Danny Puff

NEW YORK (AP) Jay-Z is defending his recent trip to Cuba in a new song.

The rapper released "Open Letter" Thursday after two Florida Republican lawmakers critical of the trip questioned if the rapper's visit to Havana with wife Beyonce, which coincided with their fifth wedding anniversary, was officially licensed.

On the song, Jay-Z talks about his distaste for politicians and repeats the refrain, "Y'all gon' learn today."

Jay-Z raps: "Want to give me jail time and a fine? Fine, let me commit a real crime."

U.S. Treasury officials said Tuesday the couple's trip was licensed as an educational exchange after Cuban-American U.S. Reps Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart expressed concerns about the trip and wanted to know if it was licensed.

Jay-Z and Beyonce are avid supporters of President Barack Obama. Jay-Z raps in his song, "Obama said, 'Chill, you gon' get me impeached, you don't need this (expletive) anyway, chill with me on the beach."

U.S. citizens aren't allowed to travel to Cuba for mere tourism, though they can obtain licenses for academic, religious, journalistic or cultural exchange trips. The so-called people-to-people licenses were reinstated under the Obama administration. Beyonce and Jay-Z marked their fifth wedding anniversary in Havana last week.

On the new song, the 17-time Grammy winner also addresses the Brooklyn Nets, which he owns less than 1 percent of. Jay-Z is selling his stake in the team so he can become certified as a player agent, a person with knowledge of the details said Wednesday.

"Would have bought the Nets to Brooklyn for free, except I made millions off of you (expletive) dweebs, I still own the building, I'm still keeping my seats," he raps.

Jay-Z also calls himself "the Bob Dylan of rap music" on "Open Letter," produced by Timbaland and Swizz Beatz.

____

Online:

http://lifeandtimes.com/jay-z-open-letter

____

AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.

Read More

LONDON (Reuters) - Former Beatle Paul McCartney's 680-million-pound ($1.04 billion) fortune put him at the top of a list ranking the UK and Ireland's richest musicians that also highlighted Adele as the wealthiest young music millionaire.

McCartney was followed closely by music and stage impresario Andrew Lloyd-Webber at 620 million pounds, Irish rock band U2 and singer Elton John in the Sunday Times Rich List 2013 to be published on April 21, an emailed statement from the paper said.

McCartney, 70, has topped all the charts for the country's wealthiest musicians since the Rich List began in 1989, when the former Beatle was worth just 80 million pounds.

Aside from starring roles at Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee as well as the closing and opening ceremonies for the London Olympics, McCartney's "On the Run" tour grossed $57 million from 18 dates in 2012.

His total was also boosted by wife Nancy Shevell's stake in her father's New England Motor Freight trucking operation.

Profits from Lloyd-Webber's hugely successful stage shows, such as "Phantom of the Opera", "Evita" and "Cats", helped to boost the composer and theatre owner's fortune to keep him in second place ahead of U2 at 520 million and "Candle in the Wind" singer John in third at 240 million pounds.

Rolling Stone Mick Jagger came joint fifth at 200 million pounds alongside former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham and her soccer player husband David Beckham.

Adele topped the 2013 Young Music Rich List of entertainers aged 30 and under with a 30 million pound fortune. With the continued worldwide success of her album "21", this was a 50 percent increase on the 20 million pounds which put the Oscar-winning singer-songwriter atop the list in 2012.

New entries to the youngsters' list, each worth 5 million pounds, included singer-songwriters Emeli Sand , aged 26, Ed Sheeran, 22, and all five members of boy band One Direction, Niall Horan, 19, Zayn Malik, 20, Liam Payne, 19, Harry Styles, 19, and Louis Tomlinson, 21.

One Direction have become Britain's richest boy band, with combined wealth of 25 million pounds. This puts them just 1 million pounds ahead of the combined wealth of the four members of JLS, Jonathan (JB) Gill, 26, Marvin Humes, 28, Aston Merrygold, 25, and Ortis Williams, 26, who now share a total fortune of 24 million pounds.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Stephen Addison)

Read More

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell for the first time in four sessions on Thursday as energy and mining stocks were hurt by declining prices and weak investor sentiment, while BlackBerry plunged on doubts about the company's recovery plan.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index fell 53.54 points, or 0.43 percent, to 12,481.37.

(Reporting By Cameron French)

Read More

PHILADELPHIA (AP) A grocery store employee said Thursday that he is thanking God and his belt buckle for saving him from a stray bullet that smashed through the market's front door.

The bullet lodged in the metal buckle worn by Bienvenido Reynoso, who had only recently started his job at 8 Brothers Supermarket in Philadelphia.

"It saved my life," Reynoso said of the belt. "I keep it for (my) whole life now."

Reynoso, 38, said he was about to wheel a hand truck outside the market in the city's Grays Ferry section when he heard gunshots around 4 p.m. Wednesday. He hit the floor.

Surveillance footage shows a man on a bike firing a gun outside the market. One person outside the store was hit in the abdomen and was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.

At first, Reynoso didn't realize he could have been a second victim.

"When I check my body, I don't see nothing, no blood, nothing," he said in an interview at his home Thursday. "And I said I'm going to be OK."

Then someone noticed a hole at the bottom of Reynoso's shirt. That's when he found the bullet stuck to his belt buckle.

Police took the bullet and shirt as evidence. But Reynoso, the father of a young daughter, got to keep the belt, which he said he got in New York three years ago.

Christian Vinas, 21, was working behind the counter and also dived to the ground when the shooting began. Reynoso had perfect timing in dropping to the floor, he said.

"That has to be God," Vinas said. "Out of all the places you could get hit in the body, you get hit right there. It was truly amazing."

Police arrested a 24-year-old suspect and charged him with attempted murder and aggravated assault.

___

Follow Kathy Matheson at www.twitter.com/kmatheson

Read More

TORONTO (Reuters) - Shares of BlackBerry slipped about 8 percent on Thursday as analysts questioned whether the handset maker's turnaround plan would succeed in the brutally competitive smartphone market.

Discounting of the Z10, its recent handset meant to take on the likes of Apple Inc's iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy line, has also raised concerns, according to one trader.

BlackBerry launched its latest handsets based on its much delayed BlackBerry 10 operating system in January, but they started selling in the United States only in March.

Investors have been skeptical about the company's prospects of regaining its lost glory and stealing back market share in the U.S. market. The stock has lost a quarter of its value since hitting a 52-week high in January.

"(The) recent optimism surrounding the ability of the new BlackBerry 10 products to get BlackBerry back to long-term profitability will ultimately prove unwarranted," Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette wrote in a research note.

"We see a combination of market maturity, more aggressive pricing from competitors and smaller resources than those of competing ecosystems frustrating the comeback attempt," added the analyst, who has an "underperform" rating on the stock.

This followed a Credit Suisse note, which suggested that the surprisingly strong gross margins that BlackBerry reported last month may have been driven more by lower amortization levels and less by operational improvements.

The weakness in BlackBerry came amid the backdrop of a broad selloff in the technology sector, led by Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, after an influential tech research firm said personal computer sales plunged the most in two decades.

Options on the stock were busy as well, with 107,000 puts and 87,000 calls traded so far on Thursday afternoon, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.

The weekly $13.50, $14 and $14.50 strike puts expiring on Friday after the close are among the most active contracts in BlackBerry, on concerns that the recent drop in the stock will continue, WhatsTrading.com options strategist Frederic Ruffy said.

BlackBerry shares were down at C$13.84 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Its Nasdaq-listed shares were down 7.8 percent at $13.53 in afternoon trading.

(Reporting by John Tilak and Euan Rocha in Toronto, and Doris Frankel in Chicago; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Read More

What if you could take up swords against the Lannister family on "Game of Thrones"? Or solve mysteries with the "NCIS" crew? Or pitch an ad campaign to Don Draper on "Mad Men"?

And then: What if you could watch the consequences of your actions on TV the next week?

That's the premise behind "Defiance" (for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, $59.99), a collaboration between the online game studio Trion Worlds and cable TV's Syfy. By the time "Defiance" the TV show debuts Monday, "Defiance" the video game will have been out for a few weeks enough time for players to make their own mark on this new universe.

Both the game and the TV drama are set in 2046, some 30 years after the Votan collective of alien species arrived in the skies over Earth. After a brutal war, the humans and aliens have settled into an uneasy peace, but alien technology that crashed to Earth has drastically changed the landscape.

The "Defiance" game shows the effects of these "arkfalls" on California's Bay Area, now a wasteland packed with bloodthirsty mutants, hostile cyborgs and overgrown, fire-spewing insects. Your character male or female, human or Votan is an ark hunter who makes a living by scavenging from crash sites, and the search for a particular alien artifact brings you to the West Coast.

Soon after your arrival, the game's sprawling map opens up, letting you choose from dozens of missions. You can race dune buggies around the wilderness. You can infiltrate raider strongholds and steal their loot. You can rescue farmers from "hellbug" infestations. Most missions can be handled solo, but if you stumble across a major arkfall you're going to need help from other online players.

You'll also discover "episode missions" that relate to the next week's installment of the "Defiance" TV show. In the first such adventure, you meet military veteran Joshua Nolan and his partner, an alien named Irisa. They ask for your help retrieving a lost Votan doohickey, which turns out to be a significant plot device in the premiere of the Syfy drama.

The titular town of Defiance was built on the ruins of St. Louis, so I don't know how many of its characters will visit us ark hunters out West. But both sides of the "Defiance" team have collaborated on building an impressive world, and I'm eager to see where they go from week to week.

I was able to battle through the initial batch of episode missions in just a few hours, but there's plenty more to do. As with any online shooter, you can engage in raucous death matches with your fellow humans. Or you can enroll in the Shadow War, in which huge teams of up to 64 players each battle for control of sites all over the map.

Such massively multiplayer epics are popular among computer gamers, but we haven't seen many on consoles. I've been playing "Defiance" on the Xbox 360, and I love being able to use an Xbox controller instead of a PC's keyboard and mouse. On the other hand, I was frequently unable to log onto Trion's servers during the first few days after the game went on sale. That problem has eased up, but there are still too many glitches, from unresponsive controls to disappearing inventory items.

There's also a wearying sameness to the bulk of the missions, which typically consist of racing to a location, killing a bunch of monsters and retrieving some object. The action is intense and challenging, often reminiscent of 2K Games' fine "Borderlands." But it's missing that series' twisted sense of humor, and I'm hoping Trion delivers more variety in future episodes. It's a work in progress; for now, I give it two stars out of four.

___

Online:

http://www.defiance.com/en/

___

Follow Lou Kesten on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lkesten

Read More

By Narae Kim and Elaine Lies

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean rapper Psy released his much-anticipated new single on Thursday hoping to repeat the success of "Gangnam Style" that made him the biggest star to emerge from the growing K-pop music scene.

The video for "Gangnam Style" has become the most watched item on YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits and Psy's horse-riding moves sparked an international dance craze.

The details of his latest single, "Gentleman", were kept under wraps until the song was released at midnight in New Zealand (1200 GMT).

The song, with a techno beat, was full of puns in Korean and contained the lines "I am a party mafia!" and the refrain, "I am a mother father gentleman".

Psy, 35, will perform "Gentleman" in public for the first time on Saturday at a concert at Seoul's World Cup stadium but he has been coy about what dance to expect this time, except to hint that it is based on traditional Korean moves.

"All Koreans know this dance but (those in) other countries haven't seen it," Psy told South Korean television last week.

He has asked fans to wear white to Saturday's event and his stylist told Reuters last month that the concept for the new song would again be a formal suit with "an unexpected twist of fun".

In "Gangnam Style", written as a commentary on materialism in the wealthy Seoul suburb of Gangnam, Psy was decked out in sunglasses, a white dress shirt, bow tie and tuxedo jackets.

The song racked up 3.59 million digital sales last year in the United States and Canada, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, putting it ninth in the best-selling list. It was third on Amazon's MP3 song bestseller list for 2012.

"Gangnam Style" catapulted Psy to global fame after an rocky career in the music business over the past decade.

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the United States and made his debut in 2001 with the album "PSY from the Psycho World".

But he ran into trouble with the authorities for "inappropriate" content in the lead song on that album, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was also charged with possession of marijuana in 2002.

Since then he has released five more albums.

Psy's brash style - at a concert last year he parodied Lady Gaga, complete with fake breasts that he set on fire - stands in stark contrast to the squeaky clean singers that dominate K-pop which is finding an increasingly large international audience.

A Music Industry White Paper published by the Korean Creative Content Agency said sales of K-pop outside Korea surged 135 percent in 2011 from a year earlier to $196 million. In 2006 overseas sales were worth $16.7 million.

Psy acknowledged last month that the stress of following up Gangnam was taking its toll.

He tweeted a picture of himself covering his face at a recording studio, with the caption: "The pain of creation."

(Reporting by Narae Kim, writing by Elaine Lies, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Read More

By Alexandria Sage

PARIS (Reuters) - Right in the heart of Paris, sandwiched between the Champs-Elysees and the River Seine, sits Avenue Winston Churchill.

So why not a Rue Margaret Thatcher, some French politicians are asking.

A conservative city councilor, Jerome Dubus, will propose that the French capital pay homage to Britain's outspoken former prime minister by naming a street after her at the next council meeting this month. Thatcher died on April 8.

But in a country where centuries-long tensions with its neighbor across the Channel linger - the avenue commemorating Britain's role in World War Two notwithstanding - the idea is not without its critics.

The president of the council's communist and far-left party, Ian Brossat, countered with a proposal to rename a square or street for Bobby Sands, the IRA prisoner who died in a 1981 hunger strike in protest over British rule in Northern Island to which Thatcher refused to yield.

"Lacking any personality and a leader, the UMP (conservative party) is looking for its good fairy in the past, and across the Channel," Brossat wrote in a short statement.

The Paris suburb of St. Denis already has a short street named for Sands in a cluster of streets named for former Socialist and Communist politicians, members of the French Resistance and poets. Avenue du President Wilson, in honor of the United States' World War One-era President Woodrow Wilson, is not far away.

Thatcher's death has divided public opinion in Britain, where opponents of her free-market ideology have spoken against the blunt politician dubbed the "Iron Lady.

In London, government ministers have proposed erecting a statue of Thatcher in city landmark Trafalgar Square, whose central column honors the 1805 naval victory of Lord Nelson ... over France.

(Editing by Mark John and Sonya Hepinstall)

Read More

By Vernell Hackett

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - Veteran singers and songwriters Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare and "Cowboy" Jack Clement will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, organizers said on Wednesday, achieving one of the highest honors in the music industry.

Rogers, 74, the husky-voiced three-time Grammy winner best known for songs like The Gambler" and "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town," will be inducted in the "Modern Era" category, the Country Music Association announced.

"Everything pales in comparison to this," Rogers said, tearing up because the honor came in his lifetime.

"My older sons thought I was already in here. Maybe now I can really impress them," he told Reuters, referring to his 8-year-old twin sons from his fifth marriage.

Rogers, a country-pop crossover artist who scored a big hit with the 1983 duet "Islands in the Stream" with Dolly Parton, has charted hit singles in each of the past six decades, and is due to play at the Glastonbury pop music festival in England in June.

Wednesday's three new inductees will bring membership of the Country Music Hall of Fame to 121 since its creation in 1961, including the likes of Parton, Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Glen Campbell and Willie Nelson.

Bare, 78, was born in Ohio and moved to California, where he had a hit with "The All American Boy" in the pop field in 1959. He later moved to Nashville, was signed to a record deal by guitar player Chet Atkins, and went on to have hits with "Detroit City," and "500 Miles Away From Home."

"This is real huge," Bare said on Wednesday. "This is the culmination of a 19-year-old boy's dream who left Ohio to be a singer."

Clements, 82, is a producer and songwriter from Texas who moved to Memphis just as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, whom he discovered, were breaking into the music scene in the mid-1950s.

He persuaded George Jones to record one of his early hits, "She Thinks I Still Care," and also persuaded a record label to sign Charley Pride, one of the few African-American singers to make it big in the country music scene.

Clement, who also produced tracks in Memphis for U2's "Rattle and Hum" album, will be inducted as a non-performer in the ceremony to be held later this year at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

Read More

HELSINKI (AP) Vladimir Putin, banned in Finland?

Finnish police say the Russian president's name was mistakenly placed on a secret criminal register that could theoretically have gotten him arrested at the border.

TV station MTV3 reported Wednesday that Putin was placed there for his contact with Russian motorcycle gang Night Wolves, though he wasn't suspected of a crime in Finland. But National Police Board spokesman Robin Lardot told the AP the listing was a mistake and that Putin's name was removed from the list.

"The National Police Board has investigated the case and indeed found that such a mistaken entry was in the register," Lardot told The Associated Press. "We have ordered it to be removed and are investigating the case very thoroughly. We don't know how it got there." He declined further comment.

Putin's inclusion would be a major source of embarrassment in bilateral relations.

Finnish Interior Minister Paivi Rasanen, whose ministry oversees the police, conveyed her "sincerest apologies" to Putin over the mistaken entry.

"The Interior Ministry considers it of grave concern if a member of the police has made such groundless entries into the database of suspects."

MTV3 said the content of the register is known only to a few top officials. But in a statement later Wednesday, police called it a "computerized personal data file intended for nationwide used by the police."

They said it includes information on people who are suspected of offenses punishable by prison "or having contributed to an offence subject to imprisonment of more than six months, or to an unlawful use of narcotics."

The Night Wolves says on its Web site that the club's prototype was born in the 1980s from the desire to protect musicians who were holding illegal concerts during the Soviet era.

The muscle-flexing Russian leader has not been averse to being associated with tough bikers and has described motorcycles as "the most dramatic form of transport."

Three years ago, he leaped onto a Harley Davidson to join about 5,000 bikers at an international convention in southern Ukraine sporting black sunglasses, black jeans and black fingerless gloves.

The head of Finland's national police force, Mikko Paatero, apologized for the "mistaken" inclusion of Putin's name in the database.

"This kind of incident is extremely exceptional and is not acceptable under any circumstances," Paatero said in a statement.

Read More