Roth: Fair play lost on Jackie Robinson West

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At the Oval Office, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcome the Jackie Robinson West All Stars Little League team from Chicago.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

Raise a hand if you're tired of these adults-screw-up-a-kid's-good-time stories?

Little League Baseball Wednesday stripped Jackie Robinson West of its 2014 regional and United States championships after confirming the manager and league administrator "knowingly violated'' residency rules to build a super team, even using players from the Chicago suburbs.

Sigh.

The story lines are always the same aren't they? Adults on rival teams point fingers, the accused scramble for an excuse, league officials step in and make rulings after the trophies are handed out, and in the end, the kids suffer.

Jackie Robinson West was one of the feel-good stories of the summer. Not only were they a very good team, their sportsmanship was exemplary and they lifted the spirits of not just Chicago's struggling South Side, but the entire nation.

They were a symbol of baseball's urban initiative working. Major League players were inspired to help the team's parents with expenses. In November, the team visited the White House and President Barack Obama.

And now we've been told Jackie Robinson West Little League cheated. The team was a sham. Not the 13 kids, the adults.

"This is a heartbreaking decision,'' said Stephen Keener, Little League Baseball, Inc., president and CEO. "What these players accomplished on the field and the memories and lessons they have learned during the Little League World Series tournament is something the kids can be proud of, but it is unfortunate that the actions of adults have led to this outcome."

I dont believe fair play is that difficult a concept to grasp. Above everything, the adults of Jackie Robinson West owe their players an apology.

If this were travel youth sports, where teams are assembled regardless of geography, this wouldn't be such a disheartening international story of deceit. But Little League Baseball's core philosophy is an old-fashioned one: Community-based rosters where neighboring chums play together. What a concept.

The adult leaders of Jackie Robinson West who knew they just needed a few more players to be really good went to Illinois District 4 and asked that their boundaries be extended, which there is a process for if OK'd by other districts. But they were told no. Instead of accepting that decision in the name of fair play, Jackie Robinson West falsified a boundary map to stack its roster, which other people signed off on all the way to Williamsport.

With Little League, Inc.'s 100 full-time employees, a $7.5 million payroll and thousands of volunteers, one might wonder how a team could get this far using ineligible players. A better question is how many other teams are caught during the vetting process? This is almost a self-policing thing because neighbors know neighbors. If an unfamiliar 13-year-old who stands 5-11 and shaves and can throw 75 mph shows up one day, red flags go up.

This is just the third time in 75 years a team has been stripped of a U.S. or world Little League title, so it appears most wrongdoing is nipped at the local level.

There will be many who feel that the rival teams that lost to Jackie Robinson West, including one in Chicago that lost 43-2 and a Las Vegas club that fell 7-5 in the national title game, should not have questioned their roster. They say its sour grapes. But silence equals complicity.

As for Little League Baseball, Inc., allowing Jackie Robinson West to keep its titles would make its rulebook as hollow as a corked bat. There are thousands of teams in 80 countries looking to the governing body to do the right thing. It had no choice but to follow precedent, set forth in cases like overage Bronx pitcher Danny Almonte in 2001.

I don't believe fair play is that difficult a concept to grasp. Above everything, the adults of Jackie Robinson West owe their players an apology.

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Source: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/sports/columnist/roth/2015/02/11/little-league-jackie-robinson-west-youth-sports/23231859/

Bobbi Kristina tragedy: Who will inherit Whitney Houston's estate?

Bobbi Kristina Brownis the sole heir of her mother Whitney Houston's estate, which is estimated to be worth $20 million.

The 21-year-oldhas been in a medically induced comasince Jan. 31, and some reports now say her family plans to take her off of life supporton the third anniversary of her mother's death, which is Wednesday.

According to the terms of the will, if Bobbi Kristinadies, family matriarch Cissy Houston and her two sonsare next in line to inherit theestate -- which includes full royalties from the late singer's music, likeness and image.

Bobbi Kristina inherited 10 percent (about $2 million) when she turned 21 and was scheduled to inherit another 15 percent at age25, before receivingthe remainder at30.

The will, which was posted online by RadarOnline, states that CissyHouston and Whitney Houston's two brothers-- Michael and Gary -- inherit the estate if Bobbi Kristina dies before coming into her majority of the estate.

One thing is certain: Whitney Houston's ex-husband and Bobbi Kristina's father, Bobby Brown, does not stand to get any of the money.

"Bobby Brown's time to contest anything would have been at the time of Whitney's death,"says Shirley Whitenack, an estate planning attorney with Schenck, Price, Smith & King in Morristown, who did not handle the Houston estate. "He doesn't have any claim just by virtue of having been married to her."

The pairwere married for 14 years. Their2007 divorce nullified Brown'sclaim to her estate. It seems unlikely, too, thatBobbi Kristina's longtime beau, Nick Gordon, will get any share of the funds.

Whitney Houston appointed her mother as executor of the will, and after heruntimely death three years ago, the "I Will Always Love You" singer'ssister-in-law and former manager, Pat Houston, became co-executor.

In March 2014,Pat Houston -- who is married to Gary Houston -- obtained a restraining order against Gordon. She accused him of "making threatening comments,"to her,among other things.

Despite publicpronouncementsfrom Bobbi Kristina, includingsocialmediapostingsannouncing her engagement and marriage to Gordon, her father's lawyer last week saidthat the two werenever legally married.Thecouple is best known for co-starring on the now-defunct reality series "The Houstons: On Our Own,"which debutedin May 2012 on Lifetime.

Gordon, whom Whitney Houston took in at age 12 but never legally adopted, and a friend, discovered Bobbi Kristina face down in a bathtub in herRoswell, Georgia homein which the couple lived.

Multiple news outlets have reported that authorities suspect possible foul playin Bobbi Kristina's case after injuries were found on her face and mouth. TMZ saysGordon is the target of the investigation.

Police have only said the investigation is ongoing.

The New York Post, in a report today, says it was told by an unnamed Brown family source thatBobbi Kristina's familyhasagreed to take her off life support at midnight Wednesday to align with the three-year death anniversary ofWhitney Houston.

Janelle Griffith may be reached atjgriffith@njadvancemedia.com.Follow her on Twitter@janellefiona. Find NJ.com/Entertainment onFacebook.

Source: http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/02/bobbi_kristina_brown_estate.html

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

n**e pics of WWE stars Seth Rollins, Zahra Schreiber surface

This social media melee beats any brawl youd see in the wrestling ring.

n***d pictures of WWE wrestler Seth Rollins and a WWE model surfaced on several social media accounts Monday, in what appears to be an accident or a hack followed by a revenge post from Rollins' scorned lover.

First, a n**e selfie of Zahra Schreiber, a model and wrestler for WWEs developmental branch NXT, popped up simultaneously on Rollins Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The pic also appeared on WWEs website, which automatically picks up posts from wrestlers accounts, Deadspin reported.

Soon afterward, Rollins fiance, Leighla Schultz, uploaded n***d pictures of the body-slammers n***d body on her own Twitter account, and wrote Zahara?, misspelling the name of Rollins apparent mistress.

Schultz otherwise hadnt tweeted since December 2013. She also wrote several posts on a friends Facebook page mocking Rollins and quoting things he may have said to Schreiber, such as: I hate my life and my fiance; I just wanted to run away with you.

All of the pics, as well as Schultzs tweet and Facebook posts, are now deleted.

Once the pics disappeared, Rollins tweeted on his account: I would like to apologize to all the WWE fans and my family and friends for private photographs that were distributed without my consent.

He didnt say anything about how the Schreiber pictures surfaced.

Rollins joined a WWE developmental team in 2010 and is now considered one of the company's most popular stars.

The WWE issued a memo to its wrestlers and other employees asking them not to publicly discuss the incident, WrestleZone reported.

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Tags: entertainment news , seth tollins , zahara schreiber

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/n**e-pics-wwe-stars-seth-rollins-zahra-schreiber-surface-article-1.2109319

Evolve pre-release impressions: Finding balance in asymmetry

Editor's Note: Our full review of Evolve will go up in the days after the game launches on Tuesday to give us a chance to evaluate the servers and online competition in a real-world environment. We are also waiting tosee the significant changes promised for a 3GB day-one patch. These impressions are based on extensive play time with the alpha and beta test versions of the game, as well as "near final" preview code provided by the publisher in the weeks before launch.

Team-based games are a hard enough thing to get right when both teams have essentially the same selection of characters, weaponry, and tools to take out the other side. Even if a few of those options are too powerful, both sides at least have equal opportunity to take advantage of the broken options, leading to a boring-but-fair matchup between equals.

With a game like Evolve, the balancing is that much harderand that much more crucial. If either side in the battle between four hunters versus one super-powered monster is overpowered, theunderpowered side is going to be decidedly not fun to play in the long run. The developers at Turtle Rock have the unenviable task of pumping up one character so he's precisely competitive with four others, with the knowledge that a miss to either side could easily ruin the entire game.

So far, those developers seem to have done a pretty good job. In my early play-testing with pre-release versions of the game, both the monsters and the hunters have their strengths and exploitable weak points. More importantly, both sides are thrown into play situations that make the four-on-one skirmishes fresh and exciting.

Hunt mode, where the bulk of the pre-release focus for Evolve's various test builds has been, can essentially be broken down into two very distinct phases. The first phase is best described as hide-and-seek with guns. The monster, who gets a slight head start, tries to hide inthe dark, tree-strewn environments for long enough to eat some local wildlife and evolve into a more powerful force for the eventual battle. The hunters try to find the monster while he's still weak and easily killable.

My enjoyment of this phase of the game so far has depended entirely on which side of the divide I've been playing. As a monster, evading the hunters is an incredibly tense experience in which you have to constantly balance the need to keep moving with the need to stop and kill smaller creatures for power. You also have to be constantly on alert, masking your tracks by running through streams or sneaking short distancesand usinga radar-ping-style sniffing ability to highlight any hunters that might be nearby. In this tense mode, crashing into a loud wooden shack or setting off some noisy carrion birds is enough to make you jumpout of your skin and run for cover anew.

There's a wonderful freedom of movement to controlling the monsters, who seem generally faster than the hunters and can make use of a slowly recharging dash to get away even more quickly. The ability to climb up walls just by holding a button gives the monster an easy verticality that can't be matched by the slow, awkward jetpacks used by the hunters. Hiding as a monster really makes you feel like a feral beast being pursued by an unseen but inevitably encroaching force.

On the hunter side, I found the hunting part of Hunt mode to be much more frustrating. Finding the monster usually means hunting for the glowing tracks he leaves on the ground, but those tracks can be hard to find and easy to lose, especially if the monster knows what he's doing in covering them up. Some of the hunters have special abilities that can aid in the searchmost notably a super-smelling dog that can home in on the monster's locationbut none of these really make the hunt feel any less of a random walk through what are usually very dark environments.

I would spend a lot of time following tracks in one direction only to hear the monster set off an alarm way off in the other direction, making me wonder how fresh those tracks actually were. Or I'd set out for a far-off carrion bird call, only to get there and hear another call that was equally far away in some other direction. Half the time, it seems, I'd find the monster completely at random while aimlessly hunting for tracks without any clue about where I should go.

Then there's the matter of sticking together as a hunting party. This is manageable when playing with a group of friends who all have headsets, allowing you to coordinate the search. When playing with random strangers, though, this kind of team-based play is a total crapshoot. Often, your teammates won't have headsets, meaning you have to communicate using in-game "beacons" that point out particular areas on the map.

On each four-person team, there always seems to be at least one person who goes off in his or her own direction or lags behind to check out every bit of flora and fauna. Then there's the person who can'tquite seem to figure out how to use the jetpack to vault the wall everyone else just climbed. In a game that's so dependent on sticking togetherand where a monster can pick off a single, unaccompanied hunter with easethis becomesincredibly frustrating. Maybe this problem will be alleviated as the player community gets more refined and experienced. As it stands, though, I'd stick with playing the monster (or playing the decently robust single-player mode) unless you can play with people you know you can work with.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/02/evolve-pre-release-impressions-finding-balance-in-asymmetry/

Sia, Husband Erik Anders Lang Enjoy "Affectionate" Date Night Pre-Grammys

Aw! Sias husband Erik Anders Lang is one romantic guy. Days before penning a love letter for Shia LaBeouf to read before Sias Grammy performance on Sunday, Feb. 8, Lang treated his wife to a special date night at her favorite vegan eatery The Springs in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, an eyewitness tells Us Weekly.

PHOTOS: 2015 Grammys

The couple, who said I do this past August at the Chandelier singers Palm Springs, Calif., home, stopped by the restaurant to celebrate Langs birthday as well, the source tells Us. She loves their vegan menu, especially the guacamole, the source says of the Grammy-nominated artist.

PHOTOS: Sia and more stars at the Grammys

But Sia, who performed with Kristen Wiig at the Grammys on Sunday, only had eyes for her hubby on their romantic date. They were incredibly affectionate, kissing and holding hands, the eyewitness tells Us. Erik asked if they could make the guacamole without cilantro. It was a surprise for her since she can rarely get guacamole without cilantro, the source says.

The request was just one of Langs many sweet surprises. At the 57th annual awards show over the weekend, Lang planned for LaBeouf to read a love letter from him before his wife performed.

PHOTOS: Celebs who got married in 2014

"For Sia: I feel like this may be strange to say this here," LaBeouf said on behalf of Lang. "I love you so. Punch me if I stop crying. I raised a white flag for you, defeated finally. If strength were made of broken pieces, you and I would always win. It is, though, and building and statues wink at us. I could squeeze you to zero. Ill never know another. What am I going to do? Punch me if I stop crying, and Ill do the same. Love, Erik."

PHOTOS: Unlikely celeb couples

"Erik and Shia conspired together and did this as a gift to Sia," a separate source previously told Us of the touching moment. "She was COMPLETELY surprised and had no idea."

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/sia-husband-erik-anders-lang-enjoy-affectionate-date-night-2015102

Watch new trailer for 'Straight Outta Compton'

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Trailer for 'Straight Outta Compton' biopic.(Photo: YouTube screen shot)

The new trailer for the N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton, is chock full of music, mayhem and, um, bleach-blonde Paul Giamatti.

Ice Cube and Dr. Dre give the trailer a lengthy introduction, explaining what the group's rise to fame really meant.

"Our music was like our weapon," Cube said. "What a lot of people don't realize about N.W.A., is it's non-violent protest." See the full trailer below. (Be warned, this red-band trailer contains extremely NSFW language.)

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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/02/09/nwa-straight-outta-compton-dr-dre-ice-cube/23112639/

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Jon Stewart on Williams: 'Bri... why?'

That's the question that Jon Stewart asked as he opened "The Daily Show" on Monday night.

Stewart devoted an eight-minute segment to the crisis surrounding Brian Williams and NBC. He was critical of Williams, but arguably more critical of the media coverage of the situation.

Related: Will Brian Williams return?

He had fun with the anchor's first name, asking "Why Bri lie?" and saying it'll be "Bri-bye" if more exaggerations emerge.

"We got us a case here of infotainment confusion syndrome," Stewart said jokingly. "It occurs when the celebrity cortex gets its wires crossed with the medulla anchor-gata."

He was referencing the fact that the most noteworthy examples of Williams' exaggerations about a 2003 Iraq War mission came not during the anchor's "Nightly News" but instead during promotional appearances on other shows.

Stewart played clips of the media's coverage of the controversy and added biting commentary about the coverage in the run-up to the invasion.

"Finally," he said sarcastically, "somebody is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War."

Most of the other late-night talk shows didn't touch the Williams controversy. Neither NBC's Jimmy Fallon or CBS's David Letterman cracked any jokes about it.

But Stewart's colleague on Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore, did take some time to comment at Williams' expense.

"We look at our relationship with war and revisit the movie "Black Hawk Down,' or as Brian Williams calls it, 'The Brian Williams Story,'" Larry Wilmore said at the start of his new show that follows Stewart's, "The Nightly Show."

Wilmore joked that "as a fellow purveyor of fake news, I sympathize with Brian Williams."

Related: With Brian Williams absent, Lester Holt looks to steady 'NBC Nightly News'

Even though Williams has scrapped a scheduled appearance with Letterman later this week, the anchor has been a late-night regular.

Williams and Stewart have seemed chummy in the past, and Williams has been a frequent guest of "The Daily Show," appearing 16 times according to the show's web site.

He's also popped up in sketches and even acted as a giant head that floated in the background of the "Daily Show" set.

Conversely, Stewart was one of the first guests on Williams' now-canceled newsmagazine "Rock Center" back in 2011.

Along with many appearances with Letterman and Stewart, Williams has also "slow-jammed the news" with Fallon on "The Tonight Show" and hosted "Saturday Night Live" back in 2007.

Wilmore on Monday night quipped that Williams had "slow-jammed the truth."

Related: What we know about the controversy

CNNMoney (New York) February 10, 2015: 9:47 AM ET

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/media/jon-stewart-brian-williams/