New York, United States | Americans have for the first time streamed more music on audio services such as Spotify than through videos, in a welcome shift for the industry, a study said.

Streaming has been rapidly growing and offering a new source of revenue for the long-beleaguered music business, which has tried to steer fans to subscription audio sites and away from video behemoth YouTube.

Analytical firm BuzzAngle Music, in a mid-year report, reported 114 billion audio streams on sites such as Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Rhapsody in the first six months of the year.

The number topped the 95 billion video streams on YouTube, Dailymotion and other sites, marking the first period in which audio dominated, it said.

Audio streams soared in the first six months of 2016, more than doubling from the same period last year, while video streams grew by a more modest 23 percent.

Streaming overall expanded by 58 percent in the United States, the world's largest music market, keeping up a breakneck rate of growth, it said.

The shift toward audio streaming is particularly striking as YouTube alone has more than one billion users around the world.

Spotify, the largest streaming company, said it had 89 million active monthly users worldwide as of the end of 2015, of whom 28 million were paying for subscriptions.

Streaming -- which allows unlimited, on-demand listening -- has been transforming the global music industry which in 2015 reported its first substantial revenue growth since the dawn of the internet age.

While some artists criticize Spotify in particular for its compensation level, the music industry says it earns far less from video sites.

Record labels have been campaigning to change US and European laws that protect video companies if users upload copyrighted material.

YouTube's owner Google rejects the criticism, saying it also has licensing agreements with record labels and checks for copyright through its Content ID technology.

The company has started its own YouTube Music streaming site for both video and audio as well as the subscription-tier YouTube Red video service.

BuzzAngle said that Toronto rapper Drake's "Views" was by far the biggest album in the first six months of the year, with Beyonce's "Lemonade" a distant second followed by Adele's "25," which came out in late 2015.

Charlotte, United States | Barack Obama delivered a forceful plea for Hillary Clinton to succeed him as president, praising the character of his former secretary of state whose horizon brightened after the FBI recommended no charges be filed over her email scandal.

Obama, returning to a swing state that helped elect him in 2008, laid out a passionate, compelling case declaring he is "ready to pass the baton" to Clinton and urging voters to make her the nation's first female commander in chief.

"I'm here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton," Obama told a fired-up crowd at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, pumping his fist and leading chants of "Hillary! Hillary!"

"There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office. Ever!"

But Obama's debut appearance on the 2016 campaign trail, while it showcased his trademark oratory and communication skills, was overshadowed by the extraordinary announcement hours earlier in Washington.

The FBI's assessment, which found that Clinton was "extremely careless" in sending classified information via her personal email account, was far from the complete exoneration she had hoped for as she rallied Democrats in her showdown with Republican Donald Trump.

Clinton and Obama flew together to North Carolina aboard Air Force One for the first in a series of high-profile rallies that the candidate hopes will energize voters -- particularly minorities who remain enamored with the outgoing president, in crucial battleground states where the November election will be decided.

Neither made any mention of the FBI's bombshell decision to recommend that Justice Department prosecutors file no criminal charges in the Clinton email investigation.

FBI Director James Comey said that after an exhaustive probe, carried out with no political agenda, investigators found no evidence of "intentional misconduct" by Clinton or her close aides.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign was "pleased" by the FBI's recommendation. But in a damaging rebuke to the former top diplomat, Comey said the FBI found that Clinton and her team "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

- 'She was guilty' -Comey's conclusion that Clinton sent and receive information that was deemed classified, and in some cases top secret, contradicts her repeated assertion that she never sent classified information through her personal email account or homebrew server.

While not as legally damaging as prosecution would be, Comey's judgment is far from the all-clear that the Clinton team would have hoped for.

And the FBI accusations of carelessness fueled Trump's narrative that the Clintons have operated above the law for years.

"She was guilty, and it turned out that we're not going to press charges. It's really amazing," Trump said in North Carolina, where he held a competing rally in Raleigh. 

"Today is the best evidence ever that we've seen that our system is absolutely, totally rigged," he said, adding that Clinton "is laughing at the stupidity of our system."

The billionaire reality TV star said the former top US diplomat should not be eligible to seek high office due to her handling of work emails while at the State Department's helm.

"This, again, disqualifies her from service. And just think of it. I mean, how can you have this?" Trump asked. 

"We know now that these deletions include emails that were work related and one big, fat, beautiful lie by crooked Hillary. Any government employee who engaged in this kind of behavior would be barred from handling classified information," Trump argued.

With just three weeks until the Democratic convention formally anoints Clinton as the party nominee, other Republicans have also seized on the email case to highlight her perceived lack of trustworthiness among voters.

House Speaker Paul Ryan slammed Clinton for "recklessly mishandling" classified information and saying Comey's announcement defies explanation.

"Based upon the director's own statement, it appears damage is being done to the rule of law," warned the top Republican.

- 'Couldn't be prouder' -The former first lady already came under recent fire after it emerged that her husband Bill met briefly with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an airport in Arizona last week -- prompting Republicans to cry foul over possible government interference with the probe.

Clinton meanwhile sought to reset her campaign with her joint appearance with Obama and move on from the controversy.  

The president is at his highest approval rating in years and can still rally the Democratic base, crucial for Clinton whose popularity is deep in the red, as is Trump's.

Obama proved her all-too-capable attack dog, tearing into Trump and labelling the provocative billionaire as an untested, impatient blowhard without the temperament for the Oval Office.

"Everybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes to do the job until you sit behind the desk," Obama said in a swipe at Trump's propensity to fire out his reactions on Twitter.

Appealing to working American families, the president warned: "The other side's got nothing to offer you."

Trump hit back, calling Obama's return to the campaign trail "a carnival act" and derided him as a president "who doesn't know what the hell he's doing."

But Obama, looking relaxed and confident on stage, insisted Clinton was the way forward.

"The bottom line is, I know Hillary can do the job," he said. 

"I couldn't be prouder of the things we've done together, but I'm ready to pass the baton," Obama said. "And I know that Hillary Clinton is going to take it." 

Miami, United States | NASA's Juno spacecraft began circling Jupiter on a 20-month mission to learn more about the origin of the solar system's most massive planet.

The arrival was a triumph for the $1.1 billion project to get closer to Jupiter, a mysterious "planet on steroids" where everything is extreme, the atmosphere is poisonous and the radiation is 1,000 times the lethal limit for a human, according to principal investigator Scott Bolton.

What are the great mysteries about Jupiter?Jupiter, the largest planet in our cosmic neighborhood, is believed to be among the first to have formed in the solar system. But how did it form? Scientists still don't know.

Like the sun, it is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, so it may have captured most of the material left after the sun came to be.

"Did a massive planetary core form first and gravitationally capture all that gas, or did an unstable region collapse inside the nebula, triggering the planet's formation?" NASA asked. 

What does the mission hope to learn?The Juno mission aims to peer beneath the clouds around Jupiter for the first time to learn more about the planet's atmosphere.

How much water the planet contains is also a key figure, because it will tell scientists a lot about when and how the planet formed.

Bolton also said Juno is likely to discover more moons around Jupiter, which is already known to have 67. 

It also aims to probe how the planet's intense magnetic field is generated, and study the formation of auroras -- streamers of light in the sky caused by energy from the sun and electrically charged particles trapped in the magnetic field.

How will it find out?By measuring the amount of water and ammonia in Jupiter's atmosphere, the spacecraft can determine if the planet has a solid core, "directly resolving the origin of this giant planet and thereby the solar system," said NASA.

Juno will also map Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields.

Juno is carrying nine science instruments and also has a camera that can capture still images and video of Jupiter and its moons.

What are the risks of getting so close to Jupiter?Jupiter's magnetic field is nearly 20,000 times as powerful as Earth's, and the planet is surrounded by an intense radiation belt.

This radiation amounts to 100 million X-rays in the course of a year, according to Heidi Becker, senior engineer on radiation effects at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The electronics inside Juno were shielded inside a titanium vault to protect them against this onslaught of radiation.

Paris, France | Chanel pulled the curtain back on its Paris haute couture show to reveal the secret life of its studios, where a small army of tailors, embroiderers and plumers turn out some of the world's most expensive clothes.

Veteran designer Karl Lagerfeld transported 80 of his so-called "petites mains" (little hands), who can spend hundreds of hours on a single dress, onto the set of his catwalk show.

With American actors Jessica Chastain, Will Smith and his daughter Willow looking on, seamstresses laboured over impossibly detailed creations while models walked between tailors' dummies and bolts of silk and taffeta.

The message of this minutious recreation of Chanel's famous rue Cambon ateliers was clear -- haute couture was timeless.

After the knowing rebels at hip brand Vetements had attempted to steal the traditional houses' thunder with their cheekily commercial show Sunday in which they recut existing designer and streetwear clothes, the "Kaiser" was reasserting that real couture was painstakingly handmade.

Like Dior and Schiaparelli, who also grandstanded the "inimitable savoir faire" of their historic studios the day before, Lagerfeld insisted that couture was unique, mounting a spirited defence of its values.

"If there wasn't these women," he said pointing to his staff bent over their Singer sewing machines, "haute couture would not exist," he added. 

- Brides wear the trousers -"It's all about know-how, without that it's a bit risky. Why is it (haute couture) so expensive? You have to really see how it is done. It is truly artisanal, nothing is mass produced. I have nothing against fast fashion, but this is sometimes else entirely.

"We are dealing with great luxury, and this is how it is done, just as it was 100 years ago," he added.

There was more than a whiff of Victoriana too about the plumed peacock dresses Lagerfeld sent down the runway, many in black and white, another echo of the Dior show.

There was also lots of the riffs on the classic Chanel box jacket and bolero -- often in the palest of pearl pinks -- before the showstopping finale of English model Edie Campbell as a bride who can both wear the trousers and have a frou-frou train of pink plumes.

"Next time I will have a bride who is over 40, and I will be put her in navy," said the designer, who even at 82 shows no signs of hanging up his starched collar.

The black and white theme continued in French designer Stephane Rolland's spectacular supervamp lily-like gowns.

But the most soulful collection of the day came from the young creator Yacine Aouadi, who drew on the famous mosque-cathedral in the Spanish city of Cordoba for quietly beautiful dresses that "mixed cultures and religions".

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Italian house Brioni, famous for its fine men's tailoring, showed off its new flashy gangster look of silk shirts, chinchilla coats and metal-edged briefcases masterminded by creative director Justin O'Shea.

The Australian, who changed the Brioni logo to a gothic font and hired the death metal band Metallica for his first ad campaign, told reporters his clothes "should be pimp. It should be awesome."  

New York, United States | Legendary competitive eater Joey "Jaws" Chestnut wolfed down a record 70 hot dogs -- buns and all -- in just 10 minutes to cllaim his crown at an annual New York competition.

Chestnut's gastric feat at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island marked a return to form for the 32-year-old Californian, who saw his eight-year winning streak broken by challenger Matt "Megatoad" Stonie in 2015.

This year, the 24-year-old Stonie fell short, managing just 53 frankfurters to come second.

The women's contest was won for the third time by Miki Sudo, 30, who chomped down 38.5 dogs.

Held by one of America's best-known wiener purveyors, the competition supposedly dates back 100 years.

It is held annually on the July 4th holiday, and pushes America's love of Independence Day hot dogs to a stomach-churning extreme.

Competitors slide franks into their gullets while drenching the buns in water to make them easier to swallow, then wriggle around to help the meaty mouthfuls descend into their stomachs.

Chestnut trains regularly, often eating between 35 to 70 wieners at a time, as well as drinking copious amounts of water to maintain his stomach's stretchiness.

He broke his own competition record of 69 hot dogs, dating back to 2013. On June 25, he managed 73.5 dogs during a qualifying round.

Anyone who vomits is disqualified.

Thousands come to watch the competition, broadcast by national sports network ESPN. This year's total prize purse amounted to $40,000.

Among Chestnut's curious eating accomplishments: In 2015, he ate 205 chicken wings in just 12 minutes, and earlier this year downed 30 gyros (Greek sandwiches) in 10 minutes.

Paris, France |Two decades after Scotland's Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, consumers may well wonder whether they are drinking milk or eating meat from cookie-cutter cows or their offspring.

The simple answer: "probably". 

The fact is, there is no way to know for sure, say the experts, even in Europe, which has come closer to banning livestock cloning than anywhere else in the world.

With the possible exception of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in the Bible, Dolly must be the world's most famous sheep.

The ewe's birth in an Edinburgh laboratory on July 5, 1996 was front-page news, provoking hype and hand-wringing in equal parts. 

For the most part, cloning turned out to be a dead end.

But there is one sector in which Dolly's legacy is alive and well: the duplication of prize breeding animals.

How aggressively the private sector has developed this niche market has depended in large part on national or regional regulations, with key differences between the United States, China and the European Union.

- US: FDA approved -   

"The most dramatic impact of the cloning of Dolly has been on animal cloning in the United States," said Aaron Levine, an expert in bioethics and cloning at Georgia Tech.

In 2008, the US Food and Drug Administration concluded that "food from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as food from any other cattle, swine or goat." 

Not even scientists can distinguish a healthy clone from a conventionally bred animal, the regulatory agency said.

There are no requirements to label meat or milk from a cloned animal or its offspring, whether sold domestically or abroad.

For industry, the aim was never to set up assembly-line production -- cloning is difficult and expensive at more than 10,000 euros ($11,000) a pop, and the success rate low, with few clones surviving to birth.

So the focus, instead, is on copying genetically outstanding specimens so they may naturally sire exceptional progeny.

"It's fairly widespread in US to use cloning to produce breeding stock," said Levine. "Cloned animals are not intended to enter the food supply directly."

"I suspect some may have," he added.

Among the leaders in commercial livestock cloning in the US are Cyagra, based in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and ViaGen, in Austin, Texas.

At least one company, ViaGen, also provides services for copying cherished cats and dogs.

- China, the new frontier -US companies typically produce hundreds or a few thousand clones per year.

The Boyalife Group's cloning new factory near the northern coastal city of Tianjin in China, however, is aiming for an annual output of 100,000 cows this year, scaling up to a million by 2020.

Also in the pipeline are thoroughbred racehorses, pets and police dogs specialised in searching and sniffing.

Boyalife has said it is working with South Korean partner Sooam and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve primate cloning technology, to create better test animals for human disease research.

And in December, Boyalife's lead scientist and chief executive Xu Xiaochun, said he would not shy away from cloning humans if regulations allowed it.

- Europe cold on cloning -Faced with strong public opinion against cloning of any kind, the European Union does not allow the practice in animal husbandry.

But officials acknowledge that meat or milk derived from cows with a cloned ancestor may very well have made its way onto the market, whether directly imported, obtained from a live imported animal, or one bred domestically from genetic material brought into the EU.

"Without knowing it, Europeans are probably eating meat from the descendents of clones that cannot be traced," said Pauline Constant, spokeswoman for the European Office of Consumer Associations, based in Brussels.

Officials say they are not concerned about any impact on human health.

In September, the European Parliament called by a large majority not only for a ban on cloned animals, but also on products derived from them. 

The final decision rests with the European Commission, which has taken a less hard-line position.  

Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Australia are among the other countries which clone livestock.

Tokyo, Japan | Japan's Kinki University has finally put a stop to years of foreign sniggering at its name by changing its pervy-sounding nomenclature.

Marking the start of the new Japanese academic year, the Osaka school formally became Kindai University, unveiling a plate bearing the new name in English at one of its main gates -- to the relief of cringing exchange students.

Like Fukuppy, a mascot for industrial fridge maker Fukushima Industries, the name "Kinki University" does not raise an eyebrow in Japan, simply referring to the western region which includes Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures, among others.

For students fluent in English, however, images of bondage and cross-dressing had posed a constant source of embarrassment. 

"My grandmother gave me a bewildered look when I told her (I went to) Kinki University," Mei Ichinose, a student of British and Japanese ancestry, told Japan's Kyodo News agency.

The university released a statement earlier this week to formally announce its decision, explaining in precise detail that in English "kinky means peculiar."

The new name Kindai is a contraction of "Kinki" and "Daigaku" (university) and college administrators hope it will embolden students to apply for exchanges, safe in the knowledge that they won't be the butt of jokes.

Fukuppy, a winged egg with a slightly vacant look on its face, faced a grilling after netizens linked its name to the bumbling failure of managers to prevent the nuclear meltdown at the unrelated Fukushima power plant.

Japanese, which has far fewer sounds than many European languages, abounds with vaguely amusing transliterations. No major urban centre, for example, is without its own Shiti Hotel -- the less-than-inviting pronunciation of "city hotel".

Madrid, Spain | Dog owners in the Spanish capital who do not pick up their pet's mess could be me made to work as street cleaners under a "shock plan" against dog poo unveiled  by Madrid city hall.

Municipal police will test the scheme in the two city districts where the biggest concentration of dog droppings have been found, city hall said in a statement.

Dog owners who do not clean up after their pets will be fined up to 1,500 euros ($1,700) or they will have the option to perform street cleaning duties for a few days as a substitute, it added.

Madrid city hall said "there is still excrement in the streets, parks and other places" despite "repeated public awareness campaigns" and the distribution of millions of free bags to collect dog poo.

"The municipality has prepared a shock plan against these infractions which will start to be deployed shortly in two districts," it added.

Several Spanish cities have come up with creative ways to crack down on dog droppings in recent years.

Last year the northeastern city of Tarragona announced it would use DNA analysis of dog droppings to track down owners who fail to clean up after them.

During a brief period in 2013 the town of Brunete near Madrid delivered dog poo back to the homes of pet owners who left it behind, in boxes marked "Lost Property".

Volunteers would strike up conversations with unsuspecting, offending pet owners after their pooch had done its business to obtain its name and species, which would then allow city officials to identify them and find their address from a registered pet database.

London, United Kingdom | A 108-year-old postcard offering a shilling in exchange for its return to an English marine research institute is now officially the world's oldest message in a bottle after being recovered in Germany.

The Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA), which received the card, said this week that the bottle had smashed the old record of 99 years and 43 days in the Guinness World Records.

It was discovered by retired German postal worker Marianne Winkler while on holiday on Germany's North Frisian islands, 108 years and 138 days after it was thrown into the North Sea off the English coast by distinguished marine biologist George Parker Bidder on November 30, 1906.

Winkler followed the message inside reading "break the bottle", and found a postcard inside asking to be returned to the MBA in Plymouth, on England's south coast.

"The postcard asked the finder to fill out information about where the bottle was found, if it was trawled up, what the boat's name was, and asked once the postcard was completed for it to be returned to a George Parker Bidder in Plymouth for a reward of one shilling," said Guy Baker of the MBA.

When Winkler wrote a letter addressed to Bidder "our receptionist was somewhat confused".

Bidder released a total of 1,020 bottles between 1904 and 1906.

He found that many bottles that sank to the bottom of the southern North Sea washed up in England, while floating bottles moved towards mainland Europe.

From this, he deduced for the first time that the North Sea's deep sea current flowed from east to west.

The MBA is still an internationally renowned research institution, and Bidder served as its president between 1939-45 before his death in 1954, aged 91. 

Honouring its promise, the MBA forwarded a thank you letter and an old shilling piece to the finder.

Washington, United States | An American woman got the surprise of her life when an emergency escape slide fell off a Boeing 767 and into her yard.

"We just heard a loud bang and the house shook and so I went to see what was going on," Andrea Self, who lives in the Phoenix, Arizona suburb of Mesa, told AFP.

"When I opened my front door, I saw what looked like a silver tarp lying there, but it had like a sulfur smell so I called the police," she said.

The slide, which fell some 2,800 feet (853 meters), landed on an awning and damaged a tree in her yard, the 31-year-old said.

"I was just kind of in shock when it happened," Self said. 

The US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) confirmed Friday that the plane, which belonged to Atlas Air, lost its over-the-wing escape slide on Wednesday afternoon.

The slides are used to evacuate an aircraft quickly in the event of an emergency.

"Only the slide had deployed. The door remained attached to the aircraft," FAA spokesman Ian Gregor told AFP.

He added that the plane "landed without incident" and that only the flight crew was on board.

The FAA is investigating why the slide deployed, he said.