On Episode 1 of UFC 244 Embedded, welterweight champion Kamaru Usman goes from “scruffy” to polished at home and then hits the gym for more finishing touches. Rival Colby Covington arrives in Las Vegas and dedicates his upcoming success to a famous family. Featherweight title challenger Alexander Volkanovski makes the long trip from New Zealand with teammate and UFC 245 flyweight Kai Kara France. Featherweight champion Max Holloway works out and horses around with his team at UFC Performance Institute. UFC 245 Embedded is an all-access, behind-the-scenes video blog leading up to the three title fights taking place Saturday December 14. Order the Pay-Per-View at ESPNPlus.com/PPV
NEW YORK (News12) — Parents in Park Slope say their children came home teary-eyed Monday after they say a teacher at P.S. 321 told the first graders that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy aren't real.
The families say it happened during a lesson about 'convincing.' They add that now they are trying to explain why the educator isn't a believer.
The principal of P.S. 231 says that this was a substitute teacher, but the moms and dads say it doesn't matter, especially that the holiday season is approaching.
In a letter sent out to parents, the principal says she was extremely upset to hear about what happened. She says they are investigating the staff member and that "...I guarantee you that this substitute will not be in class 1-216 again ... we take this very seriously."
Meanwhile, the parents say that just want their kids to understand that everyone is entitled to their own thoughts.
Nick Cannon fires back at Eminem for dissing his and Mariah Carey on Fat Joe's new song "Lord Above." Listen as Nick rounds up Suge Knight, Charlie Clips, Hitman Holla and Prince Eazy for a rebuttal titled "The Invitation."
Here's another new song from Cassidy off of his forthcoming "Bars and Beats" project. This one is called "HATE" and was produced by Mr. Chicken himself.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Russia was slapped Monday with a four-year ban from international sports events, including next summer’s Tokyo Olympics, over a longstanding doping scandal, although its athletes will still be able to compete if they can show they are clean competitors.
The ruling by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee means that Russia’s flag, name and anthem will not appear at the Tokyo Games, and the country also could be stripped of hosting world championships in Olympic sports.
The sanctions are the harshest punishment yet for Russian state authorities who were accused of tampering with a Moscow laboratory database. Russia’s anti-doping agency can appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport within 21 days — an action it has signaled it would take.
“Russia was afforded every opportunity to get its house in order ... but it chose instead to continue in its stance of deception and denial,” WADA president Craig Reedie said.
Russian athletes can compete in major events only if they are not implicated in positive doping tests or if their data was not manipulated, according to the WADA ruling.
For soccer’s 2022 World Cup, WADA said the Russian team will play under its name in the qualifying program in Europe. If it qualifies to play in Qatar, the team name must be changed to something neutral that likely would not include the word “Russia.”
At the past two track and field world championships, Russians competed as “Authorized Neutral Athlete.” A softer line was taken ahead of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, when the International Olympic Committee suspended the Russian Olympic body yet allowed athletes and teams to compete as “Olympic Athlete from Russia.”
Going forward, “they cannot use the name of the country in the name of the team,” WADA president-elect Witold Bańka told The Associated Press.
Legal fallout from the WADA ruling at CAS seems sure to dominate preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, which open July 24.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged sports organizations to appeal and said WADA’s ruling was “a continuation of this anti-Russian hysteria which has already become chronic.”
The latest round of sanctions were imposed because tampering with the Moscow data was a new violation of anti-doping rules committed as recently as January.
Handing over a clean database to WADA was a key requirement given to Russia 15 months ago to help bring closure to a scandal that has tainted the Olympics over the last decade.
WADA investigators and the IOC agreed that evidence showed Russian authorities corrupted data from the Moscow lab that was long sealed by security forces. Hundreds of potential doping cases were deleted and evidence falsely planted to shift the blame onto whistleblowers.
“Flagrant manipulation” of the data was “an insult to the sporting movement worldwide,” the IOC said last month.
Athletes whose data was manipulated in the 2012-15 testing period now face disciplinary cases by their sport’s governing body.
“Yes, we do know who those athletes are. They will be kept out of the (Tokyo) Games,” said British lawyer Jonathan Taylor, chairman of the WADA panel whose proposed sanctions were unanimously approved Monday.
However, the doping watchdog’s outgoing vice president was left frustrated by an unwillingness to fully expel Russia from the Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
“I’m not happy with the decision we made today. But this is as far as we could go,” said Linda Helleland, a Norwegian lawmaker who has long pushed for a tougher line against Russia. “This is the biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen. I would expect now a full admission from the Russians and for them to apologize on all the pain all the athletes and sports fans have experienced.”
Although the IOC has called for the strongest possible sanctions, it wants those sanctions directed at Russian state authorities rather than athletes or Olympic officials.
That position was opposed by most of WADA’s athlete commission. It wanted the kind of blanket ban Russia avoided for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games when a state-run doping program was exposed by media and WADA investigations after Russia hosted the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
The decision to appeal has been stripped from RUSADA chief executive Yuri Ganus, an independent figure criticizing Russian authorities’ conduct on the doping data issue. Authority was passed to the agency’s supervisory board after an intervention led by the Russian Olympic Committee.
The ROC on Saturday labeled the expected sanctions as “illogical and inappropriate.”
Russia has stuck to its claim that deceptive edits in the data were in fact made by WADA’s star witness, Grigory Rodchenkov. The former Moscow lab director’s flight into the witness protection program in the United States was the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary.
“As usual, Russia has disregarded all of its promises and obligations to clean sport,” Rodchenkov said Monday in a statement from his lawyers.
Sports fans worldwide will still be watching top-tier events from Russia in the next four years despite the hosting ban.
In soccer, St. Petersburg will still host four games at the 2020 European Championship and the 2021 Champions League final, because European soccer body UEFA is not bound by the ruling. Nor is the Formula 1 racing series, which goes to Sochi’s Olympic Park for a race each year.
“The contract is valid through 2025,” Russian Grand Prix spokeswoman Tatyana Rivnaya told the AP in a telephone interview.
World championships in lower-profile Olympic sports — including luge in two months and wrestling in 2022 — could stay in Russia due to legal difficulties moving them.
“There will be practical issues,” Taylor acknowledged, “and we can’t ignore those.”
However, Taylor said a block on Russia bidding for or being awarded sports events in the next four years would have a longer effect beyond the ban.
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AP Sports Writer James Ellingworth in Duesseldorf, Germany, contributed.
Jeff Goldblum goes Sneaker Shopping with Complex's Joe La Puma at Stadium Goods in New York City and talks about his iconic style, rare sneakers from Jurassic Park, and how he got to wear the Balenciaga Triple S.
The private jet Juice WRLD flew to Chicago on was loaded down with 70 pounds of marijuana ... and cops say people on the plane told them the rapper had popped several pills prior to suffering seizures.
Law enforcement sources tell TMZ ... the FBI confiscated the huge stash of weed from several suitcases that were on board the flight. We obtained this photo of the marijuana and luggage in the private jet terminal at Midway.
According to law enforcement, several members of Juice's team aboard the flight -- which landed around 1 AM Sunday -- told them Juice had taken "several unknown pills" prior to the seizures which led to him getting rushed to a hospital.
Further, we're told one of Juice's associates told authorities the 21-year-old rapper has a Percocet problem. Our law enforcement sources also say a bottle of codeine cough syrup was found on the plane.
Juice's cause of death hasn't been determined ... the Cook County Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy on Monday.
Two men -- Chris Long and Henry Dean -- were arrested for possession of handguns. We're told cops recovered 3 guns in total. Dean was released without bail, and Long is out after posting a $1,500 bond.
The last Pay Per View of the decade features 3 title fights at UFC 245. Kamaru Usman defends against Colby Covington, Max Holloway meets Alexander Volkanovski, and Amanda Nunes faces Germaine de Randamie. See these athletes prepare for their bouts.
On this episode of People's Party, Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh sit down with rapper, entrepreneur, and very-honest-motherf*cker, The Game. Right away the trio dives into the deep end, with a wide-ranging conversation on gang culture, rap beefs, Nipsey Hussle's legacy, and a possible G-Unit reunion.
Later in the episode, Kweli and The Game talk about their mixtape collaborations, rap reality vs. street life reality, and #BlackLivesMatter. Throughout the interview, The Game is the same man you hear on the track: unflinchingly honest and fearlessly raw. No topic is off-limits and stories are told in vivid detail. As one observer at the live taping said, "Damn, listening to him is like a John Woo movie!"
Philadelphia heavy spitter Cassidy is gearing up to release a new project titled "Bars and Beats." Here's a track off of it called "Selfish," produced by Mr. Chicken himself.
In this clip from People's Party, The Game tells the complete story of how he met Nipsey Hussle for the first time, while driving through Los Angeles. He explains that he was prepared for a gunfight and goes into detail on how Nipsey thought and operated. It's a story that offers deep insight into made what made "Neighborhood Nip" so special.
Full episode arrives on Monday 12/9 at 9AMet/6AMpt.
The north hardens those who brace its harshest winters, and none has battled more during those times than Aychef. The thirty-six-year-old emcee may be considered a late bloomer to the uninformed but is perceived as the hardest worker to many. Currently residing in the Bay Area of California, Aychef oozes out the Philadelphia style from the city that built him. His lyricism has been compared to the likes of Jay Z and the story-telling ability of a Nas himself, while his voice has that grit to it that makes you believe every single line he utters. In his earlier years, Aychef went under the alias Hood Fella where he amassed over three million views on YouTube remixing popular tracks. The self-defined “conscious rapper turned rockstar” is looking to make a push during the winter, dropping his debut project “Revived.” His debut single “Jiggle” is streaming now as Aychef prepares for his hottest winter yet!
Three men, including one who is at large, are facing capital murder charges for fatally shooting a man during a drug deal who previously testified as a state witness in the Amber Guyger murder trial.
Joshua Brown was found shot multiple times at a Dallas apartment complex on Oct. 4. Just 10 days earlier, his emotional testimony on the stand helped secure a guilty verdict against former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. Guyger is now serving a 10 year sentence for fatally shooting her neighbor, Botham Jean, when she entered his apartment by mistake and mistook him for a burglar.
While the slaying was not related to trial, Brown's death set off feverish speculation that he may have been killed for testifying for the prosecution.
Following Brown's death, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson urged people to avoid speculation and said on Twitter that he trusted the Dallas Police Department to conduct a thorough investigation into the man's death.
Investigators later learned Brown's death was the result of a drug deal gone bad.
A grand jury on Thursday returned indictments in Brown's killing against 32-year-old Michael Mitchell, 20-year-old Jacquerious Mitchell and 22-year-old Thaddeous Charles Green, who is at large.
Police said the three men, all residents of Cheneyville, Louisana, were in Dallas to buy drugs from Brown. Jacquerious Mitchell told police that Brown shot him in the chest after Green and Brown began fighting during the drug deal, and that Green then shot Brown twice, Assistant Dallas Police Chief Avery Moore said in October.
Michael and Jacquerious were arrested days after Brown's death and remain in the Dallas County Jail on $500,000 bond each. Police are still looking for Green.
Juice Wrld, the talented young rapper and singer whose career was just taking off, is dead after suffering a seizure in Chicago's Midway airport ... TMZ has learned.
Juice's flight from California landed early Sunday morning and, after deplaning ... witnesses tell us he suffered the seizure while walking through the airport. Law enforcement sources say he was bleeding from the mouth when paramedics got on scene.
We're told Juice -- real name Jarad Anthony Higgins -- was still conscious when he was rushed to a hospital. However, he was pronounced dead a short time later at the hospital. The cause of death is unclear at this time.
Juice Wrld's major-label career was just starting after he almost climbed to the top of the charts in 2018. His first huge hit came in summer 2018 with "Lucid Dreams" ... which made it to #2.
His song, "All Girls Are the Same," also became a hit when Lil Yachty was featured on the remix.
In fact, it was that song's success that drew the attention of Interscope Records ... which signed him to a multi-million dollar contract. One month after releasing his first studio album, "Goodbye & Good Riddance" ... Juice released the 2-track EP, "Too Soon," as a tribute to Lil Peep and XXXTentacion.
Juice also had a feature on Travis Scott's enormous "AstroWorld" album, singing the hook on the track, "No Bystanders."
Higgins' stage name was reportedly inspired by Tupac Shakur's performance in the 1992 film, "Juice."
It’s not hard to distinguish T-Pains voice on any song. Especially the angelic like harmonies on his 2005 hit single “I’m Sprung”. But when I heard Tory Lanez version of this classic banger I was in awe. Maybe due to the fact of how difficult it is to turn a classic song into a new smash hit all over again. This level of excitement led me to discover a young man by the name of Papi Yerr. The producer of Tory Lanez & T-Pain’s Jerry Sprunger. The song begins with a ringing hi hat and follows by a 2005 Busta Rhymes “Touch It” drum pattern and instantly I thought how genius it was to mix that drum pattern with T-Pains harmonious riffs from “I’m Sprung.” When I discovered Papi Yerr I went back and dug deeper into his discography and found out that he also worked with the Florida legend XXXTENTACION & even featured on a song with him entitled “Emoji”. Papi Yerr also produced Love Ya Gyal// Love Sounds ft The-Dream and The Take ft Chris Brown which is on Tory Lanez Chixtape 5. We are looking forward to hearing more from the bubbling producer Jerry Sprunger is a certified Bop!
PHOENIX — A man was caught on video in Phoenix on Friday attempting to steal a wheelchair from a woman while she was still sitting in it.
The incident occurred at 3:40 p.m. inside a light rail car at the Jefferson Street stop, according to authorities.
Authorities also say that the victim screamed for help and fell from her wheelchair.
The suspect then tried to exit the light rail car with the wheelchair, but nearby bystanders came to the aid of the victim and halted the thief before he fled on foot.
Authorities describe the suspect as a white male, age 22-28, 5-foot-6 to 6-foot, 200-215 pounds, dirty-blonde hair, a goatee and is wearing a red hoodie sweatshirt, blue jeans and reindeer slippers.
The victim has not been identified at this time, but authorities said that she only suffered bruising and soreness.
Uncle Murda has been out touring the world hitting the same stage as Janet Jackson, 50 Cent and other stars. Now he is back and ready to release ‘Don’t Cone Outside Volume 2’. He stopped by Sway In The Morning to talk about it.
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