ED SHEERAN’S ‘DIVIDE’ TAKES TOP SPOT
NEW YORK: Ed Sheeran stormed the United States charts on Monday, taking the top spot on the Billboard 200 with his new album Divide and also topping the digital songs chart with lead single Shape of You.
The British singer-songwriter sold an overwhelming 451,000 units of Divide in its debut week, giving him the biggest US sales week for any album so far this year.
His US success follows an even bigger start for Divide in his native Britain, where Sheeran, 26, had the fastest selling
“Women can’t wait any more,” the American actress album by a solo male artist in British chart history on Friday.
The singer also made news this week when the makers of HBO TV series Game of Thrones announced he would be making a guest star appearance in the upcoming seventh season of the fantasy adventure, which arrives in July.
The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).
Sales of rock band Metallica’s album Hardwired... To
Boyhood, Self-Destruct jumped more than 200 per cent to take the No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 with 81,000 units sold for the week. The jump followed a promotional deal linked to the band’s upcoming US tour.
Last week’s top spot, Atlanta rapper Future’s HNDRXX album, slipped to No. 5.
On the digital songs chart, which measures online singles sales, Sheeran’s Shape of You sold another 115,000 units for the week, nine weeks after its release. Sheeran also saw his new single Perfect take the No. 8 spot. Reuters
AFP LOS ANGELES: It would seem all but impossible to sum up one of the most distinguished careers in photojournalism in only four words, but that’s just what Nick Ut does when he says: “From hell to Hollywood”.
And the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, who is retiring this month after 51 years with The Associated Press, has the pictures to prove it, the most famous being a stunning black-and-white image from the Vietnam War that’s come to be known simply as “Napalm Girl”.
It’s the photo of a terrified child running naked down a country road, her body burning from the napalm bombs dropped on her village just moments before Ut captured the iconic image.
Ut was only 21 when he took that photo in 1972, then rushed the 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life. He would go on to take tens of thousands more over the next 44 years, including images of practically every A-list celebrity who walked a Hollywood red carpet or entered a courtroom on the wrong side of the law. AP