Danny Puff

LOS ANGELES (AP) Lil Wayne, Ron Howard, Scarlett Johansson and Kim Kardashian are all on the same page when it comes to criminal justice reform.

They're among more than 100 entertainers calling on President Barack Obama to focus on changing drug laws. Rap mogul Russell Simmons helped assemble the coalition of celebrities and civil rights leaders that presented a letter to the president on Tuesday.

The group praises the president's efforts toward drug incarceration reform but insists "the time is right" to move toward replacing jail sentences with intervention and rehabilitation for non-violent offenders. The starry group, which also includes Jennifer Hudson, Nicki Minaj, Susan Sarandon and Will Smith, also asks Obama to form a panel to handle clemency requests and to support a measure that allows judges to waive mandatory minimum sentences.

"It is critical that we change both the way we think about drug laws in this country and how we generate positive solutions that leave a lasting impact on rebuilding our communities," Simmons said, citing Department of Justice data that shows that the United States jails more of its citizens than any other country in the world.

Drug offenders comprise nearly half the federal prison population in the U.S.

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By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) - A British computer hacker pleaded guilty on Tuesday to cyber attacks on targets including Sony, Nintendo, Rupert Murdoch's News International and the Arizona State Police.

Ryan Ackroyd's plea meant his planned jury trial did not go ahead and, as a result, the court did not hear any evidence on the motivation behind the attacks he made using the persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla as part of hacking group LulzSec.

Dressed in a tracksuit bottom and t-shirt, with a large tattoo on his arm and crew-cut hair, Ackroyd spoke only to identify himself and to enter his plea.

Ackroyd, 26, was arrested in 2011 with three other British young men in connection with an international cyber crime spree by LulzSec, a splinter group of hacking collective Anonymous.

The other three had already pleaded guilty to several charges including cyber attacks on the CIA and Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, made international headlines in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website.

Ackroyd faced four charges but pleaded guilty to just one. Prosecutors said they would not pursue the other charges.

Ackroyd and his three fellow hackers will be sentenced on May 14, judge Deborah Taylor said.

Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, and Jake Davis, 20, had both pleaded guilty to two counts while Ryan Cleary, 21, had pleaded guilty to six counts including that he attacked Pentagon computers operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Cleary, Al-Bassam and Davis admitted to launching so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in which websites are flooded with traffic to make them crash.

Ackroyd denied taking part in DDoS attacks but admitted, as did the three others, to hacking into computer systems, obtaining confidential data and redirecting legitimate website visitors to sites hosted by the hackers.

The targets listed in the charge to which Ackroyd pleaded guilty also included Britain's National Health Service, the U.S. public broadcaster PBS and 20th Century Fox.

The defendants are free on bail pending their sentencing, under the condition that they do not access the Internet.

Cleary was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last June but U.S. authorities have indicated they would not seek his extradition as he was being prosecuted in Britain on the same charges.

The name LulzSec is a combination of "lulz", another way of writing "lols" or "laugh out loud", and security.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - Malian authorities will give French President Francois Hollande another camel after the one they gave him in thanks for helping repel Islamist rebels was killed and eaten by the family he left it with in Timbuktu, an official in Mali said.

A local government official in northern Mali said on Tuesday a replacement would be sent to France.

"As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel," said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"The new camel will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate."

Hollande was presented with the camel when he visited Mali in February several weeks after dispatching French troops to the former colony to help combat al Qaeda-linked fighters moving south from a base in the north of the country.

The president joked at the time about using the camel to get around traffic-jammed Paris. But he chose in the end to leave it with a family in the town on the edge of the Sahara desert.

Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was tasked with giving Hollande regular updates on the camel's status and had to inform him of its death last week, French media said.

"The news came in from soldiers on the ground," said a French government official.

French leaders have received many gifts of exotic or wild animals from Africa and further afield over the years.

Last week, a robber chainsawed a tusk off the skeleton of an elephant offered to Louis XIV by a Portuguese king in 1668. Police caught the robber as he fled, tusk under his arm.

(Reporting by Adama Diarra in Bamako and Brian Love in Paris; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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LONDON (AP) Margaret Thatcher was not just a political titan, she was a cultural icon skewered by comedians, transformed into a puppet and played to Oscar-winning perfection by Meryl Streep.

With her uncompromising politics, ironclad certainty, bouffant hairstyle and ever-present handbag, the late British leader was grist for comedians, playwrights, novelists and songwriters whether they loved her or as was more often the case hated her.

SATIRICAL TARGET

Thatcher's free-market policies transformed and divided Britain, unleashing an outpouring of creative anger from her opponents. A generation of British comedians, from Ben Elton to Alexei Sayle, honed their talents lampooning Thatcher.

To the satirical puppeteers of popular 1980s TV series "Spitting Image," Thatcher was a cigar-smoking bully, a butcher with a bloody cleaver, a domineering leader ruling over her docile Cabinet. One famous sketch showed Thatcher and her ministers gathered for dinner. Thatcher ordered steak. "And what about the vegetables?" the waitress asked. "They'll have the same as me," Thatcher replied.

In the U.S., "Saturday Night Live" got in on the act albeit more gently making the Iron Lady the subject of several skits. In one of them, Monty Python member Michael Palin played the prime minister shortly after her election in 1979, poking fun at her helmet of hair.

MUSICAL OPPOSITION

Pop was political in Thatcher's day, as the bitter social divisions of the 1980s sparked an angry musical outpouring.

"Whenever I'm asked to name my greatest inspiration, I always answer 'Margaret Thatcher,'" musician Billy Bragg, one of her most vocal opponents, said in 2009. "Truth is, before she came into my life, I was just your run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter."

Bragg was a member of the 1980s Red Wedge movement that campaigned against Thatcher and the Conservatives and for the Labour Party.

"I see no joy, I see only sorrow, I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow," sang The Beat, urging Thatcher to resign in "Stand Down Margaret."

In "Tramp the Dirt Down," Elvis Costello imagined the day of Thatcher's death: "When they finally put you in the ground, I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down."

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey went even further, lyrically fantasizing about "Margaret on the Guillotine."

But for some later musicians, Thatcher was a positive figure.

Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell who sported a Union Jack mini-dress as part of the 1990s girl group tweeted Monday: "Thinking of our 1st Lady of girl power, Margaret Thatcher, a green grocer's daughter who taught me anything is possible."

LITERARY INSPIRATION

Thatcher has made appearances in several novels written or set in the 1980s.

In Salman Rushdie's 1988 book, "The Satanic Verses," she was "Mrs. Torture." Despite his political opposition to Thatcher, Rushdie remembered her on Monday as a "considerate" woman who had offered him police protection after the novel brought a death sentence from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

She was a major, though mostly unseen, presence in Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning 2004 novel "The Line of Beauty," set during the height of Thatcher's rule. The prime minister's appearance at a Conservative lawmaker's party where she sends the crowd into a tizzy and dances to the Rolling Stones with the novel's young protagonist forms the dizzying pivot of Hollinghurst's tale of 80s power and excess.

STAGE AND SCREEN STAR

Thatcher's transformation into a stage and screen character started not long after she took office. Thatcher's personal papers include an account of an excruciating 1981 evening that she and her husband, Denis, spent at a West End farce titled "Anyone for Denis?"

On stage, Thatcher remains a potent figure, a shorthand for the 1980s. In the Olivier- and Tony Award-winning musical "Billy Elliot," coal miners sing "Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher," a song with music by Elton John and lyrics that say: "We all celebrate today 'cause it's one day closer to your death."

The London production of "Billy Elliot" kept the song in on Monday, after polling the opinion of the audience.

West End theatergoers are currently flocking to see "The Audience," a play about meetings between Queen Elizabeth II and the 12 prime ministers of her long reign. The play is a gentle liberal drama, and Haydn Gwynne's strident Thatcher is gently rebuked by the monarch over her opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa.

On-screen, the character of Thatcher had a jokey cameo at the end of the 1981 James Bond movie "For Your Eyes Only," but for left-wing directors, she was no laughing matter. Stephen Frears' "My Beautiful Laundrette" was one of several 1980s films that depicted Thatcher's Britain as a land of poverty and racism as well as economic enterprise.

Others have mined the drama of a hardworking grocer's daughter who became Britain's first female prime minister. In the 2008 TV movie "The Long Walk to Finchley," Andrea Riseborough played the young politician fighting for a seat in Parliament. The next year "Margaret," with Lindsay Duncan, depicted the end of her career via a Cabinet coup in 1990.

The most acclaimed recent screen Thatcher was Streep's turn as the aged politician looking back on her life in the 2011 film "The Iron Lady." Streep won an Academy Award for a performance that humanized a divisive character.

Streep said Monday that Thatcher's political legacy was "worthy for the argument of history to settle."

"It is hard to imagine a part of our current history that has not been affected by measures she put forward in the U.K.," Streep said. "But to me, she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit."

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AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report. Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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LOS ANGELES (AP) The horror remake "Evil Dead" has opened as the top draw at theaters with a first weekend of $25.8 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Evil Dead," Sony, $25,775,847, 3,025 locations, $8,521 average, $25,775,847, one week.

2. "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," Paramount, $20,875,389, 3,734 locations, $5,591 average, $86,438,449, two weeks.

3. "The Croods," Fox, $20,651,694, 3,879 locations, $5,324 average, $125,351,896, three weeks.

4. "Jurassic Park," Universal, $18,620,145, 2,771 locations, $6,720 average, $18,620,145, one week.

5. "Olympus Has Fallen," FilmDistrict, $10,163,132, 3,059 locations, $3,322 average, $71,236,633, three weeks.

6. "Tyler Perry's Temptation," Lionsgate, $10,085,805, 2,047 locations, $4,927 average, $38,469,146, two weeks.

7. "Oz the Great and Powerful," Disney, $8,010,234, 2,905 locations, $2,757 average, $212,606,952, five weeks.

8. "The Host," Open Road Films, $5,198,615, 3,202 locations, $1,624 average, $19,624,328, two weeks.

9. "The Call," Sony, $3,500,248, 2,002 locations, $1,748 average, $45,481,341, four weeks.

10. "Admission," Focus, $1,946,048, 1,407 locations, $1,383 average, $15,265,596, three weeks.

11. "Spring Breakers," A24, $1,172,022, 1,072 locations, $1,093 average, $12,616,764, four weeks.

12. "Identity Thief," Universal, $796,705, 721 locations, $1,105 average, $131,232,335, nine weeks.

13. "The Place Beyond the Pines," Focus, $703,379, 30 locations, $23,446 average, $1,089,409, two weeks.

14. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $603,470, 524 locations, $1,152 average, $129,725,117, 21 weeks.

15. "Jack the Giant Slayer," Warner Bros., $522,349, 502 locations, $1,041 average, $62,469,830, six weeks.

16. "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," Warner Bros., $480,929, 535 locations, $899 average, $21,807,501, four weeks.

17. "Quartet," Weinstein Co., $366,786, 252 locations, $1,456 average, $17,200,546, 13 weeks.

18. "Life of Pi," Fox, $354,962, 269 locations, $1,320 average, $123,920,583, 20 weeks.

19. "The Sapphires," Weinstein Co., $292,030, 60 locations, $4,867 average, $443,982, three weeks.

20. "Safe Haven," Relativity Media, $273,674, 360 locations, $760 average, $70,327,952, eight weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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BERLIN (AP) These thieves might really have sticky fingers.

Police said Monday an unknown number of culprits made off with 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread from a parked trailer in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld over the weekend.

The gooey loot is worth an estimated 16,000 euros ($20,710).

Germans news agency dpa reported that thieves have previously stolen a load of energy drinks from the same location.

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By Eric Kelsey

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Science-fiction drama "Defiance" wants to go where no television series has gone before, weaving a show with an online video game to achieve the elusive goal of parlaying success on one entertainment platform to another.

The new series, which premieres on U.S. cable channel Syfy on April 15, tells the story of frontier town Defiance, formerly St. Louis, in the near future following a 30-year war between humans and seven alien races.

Syfy last week released a multi-player, plot-based video game, developed with Trion Worlds, that lets users build their own personas and explore the landscape of a reshaped Earth in the San Francisco area. The game is made for Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox360 and PC.

Spinning a film or TV series into a video game, or vice versa, is nothing new. But producers say "Defiance" is the first to weave both game and show together at the same time. The video game alone took some five years to create.

Known in the entertainment industry as the "second screen," the concept lets viewers engage with a show on a second platform on which networks pin hopes for additional advertising sales and cementing a dedicated fan base.

"What's unusual about what we're doing ... is we're building the second-screen concept into the actual DNA of the show-game combo," "Defiance" executive producer Kevin Murphy told Reuters.

"We're working to make a terrific serialized drama that stands on its own, but we understand that what has people watching us is the fact that this cross-platform promotional is something very, very desirable."

"Defiance" will be a guinea pig for the viability of merging media like video games with TV shows.

"Nobody has done this before, that's the scary part," he said. "The wonderful part is that there's nobody to say, 'No, no, no, that's not the way it's done.

"It's something (Syfy President) Dave Howe always refers to as the holy grail of entertainment," he added.

Syfy spent about $100 million to develop the game and show, and the network expects about 20 percent of viewers and players to cross over between the two platforms.

"We're very cautiously optimistic," Howe said, adding that it will still take the standard four or five weeks to know if "Defiance" will be renewed for a second season.

'OLD-SCHOOL' SCI-FI

The "Defiance" cast is led by ex-Marine and vagabond Nolan, played by "Liz & Dick" star Grant Bowler, and his adopted alien daughter Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas).

The two finally become tied down helping Defiance Mayor Amanda Rosewater (Julie Benz) defend the town from invasion.

Murphy, whose past credits include writer and producer on TV drama "Desperate Housewives," said there are plans for several crossovers between the series and game, including adapting user-created personas from the game into subsequent seasons of the television show.

Murphy said he wanted to depart from the recent popular television series of dark, dystopian sci-fi, such as AMC's "Walking Dead" and Syfy's "Battlestar Galactica."

"I think this is sort of a tip of the hat more to the old-school science-fiction like 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars,' which were very hopeful, optimistic worlds," Murphy said.

The show often reflects American challenges of an ethnically diverse and often divided society.

In the pilot, polyglot alliances are tricky as humans and some races of aliens must reluctantly brush aside differences to protect the town from automatons known as the Volge.

"On our show, the aliens are not invading us," Murphy said. "The aliens are part of the melting pot .... They each have their own sort of social mores that they left behind and have been challenged because they've come to a new world."

Syfy is a unit of Comcast Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

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LONDON (Reuters) - Actress Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the 2011 film "The Iron Lady", praised the former British prime minister on Monday as a pioneer for the role of women in politics.

Britain's first and only female political leader died on Monday, aged 87, after suffering a stroke.

Streep, 63, described Thatcher as a trailblazer, "willingly or unwillingly", for female political leaders. "To me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit," the American actress said in a statement.

"To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable."

Streep paid tribute to Thatcher for rising to the position of prime minister from her upbringing as a grocer's daughter on the back of her own hard work.

The multi-Oscar-winning actress acknowledged that the right-wing Thatcher divided opinion. But Streep said Thatcher deserved credit for standing by her convictions despite the "special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer".

Streep said she was honored to try to imagine Thatcher's late life journey in playing her in "Iron Lady" but only really had a "glancing understanding" of Thatcher's struggles.

"I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends," she said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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LAS VEGAS (AP) Everything went to script Sunday night at the Academy of Country Music Awards until the end when Luke Bryan pulled off an amazing upset and won entertainer of the year.

Bryan beat out some of country music's top stars, including two-time winner Taylor Swift and overall award leader Miranda Lambert, in an upset that few would have predicted. The 36-year-old Georgia native recently began headlining his first arena tour and was the co-host of this year's show.

After an emotional speech, co-host and fellow nominee Blake Shelton held Bryan up and joked that he won in his "first and last year as co-host" of the awards.

Shelton shared one award with Lambert, his wife, for "Over You," the deeply personal song they co-wrote. With three other wins including her fourth straight as female vocalist of the year Lambert was the night's most-honored star.

"Over You," written by the couple about Shelton's late brother, won song of the year at the Country Music Association Awards last November as well.

"As a songwriter, having your song and your lyrics recognized by your peers is pretty much as good as it gets," Lambert said. "And I'm so thankful for being in this genre of country music, every single time someone's nominated, I just cheer, because I love everybody to death. So thank you for accepting me as a song writer, not just as a singer, because that means the world to me."

Eric Church won two awards, including album of the year, and was tied with Jason Aldean, Little Big Town and Florida Georgia Line.

Church, this year's top nominee, also won vocal event of the year for his collaboration with Aldean and Luke Bryan for their collaboration on "The Only Way I Know" and performed his somber but powerful song "Like Jesus Does" with only an acoustic guitar and a backup singer.

"I can't believe I just met John Fogerty," Church said as he accepted the album award from the Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman and Lambert. "We should hang out later."

Aldean, country's top-selling male act, won male vocalist of the year. Little Big Town had wins for vocal group and video of the year. Florida Georgia Line won for new artist and were previous winners in the new vocal duo/group category.

Bryan is the first male winner of the entertainer of the year award since 2007 when Kenny Chesney won the first fan-voted award. Swift and Carrie Underwood have won two apiece since then.

Husband and wife Shawna and Keifer Thompson continued their feel-good story as Thompson Square won its second straight vocal duo of the year award.

Shawna Thompson gave a shoutout to her mother from stage.

Tears came to her eyes backstage as she explained that her father had recently passed away and she wanted to acknowledge her mother during her acceptance speech to support her.

"She's just having a really hard time," she said.

The night was full of colorful performances, but the anticipation of Garth Brooks and George Strait performing together overshadowed almost everything else. The two paid tribute to the late Dick Clark, the executive producer of the show since 1979 who passed away a year ago.

Brooks appeared on stage in flannel shirt and black cowboy hat with a Fu Manchu to perform his hit "The Dance" before Strait joined him for "The Cowboy Rides Away."

Reba McEntire introduced the two and paid tribute to Clark, momentarily breaking down as tears appeared in her eyes.

"He would slap me if he saw me crying up here," she said.

Shelton kicked the show off with his new single "Boys 'Round Here," a hip-hop-flavored ode to redneck swag. He was joined by Bryan, Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow and Pistol Annies, a trio that includes his wife.

Strait made his first appearance of the night earlier, singing "Give It All We Got Tonight." Lady Antebellum debuted new song "Downtown" and Charles Kelley finished off the song by rubbing pregnant trio-mate Hillary Scott's belly. Carrie Underwood stepped out of a black Cadillac parked on stage as she started her song, "Two Black Cadillacs."

Lambert appeared later with a fiery, diamond-studded rendition of her recent hit "Mama's Broken Heart."

John Mayer joined Paisley for a guitar summit on "Beat This Summer" and Taylor Swift and Keith Urban joined Tim McGraw on stage for "Highway Don't Care," which Urban finished off with a scorching guitar solo.

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AP Writer Hannah Dreier contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://acmcountry.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) Everything went to script Sunday night at the Academy of Country Music Awards until the end, when Luke Bryan pulled off an amazing upset and won entertainer of the year.

Bryan immediately overshadowed top winner Miranda Lambert's big night by beating out some of country music's top performers, including Lambert and her husband Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean and two-time entertainer of the year Taylor Swift in an upset that few would have predicted because of his relatively recent move into the spotlight.

The 36-year-old Georgia native recently began headlining his first arena tour and was the co-host of this year's show.

"I don't know what to say guys," Bryan said as members the audience shouted "Luke." ''Thank you so much fans for doing this to me. Thank you so much for making my life what it is. What I always wanted to be was just a country singer who got to ride on a tour bus and show up on a new stage and play music every night."

After an emotional speech, Bryan's co-host Blake Shelton held his partner up and joked that he won in his "first and last year as co-host" of the awards.

Bryan is the first male winner of the award since 2007 when Kenny Chesney won the first fan-voted award. Swift and Carrie Underwood have won two apiece since then.

Bryan's win will be the talk of Las Vegas Sunday night but Lambert again walks away as the academy's trophy magnet.

She won her fourth straight female vocalist award and picked up three trophies for her hit song "Over You" one for single record of the year and two for song of the year. She was performer of the song and co-wrote the song with Shelton.

"Over You," written about Shelton's late brother, won song of the year at the Country Music Association Awards last November as well.

"As a songwriter, having your song and your lyrics recognized by your peers is pretty much as good as it gets," Lambert said. "And I'm so thankful for being in this genre of country music, every single time someone's nominated, I just cheer, because I love everybody to death. So thank you for accepting me as a song writer, not just as a singer, because that means the world to me."

Eric Church won two awards, including album of the year, and was tied with Jason Aldean, Little Big Town and Florida Georgia Line in overall win total.

Church, this year's top nominee, also won vocal event of the year for his collaboration with Aldean and Luke Bryan for their collaboration on "The Only Way I Know" and performed his somber but powerful song "Like Jesus Does" with only an acoustic guitar and a backup singer.

"I think my career is going to be pre-'Chief' and post-'Chief,'" Church said. "Album of the year is most special to me."

Aldean, country's top-selling male act, won male vocalist of the year. Little Big Town had wins for vocal group and video of the year. Florida Georgia Line won for new artist and were previous winners in the new vocal duo/group category. And husband and wife Shawna and Keifer Thompson continued their feel-good story as Thompson Square won its second straight vocal duo of the year award.

Shawna Thompson gave a shoutout to her mother from stage.

Tears came to her eyes backstage as she explained that her father had recently passed away and she wanted to acknowledge her mother during her acceptance speech to support her.

"She's just having a really hard time," she said.

The night was full of colorful performances, but the anticipation of Garth Brooks and George Strait performing together overshadowed almost everything else. The two paid tribute to the late Dick Clark, the executive producer of the show since 1979 who passed away a year ago.

Brooks appeared on stage in flannel shirt and black cowboy hat with a Fu Manchu to perform his hit "The Dance" before Strait joined him for "The Cowboy Rides Away."

Reba McEntire introduced the two and paid tribute to Clark, momentarily breaking down as tears appeared in her eyes.

"He would slap me if he saw me crying up here," she said.

Shelton kicked the show off with his new single "Boys 'Round Here," a hip-hop-flavored ode to redneck swag. He was joined by Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow and Pistol Annies, a trio that includes his wife Miranda Lambert.

Strait made his first appearance of the night earlier, singing "Give It All We Got Tonight." Lady Antebellum debuted new song "Downtown" and Charles Kelley finished off the song by rubbing pregnant trio-mate Hillary Scott's belly. Carrie Underwood stepped out of a black Cadillac parked on stage as she started her song, "Two Black Cadillacs."

Lambert appeared later with a fiery, diamond-studded rendition of her recent hit "Mama's Broken Heart."

John Mayer joined Paisley for a guitar summit on "Beat This Summer" and Taylor Swift and Keith Urban joined Tim McGraw on stage for "Highway Don't Care," which Urban finished off with a scorching guitar solo.

Stevie Wonder made his first appearance on a country music awards show, joining Hunter Hayes for a performance by two guys who got their start as precocious teens. Hayes kicked off their set with his song "I Want Crazy," then was joined by Wonder for his hit "Sir Duke."

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AP Writer Hannah Dreier contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://acmcountry.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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