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• CHICAGO (AP) -- Act I, Scene 1: Four actors in well-worn coveralls and baseball caps take the stage at the county jail. They're here to tell a tale of love, friendship, jealousy and betrayal. It's the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. The names and themes haven't changed over the centuries, but the language has a modern beat:
• "Othello never knew,
• He was getting schemed on by a member of his crew."
• This is "Othello-The Remix," the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's hip-hop version of the tragedy about a valiant Moor deceived by the villainous Iago into mistakenly believing his wife has been unfaithful. After Othello smothers his beloved Desdemona, he discovers she has been true to him and he kills himself.
• That's how Shakespeare told the story 400 years ago. This modern version -- performed this week for about 450 Cook County jail inmates -- is a rhyming, rapping, poetic homage to the Bard. It has singing and dancing. Comic touches. Men playing women. Sexual talk. References to Eddie Murphy and James Brown. A throbbing beat, courtesy of an onstage DJ.
• ___

• NEW YORK (AP) -- They were Hall of Famers like Tony Dorsett, Super Bowl MVPs like Mark Rypien, and longtime backups like Don Strock.
• In all, more than 4,500 retired players began suing the NFL two years ago, saying the league concealed what it knew about the long-term dangers of concussions and did not properly care for the head injuries that were long an accepted part of the game.
• Under a tentative settlement announced Thursday, the NFL agreed to shell out more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, nearly all going to any former players -- not just those who went to court -- with dementia or other concussion-related health problems, even if the cause was not the very on-field violence that fueled professional football's rise in popularity and profit.
• The deal stipulates that it is not to be considered an admission of liability by the NFL.

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