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When it comes to the Royal Wedding, U.S. media outlets have out-published the Brits, according to The Nielsen Company, which analyzed online buzz in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia following the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton in November 2010. The study of buzz on social media (blogs, message boards/groups) and traditional media finds that while the United Kingdom creates the greater overall level of consumer buzz about the Royal Wedding, the United States has the highest share of news coverage by traditional news sources, such as the online versions of newspapers and magazines.

U.S. News Media Take the Crown

Since the couple’s November 2010 engagement, there have been thousands of news posts about the Royal Wedding and its participants by U.S. news outlets, accounting for more than .3% of all news coverage immediately following the engagement and a steady stream of articles since. This share of news coverage from traditional media sources is considerably higher than in the U.K. and Australia. Given the varied number of news outlets, the share of news coverage is the best metric for comparison among the three markets; the share of news coverage by U.S. news outlets is more than twice that in the United Kingdom and Australia at the most recent measurement on April 3.

Kate vs. Prince William

Though Kate has received considerable interest online, Prince William continues to be the more popular subject of social media discussion in the United Kingdom, both by buzz volume and share of all buzz. William is also mentioned more often in the United States and Australia.
Overall the U.K. makes up a larger share of buzz about the Royal Wedding and its participants, while the more populous U.S. market had a greater volume of buzz since the engagement was announced.
Note: For the purposes of this analysis, Social Media use is defined as buzz from blogs and message boards/groups. Traditional Media includes posts/updates from the online counterparts of print and broadcast news outlets, online news publishers, industry publications, and wire services.
Article Source:- 
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/royal-wedding-buzz/

ABC News invites you to witness Prince William and Catherine Middleton exchange wedding vows after nearly a decade of courtship.
From Buckingham Palace, Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters will anchor live coverage of the royal wedding on the ABC television network starting at 4 a.m. ET.
If you aren't near a television, no need to worry. Catch ABC's live broadcast everywhere we are: ABCNews.com, ABC News' Facebook page, your mobile phone and on the ABC News app for iPad.
ABC News is your front row seat to the royal wedding. Don't forget to visit ABCNews.com where you can watch and share your favorite videos from the best moments of the day, sign the royal guestbook to leave a note for William and Catherine and view photos from the royal wedding in our slideshows.
Plus, join the conversation and interact with ABC News on Facebook and Twitter.
David Muir will be on-air with the ABC News team to cover your reaction of this historic day. Follow him on Twitter (@DavidMuirABC) and ask him all your royal wedding day questions, share your thoughts on Catherine Middleton's dress and let us know what you think are the best #royalmess and #royalsuccess moments.
Follow @ABCRoyals, the official royal wedding Twitter from ABC News. In the week leading up to William and Catherine's big day, @ABCRoyals will be tweeting the latest royal roundup from London. On April 29th, @ABCRoyals is your source for every detail and headline from the royal wedding, as they're happening.
"Like" ABC News on Facebook to vote and tell us what you think about Queen Elizabeth's hat, the sure to be infamous wedding gown, what could go wrong at the wedding, and much more.
On Friday night, ABC News will continue to be your all access pass for all of the wedding details. Watch a special 20/20 with Barbara Walters 9/8c on ABC.
Article Source:-
http://a.abcnews.com/images/GMA/abc_royalprom_110415_wg.jpg

Dressed in a police uniform, Aman Mojadidi once set up a fake roadside checkpoint to hand out real money to befuddled Afghan motorists used to paying, not receiving, bribes.
Then, during last fall's parliamentary elections, the Florida-born Afghan artist took his antics a step further by covertly pasting Kabul walls with faux campaign posters that featured him in a black turban with a gold-plated pistol hanging around his neck.
"Vote for me," the posters urged. "I'm rich—and I've done jihad."
The stunts are part of a campaign the 40-year-old Afghan-American has been waging for the past three years against the excesses of the Afghan government, ranked as one of the world's most corrupt. In the process, he has become the leading agent provocateur of the nascent Afghan art scene.
"I think Aman can be a leader for Afghans in showing what provocative art can do in Afghanistan," said Tamim Samee, founder of Afghanistan's Contemporary Art Prize, a four-year-old competition meant to nurture the country's young artists.
In recent years, Mr. Mojadidi has helped train young Afghans about street graffiti, worked with Mr. Samee on the annual arts prize, and joined forces with expats who have injected a jolt of inspiration into Kabul's evolving artistic community.
"No one's doing as provocative and unusual stuff," says Nikki Diana Marquardt, Mr. Mojadidi's Paris-based art dealer.
Kabul is now home to a small-but-growing number of experimental musical acts, including a heavy metal band and a popular indie group inspired by Britain's pop sensation Oasis.
Filmmakers have used American and European government money to produce movies on everything from Afghan women prisoners to the region's unusual sport of buzkashi, under which players on horseback vie for possession of a dead goat.
Veterans of that struggle, known as mujahedeen, occupy the top rungs of power in President Hamid Karzai's administration—and many of these once-respected fighters have come under withering criticism for enriching themselves while on government service.
"Jihad," proclaims Mr. Mojadidi, "is the Afghan bling."
Mr. Mojadidi, who spent his teen years as a vegetarian, high-school dropout and surfer in Florida, most famously channeled widespread contempt for the country's corrupt leaders by adopting the persona of "Jihadi Gangster"—a comical blend of Afghan mujahedeen and American gangsta rappers.
The most controversial photograph from his "Jihadi Gangster" series—"After a Long Day's Work"—featured Mr. Mojadidi sitting on a couch in front of a gold-plated prosthetic leg and a table filled with alcohol, cashews and jade-tipped bullets.
With his black turban and golden gun hanging down below his long gray beard, Mr. Mojadidi was pictured blithely using a remote to switch TV channels as a scantily clad woman with a blue burqa covering her face fawned over her man.
The limited edition photos—one of which was auctioned off for $14,000—have caused an uproar in Kabul.
When Afghan censors saw some of the tamer photographs from the series featured in the December issue of Kabul's largest English language magazine, Afghan Scene, they angrily forced the publisher to cut out the images—literally, with scissors—from 9,000 already-printed copies.
"This is not a Muslim fighter, he is Indian or something," said government censor Abdul Raquib Jahid as he jabbed his finger at one of the banned photographs. "This is an insult—or a blasphemy—to jihad."
As it happens, Mr. Mojadidi, who sometimes describes himself as a "Southern Fried Afghan," comes from holy warrior stock himself.
His uncle, Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, was one of the country's most famous anti-Soviet mujahedeen in the 1980s, and, until recently, chaired Afghanistan's Senate. Mr. Mojadidi himself briefly traveled with his uncle's anti-Communist fighters in 1990 to the front lines in Afghanistan.
At the time, dressed in Converse sneakers and the traditional Afghan shalwar kameez, the artist even fired a couple of mortars at the Soviet-backed government's tanks outside Jalalabad. He drove back to Pakistan the next day, filled with his first jolt of conflict reality.
"I grew up saying: 'I'm Afghan,'" Mr. Mojadidi recalls. "But when I came on that trip when I was 19, I remember thinking: 'I'm not that. My experience is completely different.'"
The next time he returned to Afghanistan was in 2001, when he joined his uncle in a triumphant convoy from Pakistan to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban regime.
The uncle, Mr. Mujaddedi, who had served as interim president of Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet-backed regime in 1992, oversaw the drafting of a new Afghan constitution.
The white-bearded Afghan leader chuckled quietly when he was first shown his nephew's photographs of the "Jihadi Gangster" series.
"I don't agree with him," Mr. Mujaddedi said while looking over the images in his office as former Taliban government officials sat nearby waiting to confer. "This will make people upset and create problems for him."
Controversy, of course, is what Mr. Mojadidi is courting. His recent run-in with Afghan censors was just the latest round of cultural shenanigans.
In his first big attempt at performance art, Mr. Mojadidi bought an Afghan police uniform in 2009 and set up a fake checkpoint on a road outside Kabul.
Some of his filmed experiment, which he called a "reverse bribe," made its way onto "Danger Bell," Afghanistan's premier political satire TV show.
With video cameras rolling, Mr. Mojadidi flagged down cars, checked their papers and then offered a personal apology—along with $2 worth of Afghan currency, a significant amount of money here—if the drivers had ever had to pay off a police officer in the past.
On the video, most of the drivers appeared perplexed and initially hesitant to take the cash, perhaps fearing it was some sort of cruel trap. But only four of the 20 drivers turned down the money.
Artical Source:-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271262475103684.html?mod=WSJ_Ahed_LEADTop

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Since I have an older edition of the DVDs without the broadcast version of the pilot, this is one of the best things I've heard all day. Pass it on.

Dozens of large fires burned out of control Monday in Texas in what officials described as unprecedented conditions that show no signs of abating soon.
"We're experiencing conditions never seen in Texas before," said Marq Webb, a public information officer with the Texas Forest Service, which was devoting massive resources to the effort. "Yesterday, we had 1,400 people and that number will go up today," Webb said Monday in a telephone interview from the service's incident command center in Merkel just west of Abilene.
In all, the Forest Service has been asked to help battle fires covering some 700,000 acres, he said.
Thirty-one fires were being fought in East Texas; another 11 fires in West Texas, officials said.
"We've had 19 consecutive days of just super-dry weather, relative humidities in the single digits," said Forest Service spokeswoman C.J. Norvell in Midland. "What we're seeing right now is winds that are typical of spring, but everything else is typical of late summer -- no rain, vegetation that's just super dry. When you combine those two, it really has not boded well."
The Wildcat Fire just north of San Angelo has led to the evacuation of hundreds of people from their homes, Norvell said. The same fire threatens three small communities just north of Saint Angelo -- Robert Lee, Bronte and Tennyson, she said.
A predicted change in wind direction from south to southwest could worsen the prognosis, she said. "This little change is going to test some infrastructure and fire lines that we've set up," she said.
The fires have a variety of causes -- some of them acts of nature, such as lightning strikes -- but most of them acts of man, said Webb. Those include anything from fence welding to debris burning, despite the fact that burn bans are in effect for 195 of the state's 254 counties, he said.
Texas authorities have made an arrest in connection with one of hundreds of blazes scorching the state in what a Forest Service official called the "perfect storm for wildfires."
A man was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, which is a felony under Texas law, Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Palmer Buck said early Monday. The man, whom authorities did not immediately identify, was being held under a $50,000 bond.
According to Buck, the man started a campfire at a homeless camp in a remote area, which got out of control and prompted evacuations. The fire burned about 60 acres.
"We're experiencing conditions we've never seen in Texas before," he said. "We have a huge area of Texas with abundant fuels and they are tinder dry -- and I'm talking about probably half of the state."
Monday's forecast was worse than Sunday's, "and tomorrow's supposed to be worse than today," he said. Though temperatures are expected to dip Wednesday, they were predicted to ramp back up on Thursday and Friday.
Such weather has taxed the resources available to fight the fires. "We're stretched pretty thin right now," Webb said.
Conditions this spring are the driest they've been in Texas since 1917, said a Texas Forest Service spokeswoman.
Authorities have responded to 7,807 fires across more than 1.5 million acres since this year's wildfire season began, Gov. Rick Perry wrote over the weekend in a letter to President Barack Obama. Perry requested that the federal government declare Texas a disaster area. Fires have affected all but two of the state's 254 counties.
Perry noted that one firefighter has died and 18 others have been injured, while 244 homes have been destroyed and another 8,514 threatened residences "saved."
In the Possum Kingdom complex west of Fort Worth, approximately 90 head of cattle were killed by the fire, said Webb.
In southwest Austin, 10 homes suffered major damage and six suffered minor damage in a 100-acre area, said Matt Curtis, a spokesman for Mayor Lee Effingwell. Curtis said Monday morning that the fire was contained, though firefighters were expected to spend the day looking for potential flareups and hotspots.
Officials were to decide later in the day whether to allow evacuees -- some 50 of whom spent the night at a shelter -- to return home, Curtis said.
"Luckily, this fire happened in a somewhat unpopulated part of that neighborhood," he said. The multi-jurisdictional effort included the Austin Police Department, the Austin-Travis County Fire Department, the Austin-Travis County EMS, the Travis County Sheriff's Department and the Texas Forest Service.