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It's official! Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier will headline UFC 200. This fight replaces Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz as the marquee match up at the big event, which takes place on July 9, 2016 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Because McGregor refused to fulfill his promotional obligations he was taken off of the card.

THE main event for #UFC200: @DC_MMA vs @JonnyBones II
Here. We. Go. https://t.co/vvnbpPFA24

— UFC (@ufc) April 27, 2016

UFC President Dana White made the announcement Wednesday, April 27, on Good Morning America.

It's on!! Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones 2 at #UFC200!!  Tix on sale this Friday https://t.co/HGlgFO78nt

— UFC Europe (@UFCEurope) April 27, 2016

Daniel Cormier (left) and Jon Jones square off at UFC 182

This is the second time Cormier will face Jones.

Bones retained his Light Heavyweight title in their first bout with a unanimous decision victory at UFC 182.

Jones was later stripped of his title after fleeing the scene of an April 2015 hit-and-run accident. On September 29, 2015, Jones plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to up to 18 months of supervised probation.

The UFC immediately reinstated Jones, but while he was gone Cormier had become the new champion by defeating Anthony "Rumble" Johnson via submission at UFC 187.

Jon Jones delivers an elbow to the face of Ovince Saint Preux at UFC 197.

Following a 15-month layoff, Jones, returned to the octagon on April 23, 2016 at UFC 197. He beat Ovince Saint Preux by unanimous decision.

Saint Preux was a late replacement for Cormier, who had suffered a leg injury in training camp.

Jon Jones (@JonnyBones) is "ready to dominated Daniel Cormier" again in #UFC200. @UFC #UFConGMA https://t.co/TjkC3DfSum

— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 27, 2016

"I don't think that in July it should be a problem." - Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) on fight w/Jon Jones. #UFC200 @UFC https://t.co/ULuULWTtTx

— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 27, 2016

Cormier vs Jones 2 should be a great fight. The two men legitimately hate each other and Cormier is obsessed with beating the man who handed him the only loss of his UFC career.

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We've got some clarification on Conor McGregor supposed retirement and his situation with the UFC... we think.

As we previously reported, The Notorious surprised everyone on Tuesday, April 19, by announcing that he was retiring from mixed martial arts at the young age of 27.

I have decided to retire young.
Thanks for the cheese.
Catch ya's later.

— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) April 19, 2016

Following several hours of rampant speculation as to why he would walk away from the sport, specifically the UFC, that has made him a millionaire in a very short period of time, UFC President Dana White appeared on ESPN's Sportscenter to offer an explanation.

He says Mystic Mac refused to show up in Las Vegas to help promote the organization's huge UFC 200 card and and his rematch with Nate Diaz, that was scheduled for July 9, 2016 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. As a result he was taken off of the card.

"Well, what's happened is, we've pulled Conor McGregor from UFC 200," White said on SportsCenter. "And we're working on other fights right now. Conor did not want to come to Las Vegas [this week] to film the commercial or be a part of any of the marketing that we have. He's in Iceland training and [not participating in the marketing] is not possible. This has only happened one other time in UFC history. Nick Diaz didn't show up for his press conference for his fight with Georges St-Pierre and I pulled Nick Diaz from the fight. We've had other instances like this where guys didn't want to do the press conference, [but] you have to. You have to do the press conference, so Conor put out that tweet. Is Conor McGregor retiring? Only he could answer that question."

Translation: The UFC is not about to let an athlete dictate to them when he or she is going to fulfill their contractual obligation to put in the work that is necessary to sell a fight to the public. Either do it their way or kick rocks.

There are rumors that McGregor wanted $10 million to go through with the match and the UFC balked. Dana's explanation may be a smokescreen, but it's all we have to go on at this point.

Chael Sonnen

Former UFC fighter Chael Sonnen believes McGregor overplayed his hand and it blew up in his face.

"I don't have any inside info on this. Just being around the business since the 90's, I know how it works. I know how this whole thing went down. And if I tell you what I think, I guarantee I'm 98 percent right if not 100," Sonnen said on Facebook Live, via MMA Fighting on Tuesday. "Conor had a deal with the UFC. And Conor's now going back and trying to renegotiate and it just doesn't work that way. It can't. You can't write everything down, you can't get your contracts done all the time in this business. There's 500 guys under contract. There's not even that many employees in the UFC. I think there's like 340 employees with 500 fighters. There's 53 shows scheduled for a year that only has 52 weeks in the year. You have to be able to make a phone call, count on whatever the guy says, hang up the phone and that's the end of it. You have to be able to do that.

Conor has a contract, he made a deal, somewhere he didn't sign it. Let the promotion go out, let the money get spent and then realized ‘I've got the upper hand. Now I can come back and renegotiate. Who's going to tell me no when the advertising is already done?' That's what he did. Guaranteed. With no inside knowledge, guaranteed that's what happened," Sonnen continued. "He might really be done...I don't know if he wants to be done. This was a negotiation tool. But he called the bluff of the wrong guys. These are gamblers man, there's rules in Vegas. If you say bet you have a bet. I mean that. You go to a casino, you don't put your money down, you tell the pit boss ‘I want that bet' if he yells the word bet you have a bet. And it goes both ways. If you win it he'll pay you...Anytime you go into a negotiation and you call someone's bluff, man you better mean it because this is what can happen. When you get beat up by a guy, and then you agree to fight him again, and then you pull out, it really doesn't matter after that. And the miscalculation here by Conor is he's not gonna be telling his side. He's gonna be telling his side to whoever.com. He's not gonna be telling it on FS1 or ESPN or anywhere else. Those days are gone. This was a big mistake."

pic.twitter.com/mM3eTkgS8m

— TheShoeGawd™ (@theshoegawd) March 6, 2016

Diaz defeated McGregor in their first bout via submission in round 2 at UFC 196 on March 5th.

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Tyga's latest CD titled The Gold Album: The 18th Dynasty, didn't perform well when it as released on June 30. The oft-delayed project only sold 2,200 copies it's first week out. By comparison the rapper's previous disc Hotel California sold 54,000 first week and is approaching gold status.

Cash Money Records co-owner, Birdman, believes T-Raww purposely torpedoed the new album's sales by allowing it to be streamed for free on Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube, according to TMZ.

Because of the record's poor performance and what Birdman's believes was a stunt by Tyga to leave Cash Money a dud for his last contractually obligated album, so he could sign outright with Lil Wayne, he's not counting the disc and is refusing to let the "Rack City" rapper out of his contract.

Baby is looking to take Tyga to court if need be to enforce the contract. What doesn't make any sense is that The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty was released independently by Tyga's own label, Last Kings Music. That would seem to make Birdman's claims pointless unless he and the rapper had some other kind of deal under the table.

Tyga explained his side of it all via Twitter on July 1.

We guess a judge will eventually sort this mess out.

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KATHMANDU, Nepal (Associated Press) — Sleeping in the streets and shell-shocked, Nepalese cremated the dead and dug through rubble for the missing Sunday, a day after a massive Himalayan earthquake killed more than 2,200 people. Aftershocks tormented them, making buildings sway and sending panicked Kathmandu residents running into the streets.

The cawing of crows mixed with terrified screams as the worst of the aftershocks — magnitude 6.7 — pummeled the capital city. It came as planeloads of supplies, doctors and relief workers from neighboring countries began arriving in this poor Himalayan nation. No deaths or injuries were reported from the early Sunday afternoon quake, but it took an emotional toll.

"The aftershocks keep coming ... so people don't know what to expect," said Sanjay Karki, Nepal country head for global aid agency Mercy Corps. "All the open spaces in Kathmandu are packed with people who are camping outdoors. When the aftershocks come you cannot imagine the fear. You can hear women and children crying."

Saturday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake spread horror from Kathmandu to small villages and to the slopes of Mount Everest, triggering an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts. At least 17 people died there and 61 were injured.

The earthquake centered outside Kathmandu, the capital, was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in over 80 years. It destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods of Kathmandu, and was strong enough to be felt all across parts of India, Bangladesh, China's region of Tibet and Pakistan.

By Sunday afternoon, authorities said at least 2,169 people had died in Nepal alone, with 61 more deaths in India and a few in other neighboring countries. At least 721 of them died in Kathmandu alone, and the number of injured nationwide was upward of 5,000. With search and rescue efforts far from over, it was unclear how much the death toll would rise.

But outside of the oldest neighborhoods, many in Kathmandu were surprised by how few modern structures — the city is largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings — collapsed in the quake. While aid workers cautioned that many buildings could have sustained serious structural damage, it was also clear that the death toll would have been far higher had more buildings caved in.

Aid workers also warned that the situation could be far worse near the epicenter. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered near Lamjung, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu, in the Gorkha district.

Roads to that area were blocked by landslides, hindering rescue teams, said chief district official Prakash Subedi. Teams were trekking through mountain trails to reach remote villages, and helicopters would also be deployed, he said by telephone.

Local aid worker Matt Darvas said in a statement issued by his group, World Vision, that he heard that many remote mountain villages near the epicenter may have been completely buried by rock falls.

The villages "are literally perched on the sides of large mountain faces and are made from simple stone and rock construction," Darvas said. "Many of these villages are only accessible by 4WD and then foot, with some villages hours and even entire days' walks away from main roads at the best of times."

Nepal's worst recorded earthquake in 1934 measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.

With people fearing more quakes, tens of thousands of Nepalese spent Saturday night outside under chilly skies, or in cars and public buses. They were jolted awake by strong aftershocks early Sunday.

"There were at least three big quakes at night and early morning. How can we feel safe? This is never-ending and everyone is scared and worried," said Kathmandu resident Sundar Sah. "I hardly got much sleep. I was waking up every few hours and glad that I was alive."

As day broke, rescuers aided by international teams set out to dig through rubble of buildings — concrete slabs, bricks, iron beams, wood — to look for survivors.

In the Kalanki neighborhood of Kathmandu, police rescuers finally extricated a man lying under a dead body, both of them buried beneath a pile of concrete slabs and iron beams. Before his rescue, his family members stood nearby, crying and praying. Police said the man's legs and hips were totally crushed.

Hundreds of people in Kalanki gathered around the collapsed Lumbini Guest House, once a three-story budget hotel and restaurant frequented by Nepalese. They watched with fear and anticipation as a single backhoe dug into the rubble.

Police officer RP Dhamala, who was coordinating the rescue efforts, said they had already pulled out 12 people alive and six dead. He said rescuers were still searching for about 20 people believed to be trapped, but had heard no cries, taps or noises for a while.

Most areas were without power and water. The United Nations said hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were overcrowded, and running out of emergency supplies and space to store corpses.

Plumes of smoke, meanwhile, rose above the capital as friends, relatives and others gathered by the river to quickly cremate loved ones' remains.

Most shops in Kathmandu were shut; only fruit vendors and pharmacies seemed to be doing business.

"More people are coming now," fruit seller Shyam Jaiswal said. "They cannot cook so they need to buy something they can eat raw."

Jaiswal said stocks were running out, and more shipments were not expected for at least a week, but added, "We are not raising prices. That would be illegal, immoral profit."

The quake will likely put a huge strain on the resources of this impoverished country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, relies heavily on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.

With Kathmandu airport reopened, the first aid flights began delivering aid supplies. The first to respond were Nepal's neighbors — India, China and Pakistan, all of which have been jockeying for influence over the landlocked nation. Nepal remains closest to India, with which it shares deep political, cultural and religious ties.

India suffered its own losses from the quake, with at least 61 people killed there and dozens injured. Sunday's aftershock was also widely felt in the country, and local news reports said metro trains in New Delhi and Kolkata were briefly shut down when the shaking started.

Other countries sending support Sunday included the United Arab Emirates, Germany and France.

After the chaos of Saturday — when little organized rescue and relief was seen — there was more order on Sunday as rescue teams fanned out across the city.

Workers were sending out tents and relief goods in trucks and helicopters and setting up shelters, said disaster management official Rameshwar Dangal. Mukesh Kafle, the head of the Nepal Electricity Authority, said power was restored to main government offices, the airport and hospitals.

Among the destroyed buildings in Kathmandu was the nine-story Dharahara Tower, a Kathmandu landmark built by Nepal's royal rulers as a watchtower in the 1800s and a UNESCO-recognized historical monument. It was reduced to rubble and there were reports of people trapped underneath.

The Kathmandu Valley is listed as a World Heritage site. The Buddhist stupas, public squares and Hindu temples are some of the most well-known sites in Kathmandu, and now some of the most deeply mourned.

Nepali journalist and author Shiwani Neupane tweeted: "The sadness is sinking in. We have lost our temples, our history, the places we grew up."

___

Associated Press writers Muneeza Naqvi and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Associated Press) — With a malevolent laugh, the leader of Nigeria's Islamic extremists tells the world that more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls have all been converted to Islam and married off, dashing hopes for their freedom.

"If you knew the state your daughters are in today, it might lead some of you ... to die from grief," Abubakar Shekau sneers, addressing the parents of the girls and young women kidnapped from a remote boarding school more than six months ago.

In a new video released late Friday night, the Boko Haram leader also denies there is a cease-fire with the Nigerian government and threatens to kill an unidentified German hostage.

"Don't you know we are still holding your German hostage (who is) always crying," he taunts. "If we want, we will hack him or slaughter him or shoot him."

A German development worker was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gombi, a town in Nigeria's northeast Gombi in July. Police reported he was ambushed as he drove to work.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week told reporters in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, that he had no new information about a German abductee.

In the new video, Shekau wears a camouflage tunic and pants and the black and white flag of al-Qaida is by his side. He is flanked by masked and armed fighters standing in front of four military pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. Boko Haram has looted many weapons and vehicles including armored cars from Nigeria's military.

The military has several times claimed to have killed Shekau, and says any new videos are made by a look-alike. But the United States has not removed a $7 million ransom on the head of the extremist leader.

On Oct. 17, Nigeria's military chief, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, announced that Boko Haram had agreed to an immediate cease-fire to end a 5-year insurgency in which thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been driven from homes in northeast Nigeria. And government officials said they expected the Chibok girls to be released any day.

But Shekau denies in the video that he has agreed to any truce and says he is dedicated to fighting and dying a martyr's death to guarantee him a place in paradise.

"You people should understand that we only obey Allah, we tread the path of the Prophet. We hope to die on this path ... Our goal is the garden of eternal bliss," he says.

He said Boko Haram is interested only in "battle, hitting, striking and killing with the gun, which we look forward to like a tasty meal," he said.

The fighting and abductions have continued, with Boko Haram seizing the commercial center of Mubi this week and fighting raging Friday around nearby Vimtin, the village where Badeh was born.

And the only news of the girls has come from Shekau, who appeared to dash hopes that they would be released in an exchange for detained Boko Haram fighters.

"The issue of the girls is long forgotten because I have long ago married them off," Shekau says with a chortle. The extremist fighters have ordered girls to stay out of Western-style schools and get married. Boko Haram is a nickname meaning "Western education is sinful" in the Hausa language.

An earlier video in May showed some of the kidnapped girls, including two explaining why they had converted to Islam. Unconfirmed reports have indicated the girls have been divided into groups and that some have been carried across borders, into Cameroon and Chad. There also have been reports that they were forced to marry fighters who paid a nominal bride price equivalent to $12.

Some 276 girls and young women were kidnapped in the early hours of April 15 from a boarding school in the remote town of Chibok. Dozens escaped on their own in the first couple of days but 219 remain missing.

The plight of the girls attracted international outrage, with demands that Boko Haram free them. The Nigerian government and military's failure to secure their release has brought criticism that President Goodluck Jonathan is uncaring of their fate.

Shekau in August announced that Boko Haram wanted to establish an Islamic caliphate, along the lines of the IS group in Syria and Iraq. Fleeing residents have reported that hundreds of people are being detained for infractions of the extremists' version of strict Shariah law in several towns and villages under their control.

Shekau's video announcement further discredits the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner who on Thursday formally announced his candidacy for elections on Feb. 14, 2015, in Africa's most populous nation. Nigeria's 160 million people are divided almost equally between Muslims who dominate the north and Christians in the south. The West African nation is the biggest oil producer on the continent and has its biggest economy.

___

Faul reported from Johannesburg.

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(Reuters) - Nigeria aims to secure the release by Tuesday of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist Boko Haram militants, two senior government sources said on Saturday, although they declined to comment on where this handover would take place.

Nigeria's armed forces chief, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, announced on Friday a deal with Boko Haram for a ceasefire that would enable the release of the girls, whose abduction while taking exams in the remote northeastern town of Chibok in April caused international shock and outrage.

The announcement came a day before a rally of supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja at which either Jonathan or his vice president, Namadi Sambo, ie expected to announce his candidacy for February 2015 elections.

The timing, coupled with a history of abortive government attempts at truce deals with Boko Haram and military claims to have rescued some girls that proved false, mean Nigerians are likely to greet the newly reported breakthrough with scepticism.

"I can confirm that FG (the federal government) is working hard to meet its own part of the agreement so that the release of the abductees can be effected either on Monday or latest Tuesday next week," one source told Reuters by telephone.

Officials at the presidency and military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Boko Haram has also not yet commented on the reported truce. The group's sole means of conveying messages are videotaped speeches by a man claiming to be Abubakar Shekau, its leader whom the military last year said it had killed.

The second government source involved in the talks was more cautious, stressing that there might have to be more discussions in Nigeria and the Chadian capital N'djamena -- the nearest non-Nigerian major city to the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency -- before all the details are ironed out.

"We have confidence in those we are negotiating with but we are still doing it with considerable caution. Boko Haram has grown into such an amorphous entity that any splinter group could come up disowning the deal," he said.

"(But) we believe we are talking to the right people."

CONFUSION OVER BOKO HARAM LEADERSHIP

Boko Haram is believed to divided into several factions that loosely cooperate with each other, and it is unclear with which faction the government has been negotiating. It says the talks were held with a formerly unknown militant called Danladi Admadu, who alleges he is the group's "secretary general".

Underlining the uncertainty over chain of command in Boko Haram, Nigeria's military said at the end of last month that a man who had been posing as Shekau in the group's growing number of videos had been killed in clashes over the town of Konduga.

Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly as "Western education is sinful", has massacred thousands in a struggle to carve an Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria, whose southern half is mainly Christian or animist in faith.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and its oil-rich economy is the continent's largest.

The schoolgirls' abduction stunned the world, spurred a global Twitter campaign to get them rescued and heaped pressure on Jonathan's administration to do more to protect civilians in the northeast where Boko Haram's insurgency is focused.

Several rounds of negotiations with the jihadist movement have been pursued in recent years but they have never yielded calm, partly because of Boko Haram's internal divisions.

Since the girls' kidnapping, the Nigerian military has twice asserted that it rescued some or all of the girls, only to have to backtrack hours later.

At Saturday's rally in Abuja, many of President Jonathan's supporters wrapped themselves in the white and green of Nigeria's flag and sang and danced under a banner reading "We Love You Goodluck Jonathan. Our support is 100 percent."

Two candidates for the main opposition coalition, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, have declared their candidacy against Jonathan.

(Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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A pro-Russia fighter holds up a toy found among the debris at the crash site of MH17.

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(Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russia and pro-Moscow rebels on Saturday of destroying evidence to cover up their guilt in the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner that has accelerated a showdown between the Kremlin and Western powers.

As militants kept international monitors away from wreckage and scores of bodies festered for a third day, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the rebels to cooperate and insisted that a U.N.-mandated investigation must not leap to conclusions. Moscow denies involvement and has pointed a finger at Kiev's military.

The Dutch government, whose citizens made up more than half the 298 aboard MH17 from Amsterdam, said it was "furious" at the manhandling of corpses strewn for miles over open country and asked Ukraine's president for help to bring "our people" home.

After U.S. President Barack Obama said the loss of the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight showed it was time to end the conflict, Germany called it Moscow's last chance to cooperate.

European powers seemed to swing behind Washington's belief Russia's separatist allies were to blame. That might speed new trade sanctions on Moscow, without waiting for definitive proof.

"He has one last chance to show he means to help," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said after a telephone call to Putin.

Britain, which lost 10 citizens, said Prime Minister David Cameron agreed with Rutte that the European Union, warier than Washington of hurting its own economy by imposing sanctions, should reconsider its approach due to evidence of rebel guilt. On Friday, Cameron had urged caution before an investigation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most powerful figure in the EU, spoke to Putin on Saturday, urging his cooperation. Merkel's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper: "Moscow may have a last chance now to show that it really is seriously interested in a solution."

"Now is the moment for everyone to stop and think to themselves what might happen if we don't stop the escalation."

Germany, reliant like other EU states on Russian energy and more engaged in Russian trade than the United States, has been reluctant to escalate a confrontation with Moscow that has revived memories of the Cold War. But with military action not seen as an option, economic leverage is a vital instrument.

RUSSIAN RETALIATION

Russia said on Saturday it was retaliating against sanctions imposed by the United States last week, before the air disaster, by barring entry to unnamed Americans and warned of a "boomerang effect" on U.S. business. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did agree in a phone call to try and get both sides in Ukraine to reach a consensus on peace.

Driving home its assertion that the Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian SA-11 radar-guided missile, Ukraine's Western-backed government said it had "compelling evidence" the battery was not just brought in from Russia but manned by three Russian citizens who had now taken the truck-mounted system back over the border.

The prime minister, denying Russian suggestions that Kiev's forces had fired a missile, said only a "very professional" crew could have brought down the speeding jetliner from 33,000 feet - not "drunken gorillas" among the ill-trained insurgents who want the Russian-speaking east to be annexed by Moscow.

DNR gunmen stop @OSCE on road to site of flight #MH17. Finally let them out, "but only on the road, not the field." pic.twitter.com/n2XM4MZkZ4

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 19, 2014

Fighting flared in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. The government said it was pressing its offensive in the east.

Observers from Europe's OSCE security agency visited part of the crash site near the village of Hrabove for a second day on Saturday and again found their access hampered by armed men from the forces of the self-declared People's Republic of Donetsk. An OSCE official said, however, they saw more than on Friday.

At one point, a Reuters correspondent heard a senior rebel tell the OSCE delegation they could not approach the wreckage and would simply be informed in due course of an investigation conducted by the separatists. However, fighters later let them visit an area where one of the airliner's two engines lay.

"The terrorists, with the help of Russia, are trying to destroy evidence of international crimes," the Ukrainian government said in a statement. "The terrorists have taken 38 bodies to the morgue in Donetsk," it said, accusing people with "strong Russian accents" of threatening to conduct autopsies.

Ukraine's prime minister said armed men barred government experts from collecting evidence.

RETRIEVING REMAINS

In the regional capital Donetsk, the prime minister of the separatist authorities told a news conference that Kiev was holding up the arrival of international experts whose mission to probe the cause - and potentially blame - for the disaster was authorized on Friday by the United Nations Security Council.

And contrary to earlier statements by the rebels, Alexander Borodai said they had not found the black box flight recorders. He said rebels were avoiding disturbing the area.

"There's a grandmother. A body landed right in her bed. She says 'please take this body away'. But we cannot tamper with the site," Borodai said. "Bodies of innocent people are lying out in the heat. We reserve the right, if the delay continues ... to begin the process of taking away the bodies. We ask the Russian Federation to help us with this problem and send their experts."

Midday temperatures are around 30 Celsius (85 Fahrenheit).

At Hrabove, one armed man from the separatist forces told Reuters that bodies had already been taken away in trucks. Another said that immediately after the crash people had looted valuables. But fighters and local people say they have been doing their best to collect evidence and preserve human remains.

As the stench of death began to pervade the area after Thursday's crash, correspondents watched rescue workers carry bodies across the fields and gather remains in black sacks.

Meeting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said: "We are already shocked by the news we got today of bodies being dragged around, of the site not being treated properly ... People are angry, furious."

The Ukrainian security council in Kiev said staff of the emergencies ministry had found 186 bodies and had checked some 18 sq.km (7 square miles) of the scattered 25-sq.km crash site. But the workers were not free to conduct a normal investigation.

"The fighters have let the Emergencies Ministry workers in there but they are not allowing them to take anything from the area," security council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "The fighters are taking away all that has been found."

Malaysia, whose national airline has been battered by its second major disaster this year, said it was "inhumane" to bar access to the site around the village of Hrabove, near the city Donetsk, but said Russia was doing its "level best" to help.

A team of Malaysian experts flew in to Kiev on Saturday and experts from Interpol are due there on Sunday to help with the identification of victims. Dutch, U.S. and a host of other specialists are being lined up to help in the investigation.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said before flying to Kiev it would be "inhumane" not to have access and said Moscow was helping: "They are trying their level best to assist Malaysia to ensure we have a safe site," Liow said.

As tales of personal grief unfolded, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak revealed his own family was involved - his 83-year-old step-grandmother had been aboard the flight.

The United Nations said 80 children were aboard. The deadliest attack on a commercial airliner, follows the disappearance of flight MH370 in March with 239 passengers.

The company has defended its use of the route, 1,000 feet above the area close by Ukraine due to the hostilities. Some airlines had been avoiding the area, though many others were flying over. The issue has raised questions of liability for the deaths and damage and about international supervisors' roles.

The scale of the disaster could prove a turning point for international pressure to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, which has killed hundreds since pro-Western protests toppled the Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February and Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula a month later.

SEE THE FULL LIST OF PASSENGERS AND CREW MEMBERS

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Elizabeth Piper in Kiev, Peter Graff in Donetsk and Siva Govindasamy and Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Officials Fear MH17 Site Now Tampered by Rebels

Freelance journalist describes MH17 site

Gunfire near MH17 crash site

Inside the MH17 crash site

Ukraine P.M. points finger at Russia

Photo sources: Reuters, Associated Press, BBC

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Associated Press) — Boko Haram militants dressed as soldiers slaughtered at least 200 civilians in three villages in northeastern Nigeria and the military failed to intervene even though it was warned that an attack was imminent, witnesses said on Thursday.

A community leader who witnessed the killings on Monday said residents of the Gwoza local government district in Borno state had pleaded for the military to send soldiers to protect the area after they heard that militants were about to attack, but help didn't arrive. The killings occurred in Danjara, Agapalwa, and Antagara.

"We all thought they were the soldiers that we earlier reported to that the insurgents might attack us," said the community leader who escaped the massacre and fled to Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

The militants arrived in Toyota Hilux pickup trucks — commonly used by the military — and told the civilians they were soldiers and that they had come "to protect you all," the same tactic used by the group when they kidnapped more than 300 girls from a school in the town of Chibok on April 15.

After people gathered in the center on the orders of the militants, "they began to shout 'Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar,' then they began to fire at the people continuously for a very long time until all who had gathered were all dead," said the witness, who didn't want to be named out of fear for his safety. Allahu akbar means God is great.

The slaughter was confirmed by both Mohammed Ali Ndume, a senator representing Borno whose hometown is Gwoza, and by a top security official in Maiduguri who insisted on anonymity because he isn't allowed to speak to the media.

It took a few days for survivors to get word of the massacres to Maiduguri because travel on the roads is extremely dangerous and phone connections are poor or nonexistent.

Ndume said the military has assured the Borno state governor that they will send soldiers to the area immediately.

"It is sad that we have to wait till now that people are being killed for government to take action," said Ndume. "Soldiers of the Nigerian army have been overstretched in both human and material capacity."

Calls made to Defense Headquarters spokesman Chris Olukolade's mobile phone didn't connect. An email sent to him seeking comment wasn't answered. Calls made to presidential spokesman Reuben Abati also didn't connect, and he didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The community leader said some of the others who escaped are trapped in the mountainous area. "They still see the gunmen going about attacking villages and hamlets by setting them on fire," he said.

He said managed to survive because "I was going round to inform people that the soldiers had come and they wanted to address us." As people were fleeing, other gunmen lurked outside the villages on motorcycles and mowed them down, he said.

In another incident, militants attacked Alagarno, a village near Chibok where the girls were kidnapped, and destroyed it, according to Pogu Bitrus, a Chibok community. People heard gunshots as the fighters were approaching and were able to flee, he said.

Nigeria's military has insisted that the big influx of troops and a year-old state of emergency in Borno and two other states has the insurgents on the run. But soldiers have told The Associated Press they are outgunned and outnumbered by the insurgents, don't have bullet-proof vests, are not properly paid and have to forage for food.

The villages attacked on Monday are in the Gwoza local government, a regional political center whose emir was killed in a Boko Haram ambush on his convoy last week. Emirs are religious and traditional rulers who have been targeted for speaking out against Boko Haram's extremism.

Borno Gov. Kashim Shettima traveled on Saturday to Gwoza to pay his respects to the fallen emir and was quoted as saying it was a terrifying ride. A local journalist who was in the convoy that was escorted by 150 soldiers counted at least 16 towns and villages that were deserted along the 135 kilometer (85 mile) route, according to the local media report.

Boko Haram, which wants to establish Islamic state in Nigeria, has been taking over villages in the northeast, killing and terrorizing civilians and political leaders as they make a comeback from a year-long military offensive. Thousands of people have been killed in the 5-year-old insurgency, more than 2,000 so far just this year, and an estimated 750,000 Nigerians have been driven from their homes.

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Beyoncé's new surprise self titled album is set to blow away the competition. The project sold an incredible 550,000 copies in just two days, according to Billboard. It moved 430,000 units on Friday (December 13), the first day of it's release, and then another 120,000 on Saturday.

The album will be the singer's fifth consecutive disc to hit No. 1 in it's opening week. With sales expected to soar over 600,000, the new album will be the highest debut by a female artist on the Billboard 200 since Taylor Swift's Red, which sold 1.2 million copies in 2012.

**UPDATE**

Apple has released the numbers for BEYONCÉ the album, and they're insane.  The project sold 828,773 copies on iTunes in just its first three days. 

617,000 of those downloads came from the United States.

Those numbers shatter the previous record held by Taylor Swift's Red, which sold 465,000 on iTunes in the week ending Oct. 28, 2012.

Really impressive numbers, congrats B!

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Through a unique marketing strategy and a change in rules by the Recording Industry of America, Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail becomes the first album to be certified platinum on the day of it's release.

Jay teamed up with Samsung, who bought 1 million copies of the album and gave them away on the 4th of July to Samsung Galaxy users who downloaded the Magna Carta app.

The RIAA in turn changed their longstanding rule that albums could not be certified platinum until 30 days after their release date. Magna Carta becomes the Roc Nation CEO's 12th platinum album.

The album was officially released to the general public today. Billboard is projecting it will sell between 350,000 - 400,000 copies in it's opening week, which will place it atop the Billboard 200 chart and give Jay his 13th No. 1 album.

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Tyler, The Creator's latest album, Wolf, checks in at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 after selling 89,000 copies it's first week out. It's the best opening week for the Odd Future rapper. His 2011 album, Goblin, sold 45,000 it's first week in stores.

Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience has slowed a bit in the sales department, but still moved 139,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. Good enough to claim the top spot on the charts for the third consecutive week. The album has now sold a total of 1.43 million copies.

Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being II falls 3 slots from the previous week to land at No. 5. It sold 68,000 copies.

The Band Perry slides into the No. 2 slot after selling after selling 129,000 copies of Pioneer. Blake Shelton's Based On a True Story finished fourth with 82,000 units sold.

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Video And Pics After The Jump

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A deadly fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people attending a university party and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said. It appeared to be the deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Witnesses said that a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the fire.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria, at the southern tip of Brazil near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless, young male partygoers joined firefighters in wielding axes and sledgehammers, pounding at windows and walls to break through to those trapped inside. Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately trying to find help — others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.

"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.

Silva added that firefighters and ambulances responded quickly after the fire broke out, but that it spread too fast inside the packed club for them to help.

The death toll is rising in the Brazilian nightclub fire as firefighters search the charred remains of the establishment.(Photo: Agencia RBS, AFP/Getty Images)

Michele Pereira, another survivor, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage and that the fire broke out after band members lit flares.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward. At that point the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak but in a matter of seconds it spread," Pereira said.

Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha earlier that the total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured. Officials earlier said 180 were killed.

Rodrigo Moura, identified by the newspaper Diario de Santa Maria as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. "I just got out because I'm very strong," he said.

Relatives of victims react to news of the fire at a nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil on Sunday.(Photo: Lauro Alves, AFP/Getty Images)

The fire led President Dilma Roussef to cancel a series of meetings she had scheduled at a summit of Latin American and European leaders in Chile's capital of Santiago, and was headed to Santa Maria, according to the Brazilian foreign ministry.

"It is a tragedy for all of us. I am not going to continue in the meeting (in Chile) for very clear reasons," she said.

"Sad Sunday", tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004. Seven members the band were sentenced to prison for setting off the blaze.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

Source: Associated Press

AP News Coverage

Raw AP footage

Brazil nightclub fire: footage of aftermath in Santa Maria (In Portuguese)

Al Jazeera English news coverage

CNN coverage

Pic Sources: USA Today and CNN

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Lil Wayne officially surpassed a million records sold of Tha Carter IV this week and will hold onto the top spot on the Billboard Top 200.

TC4 moved 219,000 copies this week. A 77% drop from the 964,000 moved a week prior, but still far ahead of the nearest competitor.

Adele's 21 holds down the (No. 2) slot, moving up a notch from her 3rd place finish last week with 119,000 records sold.

Jay-Z and Kanye West comes in at (No. 6) with just under 149,000 copies of Watch The Throne sold.

50 Cent proved again last night that he is Mr. International as he rocked a crowd of at least 70,000-200,000 depending on who you ask, at the Casablanca Festival in Morocco.

MTV writer Shaheem Reid was at the show and this is how he described the hysteria via twitter.

"Just getting back to the telly. @50cent killed Morocco. 65k at the venue. At least 5k were waiting on our cars when we left." he wrote. "Kids kept jumping on the Benz with @50cent in it. They were on the roof and the hood. They jumped on the roof Yayo's van. Major love. One kid was hanging on the roof of the van yelling "50 Cent is my life!"... The show was a zoo too."

Both 50 Cent and DJ Whoo Kid estimated the crowd to be as large as 200,000.

"I'm leaving morocco I performed in front of 200,000 people last night. Believe it or not I'm gonna feed a billion people #SK," 50 wrote on twitter.

 
Fif has also been making news for an enormous humanitarian effort he's about to undertake. He announced last week via twitter that he has a goal to feed over 1 billion people in Africa over the next five years.

50's twitter followers have been support the movement by adding #SK, short for "Street King" at the end of their tweets trying to draw awareness to the cause.

Nicki Minaj's "Pink Friday" album continues to amaze two months after it's release.

It now claims the record for most consecutive weeks in the top ten by a female rap album in Billboard album chart with fourteen and counting.

Of course Nicki was more than happy to tweet the good news to her followers.

Next up for the Young Money princess are dates on the road with Lil Wayne. The two play twenty four dates across the U.S. on the 'I Am Music II' tour starting March 18 in Buffalo, NY.

Video After The Jump

Anowa Adjah aka "The Nigerian Powerhouse" is showing that women with a larger body need not feel ashamed of their weight.

The fitness guru proves that females over 200 pounds can be just as sexy and physically fit as ladies with smaller body types.

Check Anowa out as she works out, displaying her incredible flexibility.