Singer Chris Brown Pleads Guilty

The singer Chris Brown has pleaded guilty to one count of felony assault against his ex-girlfriend Rihanna. The judge issued a stay-away order that requires Brown to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna, except when it comes to industry events. At industry events he must stay at least 10 yards away from her. Rihanna must also keep the same distances away from him. The plea deal includes five years of supervised probation and six months of community labor.

GM to Temporarily Close 20 Plants

On Friday, General Motors Corp. stated that it will temporarily close 20 of its factories across North America and reduce vehicle production while it tries adjust to the decline in automobile demands. The company will cut 250,000 vehicles from its production schedule for the first quarter of 2009. They normally produce 750,000 automobiles for that quarter. Many of the plants will be closed for the whole month of January and employees will be temporarily laid off and will receive part of their normal wages. They could be able to apply for state unemployment benefits. GM reported that its sales are down 41 percent for November and are down 22 percent for the first 11 months of 2008.

General Motors currently trying to obtain Government loans to be able to stay in business. The White House says that it might go into its $700 billion Wall Street Bailout fund to help GM and Chrysler. The entire automobile industry is having to make cuts due to the decline in the demand of automobiles.

Woman Loses Thousands of Dollars in Lawsuit for Downloading Music

A woman in Minnesota, named Jammie Thomas, was court ordered to pay $222,000 for downloading and sharing copyrighted music online. The record industry wants to make an example out of her and send the message that downloading and sharing music is not okay or legal.

Thomas is ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her for $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that they are focusing on in this case. They say she shared a total of 1,702 songs. This is the first time that one of the music industry's lawsuits went to trial. Most people settle and pay the companies a few thousand dollars. Thomas thought that she didn't do anything wrong and proceeded with the lawsuit against her. Thomas claimed she didn't own a file sharing account with Kazaa but evidence showed that the Internet address belonged to her.

Jammie Thomas is 30 years old and lives paycheck to paycheck and now she could get a fourth of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life. Including the attorney fees, she could owe nearly half a million dollars.