Saturday, July 7th

[note: I think on the weekends I'm going to do one news break for both noon and 5PM, unless something wild happens]

Today the much-awaited multi-continental Live Earth festival, and so far the reports have been positive. The concert series features shows in Washington DC, New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg, Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, as well as a performance by a five-piece band of scientists beamed from a research station in Antarctica.

Although unable to travel to each site, former Vice President and environmentalist kicked off the Sydney performance with a live broadcast from the Capitol, and appeared as a hologram at the stage in Tokyo, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stages feature a mix of a big-name acts and local performers. Critics of the show point out that many acts were flown in at great expense often using highly polluting methods, and some did not sign the "Live Earth Pledge" that urges people to go green. Concert promoters assure that wherever possible environmental alternatives such as biodiesel fuel and energy-saving lighting were used.

Events in the US are scheduled to begin early this afternoon.

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In light of recent events, a larger number of Americans are demanding for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury, obstruction of justice, illegal wiretapping, human rights violations, collusion, and a variety of other crimes.

House Bill H.R.333, sponsored by Dennis Kucinich and endorsed by 13 other congressional leaders, is now the most viewed bill of all time on the US pending bills database, according to congressional watchdog group OpenCongress.

A recent poll suggested more than half of all US citizens would like to see impeachment proceedings begin for Cheney, with slightly more than 30% seeking similar action for President Bush, according to the Huffington Post.

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To close, TorrentFreak is reporting this afternoon that popular torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is in trouble again with the Sweedish government. After a year-long attempt to find criminally-infringing content on seized Pirate Bay servers, without success, the goverment began blocking the website, claiming the Pirate Bay hosts child pornography.

A similar measure was brought against kopimi.com ["copy-me-dot-com"], but was dropped shortly thereafter. Pirate Bay programmers are upset at the lack of communication with the police in the matter.

The Pirate Bay recently began an uncensored image hosting site as part of a side project, BayImg ["bay image"], and has been in and out of US court for infringement allegations.

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Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118382481963260075.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-hr333/show
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/impeach-dick-cheney_b_55222.html
http://torrentfreak.com/swedish-police-about-to-shut-down-the-pirate-bay-again/#