New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will have flags flown at half-staff Saturday for Whitney Houston,
despite receiving strong criticism. Christie
ordered flags flown at half-staff at state government buildings on
Saturday, the day funeral services are held for Houston at Newark's New
Hope Baptist Church, where she sang as a child. Christie defended his position by saying Houston deserves the honor
because of her huge cultural impact and as "a daughter of New Jersey."
The
cause of Houston's death at a Beverly Hills hotel has not been
determined, and the results of toxicology tests are pending.
Investigators found several bottles of prescription medication in the
hotel room where she died Saturday. .
The funeral is
expected to be made available for television and web streaming from the
New Jersey church where she grew up. Publicists and entertainers by Wednesday had confirmed nearly a dozen
celebrities and personalities will be in some of the 1,500 coveted,
"invitation-only" seats.
Gospel singer and pastor Marvin L. Winans, a longtime friend of the
Houston family, will give the eulogy at New Hope Baptist Church. Winans
officiated at Houston's 1992 marriage to R&B singer Bobby Brown.
Whitney Houston has re-entered music charts on
Wednesday with a greatest hits album that raced into the top 10 of the
U.S. Billboard 200, as
fans of Houston rushed to rediscover the singer's music. Single digital
track sales of the artist's music rose to more than 887,000 song
downloads in 24 hours.
The biggest selling digital song was
Houston's signature ballad "I Will Always Love You" with more than
195,000 copies downloaded, fueled by Jennifer Hudson's emotional
rendition of the song in tribute to Houston at Sunday's Grammy awards. The sales surge in Houston's music is likely to continue through the week, ahead of the singer's funeral on Saturday.
Rihanna and Chris Brown may have shared more than victories at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards on September 6. Both entertainers were photographed kissing at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards more than likely when they didn’t think anyone was watching. Rihanna won the Video of the Year award and Chris Brown won for Best Male Video. It is highly unlikely that it was a romantic kiss but probably more of a greeting, since Chris Brown is still supposedly dating Karrueche Tran. Rihanna has been posting a lot of cryptic tweets seemingly about moving on.
Rumors about the pair had been relatively quiet as of late, save for Rihanna’s interview on ‘Oprah: The Next Chapter’ in which she revealed she still loves Brown and a rumored rendezvous in St. Tropez that Brown denied. Brown himself has been keeping a pretty low profile following the nightclub brawl between his crew and Drake‘s crew. Most recently, Rihanna’s been linked with Rob Kardashian, who was dating Rita Ora.
Considering the controversy that erupted when the pair collaborated on Rihanna’s ‘Birthday Cake’ and Brown’s ‘Turn Up the Music’ remixes, we can only imagine what would happen if they were to publicly reunite as a couple.
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