AWARENESS: JAY-Z & LEBRON JAMES SUPPORT MENTORING IN DALLAS

LeBron James and Jay-Z pose for a photo with some mentoring program participants at the ‘Sprite Two Kings Dallas Elevators Mentoring’ Event on Saturday (Feb. 13) in Dallas, Texas.

The program was developed to give students an opportunity to elevate their lives, through a dynamic curriculum and a series of unique professional experiences. More info at their official site.

RANDOM PICS: NBA CELEBRITY ALL-STAR GAME IN DALLAS

Former Bball player Magic Johnson and rapper Drake pose during the NBA All-Star celebrity game held at the Dallas Convention Center on Friday (February 12) in Dallas, Texas. Both were Coaches at the star-packed event. More photos and info below.

Jessica Simpson “Almost Puked” During Runway Debut

Despite having lived a good deal of her life under the scrutiny of photographers and TV cameras, Jessica Simpson confesses that she felt so nervous walking the runway at a Paris fashion show last fall that she nearly spilled the contents of her stomach right there and then.

“I almost puked,” the Texas belle revealed at a press conference on Friday morning to promote her upcoming VH1 show, The Price of Beauty, for which the runway segment was filmed. “I was so nervous to walk out there and be judged,” especially with “people who just eat salad.”

And while Jess didn’t upchuck in that particular instance, she confessed, “I throw up in a couple episodes.”

Jeez… We can’t wait.

Said Jessica of the personal journey she takes during the first season of Price of Beauty, “it changed me completely. I didn’t always have the inner confidence. The journey was finding what was beautiful inside me.”

And after her experience on the show, which looks at how other cultures view beauty, Jessica declared, “any man I find — they’re going to be darn lucky!”

On the general obsession with appearances, Jess said, “beauty is an easy thing to be obsessed with in our society [because of] the pressures put on women.”

And when asked her thoughts on cosmetic surgery, the singer diplomatically explained, “I’m not against plastic surgery if it’s for a woman to have confidence. We learn a lot about surgery in Brazil — the largest for butt implants, definitely for plastic surgery.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Fort Hood Shootings: What You Should Know

Suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people on Thursday.
By Gil Kaufman

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Fort Hood


Photo: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images

Two days after the horrific shootings at the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas, details continue to emerge about the suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist opened fire on his fellow soldiers Thursday, according to reports, killing 13 and wounding at least 30 before being shot four times by Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer employed by the Army, who many are praising as a hero who saved countless lives by stopping the rampage.

Hasan, whose job it was to counsel physically and psychologically wounded soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was described by those who knew him as a calm, gentle person, but one whose anger was stoked by alleged harassment from some of his Army peers over his Muslim faith.

Some facts about the shooting:

» Hasan was born in Arlington, Virginia, to Palestinian parents who ran a restaurant and bar in nearby Roanoke, and later owned a small grocery store. He is unmarried and has no children. The psychiatrist, who is still in a coma in a hospital following the rampage, reportedly opened fire with a handgun at the Solider Readiness Processing Center, where more than 300 unarmed soldiers were lining up for vaccines and eye tests, firing more than 100 rounds before being taken down by Munley and her partner. He reported for duty to Fort Hood in July 2008 after finishing a psychiatric fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007. He was reportedly distraught over a pending deployment to the Afghanistan war front.

» Munley, 34, and her partner, responded to the chaotic scene within three minutes of a report of shots fired. Described in reports as a petite mother of two teenage daughters, she is credited with helping to stop the five-minute rampage with her decisive action. First to arrive on the scene, according to Time magazine, she engaged Hasan as he fired shots at her and brought him down using tactics learned following the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shootings. In that massacre, the gunman was able to continue firing because first responders were waiting for additional backup before engaging the shooter. CNN reported that Munley and partner Mark Todd pulled up alongside the building where the shooting was taking place and stood 15 yards away from Hasan as he calmly fired on his fellow officers. Todd said he yelled for Hasan to stop and drop his weapon, at which point the psychiatrist turned and began firing at the police. Both Munley and Todd took cover and fired at Hasan, hitting him four times as he returned fire. Munley was wounded in the arm and leg. At press time, she was in stable condition after undergoing surgery on Friday to repair damage to an artery.

» According to multiple reports, Hasan was the proud eldest son of Palestinian immigrants who faced harassment over his Muslim faith, but was not shy about sharing his political opinions in a strident manner that some felt was inappropriate for an Army major. During a 2007 presentation for an environmental health class, a colleague told Bloomberg news that while other students gave presentations on the environmental effects of dry-cleaning chemicals and mold, Hasan argued that Muslims were being targeted by the U.S. anti-terror campaign. He reportedly told classmates that he was “a Muslim first and an American second.” While studying at Walter Reed and receiving a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry, Hasan suffered “difficulties” that required some counseling and extra supervision, according to The New York Times. Six months ago, he came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings that referred to suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on hand grenades to save the lives of comrades. Officials were not able to confirm that Hasan was the author of the postings and no formal investigation was opened.

» Thursday’s attack was not the first incident of its kind in Killeen. In September 2008, 22-year-old Specialist Jody Michael Wirawan shot and killed an officer and then shot and killed himself when police arrived. And, on October 16, 1991, George Jo Hennard drove his pickup truck through the window of a cafeteria in Killeen and fatally shot 23 people and injured 20 more before killing himself, according to ABC News.

» Fort Hood is a U.S. Army base located near Killeen, Texas, that serves a population of more than 300,000 soldiers, officers, family members and retirees. It is one of the largest U.S. military installations in the world, covering more than 335 square miles, making it the only post in the U.S. capable of stationing and training two whole armored divisions. Construction began on the site in 1942 and its primary mission today is to maintain a state of readiness for U.S. combat missions. The majority of Fort Hood’s population is between the ages of 25 and 34. According to Icasulaties.org, more soldiers from Fort Hood have died from Iraq (483) and Afghanistan (31) than any other U.S. military post.

It should be noted that the shootings at Fort Hood are an ongoing investigation and many facts remain unclear. For more information on related issues, such as depression (see HalfOfUs.org) and cultural tolerance (see Teaching Tolerance), and for a wealth of information on similar topics, see Think.MTV.com.

‘Allahu Akbar!’: The Wingnut Right Has the Jihad Nugget They’ve Been Hoping For

The Associated Press is reporting that, according to Ft. Hood’s commander, witnesses to yesterday’s massacre say Maj. Nidal Hasan was shouting “God is great” in Arabic as he was firing on his fellow soldiers.

FORT HOOD, Texas – Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — an Arabic phrase for “God is great!” — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday.

And CNN has what it claims is security-camera footage of Hasan in a convenience store wearing Islamic garb on the day of the shooting:

If true, the above would seem to confirm what many on the wingnut right seemed to positively hope was the case last night—that Hasan’s rampage was an act of Islamist terrorism, as opposed to the result of a breakdown or mental illness or the garden-variety insane rage and alienation that has inspired what seems like a mass killing every other month. We all know what first came to mind when Hasan’s name was released yesterday. But we suppose a handy guide for finding the line that divides the Glenn Becks of the world from the rest of us is whether you reacted with dread at the idea that it may have been related, however murkily, to Islamism, or if you were filled with smug delight.

Here’s some smug delight, from a horrible woman (via the Awl):

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Fort Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me “Islamophobic,” call me “psychic,” call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent, an American citizen who is an Army-trained physician-a psychiatrist to be exact-as well as a religious Muslim.

And here, from the Corner’s Victor Davis Hanson, is a new meme watch: When a Christian or a Jew or any other kind of regular American blows a gasket and kills a bunch of people, there are a variety of reasons we can investigate as to the potential cause. When a Muslim does it, it’s a personal jihad:

[I call it] al Qaedism, or the spontaneous rage of disaffected Muslims, who connect their own failures in some sense to generic radical Islamist sentiments, and act out that anger by running over the innocent (San Francisco or North Carolina), shooting Jews (the LAX or Seattle attacks), or shooting up malls or sniping. These are of course different from but in addition to the 24 organized plots that have been broken up since 9/11, four of them this year alone.

Maybe Hasan killed all those people because he thought Allah wanted him to. Maybe he did it because he wanted to exact revenge for perceived slights. Maybe he was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought they were lizard people. Maybe all of the above. We don’t know. But if it was Islamism, this is the lesson that Hanson and his partisans want to take from it:

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate “fear and mistrust” of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

A saner approach. No one, anywhere, has ever disputed that there is a small minority of Muslims—or any religious sect, for that matter—who subscribe to violent and extremist religious views. Make no mistake, this is an argument for legitimate fear and mistrust of “Muslims in general.” Expect to see more like it.

Diora Baird Hotness Reminder

Model and actress, but mostly model, Diora Baird is featured today for no other reason than being awesome. Ok, if you’ve seen her movies then you know she’s not really cast for her acting ability, but more so for her natural and physical gifted-ness. Is that a word? Anyway, you may recongize her from “Wedding Crashers” or “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Diora Baird is hot, and she’s not done any photo shoots as of late, so this is just more of an hotness reminder. And although she is a looker, she is  not stupid (anymore):

“Everybody has a card that says they’re a producer. And I learned very quickly that if a producer wants to have dinner with me, he doesn’t want to cast me, he wants to f- me. If he wants to call my manager and set up a meeting, then that’s another thing. You know what I mean?”

More Diora Baird Photos!

The Quaids In Texas: “Nobody Knows What To Make Of Them”

Headline-making couple Randy and Evi Quaid are strolling around the small town of Marfa, Texas seemingly without a care in the world – despite the fact that they are set to be extradited to California after failing to appear in Santa Barbara court THREE times.

See New Photos Of The Quaids In Texas

read more

Mass Shooting Reported at Ft. Hood

An Army soldier killed twelve people and wounded 31 at the Ft. Hood Army post in Killeen, Texas. The shooter has been killed, but two suspected conspirators, also soldiers, are in custody.

We’re getting some clarity: At a press conference minutes ago, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone told reporters that a soldier entered the post’s soldier readiness facility, where servicemembers preparing to deploy go for last-minute medical check-ups and the like, at approximately 1:30 p.m. and opened fire with two handguns, killing twelve and wounding 31. The assailant was killed. According to eyewitness accounts, Lt. Gen. Cone said, two other soldiers were also involved in the shooting. Both men have been located and detained as suspects.

“The situation is ongoing, although I think we have positive news that we’re very close to a resolution,” he said.

UPDATE: Fox News is reporting that Hasan was an “Army mental health professional,” as is the Associated Press: “A defense official speaking on condition of anonymity says Hasan was a mental health professional—an Army psychologist or psychiatrist. It was not known whether he was treating people at the base.”

And Texas Rep. John Carter, who represents the district in which Ft. Hood is located, also told the network that he’s been told by sources at Ft. Hood that the two suspects have been released, but that authorities are looking for yet another suspected conspirator who’s still at large.

UPDATE: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison just said on Fox, citing officers she’s been speaking to, that the shooter “was going to deploy to Iraq, and I think there was some measure of being concerned or upset about that.” She said “it’s not totally clear” that the two other suspects “were a part of this plot.”

UPDATE: ABC News has identified the shooter as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan. If it’s true that he had two other soldiers assisting him, we can’t help but think of a recent rash of killings in Afghanistan involving Taliban fighters infiltrating Afghan police units and killing U.S. and British soldiers. On the other hand, the FBI is saying there’s “no terrorism nexus.”

UPDATE: Here’s Obama’s statement on the shootings: “It’s difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.”

UPDATE: “The individuals involved were all U.S. soldiers,” according to an Army spokesman giving a news conference right now. The primary shooter was armed with two handguns.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that twelve victims have been killed, and that one of the shooters has died as well. Unclear whether the gunman is included in that figure of twelve fatalities. Barack Obama is expected to publicly address the shootings shortly.

Twenty people were wounded, though that number is likely to increase. It’s unclear whether the victims were soldiers or not. Fox News has confirmed that one suspect is still at large, and is speculating based on unconfirmed reports that a third is on the loose as well. Which would seem to indicate a coordinated operation.

UPDATE: KWTX-TV in Waco is reporting that the death toll may have risen from seven to nine. CNN also says that “as many as nine” have been killed.

UPDATE: The Killeen Daily Herald is reporting, on Twitter as well as in a reporter interview on Fox, that the suspect in custody is a 40-year-old male. Fox News, citing FBI sources, says “authorities believe there is no terrorism nexus” in the attack. “It’s not being discussed.”

UPDATE: Here’s Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) on MSNBC, saying that one shooter attacked a processing center where soldiers were being prepared to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and that 30 people were wounded.

UPDATE: A local news station is reporting that one of the shooters, an Army major, has been wounded but is still at large.

From KCEN-TV in Waco, Texas:

Police surrounded the 42006 building, said to be used for traumatic brain injuries, on Fort Hood and fired shots at a male suspect in an Army uniform with a Major rank. The suspect was injured, but has now run in to another building.

Reports say the shooter had a high-powered rifle and was aiming to kill.

Fox is reporting that the shooters attacked three separate locations on the post at the same time. According to the Austin-American Statesman, the shooting started at 1:30 p.m.—one gunman was at a “personnel and medical processing center” and another shooter was at a theater. The way this is shaping up, it certainly looks like a deliberate, coordinated attack. Though we can certainly imagine a lot of confusion in the aftermath of an event like this as to who was a shooter and who was just a soldier shooting back. And if one shooter got away after the initial incident and started firing from another location, it could have led to the misapprehension that there were three attackers when there were in fact two. There was a graduation ceremony of some sort taking place on the post, according to Fox, which drew a lot of civilians there today.

The Ft. Hood web site currently bears the message “LOCKDOWN: Ft. Hood is closed….” The site’s down, but here’s a screengrab:

A Ft. Hood soldier was killed in Afghanistan last month by an improvised bomb. And Killeen was the site of a massacre at Luby’s cafeteria in 1991, when a gunman drove his truck into a restaurant and fatally shot 23 people before committing suicide.

Jay-Z Announces 2010 North American Tour Dates

Young Jeezy will open; tickets go on sale November 13.
By MTV News staff

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Jay-Z


Photo: Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Mere hours after Jay-Z rocked the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin, he announced the North American dates for his 2010 BP3 Tour via a press release from promoter Live Nation. The tour will begin on February 22 in Houston, with more dates to be announced soon.

Young Jeezy is scheduled to open all dates on the tour, tickets for which go on sale beginning November 13.

The first leg of the tour is still under way, with dates in Fresno, California (Saturday), Los Angeles (Sunday), Austin, Texas (Tuesday) and Champaign, Illinois (November 12).

The second leg will make stops in Dallas; New Orleans; Atlanta; Greensboro, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Pittsburgh; St. Louis; Indianapolis; Denver; Los Angeles; and more, according to the press release. Additional day of show and on-sale information will be announced shortly for stops in East Rutherford, New Jersey; Uniondale, New York; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Detroit.

Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets beginning Tuesday through Citi’s Private Pass Program, and will also have access to VIP Ticket Packages.

Jay-Z’s 2010 North American tour dates, according to Live Nation:
» — 2/22 Houston @ Toyota Center
» — 2/23 Dallas @ American Airlines Center
» — 2/25 New Orleans @ New Orleans Arena
» — 2/27 Atlanta @ Philips Arena
» — 2/28 Greensboro, North Carolina @ Greensboro Coliseum Complex
» — 3/3 Washington, DC @ Verizon Center
» — 3/7 Norfolk, Virginia @ Scope Arena
» — 3/11 Boston @ TD Garden
» — 3/16 Pittsburgh @ Mellon Arena
» — 3/19 St. Louis @ Scottrade Center
» — 3/20 Indianapolis @ Conseco Fieldhouse
» — 3/22 Denver @ Pepsi Center
» — 3/24 San Jose, California @ HP Pavilion
» — 3/26 Los Angeles @ Staples Center

Related Videos

• MTV News Extended Play: Jay-Z

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• Jay-Z Answers The Call At September 11 Benefit Show

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• Jay-Z

Chris Brown: Graffiti Drops One Week Early!

Chris Brown’s album Graffiti is now set to be released on December 8th (a week before its original drop date). The release comes on the heels of his upcoming “Fan Appreciation Tour” which begins November 14 in Houston, Texas.

Below are some images from Chris’s upcoming music video “Crawl” featuring sexy R&B singer Cassie. The vid was directed by Joseph Kahn and was shot in Los Angeles.

If you missed it, check out Chris’ Graffiti album cover!

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