If you are an online poker player, you surely would have come across these companies, pokerstars.com, fulltilt.com and absolutepoker.com. They are three of the biggest online poker sites in the world. If you visit any of these sites today, you might be wondering, what is happening to them?

A visit to pokerstars.com, fulltiltpoker.com and absolutepoker.com reveals a message from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice. The message says the domain has been seized for various offenses by the site.

Federal prosecutors have issued indictments against the owners of the three online poker sites. Isai SCheinberg, founder of Pokerstars, and Raymond Bitar, founder of fulltiltpoker, and nine other people are being charged with the operation of illegal gambling businesses.

The goverment is also seeking to reclaim $3 billion that it says the gambling companies amassed illegally by finding loopholes in a 2006 law passed by U.S. lawmakers making online gambling illegal in the United States.

According to prosecutors, Fulltilpoker, Pokerstars and Absolutepoker disguised poker payments it received from U.S. players as money for the purchase of flowers, golf balls and jewelry among other disguises. A judge has also ordered a restraining against 76 bank accounts used by the companies in 14 different countries.

Federal agents have arrested a number of people in connection with financial transactions involiving the poker companies. This indictment will roll into a legal battle between the U.S. prosecutors and pokerstars, fulltilt poker and absolute poker, who are all not incorporated in the United States. The companies have argued in the past that poker is a game of skill and therefore can not be classified as gambling.

According to prosecutors, the three companies bribed payment processors who lied to U.S. banks about the nature of the transactions. The payment proecessors reported funds received from U.S. players to these companies as payments for the purchase of golf balls, flowers and jewelry.

What is going to happen to players with money deposited with fulltilt, pokerstars and absolutepoker? We don’t know exactly but our guess is they will get their money back. Also are these poker sites going to operate again? We can’t answer that as well because the legal process involved will be complicated. But for now, fulltilt poker, pokerstars.com and absolute poker has been shut down by the FBI.

Nashville-born Paul McDonald became the latest American Idol contestant to be eliminated from the show. During Thurdays American Idol results show, he was announced as the receiver of the lowest number of votes.
McDonald is the first male to be eliminated since the top 13. Casey Abrams was eliminated during the top 11 elimination show but was saved by the judges.

Yesterdays Top 8 results show also saw the “original American Idol,” Kelly Clarkson return to the show that kicked-off her career. She performed “Don’t You Wanna Stay” with country singer Jason Aldean.

The top 8 results show started with a duet by Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina. They sung Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey.” This was followed by another pairing. Casey Abrams and Haley Reinhart performed the jazz standard “Moanin’.”
American Idol Judge Jenifer Lopez said they sounded like they’ve been doing it all their lives.

Then it was the turn of Paul McDonald, Stefano Langone, Jacob Lusk and James Durbin to perform “The Sound of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel’s.

The Bottom three of the top 8 American Idol elimination show were announced as:Haley Reinhart, Stefano Langone and Paul McDonald.
American Idol host Ryan Seacrest sent Haley to safety before announcing Paul McDonald as the one eliminated from the show.

Paul Casey took his elimination rather well and smiled all through his elimination performance.
Thursday’s elimination show also saw Rihanna performing “California King Bed.”
Paul McDonald effectively became the first male to be eliminated from the 2011 American Idol show.

Rihanna and Britney Spears S&M remix audio and video

A message posted on Rihanna’s Facebook page said fans could get a copy of her new S&M remix collaboration with Britney Spears. The message read: “Just one night full of sin…. How do you like it, like it? Grab your copy of the official S&M remix featuring Rihanna & Britney Spears here”

This announcement of the Rihanna and Britney Spears S&M remix release comes just two days after both Britney and Rihanna tweeted about a collaboration coming out soon.

The remix of S&M sounds very much like the original. The only difference seems to be the voice of Britney Spears being added to the song and a very naughty new line being added to the song.

From all indications, it appears the pair never met during the recording of the remix and it shows in the tune. Rihanna and Britney Spears both posted messages on twitter over the weekend taling about their new collaboration.

Rihanna

What do you make of the new S&M remix from the pair? Let us know by commenting below.

Organizers of the Grammy Awards program have announced a major overhaul that will trim the number categories award by 31. The move will reduce the number of awards given out from 109 this year to 78 for the awards next year.

The Grammy Awards is the music industry’s top awards. In the move, a lot of the present categories will be merged into one award and some will be cut completely. There will also be new all-purpose categories for music from different genres.

The top four awards — which are album, record and song of year, and the best new artist ward — will be maintained as it is.

The president of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, said the decision to cut some of the categories comes after talks that involved “passionate discomfort” and that the decision will be unsettling to some artists. He said the cuts were however needed to keep up the prestige of the Grammy Awards.

Categories merged or dropped from the Grammy Awards

The awards given out during the three-and-a-half hour television broadcast of the Grammy Awards will not be affected. So TV viewers will not notice the new changes. Only 10 awards are handed out during the TV broadcast. The rest of the awards are given out earlier in the day in a ceremony broadcast on the internet.

One of the music genres that will be most affected by the cuts will be R&B. There will be only four awards given in this genre, down from eight this year. The awards for best R&B vocal performance by a male, female and a group has been merged into one Best R&B performance award.

This the Academy says is due to the low number of entries these categories have received over the last couple of years.

Also the awards for best male and female vocal performance has been merged into a single award, best pop solo performance.

The awards for best rock solo vocal performance and best rock vocal performance by a duo or group will be combined into the award, best rock performance.

Also the two awards in the metal and hard rock genre have also been combined. The award for best instrumental performance in the pop, rock and country categories have been dropped.

The genre of Rap was comparatively untouched. The number of awards in this genre has been reduced to four from five. The award for solo and group performance has been combined into a single best rap performance award.

Musicians in the Latin category will now compete for four awards, down from seven. Latin artists have their own Grammys, which is targeted at the international market whiles the awards given out the Grammy Awards are more centered around U.S. artists.

Jazz has been reduced to four categories from six. Classical will get nine awards categories, down from thirteen.

One of he cuts surely to get some criticism will be the dropping of the Hawaiian and Native American albums awards. They will now compete for a new category called regional roots music album.

A new rule has also been introduced to determine which categories could be cut in the future. If a category receives less than 25 entries for consideration, that category will be dropped for that years awards. This is an increase from the present 10 entrants requirement. If the category continues to receive less than 25 entries for three consecutive years, the category will be cut permanently.

Also if a category gets 25 to 39 entrants for consideration, only three of the entrants would get nominated for that years awards. There are normally five nominations in each category.

Officials say they will soon announce a date for the 2012 edition of the Grammy Awards in the coming weeks.

Just a couple of days ago, Mariah Carey tweeted a photo of her twin-carrying pregnant belly with a red and blue butterfly painted on it. The new edition of Life & Style Magazine features a Demi Moore style pose of Mariah Carey baring her pregnant belly.

In an interview with the magazine, Mariah Carey said she felt vulnerable about taking photos but felt she couldn’t let the opportunity to document the once in a lifetime experience slide by. She said her aim of taking the pictures was to share the moment with her true fans.

pregnat Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey is due to born her twins in a couple of weeks. It will be the first children with her husband, Nick Cannon. She said in the interview that the babies kicked almost through the entire photo shoot sections. She revealed the photo shoot did not start until 1:30 a.m. because she was in the hospital the previous night till the day of the shooting with five minute contractions.

The contraction incident occurred on March 27 when she had a false alarm and was taking to the hospital only to be told it was premature contractions.

Mariah Carey later tweeted to her fans that she and the twins were doing OK and that the delivery time was only a few weeks away.

She ten tweeted a photo of her pregnant belly with a painting of a red and blue butterfly and the words “dem babies” written above it.

Mariah Carey revealed to the magazine that being pregnant has changed her opinion of motherhood. She said she now has so much respect for mothers everywhere especially mothers who have gone through difficult pregnancies and those that have born multiples.

Mariah Carey now joins the company of Christina Aguilera and Claudia Schiffer as some of the stars who have taken photos of their bare pregnant bellies.

The pioneer of the trend was Demi Moore when she made her famous pose for Vanity Fair magazine in 1991. This was followed by Cindy Crawford in 1999 when she posed for W magazine.

Britney Spears took it one step further when she posed nude whiles pregnant with Jayden on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

In last week’s episode of the Americann Idol results show, Casey Abrams was voted off but was saved by the judges. That meant the two people had to be eliminated in today’s result show.

During Wednesday night’s performance show, Casey sung a rendition of Elton John’s “Your song” and the judges and American liked it. He was safe this time round.

The bottome three time round were Naima Adedapo, Thia Megia and a rather surprising Paul MacDonald.

But after a record 55 million votes (at this stage in the series), the two contestants eliminated from the top 11 were Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia.

In Wednesday night’s show, Adedapo had chosen to perform a reggae rendition of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” complete with a Jamaican accent and this did not go down well with the judges. And American seems to agree wit the judges.

Thia Megia also performed a song from Elton John. She sung a rendition of the popular song, “Daniel.”

Last night’s show proved just how popular the American Idol show is, even after so long. A total of 55 million votes were cast. That is 25 million more than last week and a record for this stage of the competition.

Thursday’s show started with a duet performance of Travis and Carrie Underwood’s “I Told You So” by Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina. They were quickly declared safe for another week after their performance and took their places on the couch.

Next to perform were Jacob Lusk and Naima Adedapo. There were less than impressive with their version of Ashford & Simpson’s “Solid.” Lusk however was safe but Adedapo found herself in the bottom three.

The next performance featured a trio by Haley Reinhart, Thia Megia and Pia Toscano. They performed Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” Megia was called to the bottom three while the other two were safe.

The last Idols performance of the night was a quartet by Casey Abrams, Sefano Longone, McDonald and James Durbin. They performed Wings’ “Band on the Run.” In the end McDonald ended up a shock bottom three member while many though it will be Stefano.

American Idol host Ryan Seacrest quickly sent McDonald back to the safe couch as Thia Megia and Naima Adedapo were voted out of the competition.

There were also performances by American Idol season three winner Fantasia and Jamie Foxx & Will.i.am.
Do you agree with the voting? Let us know by commenting below.

In an interview with Australian newspaper, Daily Telegraph, Hanna Montana star Miley Cyrus has criticized the overnight success of Rebecca Black.

Miley Cyrus on Rebecca Black

Miley told the newspaper in an interview that just putting a video on YouTube should not make one go on tour. Rebecca Black‘s video for her song, Friday (watch it above), has now been viewed more than 69 million times on YouTube as of writing today. This is mostly due to the buzz the 13-year-old Black has received from media coverage.

The video for Friday has been mentioned in almost every major news network and that is sure to get everyone’s attention. Everyone is writing about her and suddenly everyone wants to see this video that is making so much noise. As of today the video has received over 1,240,000 comments, however most of the comments are in the negative with many people calling the video  and song the worst they have ever seen. Also the video has been liked 164,981 times and disliked 1,351,479 times. It appears many people just don’t like the video and song.

And Miley Cyrus seems to agree with the majority of people watching the video. According Cyrus, it should be harder for one to become an artist and posting a video on YouTube should not be the way to become one.

Justin Bieber also rose to fame by posting a video on YouTube and Miley seems disgusted by much of what the internet has to offer. In the interview, Miley Cyrus said she does not Tweet or social network at all. She said she tries to stay away from it all. She said she already complained about not having enough privacy so putting herself out there on the internet will seem silly and hypocritical.

Despite not mentioning Justin Bieber in her interview, many people view her remark about internet sensations as also an attack on him.

A read around the celebrity blogs reveal opinions about Cyrus’ comments are split. Some people seem to think Miley also never took the hard way to becoming a sensation. Those against her comments say she became famous just because of her dad and should therefore not talk about taking the hard way to stardom.

Miley also dropped a hint in her interview with the Australian newspaper that she might not be single any longer. In the interview, Miley said she will not be touring Australia as a single woman. Rumors are that she is dating an unnamed British Actor. Tell us what you think of the Rebecca Black’s singing and her video.

After a week of debating if Chris Brown should be allowed to perform on Dancing With The Stars after his recent bust up on the Good Morning America show, we can finally focus on the results of Tuesday night’s elimination show.

Chris Brown did perform on the show, well not in person. The embattled R&B singer taped a performance of his song, “Yeah 3x” and also pre-recorded a medley of “Forever” and “Beautiful” for the show last night.

The main question on the minds of fans of the DWTS was, who will be the first couple to be eliminated from the Season 12 of the popular Dancing With The Stars reality TV show.

Well the choice wasn’t surprising but rather obvious to those who have been following the show. Co-host of “Love Line”, Mike Catherwood’s name came up when the host announced the first star to be eliminated in DWTS 12. The star and his dancing partner, Lacey Schwimmer have consistently received low scores throughout their time on the show.

Ralph Macchio, Kirstie Alley, Chris Jericho, Hines Ward and Romeo have all been scoring well on the show and were quickly announced to be safe for another week.

The buttom three was announced and included Mike Catherwood, Sugar Ray Leonard and Wendy Williams. Host of the show, Tom Bergeron, announced to Catherwood he will be the first person out of the 2011 version of the show. Catherwood did not feel very disappointed but rather talked about how he has thoroughly enjoyed being on the show.

He paid tribute to his fans and fellow contestants. He said he had made a lifelong friend in his dancing partner, Lacey Schwimmer. He described her as beautiful inside and outside.

The next elimination round for Dancing With The Stars 2011 will take place next week Tuesday.

Tesla Motors have filed a lawsuit against the Top gear show from the BBC over allegations the show faked a race scene that showed the Tesla Roadster running out of electricity and grinding to a halt.

The show was broadcasted in 2008 and started a row between the two companies which has led to the lawsuit. The documents regarding the lawsuit were filed in court on behalf of Tesla on Tuesday by Carter-Ruck, a law firm specialized in libel law. According to the lawsuit, the scene was still being broadcasted worldwide and also being distributed through DVD. The law firm expects to receive not more than £100,000 from the BBC.

During the show in 2008, a scene featured a race between the Lotus Elise and the Tesla Roadster. The scene showed the Roadster having to stop and recharge its batteries. But the company says the scene was “faked” as the Roadster never ran out of electricity.

According to the Tesla, after receiving the two Roadsters that were used on the show, a check on them showed the battery had not lost more than 20% of their charge.

Tesla are suing the Top Gear program for Libel and malicious falsehood. The company says the show falsely showed the range of the Roadster to be 55 miles when the true range was 211 miles. It also said the the show falsely claimed the second Roadster loaned to the show was broken.

A statement from Tesla said the company wants Top Gear to distributing the said episode and set the records straight. It said the program has however ignored their repeated requests to stop distributing the show.

A statement from Top Gear makers, BBC, confirmed the lawsuit and said the company stands by what was represented on the program and will vigorously defend the claim.

Tesla has sold 1,500 Roadsters since 2008. Analysts expect 2011 to be a very good year for electric cars as they are now eligible for a £5,000 government grant.

Hollywood A-lister, Reese Witherspoon , yesterday got married to Jim Toth at her ranch in Ojai, California. The story was broken by US Magazine.

Reese Witherspoon wedding ceremony

The wedding ceremony took place in the front courtyard of Reese Witherspoon’s California house. Witherspoon whore a gown that was custom made for her by designer Monique Lhuillier. The 35-year-old actress and 40-year-old CAA agent, Jim Toth, said their wedding vows in front of about 120 friends and family members.

Guests at the wedding included Renee Zellweger, Alyssa Milano and Tobey Maguire.

The ceremony also saw Heather Rosenfield, who is Reese Witherspoon’s best friend, serving as the matron of honor. Witherspoon’s children from her old marriage with Ryan Phillippe, Ava who is 11 and Deacon who is 7, also played roles in the wedding ceremony. The nieces of the actress were also flower girls.

Jim Toth and the children walked down the aisle to the “Tennessee Waltz” music. Reese also walked down the aisle to the music, “here comes the bride.” The wedding ceremony was a rather short one, lasting for just twenty minutes. The ceremony was performed by Reverend Jimmy Bartz. Both Witherspoon and Toth attend weekly church services at his church.Their wedding bands were designed by William Goldberg.

The wedding took place in Witherspoon’s spectacular favorite rural retreat. The actress takes up gardening and the raring of animals on the ranch in Ojai, California.

In 2007, the actress and Ryan Phillippe called it quits after being married for seven years. This marriage with Toth will be Witherspoon’s second marriage. After her divorce from Ryan, she dated Jake Gyllenhaal for three years before meeting Toth, who has never been married.

The couple revealed they were engaged back in December 2010. Photos of the wedding are yet to be released.