New Zealand’s ruling National Party is being sued for alleged unauthorised use of rapper Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” in campaign ads ahead of next Saturday’s general election.

Detroit-based Eminem Publishers said in a statement on Tuesday it had started court proceedings in New Zealand.

“The proceedings stem from allegations that unauthorised use has been made of Eminem’s Grammy and Academy Award winning song, ‘Lose Yourself’, in election campaign advertising run by the National Party,” the statement said.

The National Party said in a statement it rejected the allegation, saying it purchased the music from a recognised production music supplier and was assured it did not infringe any copyright and was an original work.

“We note that the work in question has been licensed multiple times both in Australia and New Zealand without issue or complaint,” the statement said, referring to three television programmes it had been used on.

“The National Party will be defending this action vigorously.”

-NDTV

Britain’s Prince William said on Monday he was “thrilled” that his wife Kate is pregnant with their second child, but admitted it had been a “tricky few days” as she struggles with severe morning sickness.

Kate cancelled an official engagement on Monday because she is suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, the same condition that caused her to be hospitalised in 2012 when she was pregnant with her first child Prince George.

William attended the public event in Oxford without her and told reporters: “It’s been a tricky few days, a week or so, but obviously we’re immensely thrilled, it’s great news.”

He said it was still “early days, but I’m hoping things will settle down and she feels a bit better”, adding: “I’m going to go back to look after her now.”

The royal palace revealed the good news on Twitter.

“The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce the The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting their second child,” came the first message, mid-morning UK time.

“The Queen and members of both families are delighted with the news that Their Royal Highnesses are expecting their second child.”

The news follows weeks of speculation.

It seems most likely the new royal was conceived shortly after the couple’s tour of Australia and New Zealand.

An official statement from Clarence House said that Kate was unwell because of the pregnancy: “Her Royal Highness will no longer accompany The Duke of Cambridge on their planned engagement in Oxford today. The Duchess of Cambridge is being treated by doctors at Kensington Palace.”

Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “Many congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I’m delighted by the happy news that they’re expecting another baby.”

The Duchess’ illness may have forced the couple to reveals details of the new baby before the conventional 12-week stage, according to the Daily Mail.

The tabloid reported the illness could affect a number of upcoming engagements for the Duchess, so rather than fuelling speculation they decided to go public.

Her planned first solo foreign visit, to Malta in a few weeks’ time, is in doubt, though no decision has yet been made.

However, she is still due to attend the opening ceremony of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games for injured soldiers in London on Wednesday.

The severe morning sickness that hit the Duchess during her first pregnancy was also the cue for the couple to announce Prince George was on the way. St James’s Palace announced the news after the Duchess was admitted to hospital in December 2012.

Their second child will be fourth in line to the throne after Charles, William and George – pushing Harry down to fifth spot.

The announcement is curiously timed for two reasons – later this week is the inquest into the death of nurse Jacinta Saldanha, who put through the Australian radio hosts who called the hospital during the Duchess’ first pregnancy.

It also comes barely a week before the Scottish independence referendum, sparking furious speculation as to whether it will provide an accidental (or otherwise) badly-needed boost to the Better Together campaign.

Under the plan outlined by the Yes campaign, the Queen would stay Queen of Scotland. However, royal baby mania is likely to make the Scots look more fondly on their southern neighbours and the Union in general.

In a cheeky attempt to defuse the threat to his independence campaign, Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond drew attention to the couple’s links to Scotland.

“Congratulations & best wishes to the Earl & Countess of Strathearn,” he tweeted. “Wonderful to hear they’re expecting their second baby – very happy news!”

To honour their marriage, the Queen gave Kate and William Scottish titles as the Earl and Countess of Strathearn – a title which dates back to the mid-14th century.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was also quick to pass on his congratulations to the couple.

In a press release he said: “It is an exciting time in any young family’s life. People across the country were delighted to welcome the Duke and Duchess and young Prince George to our shores earlier this year.

“The young Royals’ deep and growing affection for Australia was evident and people delighted in meeting the young Prince. This is an exciting time for the Cambridges and I look forward to welcoming their growing family back to Australia.”

The baby is expected in April next year, according to several news sources.

AFP

A hit song performed by Colombian pop star Shakira was indirectly copied from another songwriter’s work, a federal judge in New York has found.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein said Shakira’s Spanish-language version of Loca in 2010 had infringed on a song by Dominican singer Ramon Arias Vazquez.

Her English language version of Loca – which featured Dizzee Rascal – was “not offered into evidence” at the trial.Neither version of Loca was released as a single in the UK.

However, the Spanish language version – a collaboration with Dominican rapper Eduard Edwin Bello Pou, better known as El Cata – was widely released as a single around the world. It went on to sell more than five million copies and topped Billboard Magazine’s Latin charts.

It was also included on her 2010 album Sale el Sol. For English language markets, the album was titled The Sun Comes Out and both versions of the song were included.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Judge Hellerstein said that while the hit single had been based on an earlier version of a song recorded by Bello [El Cata], that itself had been copied from Arias Vasquez’s original song.

“There is no dispute that Shakira’s version of the song was based on Bello’s version,” wrote the judge in his ruling.

“Accordingly, I find that, since Bello had copied Arias, whoever wrote Shakira’s version of the song also indirectly copied Arias,” he concluded.

Ramon Arias Vazquez penned his song Loca con su Tiguere in the 1990s, but Bello has denied copying it.

The case has yet to determine damages for the plaintiff, Mayimba Music, which holds the rights to Arias’ work.

Shakira’s song was distributed by Sony in both Spanish and English, but the copyright lawsuit mainly focused on the Spanish version.

On 13 July, the Colombian singer performed at the World Cup closing ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.

Source: BBC

Be ready with your pen and paper, because after seven hugely successful years, Red Bull Doodle Art is lengthening its global canvas to cover Sri Lanka in its competitive celebration to take doodling to the next level with entries opening up on July 22nd.

This year’s competition will culminate – for the first time in its history – with the best creations from around the world being displayed in a single global gallery at an exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa which will run from October 24-26. The South African city has been appointed as the World Design Capital for 2014.

To participate, go to www.redbulldoodleart.com, sign up and upload all of your artwork, where it will feature in an online gallery. The winner will have the chance to go to the global gallery in Cape Town to present his or her doodle. Also, merchandise of Red Bull Doodle Art will be created using the best artwork, which will be available in the Red Bull Collection.

There will be 20 finalists in each country, who get chosen through Facebook. The national winner will be the one who gets the most points, based on style (10 points), creativity (10 points), Facebook voting (10 points) and the judges’ opinion (10 points).
This year’s Red Bull Doodle Art, the competition’s eighth edition, will see the number of participating countries swell to 40. Besides Sri Lanka, the other newcomers are India, Costa Rica, Algeria, Japan and Poland.

The application phase in Sri Lanka starts on July 22nd at 2.30 p.m. and ends on August 21 at 11.00 p.m. with the winners being announced on September 25th.

Aside from being an entertaining distraction, doodling is a great, fun way of expressing yourself. Anyone can take part and, who knows, maybe it will be you flying to Cape Town to present your doodle!

To learn more about the project, please visit www.redbulldoodleart.com where you can see inspirational pieces of art from around the globe.

Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo has decided to spend his summer vacation on the Greek island of Mykonos after his team’s early exit from the FIFA World Cup.

The Real Madrid player and Ballon d’Or winner Saturday arrived at Mykonos Island, part of the islands group — the Cyclades — with some his friends but without girlfriend Irina Shayk, reports EFE.

Ronaldo has also visited other islands of the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea on board a luxurious yacht.

The Korean singer who made his giant breakthrough into the world music industry with Gangnam Style ( which made a record of more than 2 billion hits on Youtube), has rocked audiences once again, withHangover.

The song which was published on Psy’s official youtube channel on Sunday, has already reached more than 16 million hits within the time span of just 1 and a half days.

The Korean singer superstar has is seen singing in Hangover with master rapper Snoop Dogg.

The group of individuals who staged a demonstration opposite the head office of The Capital Maharaja Organization Limited on the elimination of a contestant at the Season 6 of the Sirasa Superstar competition dispersed Monday morning.

A group of representatives are engaging in discussion with senior officials attached to the Sirasa Media Network.

Seventy-one days after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, the first book about the disaster will go on sale on Monday with a theory about what might have happened.

And as the international search continues for the aircraft Irene Burrows, the Queensland mother who lost her son and daughter-in-law on the flight, said it was too soon for a book.

Flight MH370 The Mystery, which is made available by NewSouth Books in Sydney, doesn’t claim to have any answers but to some extent supports the theory that the aircraft may have been accidentally shot down during a joint Thai-US military exercise in the South China Sea. Searchers were then possibly led in the wrong direction to cover up the mistake, it suggests.

”In an age where a stolen smart phone can be pinpointed to any location on earth, the vanishing of this aircraft and 227 passengers is the greatest mystery since the Mary Celeste,” the publicity for the book reads.

The Sun-Herald is the first media outlet in Australia to see the work, written by author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne. It records the events, emotions and theories unfolding on a backdrop of fruitless searches.

Cawthorne says in the introduction that ”almost certainly” relatives will never be sure what happened to their loved ones.

”Did they die painlessly, unaware of their fate? Or did they die in terror in a flaming wreck, crashing from the sky in the hands of a madman?”

He says this raises the significance that around the time the plane’s transponder went off at 01.21, New Zealander Mike McKay, working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Thailand, saw a burning plane. He links that to the joint Thai-US military exercise going on in the South China Sea with personnel from China, Japan, Indonesia and other countries.

”The drill was to involve mock warfare on land, in water and in the air, and would include live-fire exercises,” he writes.

”Say a participant accidentally shot down Flight MH370. Such things do happen. No one wants another Lockerbie [Pan Am flight 103 by terrorists in 1988 allegedly in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier], so those involved would have every reason to keep quiet about it.”

He suggests through anonymous and contradictory sources, they might release misinformation, leading people to search in the wrong place in an environment so hostile that it would be unlikely anything would ever be found.

”After all, no wreckage has been found in the south Indian Ocean, which in itself is suspicious,” Cawthorne writes.

”Now I’m not saying that’s what happened but if a black box is found, who is to say that it is from Flight MH370? Another black box could have been dropped in the sea 1000 miles from Perth while the search was going on in the South China Sea. In these circumstances, with the amount of disinformation abroad, it is best to be sceptical.”

Ms Burrows, the mother of Brisbane man Rod Burrows who was travelling with his wife, Mary, said on Friday the book was premature.

”Nobody knows what happened so why would anyone want to put out a book at this stage?” she said.

”There’s absolutely no answers. It’s devastating for the families. It’s 10 weeks tomorrow and there’s nothing,” she said.

”There are so many theories that I only want to believe one, that they were all unconscious and didn’t know what was going on.

”That’s my only theory. That keeps me sane. All I want is for somebody to find a bit of plane. My husband wants a black box and I want a bit of plane to let me know just where they are.”

Penguin will soon release a book on the mystery to be written by aviation author Christine Negroni. She wrote Deadly Departure on TWA Flight 800, about a plane that crashed in the Atlantic near New York in 1996, killing 230.

Writing on her blog she says she has discussed the flight with French air accident investigator Olivier Ferrante.

He told her: ”So far it is a crash with no airplane, no bodies, no crash site, no physical evidence. It is a virtual crash until a piece of wreckage is found.”

SOURCE: SMH

The late pop legend Michael Jackson has topped the album charts, nearly five years since his death, with Xscape.

The second posthumous album of his previously unreleased tracks features eight songs recorded between 1983 and 1999.

It was reworked by producers including Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins and Stargate.

Lily Allen’s Sheezus fell to number six, while in the singles chart Rita Ora’s I Will Never Let You Down debuted at number one.

he rest of the album chart saw another new entry at number two with US rockers The Black Keys’ latest release Turn Blue. Paloma Faith’s A Perfect Contradiction was at three while Paolo Nutini’s A Caustic Love was at four.

Foxes was at five with Glorious.

Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita Wurst hit the singles chart at number 17 with Rise Like A Phoenix, following the song’s worldwide coverage after its success last Saturday.

The other new entries in the top 20 singles chart were Ed Sheeran’s One, which is at number 20, and Australian boy band 5 Seconds Of Summer with Good Girls at number 19.

The top end of the singles chart had Waves by hip-hop star Mr Probz at two and All Of Me by soul singer John Legend at three.

BBC

It was a bizarre incident on a red carpet renowned for its strict decorum. The man was later identified as Vitalii Sediuk, a Ukrainian prankster known for such stunts.

Yet Ferrera didn’t seem ruffled on the carpet and was in good spirits at the movie’s after-party, laughing with guests and taking pictures.

She declined comment on the incident, however, and festival organizers didn’t immediately return messages about the matter.

The former Ugly Betty star was on her way into the Palais des Festivals for the world premiere of the DreamWorks animated sequel.

Rupesh Paul Productions is promoting The Vanishing Act, a film about the plane tragedy, among buyers at the Cannes Film Festival.

A poster for the movie promises to tell “the untold story” of the missing plane, but in an interview Friday, the associate director of the movie, Sritama Dutta, said the only similarities between the thriller and the real-life disaster is that a plane is missing.

Video Trailer: Click Here

“It has got no similarities,” said Dutta, adding there have been so many developments with the actual case that it wouldn’t be practical to try to mirror it.

“We cannot keep up with the true facts, it’s changing every day.”

However the 90-second trailer for the film, posted to YouTube yesterday, features a cast of terrified passengers aboard a turbulent MAS jetliner and recreates some of the dramatic scenarios that could have played out on board the ill-fated flight after takeoff.

Dutta said Indian director Rupesh Paul will film the movie and a multiethnic cast for it could be revealed before Cannes ends May 25.

Paul presented the film idea to financiers with the teaser trailer on Saturday afternoon, according to Variety .

Paul told the magazine that he spent 20 days working on a screenplay based around a Malaysian journalist’s theory about what happened to the plane.

He said the journalist, who insists on anonymity for now, is one of the film’s investors. The film’s budget is about $3.5 million.

The trailer for the partly fictional film was shot over six days in an Aerobus parked in Mumbai, India.

Shooting the film will take 35 days and involve more than 200 actors.

Paul hopes to shoot the film in India and the United States and plans a worldwide release in September.

His erotic movie “Kamasutra 3D” is being screened outside the Cannes competition this year.

His personal website says Paul “redefines all-round talent” and “his free spirit has been prized and puzzled by many.”

Within weeks of MH370 disappearing Australian film Deep Water, about a plane that crashes into the ocean on its way from China, was shelved because of its resemblance to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The Hollywood Reporter stated Deep Water, a follow-up to Bait 3D, had been put on hold because of “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

“Out of sensitivity to the Malaysia flight situation, we’ve decided to put it on pause for now,” Gary Hamilton, managing director of Arclight Films told hollywoodreporter.com in March

The news from Cannes comes as the first book about the aviation disaster is set to hit bookshelves tomorrow, Fairfax reports.

Just over 10 weeks after the plane went missing, “Flight MH370: The Mystery” by author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne, will go on sale Monday.

American aviation author Christine Negroni, wrote Deadly Departure on TWA Flight 800, is also working on a book about the missing Malaysian flight, called Crashed, which will be published by Penguin.

Authorities still have not been able to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 when it went missing. The search for the plane has made headlines worldwide.

Video Trailer: Click Here

Pitbull has released a video for the official song of the 2014 World Cup, "We Are One (Ole Ola)" — which is to say, Pitbull has just released a Pitbull music video.

People dance, Pitbull raps and sings, and girls in minimal clothing abound. Pictures of Brazilian flags and soccer players are meant to serve as a general backdrop, but it's mostly just Pitbull reminding us that we are one.

Jennifer Lopez is also on scene, but she probably spent more time in hair and makeup than she did in the studio recording her very brief part. The video/song also features Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, who unequivocally steals the show.

Sorry, Pitbull — we liked the message, but it's hard to beat Shakira's 2010 World Cup song.

The 2014 World Cup Finals will be held starting on July 13 in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana stadium.

Video: Click Here