ALLAN THE MAN

Fresh from a whirlwind scouting trip that took him to two Asian countries, Gilas Pilipinas assistant coach Norman Black has listed defending champion China, Iran, and South Korea as the three teams to beat in the FIBA Asia Men’s Championship in two weeks' time.

The multi-titled coach travelled all the way to Guangzhou, China for the Fiba Stankovic Cup, primarily to take a closer look at the Chinese team under renowned former Greek national coach Panagiotis Giannakis.

The winners for the Yahoo! OMG! Awards 2013 were revealed on Friday, July 19, at the SM Mall of Asia Arena hosted by Edu Manzano and Billy Crawford.

Yahoo! OMG Awards gave recognition to the emerging stars, favorite celebrities, and popular programs in music, film, radio and television. This year's 106 nominees across 22 categories were arrived at based on the most-searched topics or personalities on the local Yahoo! search engine.

BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the popular BlackBerry Messenger will be available on Android and iOS back at the BlackBerry live 2013 conference. We then had a tweet from the BlackBerry Worldwide tweeter account stating that the app will be available on June 27.

Unfortunately, the account didn't turn out to be an official BlackBerry affair and the BlackBerry Messenger for the Android and iOS did not make its appearance on the suggested date. 

Rappler readers and Facebook users sent out warning of a hoax making the rounds on social media.

The hoax, which is based on the fear of having people you don't want seeing your posts and photos because of a "graphic app," is a fabrication. While the hoax has been worded a number of different ways, the intent is the same: to misinform and cause you to waste time disabling your ability to see others' posts.

With the FIBA ban on Lebanon now official, the 27th FIBA Asia Championship field is down to 15 teams.

“We tried our best to find a replacement team, but given the short period of time available we couldn’t find any,” said FIBA Asia secretary-general Hagop Khajirian on Friday.

The Lebanon national men’s basketball team will miss the FIBA Asia Championship after the world basketball body affirmed the country’s suspension from competing internationally.

FIBA has officially suspended the Lebanese Basketball Federation (FLB) because of legal troubles plaguing the local league as well as political disputes involving basketball stakeholders in the country.

“Pacific Rim” tops Philippine box office for the July 10 to 14 time frame according to Box Office Mojo. Star Cinema’s “Four Sisters and a Wedding” places 3rd while GMA Films/Regal Films’ “My Lady Boss” ranks 6th in the Top 10.

According to the third party box office tabulator, Hollywood movie “Pacific Rim” made a killing last weekend by raking P83 million in 4 days. “Despicable Me 2″ settled for no. 2 but its two-weeks total is now P201 million.