tour

Tadhg Furlong pronounced himself ready for the challenges of a third Lions tour ahead of Saturday’s first game on Australian soil against Western Force here in Perth.

The 32 year-old is a veteran of the last two tours to New Zealand in 2017, which ended in a draw, and South Africa four years ago, when the Lions lost.

The Leinster prop, however, was a stalwart of both series playing in all six tests matches and he’d like to extend that run Down Under.

”Would it be cool to say that I played in all three again?

“Yeah, it would. Is it something that motivates me at the minute? No.

“I think obviously after the result last weekend, we’re looking straight ahead for this Saturday, so it’s just about trying to get my best out onto the pitch and trying to get results with the lads,” explained Furlong.

Not so long ago there were doubts Furlong would make the squad. A calf strain was the latest in a long line of injuries that kept him sidelined for most of last season missing Leinster’s URC win a couple of weeks ago.

“There wasn’t a big bang and it was like you’re out for six months and you’re trying to scramble back.

“They’re all kind of short-term injuries, and you’re always trying to get back for this game or that game, and I suppose I was fully invested in the end of the season with Leinster, so it wasn’t ever feeling of you wouldn’t get back fit for something.

“It’s more a feeling of would you get picked, have you done enough?

Furlong will pack down in the front row against Western Force alongside his Leinster team mate and now Lions captain Dan Sheehan.

“I suppose knowing Dan, he doesn’t overthink it a whole lot, and he always plays well, and I think he has the respect of the group.

”I’m delighted for him as a friend and a teammate.

“He was a big old hooker and I remember him coming into a few scrum sessions.

”It’s hard to find your slot, what’s comfortable, what works for you.

“Then it just exploded for him. He’s a freak. I’m not sure at what point, but when he came onto the scene, he came onto the scene quick.”

The once-clashing R&B songstresses Brandy and Monica are back — together.

The titans announced their first-ever co-headlining tour, “The Boy Is Mine,” on Tuesday, paying homage to their 1998 hit of the same name. Kelly Rowland, Muni Long and recent “American Idol” winner Jamal Roberts are scheduled to appear as special guests along the road.

“This really is a full-circle moment,” Brandy said in a statement to Variety. “Monica and I coming together again isn’t just about the music — it’s about honoring where we came from and how far we’ve both come. ‘The Boy Is Mine’ was a defining chapter in R&B, and to share the stage all these years later is bigger than a reunion — it’s a celebration of growth, sisterhood, and the love our fans have given us from day one.”

She added that she recognized the love “The Boy Is Mine” still received, saying that the song “means everything to me.”

Upon its release, the song spent 13 weeks at No. 1. That was 27 years ago, and though the pair have been on “different journeys” since, they’ve come back together to give “the people what they’ve been asking for.”

“God’s timing perfectly aligned us,” Brandy said.

Presale for the tour begins on June 26, with general tickets going on sale on June 27. The run currently includes one Los Angeles-area show on Nov. 9 at the Kia Forum.

Brandy and Monica had a widely publicized fallout in 1998. Monica is said to have punched Brandy in the face just before they took the stage at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards to perform their hit single.

The duo was seen as a monumental combination of ‘90s talent, with both Brandy and Monica being lauded for their debut records. Brandy had already achieved RIAA platinum status with her eponymous album released in 1994 when she was just 15. “The Boy Is Mine” was an instant hit when it was released four years later, but the VMAs incident seemed to spawn acrimony.

Though both would remain in the music industry, Brandy would also pursue an acting career. The “Vocal Bible” took off following her role as the first African American actor to play Cinderella in 1997. More recently, she starred as a rapper in the ABC drama series “Queens” in 2021.

Monica’s 1995 debut, “Miss Thang,” went platinum when she was 14, but the singer largely remained out of the spotlight following the release of “Code Red” in 2015. She teased a pivot into the country music genre in 2022 with “Open Roads,” which she says was produced entirely by 10-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile. Though she confirmed its completion in 2023, it has yet to be released.

After the kerfuffle in 1998, it wouldn’t be until 2012 that the two collaborated again on “It All Belongs to Me” and 11 years more before they worked on a remix of “The Boy Is Mine” for Ariana Grande. In 2021, Brandy and Monica appeared on “Verzuz,” a popular webcast series made by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland where two artists pit their best hits against each other.

The affair went down smoothly until about 30 minutes in, when Monica spoke of how she had come a long way from “kicking in doors” and “smacking chicks,” a (seemingly autobiographical) line from her hit song “So Gone.”

“You sure was,” Brandy replied. “I was one of the ones.”

But Monica refuted the quip, claiming, “People think I’m abusive. That’s not what happened.”

After a little back and forth, Brandy conceded, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that … I didn’t mean no shade by that.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Monica replied before moving on, as both singers seemed to have done with the announcement of the upcoming tour.

England’s Tommy Fleetwood was denied his first PGA Tour title in heartbreaking fashion as American Keegan Bradley claimed the Travelers Championship by a single shot.

Fleetwood, 34, held an three-shot overnight lead going into the final round as he looked to finally get over the line on the PGA Tour.

After 41 top-10 finishes, Fleetwood looked on course to end his wait as he held a two-shot lead with three holes to play and a one-shot advantage going into the final hole.

After a decent tee shot on the 18th, a poor putt on his third shot left Fleetwood needing to hole from six-feet to make par.

But he narrowly missed, leaving him to bogey and hope that Bradley, who had reached the green in two, would miss his birdie putt.

The 2011 US PGA Championship winner – who will captain the USA at the Ryder Cup in September – made no mistake, slotting home to deny Fleetwood even a play-off.

“I’m gutted right now,” said Fleetwood.

“I’ve not been in that situation for a long time. It’s probably the worst way to finish.

“Leading by two with three to play. Leading by one going into the last and you don’t even make it to a play-off. It’s the worst way it could go.”

England’s Tommy Fleetwood will take a three-shot lead into the final round of the Travelers Championship in Connecticut.

The 34-year-old, looking to clinch his first PGA Tour title, had a share of a three-way lead after the second round.

A brilliant seven-under-par 63 on Saturday has given Fleetwood the outright lead over American pair Russell Henley and Keegan Bradley.

Henley catapulted into contention with a blistering nine-under-par 61 that included four birdies in his first six holes.

The American set a clubhouse score of 13 under but Fleetwood got to 14 under with an eagle on the par-five 13th.

A birdie on the 15th followed and Fleetwood came close to finishing his round by picking up another stroke.

While world number one Scottie Scheffler slumped to a two-over 72, world number two Rory McIlroy shot a two-under 68.

The Northern Irishman made four bogeys across the front nine but a double bogey on the 12th probably ruined his hopes of a late charge on Sunday.

Terrance “T.A.” Dixon, once a hype man to rapper Fat Joe, has sued his former employer for $20 million, making some allegations that might blend right in at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ RICO and sex-trafficking trial.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York and reviewed by The Times, alleges that the rapper underpaid Dixon, cut him out of promised pay for contributing to album tracks, defrauded authorities about his income, ditched Dixon in foreign countries without money or transportation home and is running a criminal organization built on intimidation and violence.

The lawsuit alleges that Fat Joe forced the hype man — a sort of backing vocalist who pumps up the audience — into approximately 4,000 sex acts with women in front of him and his crew.

The 54-year-old rapper, born Joseph Antonio Cartagena, is also accused of having sexual relationships with girls who were 15 and 16. The allegations go back to when the rapper was in his late 30s, the lawsuit says. Fat Joe’s song “She’s My Mama,” which has graphically sexual lyrics, was based on what is alleged to have happened with him and one of the girls in real life, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that Dixon’s role over about 16 years was more than that of the usual hype man. He “consistently” had duties that included co-writing lyrics, structuring hooks, recording background vocals, performing at more than 200 live shows as Fat Joe’s primary onstage counterpart and managing travel logistics, including equipment transport, security and emergency arrangements. The complaint alleges that Dixon also acted as Joe’s bodyguard and handler during tours.

According to the filing, Dixon wrote or co-wrote tracks including “Congratulations,” “Money Over Bitches,” “Ice Cream,” “Cupcake,” “Blackout,” “Dirty Diana,” “Porn Star,” “Okay Okay,”“No Problems,” a version of “All the Way Up,” “300 Brolic,” “All I Do Is Win (Remix verse),” “Red Café (Remix),” “Winding on Me,” “Cocababy” and “Get It for Life.”

The complaint alleges that Dixon was not properly paid for his efforts, even though he says he was promised certain ownership percentages and documented credit on songs that Fat Joe released commercially. Dixon, who left Fat Joe’s team in 2020, was unable to obtain certain evidence of wrongdoing until a person named as “Accountant Doe” came forward last year with information, the lawsuit says.

Fat Joe “exercised sole control over contracts, budgets, tour management, licensing, and credit attribution and intentionally omitted Plaintiff’s name from liner notes, publishing registrations, and royalty structures, despite Plaintiff’s direct contributions to these works’ creative and commercial success,” the complaint says.

Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Fat Joe, called the lawsuit “a blatant attack of retaliation” and labeled the allegations “complete fabrications” that his client denies in a statement to Variety. Retaliation referred to the slander lawsuit that the rapper filed against Dixon in April after the former hype man accused him on social media of flying a 16-year-old across state lines for sex.

Dixon’s attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, is also representing producer Lil Rod (Rodney Jones) in his $30-million federal lawsuit filed last year against Sean “Diddy” Combs and others in Combs’ orbit, in which Lil Rod alleged sexual harassment and sexual assault. A judge tossed out a majority of Lil Rod’s allegations against Combs in late March.

Both lawsuits include trigger warnings in bright red type ahead of the allegations — something not often seen in such documents.

“Fat Joe is Sean Combs minus the Tusi [pink cocaine],” Blackburn said in a statement to the Independent. “He learned nothing from his 2013 federal conviction,” the attorney added, referencing Fat Joe’s four-month sentence and $15,000 fine in a plea deal for failure to file a tax return in multiple years on more than $3.3 million in income.

In addition to Fat Joe, defendants in the new lawsuit include Peter “Pistol Pete” Torres, Richard “Rich Player” Jospitre, Erica Juliana Moreira and several companies —including Roc Nation — that are affiliated with the rapper. Dixon is asking for a jury trial.

French Cambodian director Rithy Panh has often cited the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, which killed his family and from which he escaped, as the reason he’s a filmmaker. His movies aren’t always directly about that wretched time. But when they are — as is his most memorable achievement, the Oscar-nominated 2013 documentary “The Missing Picture,” which re-imagined personal memories using clay-figurine dioramas — one senses a grand mosaic being assembled piece by piece linking devastation, aftermath and remembrance, never to be finished, only further detailed.

His latest is the coolly observed and tense historical drama “Meeting With Pol Pot,” which premiered last year at Cannes. It isn’t autobiographical, save its fictionalization of a true story that happened concurrent to his childhood trauma: the Khmer Rouge inviting a trio of Western journalists to witness their proclaimed agrarian utopia and interview the mysterious leader referred to by his people as “Brother No. 1.” Yet even this political junket, which took place in 1978, couldn’t hide a cruel, violent truth from its guests, the unfolding of which Panh is as adept at depicting from the viewpoint of an increasingly horrified visitor as from that of a long-scarred victim.

The movie stars Irène Jacob, whose intrepid French reporter Lise — a perfect role for her captivating intelligence — is modeled after the American journalist Elizabeth Becker who was on that trip, and whose later book about Cambodia and her experience, “When the War Was Over,” inspired the screenplay credited to Panh and Pierre Erwan Guillaume. Lise is joined by an ideologically motivated Maoist professor named Alain (Grégoire Colin), quick to enthusiastically namedrop some of their hosts as former school chums in France when they were wannabe revolutionaries. (The character of Alain is based on British academic Malcolm Caldwell, an invitee alongside Becker.) Also there is eagle-eyed photojournalist Paul (Cyril Gueï), who shares Lise’s healthy skepticism and a desire to learn what’s really happening, especially regarding rumors of disappeared intellectuals.

With sound, pacing and images, Panh readily establishes a mood of charged, contingent hospitality, a veneer that seems ready to crack: from the unsettlingly calm opening visual of this tiny French delegation waiting alone on an empty sun-hot tarmac to the strange, authoritarian formality in everything that’s said and shown to them via their guide Sung (Bunhok Lim). Life is being scripted for their microphones and cameras and flanked by armed, blank-faced teenagers. The movie’s square-framed cinematography, too, reminiscent of a staged newsreel, is another subtle touch — one imagines Panh rejecting widescreen as only feeding this evil regime’s view of its own righteous grandiosity.

Only Alain seems eager to ignore the disinformation and embrace this Potemkin village as the real deal (except when his eyes show a gathering concern). But the more Lise questions the pretense of a happily remade society, the nervier everything gets. And when Paul manages to elude his overseers and explore the surrounding area — spurring a frantic search, the menacing tenor of which raises Lise’s hackles — the movie effectively becomes a prison drama, with the trio’s eventual interviewee depicted as a shadowy warden who can decide their fate.

Journalism has never been more under threat than right now and “Meeting with Pol Pot” is a potent reminder of the profession’s value — and inherent dangers — when it confronts and exposes facades. But this eerily elegiac film also reflects its director’s soulful sensibility regarding the mass tragedy that drives his aesthetic temperament, never more so than when he re-deploys his beloved hand-crafted clay figurines for key moments of witnessed atrocity, or threads in archival footage, as if to maintain necessary intimacy between rendering and reality.

Power shields its misdeeds with propaganda, but Panh sees such murderous lies clearly, giving them an honest staging, thick with echoes.