May 7, 2014

Pop Music Sales Plummet As Top 10 Sells Around 300K Copies Total

Pop, pop pop music. Everyone used to want pop music. But now, not so much. With very little new product, and nothing at all from name acts. the pop sales of CDs last week was dismal. The top 10 sold a total of around 320,000 copies– and a third of those were “Frozen” soundtracks. The rest was pretty much a loss, with everything from number 20 down selling fewer than 10,000 copies each– all the way to number 50, by some act called Schoolboy Q. They sold 5,545 copies– that’s not enough to buy lunch at their school.

This week’s new releases didn’t amount to much. Next week, May 13th, gives us Michael Jackson’s “Xscape” album. All eyes will be on that release. If Jackson doesn’t knock “Frozen” off, there will be a lot of sobbing. Coldplay comes on Monday the 19th, and Mariah Carey is set for May 27th.

Read More: http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/05/06/pop-music-sales-plummet-as-top-10-sells-around-300k-copies-total

http://www.billboard.com/charts/pop-songs

Reflecting the death of radio to online streaming. Next up the boob tube.

May 7, 2014

Car trailing Obama daughters' motorcade prompts White House lockdown

Source: Reuters

A car that trailed a motorcade carrying President Barack Obama's daughters on to Pennsylvania Avenue prompted a security lockdown at the White House on Tuesday.

A Secret Service spokesman said the car entered the security checkpoint at 17th Street and Pennsylvania and was immediately stopped by Secret Service uniformed officers.

The male driver was arrested and Washington police checked the car for explosives.

The Secret Service identified the driver as Mathew Evan Goldstein, 55. He was arrested and charged with unlawful entry and was transported to city police for processing.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/car-trailing-motorcade-prompts-white-house-security-lockdown-214350227.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6vZGlTr30AMDDQtDMD

May 7, 2014

NATO commander says must consider permanent troops in Eastern Europe

Source: Reuters

NATO will have to consider permanently stationing troops in parts of Eastern Europe as a result of the increased tension between Russia and Ukraine, the alliance's top military commander said on Tuesday.

NATO has arranged a number of short-term army, air force and naval rotations in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic republics, Poland and Romania, but these are due to finish at the end of this year.

Asked whether NATO might have to look at permanently stationing troops in the alliance's member states in Eastern Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said: "I think this is something we have to consider and we will tee this up for discussion through the leaderships of our nations to see where that leads."

NATO leaders are due to hold a summit in Wales in early September.

In the run-up to the summit, NATO commanders, defense ministers and foreign ministers would look at "tougher questions" about whether the alliance had the right footprint in Europe, Breedlove told a news conference in Ottawa.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/g7-begin-reducing-russian-energy-dependency-uk-minister-133031891.html;_ylt=AwrBEiQKaWlTiAcA53fQtDMD

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I think the word they wanted was "Bootprint".

May 6, 2014

She's back...Monica Lewinsky Blames the Internet

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, probably due to growing Clinton nostalgia in politics and on Tumblr, broke her silence with a personal essay for Vanity Fair this month. In it, she posits, "thanks to the Drudge Report, I was ... possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet."

The full essay will be available digitally on Thursday, but here are the highlights. Lewinsky, who is only 40 now, expresses regret: "I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened." She also says she's ready to move on: "It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress." And she assures conspiracy theorists that the Clintons did not buy her silence up until now: "I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth."

Lewinsky also makes a point to note that her affair with President Clinton was consensual, and that he did not abuse her. The abuse she suffered was at the hands of the media, she says. Now, the Internet is a much more friendly place for Lewinsky, especially the teen Internet. As The Wire noted earlier this year, Lewinsky is a big part of the '90s nostalgia that permeates Tumblr and sites like Buzzfeed. Beyoncé put her in a song on her latest album.


http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/05/monica-lewinsky-blames-the-internet/361788/

May 6, 2014

Fed report: Warming disrupting Americans' lives

Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new federal scientific report. And those shining seas? Rising and costly, the report says.

Climate change's assorted harms "are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond," the National Climate Assessment concluded Tuesday. The report emphasizes how warming and its all-too-wild weather are changing daily lives, even using the phrase "climate disruption" as another way of saying global warming.

Still, it's not too late to prevent the worst of climate change, says the 840-page report, which the White House is highlighting as it tries to jump-start often stalled efforts to curb heat-trapping gases.

However, if the nation and the world don't change the way they use energy, "we're still on the pathway to more damage and danger of the type that are described in great detail in the rest of this report," said study co-author Henry Jacoby, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jacoby, other scientists and White House officials said this is the most detailed and U.S.-focused scientific report on global warming.

Read More: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fed-report-warming-disrupting-americans-lives

May 6, 2014

‘Ghostbuster’ cops keep raiding dead man’s home: suit

He’s been dead for eight years, but try telling that to the NYPD.

Cops have barged into James Jordan Sr.’s family home looking for him more than a dozen times since he died in 2006 — prompting his exasperated relatives to finally post his death certificate on the front door.

“I tell them over and over, ‘James isn’t here! He’s dead! It’s that simple. What’s so difficult to understand about that?’?” the Brooklyn security guard’s widow, Karen, told The Post on Monday.

James Jordan Sr., who died from diabetes at age 46, was last arrested in 1996 — for turnstile-jumping, said Karen Jordan, who has filed a lawsuit against the city in Brooklyn federal court.

But cops still routinely ransack the family’s Bushwick home on Sumner Avenue, demanding to see him — coming four times this year alone, Jordan said.

http://nypost.com/2014/05/06/nypd-has-raided-dead-mans-home-over-and-over-suit/

May 6, 2014

Ukraine: Lies, propaganda and the West's agenda

Washington and Brussels are the heroes of the Ukrainian saga, if you believe the Western media. Russian President Vladimir Putin is cast as the Big Bad Russian Bear, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are the Democratic A-Team. Russia is supposedly using dirty KGB-inspired tactics: secret agitators backed by masked paratroopers. The West makes the same tired claims to back democracy and freedom and denounces Putin's foul play.

The hyperbole is extraordinary. Is it really appropriate to invoke the memory of Anschluss, or compare Putin to Saddam Hussein? Kerry has called Ukraine an "incredible act of aggression", conveniently ignoring drone strikes, the Iraq War, and the numerous illegal coups the US has pulled off since World War II.

Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the argument in March that Putin is "trying to re-establish Russian influence and a measure of control over the former states of the Soviet Union". All this deceitful moralising, as well as attempts to classify Putin's putsch in Crimea as some grandiose geopolitical strategy, ignores two crucial realities about this crisis.

The first is that Putin is acting out of political desperation. The second is that the West has been no saint in this crisis, and it may even have caused it.

Read More: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/ukraine-lies-propaganda-west-age-20145384527678726.html

May 6, 2014

Ukraine crisis: Mercenaries, Nato M16 cartridges and US military meals - evidence of Western involve

“The snipers on that hill were British. People have seen them. You could tell by their uniforms,” Vitali Nelovich said with confidence. “They were by the television tower. But even before they were stationed, there were others who came by helicopter. They were very dark skinned”.

Alexei Viktorovich was also adamant: “The dark-skinned men were very professional, I was in the army myself, so I could tell. They didn’t stay long, flew in and flew out.”

There was other incriminating “evidence”, local people pointed out, of a foreign hand in the shooting which took place between Ukrainian forces and residents, claiming between seven and 10 lives and up to 20 injured in Andrievka, near the militant stronghold of Slovyansk on Friday evening.

There were MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) – a staple of US forces on combat missions, in the brown packets familiar to many of us from Iraq and Afghanistan, clearly marked Made in USA, issued by the Department of Defense.


http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-crisis-mercenaries-nato-m16-cartridges-and-us-military-meals-evidence-of-western-involvement-or-something-far-less-controversial-30244105.html

May 6, 2014

Exclusive: U.S. to sanction both sides of South Sudan conflict in days - sources

Source: Reuters

Amid warnings that ethnic violence in South Sudan risks spiraling into genocide, the United States expects to impose sanctions on individuals on both sides of the conflict in the coming days, U.S. and other diplomatic sources said on Monday.

The sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that the sanctions would involve a ban on travel to the United States and the freezing of any assets under U.S. authority. People on both the rebel and government sides will be targeted, the sources added, without disclosing names.

"In the coming days," a U.S. official said about the expected timing of the move. The other sources confirmed that the United States had already made a decision to sanction several individuals and it was now a question of timing.

The fact that Washington is preparing U.S. sanctions against a country the United States helped create and has supported with large amounts of aid shows how frustrated President Barack Obama's administration has become with South Sudan's leaders.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/us-southsudan-unrest-sanctions-idUSBREA440UX20140505

May 6, 2014

Ukraine crisis: Can Ukraine, Russia avoid another gas shutoff? (+video) - CSMonitor.com

Weekend clashes between Ukraine forces and pro-Russian militants extended into Monday as violence spread to the Black Sea port city of Odessa.

The street-level unrest parallels escalating diplomatic tensions between Kiev and Moscow over Ukraine's unpaid natural gas bills. After trilateral talks in Poland late last week failed to reach a compromise and Russia threatened to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on May 31, European Union officials huddled Monday to figure out how to replace Russian gas with other sources.

With a firm deadline in place, a mounting Ukraine debt, and a staunch disagreement on basic contract terms, the scenario bears an unsettling resemblance to the countries' past gas disputes that ended in a midwinter shutoff of supply. The onset of spring makes any current gas crisis less urgent, and there's still hope Western financial and diplomatic support can avert another gas war between Russia and Ukraine. Still, both sides appear to be uninterested in compromise and are running short on patience.

"If we don't receive prepayment for June by May 31, then it is possible Gazprom will reduce gas supplies to Ukraine or provide it with the capacity it has paid for by May 31," Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Friday during joint talks in Warsaw between Russia, Ukraine, and the European Commission, as reported by Reuters.

Read More: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0505/Ukraine-crisis-Can-Ukraine-Russia-avoid-another-gas-shutoff-video