Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though published reports indicate that TBS has acquired as much as 10 percent of Funny or Die.

“We’re thrilled by our acquisition of Turner,” McKay joked. “We’re now taking a long hard look at Viacom.”

Funny or Die also will partner with TBS, as well as Time Warner’s Adult Swim cable entity, on content creation and distribution across tv and mobile devices.

Dick Glover, Funny or Die’s president and CEO, stated the partnership will better grant “brands and advertisers to create far-reaching, hilariously funny cross-platform content and messaging.”

Funny or Die states that 16 million users visit its site monthly and video views exceed 60 million a month.

“We’re investing in Funny or Die because we can take their great content and give it a wider audience through the incredible reach of TBS,” stated Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks.

That’s a favorite ringmaster’s refrain at the circus, a cherished entertainment tradition across America. And it’s lovingly preserved at two uncommon U.S. museums.

It was not a ringmaster’s whistle that heralded “Circus Day” in every decent-sized town in America for several decades on each side of the turn of the 20th Century. 

It was the synchronized clopping of draft horses, mingled with the rousing tunes of a brass band atop a four-ton wagon at the head of a grand street parade bearing the circus from the railroad depot into town.

Circus Museums Pay Tribute to ‘Greatest Show on Earth’

Behind the bandwagon rolled brightly painted chariots; mounted cages carrying huge cats, elephants, and other eotic animals; and baggage wagons disguised as theme floats.  Raucously bringing up the rear was a steam calliope, piercing the air with peppy, whistled tunes.  

Train-borne circuses dwindled to a handful by 1940, and one by one, the gaudy circus wagons found their way into carnivals or storage sheds.  Hundreds rotted and rusted in open fields.

Circus wagons, such as this elaborately decorated depiction of an elephant at Circus World in Wisconsin, advertised not only the circus but also rides atop the mighty beasts. (Carol M. Highsmith)​​
But in 1959, John Kelley, a former attorney for the Ringling Brothers Circus, opened Circus World, a museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where the five Ringlings had founded their show.  

That museum is still going strong.  It’s filled with circus wagons that arrived terribly decayed and were then restored.  And one weekend each July, they again take a train ride to Milwaukee, 145 kilometers away, where they rumble once again in a Great Circus Parade.

The second circus museum also has a Ringling connection. One of the Ringling brothers – John – and his wife, Mable, built a beautiful estate in Sarasota, Florida.  It is now a lavish art museum, owned by the say of Florida.  On the grounds, the say built a circus museum containing more circus wagons, an animated miniature circus, spangled costumes and other memorabilia.

These collections are not the Greatest Show on Earth, as the Ringling Brothers called their circus.

But they are a glittering tribute to it.

TWC’s iPad app was launched on March 16, 2011 and quickly drew objections from various broadcasters, including Fox and Discovery.

The cable company pulled the channels but on April 7, it went to a New York federal court to get a declaratory judgment that copyright law permitted a limited, more convenient way for its subscribers to enjoy tv in the home.

Viacom filed its own lawsuit that same day, accusing TWC of breaching the programming agreement between the two companies and committing copyright infringement.

Fox, Discovery and others granted TWC to put back its channels onto the iPad app, but Viacom resisted. In interviews, CEO Philippe Dauman expressed concern about audience cannibalization before the TV industry was ready to measure ratings on mobile devices.

The parties first tried to resolve differences last summer, entering into a standstill agreement to pause litigation, but after Viacom made a deal last August with Cablevision to resolve a similar dispute, TWC insisted that “Viacom’s allow of such rights to Cablevision without offering identical rights to TWC constitutes a breach of certain of the Viacom Affiliation Agreements.”

The animosity between the two companies expanded to other fronts. For instance, in Texas, Viacom sued TWC for threatening to drop and not giving enough distribution to its Country Music Television channel.

Since November, the war between the two companies has been relatively quiet as Viacom and TWC have repeatedly requested extensions from the court in the iPad dispute.

Evidently, the two sides picked up negotiating again and today, have come out with a joint statement announcing a settlement. Here it is:

“Viacom and Time Warner Cable have concurred to resolve their pending litigations. All of Viacom’s programming will now be available to Time Warner Cable subscribers for in-home viewing via world wide web protocol-enabled devices such as iPads and Time Warner Cable will continue to carry Viacom’s Country Music Television (CMT) programming. In reaching the settlement agreement, Time Warner Cable and Viacom were also able to resolve other unrelated business matters to their mutual satisfaction. Neither side is conceding its original legal position or will have further comment.”

PETROL pump pain could soon be a thing of the past, with motorists simply plugging their automobile into a power socket.

Holden yesterday unveiled the petrol pump of the future in the form of its first electric automobile charging station.

The charger outside its Port Melbourne head office is the first of many that will grant owners of its Volt electric automobile to charge their vehicles and hit the road.

The automobile maker claims the Volt is the most technologically advanced automobile of its type in the world.

It is certainly not the cheapest, though, with sluggish US sales this year partly blamed on the vehicle’s high sales price, estimated to be up to $65,000 when it arrives in Australia this year.

While each automobile takes about four hours to charge, it will run for up to 80km before needing an electric top-up.

More importantly, a 1.4-litre petrol engine will kick in as a backup generator to recharge the battery when things go flat.

This extends the car’s coverage to up to 600km and ensures drivers will not be caught short between charging points.

Holden stated the Volt would run on 100 per cent green power from a charging station or owners could recharge at home from a standard power outlet for just $2.50.

Holden’s engineering director Greg Tyus stated the Volt was possibly the world’s most technologically advanced vehicle.

“This will change the way Australians think about sustainable transport,” he said.

ChargePoint CEO James Brown stated the launch of the Volt would spur a network of supporting infrastructure such as charging stations across the country.

“The advent of electric vehicles will see a paradigm shift in the way people drive and plan their journeys,” Mr Brown said.

Owners will even be able to use their iPhone to securely log in and charge their car, along with checking how much juice they have left in the tank.

“Refuelling your automobile will become synonymous with parking your car. That trip to the petrol station will no longer be needed.”

Car sharing service GoGet recently offered its 15,000 members access to Mitsubishi i-MiEV battery-electric vehicles at public charging stations, including six-star energy-rated residential and retail development The Nicholson in East Coburg.

Meanwhile, Holden will this day announce an export program for its Commodore, which will make the Adelaide-made automobile a race and showroom star in the United States. Though sales of the Elizabeth-produced sedan continue to slide in Australia, a Commodore V8 will be exported to America where it will be sold with the Chevrolet SS Performance badge.

Zynga CFO Dave Wehner told the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on Wednesday that the majority of bookings and revenue growth is coming from the mobile gaming space, especially the IOS and Android platforms, compared with web gaming.

And with smartphones increasingly fitted with digital wallets, the social games publisher behind Facebook games like FarmVille and CityVille sees an opportunity to increase its payer penetration among gamers.

“There’s a ton of connected wallets out there, people who are available as potential players and payers,” Wehner told the Boston investors conference.

Zynga launched four new mobile games during its latest financial quarter.

Despite that expansion, the San Fransisco-based company still has a small share of a competitive mobile gaming market.

“We’re one, if not the top game player, on smartphones. And yet we have a modest share. So we have a large opportunity to grow the share in mobile,” Wehner said.

Councillors were shown 360 Architecture’s “fly-through” video revealing interior and exterior images of what the $450 million arena might look like.

“The shape of building has taken on abstractly the shape of an oil drop, we were also inspired by a lot of the snow drifts,” stated the project’s architect.

But the design itself is still a “blank canvas,” stated Scott Ralston, spokesperson for 360 Architecture.

The centrepieces of the blank canvas will be the winter garden and the bowl itself.

“We thought of the winter garden as an integrated piece of the arena,” stated Ralston.

The winter garden joins the arena with the southside of 104th Avenue.

The arena will put fans closer to the action with 9,000 seats proposed for the lower bowl, he told councillors.

He also announced the developer of the arena district has acquired the Greyhound site, but did not specify how it will be used.

The presentation kicks off a public consultation process, allowing Edmontonians to offer feedback in-person, on-line and over the phone.

Following the consultation, an updated design package will be given to council, which will make the final decision on the design of the new building.

The master agreement, which includes all the legal documents for the arena deal, will also go council on July 4, before final approval can be given.

Construction of the arena is still scheduled to begin in 2015.

HRW’s new report states at least 149 boys and young men between the ages of 12 and 20 have been forcibly recruited to fight alongside soldiers loyal to Bosco Ntaganda, a former rebel leader who is already wanted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting kids as a deputy commander in the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an armed political group that fought in northern Congo during the country’s civil war.

The report states at least seven have died in battle.

Human Rights Watch Senior Africa Researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg states much of the forced recruitment has targeted schools.

“In one particular school — a school called Mapendano Institute — Bosco’s mutinying soldiers arrived in the afternoon at about 2 o’clock, just as the kids were finishing their studies, rounded up at least 32 of them, tied them up and then marched them off to their military camp,” she says. “They put them into military uniforms and gave them one day of training before they shipped them off to the front lines to fight the Congolese army.”

Human Rights Watch states the recruitments have been taking place in Masisi, North Kivu province, an area that until recently was under control of soldiers loyal to Ntaganda.

The former rebel leader and his troops were integrated into the Congolese army in 2009 as part of a peace deal to end years of fighting in the area, but indications the Congolese government was going to arrest Ntaganda on an ICC warrant prompted him and several hundred soldiers to mutiny against the army.

According to Van Woundeberg, the main charge against Ntaganda is recruiting child soldiers.

“What is so shocking is that he is continuing to commit the exact same crime for which he is already wanted by the International Criminal Court,” she says.

Former UPC commander Thomas Lubanga was convicted of the same crimes in March, and ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo stated Monday he is seeking to expand the arrest warrant against Ntaganda to also include crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and rape.

Human Rights Watch states Ntaganda and a small group of soldiers have left the Masisi area that had been their stronghold, and are now hiding out in the Virunga National Park, along with a number of child recruits.

The underdog candidate will take on former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey this fall in a closely monitored Nebraska Senate race.

Fischer came out of nowhere in the final weeks to pass say Attorney General Jon Bruning, widely regarded as the “establishment” candidate and Don Stenberg, the favorite of the Club for Growth and Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund. Both men heavily outspent Fischer in the primary.

With 98 percent of the precincts reporting, Fischer had 41 percent of the vote to Bruning’s 36 percent, with Stenberg a distant third at 19 percent.

Fischer benefited from endorsements from 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former presidential candidate Herman Cain. 

In a statement posted on her Facebook page, Palin congratulated Fischer on her victory.

“The message from the people of Nebraska is easy and powerful,” the statement said. “America is looking for real change in Washington, and commonsense conservatives like Deb Fischer represent that change. I applaud Moms like Deb Fischer who are bold enough to step up and run on a conservative platform to restore America and protect our children’s future.”

Fischer, a rancher in rural Nebraska, was also backed backed by an outside group, created by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, that ran TV ads on her behalf.

At a victory party Tuesday night, Fischer stated she is ready to take on Kerrey, eschewing any suggestion that the win caught her by surprise. She states she knows how to work hard because she is a Nebraskan.

She acknowledged that the general election race could get bloody. She calls the race the “focus of the entire nation” and thinks it will get “interesting.”

The race has drawn national attention because a GOP win would push Republicans closer to a Senate majority.

Nebraska is a solidly Republican state, but Democrats think they have a shot of winning with Kerrey, a former senator, governor and presidential candidate. Kerrey easily won the Democratic nomination.

The general election winner will replace Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, who is not seeking a third term.

Fox News’ John Brandt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The conductor on the train, travelling from Abakan in Eastern Siberia to Moscow, announced that a pregnant passenger had gone into labor. Sergei Zapletnyak, an Interior Ministry warrant officer who had worked as a medical assistant, responded to the call for help.

“I have never delivered a baby, only assisted,” he said. “When I learned that a woman was giving birth, I decided to take complete control of the situation at once, as the staff of the passenger train started to panic.”

Zapletnyak and his colleague Dmitry Rudnov moved the woman, who had already gone into labor, into their working compartment in order not to disturb other passengers.

Just an hour after she started going into labor, physicians took the 23-year old woman and her child to hospital at the next station. The new baby is her second child.

The study (PDF) was produced by the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy research group and think tank, along with partners including the International Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Ministerial’s Electric Vehicles Initiative.  The study analyzed 16 cities and regions to gauge their readiness to absorb E.V.’s. Ben Holland, program manager for the Project Get Ready, an initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, described the EV City Casebook as “a global snapshot of electric automobile deployment.” The study makes a strong case that cities are taking innovative steps to encourage E.V. adoption, but it also includes estimates of the actual vehicles on the ground that indicate very few motorists have taken advantage of the accommodations.

The EV City Casebook notes that 50 percent of Manhattan automobile owners park in assigned spaces, making these drivers good candidates to purchase electric vehicles, as they could conceivably have access to charge points. But according to city data, less than 22 percent of Manhattan residents own cars. To date, the EV City Casebook said, there were just 238 plug-in vehicles in New York municipal fleets and in private hands. In a telephone interview, Adam Freed, deputy director of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office of long-term planning and sustainability, stated there were 70 highway-capable purely electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles operated by the city, including 50 Chevrolet Volts, 10 Ford Transit Connect vans and, on loan, 10 Navistar eStar medium-duty trucks.

Places to plug in are on the rise. Ari Kahn, policy adviser in the mayor’s office for electric vehicles, stated in an interview there were 64 public charge points in Manhattan, compared with 41 gas stations. “Access to charging is really improving, so that’s good news,” he said.

Most of the dedicated automobile parking in Manhattan is in commercial lots, not private residences, which prompted the city to convene a half-day symposium last spring to educate commercial garage owners about electrics. Next month, the city will begin an as-yet-unnamed campaign as part of a recently announced regional electric-vehicle partnership (PDF) with Boston and Philadelphia. The aim, Mr. Freed said, was to educate consumers about electric vehicles and to “create the critical mass to attract more of the automakers’ vehicles to the Northeast.”

The authors claimed that if all national targets announced by member governments taking part in the international Electric Vehicles Initiative were realized, 6 million E.V.’s would be sold in 2020 and 20 million would be on the world’s roads by that year.

Those are huge numbers, but getting from today’s low sales figures to that 6 million will require something of a leap of faith. The study looks at four cities and regions in the United States, nine in Europe, one in China and two in Japan. All would like to see more electric vehicles on the streets, but the early deployment has been slow. Barcelona, with almost 1 million registered vehicles, has 280 plug-in vehicles in public fleets, according to the study, and 200 in the hands of consumers. Berlin has 1.3 million vehicles, of which 350 are plug-in vehicles.

“The numbers show that we still have a lot of work to do for this technology to achieve what we want it to achieve, including reducing dependence on petroleum,” Mr. Holland of Project Get Ready said. “We may not hit all the targets by the years designated, but there is reason to think that electric vehicles will play a significant role in transportation.”