Buying concert tickets is a drag, as Taylor Swift fans know all too well.
When tickets first went on sale for her highly anticipated Eras Tour in November 2022, fans agonized over hours-long queues and frozen screens before Ticketmaster’s website ultimately crashed. Many failed to procure tickets, which were ultimately sold on the secondary market for as much as $11,000.
In the wake of that fiasco, the Department of Justice opened an investigation of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. On Thursday, it filed a lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation, accusing it of operating an illegal monopoly through anticompetitive behavior that has harmed everyone from consumers to venues to artists.
"It is time to break it up," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday.
The lawsuit claims that Live Nation controls about 60 percent of the market for concert promotions and manages more than 400 artists. Through Ticketmaster, it also controls about 70 percent of the market for ticketing and live events and more than 80 percent of major concert primary ticketing.
"Artists and fans as well as the countless people and other services that support them suffer from the loss of dynamism and growth that competition would inevitably usher in," the complaint in New York federal court states...
It's been a while since we bought tickets for a concert, but any time the government acts to protect the interests of the general public, it's a good day.
A Papua New Guinea government official has told the United Nations more than 2,000 people were believed to have been buried alive by Friday’s landslide and has formally asked for international help.
The government figure is roughly triple the U.N. estimate of 670 killed by the landslide in the South Pacific island nation’s mountainous interior. The remains of only six people had been recovered so far.
In a letter seen by The Associated Press to the United Nations resident coordinator dated Sunday, the acting director of the South Pacific island nation’s National Disaster Center Luseta Laso Mana said the landslide “buried more than 2000 people alive” and caused “major destruction” at Yambali village in the Enga province. [snip]
The government estimates Papua New Guinea’s population at around 10 million people, although a U.N. study, based on data including satellite photographs of roof tops, estimated in 2022 it could be as high as 17 million. An accurate census has not been held in the nation in decades.
The landslide had also buried a 200-meter (650-foot) stretch of the province’s main highway under debris 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) deep which creates a major obstacle to relief workers...
Until yesterday, when a single excavator was put into service, rescuers were trying to dig out the victims with shovels and farm tools. Awful.
Radical Israeli settlers have expanded their attacks on aid trucks passing through the West Bank this month, blocking food from reaching Gaza as humanitarian groups warn that the enclave is sinking deeper into famine.
Groups of settler youth are tailing relief convoys, setting up checkpoints and interrogating drivers. In some cases, far-right attackers have ransacked and burned trucks and beaten Palestinian drivers, leaving at least two hospitalized.
The assailants use a web of publicly accessible WhatsApp groups to track the trucks and coordinate attacks, providing a window into their activities. Working off what they say are tips from Israeli soldiers and police, in addition to the public, members pore over photos to work out which vehicles might be carrying aid to Gaza and mobilize local supporters to block them.
An attack on Thursday showed the system in action: Users in one WhatsApp group with more than 800 members began posting about a flatbed truck loaded with sugar, sharing photos from the road as they followed it.
“The truck supplying Hamas stopped in front of Evyatar!” said 23-year-old Yosef de Bresser, referring to an Israeli outpost south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
De Bresser is a leader in the “We Won’t Forget” movement, which set up protest camps at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza earlier this year and runs several of the WhatsApp groups targeting aid trucks.
“Come join the blockade!” he wrote. Others answered the call.
The flatbed was ransacked, its load strewn across the road, according to images posted later in the group — one of two sugar trucks vandalized by settlers that day. De Bresser said the waybills — which did not show a destination — proved that the truck was headed to Gaza...
Hamas isn't being supplied by these aid trucks, though the radical settlers likely believe every Palestinian man, woman and child is "Hamas." Whether through bombs or starvation, the object is the same. They want Palestinians driven from all the lands they consider to be the historic homeland of the Jewish people, including Gaza and the West Bank. And violence by these settlers is rarely punished, many of whom have been called up as reservists and are now fighting in Gaza. Trump buddy Netanyahu and his radical war cabinet have dissipated international sympathy for Israel after the murderous Hamas attacks of October 7, and in the process are creating 10 terrorists for every civilian killed and irretrievably damaging Israel's standing in the world for generations to come.
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