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Gangs of British ticket touts - scalpers - have descended on Beijing and are dealing in Olympics tickets despite warnings by the Chinese authorities that scalpers would be punished severely. The touts have travelled from London, Manchester and Liverpool to offload and even buy more tickets. The scalpers are being blamed for the poor crowds in the early rounds of the competition; a huge number of Olympics tickets was available before the Olympics began - around 6.8 million - most of which were purchased by average Chinese citizens. These citizens then sold the precious tickets to scalpers.

When Olympics tickets went on sale in China it sparked a stampede in which tens of thousands of people fought with police and went days without food or water. The paramilitary People's Armed Police, tens of ambulances and police officers were forced to supply water and first aid, as well as act as a barricade to the mob which attempted to force their way into ticket offices.

Local Las Vegas television station KLAS last week covered Ticket Summit 2008, the largest trade show and convention for the secondary ticket industry.

In the video below, news anchor Gary Waddell not only covers the event, he also speaks to Don Vaccaro, CEO of TicketNetwork, the host of the conference, who describes opportunities for fans to find ticket deals, particularly in Las Vegas.

Twisted Sister founder and guitarist Jay Jay French has created a rock anthem for a new political generation. Recorded by Jay Jay French and Friends, "I Want Barack" is a rewrite using the template of one of the biggest anthems of the '80s and one of Twisted Sister's biggest hits - "I Wanna Rock". "I Want Barack" is a rousing battle cry for Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. It is expected to be featured at upcoming Obama rallies.

A lifelong political devotee, French comes from a long line of activists. His mother Evaline French Segall ran the Upper West Side campaign headquarters for John F. Kennedy during his Presidential bid and was later the campaign manager for the first African American woman ever elected to the New York State Senate, Constance Baker Motley.

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and his company have been in the news frequently over the past few months signing mega-deals with the likes of Jay-Z, Shakira and Madonna. Rapino appeared on CNBC's PowerLunch recently to discuss the company's future. (see video here)

Rapino talked about the economic situation of Live Nation, whose stock price sits at about $10, down from its previous high of nearly $25.

The sports ticket market is booming, thanks in part to online ticket reselling on websites such as StubHub. Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism recently took a look at the site, and the secondary ticket market, and filed a video report that can be seen at here.

According to Forrester Research, by the end of 2008, consumers will spend almost $3 billion on tickets sold by online resellers, and nearly $2 billion of the sales will be for sports tickets.

When it comes to ticket resale and the law, most consumer advocates agree that it is the customer that loses. Colman Herman, a consumer advocate in Massachusetts, agrees with that notion and says the resale law in the Bay State was supposed to be designed to protect consumers, but instead does anything but.

"Last year, there was draft legislation that would have changed the state law to allow a ticket resale price cap of three times face value," he said in an op-ed piece in Tuesday's Boston Globe. "But the bill that came out of committee dropped the price cap. In other words, the sky's the limit on ticket prices. The bill also dropped the 5-cent enforcement provision. High-priced lobbyists for ticket resellers had their way."

In an age with high gas prices and energy costs, everyone has to try and make a difference, and TicketNetwork, parent company of TicketNews, is no different, unveiling a new solar power initiative today during a ceremony at the company's Vernon, CT headquarters.

TicketNetwork showed off 172 solar panels, during the ceremony, that were installed to two south-exposed roofs of their building. The lunchtime event included members of the Connecticut State Legislature and the Department of Environmental Protection.

Several Pittsburgh Penguin hockey fans eager to watch Game Four of the Stanley Cup finals on May 31 were disappointed after the tickets they bought from scalpers turned out to be counterfeit. However, police were able to arrest the culprits.

The tickets were purchased outside of the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, hours before Saturday night's game between the Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Detroit won the game and leads the series 3-1.

By Petrina Crockford

The president of Ticketmaster China last week predicted that this summer’s Beijing Olympics will sell out, a historic first for the world games.

“We predict that this will be the first Olympics that it’s a ‘sold out’ Olympics,” Jonathan D. Krane told reporters during a press event in China. Ticketmaster is the official ticket provider for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

By Petrina Crockford

In an industry first for a major artist, Madonna has publicly embraced a secondary ticket broker, UK-based viagogo, as one of the channels for fans to obtain tickets.

The Sticky & Sweet Tour is the singer's first under her $120 million deal with Live Nation, and viagogo will be the authorized secondary ticket reseller throughout Europe, with the exception of Germany and Italy. Live Nation and viagogo already work together in the Netherlands. Madonna has also signed a deal with StubHub as the official fan-to-fan ticket exchange in the U.S.

By Petrina Crockford

Beginning with Tom Waits’s Glitter and Doom Tour, Ticketmaster will start implementing a new Paperless Ticket™ technology, giving fans a more convenient event experience.

According to David Marcus, Ticketmaster senior vice president, Music, the Paperless Ticket™ will be introduced at major venues across North America and Canada over the next 12-18 months.

With just a few months left before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, work on the venues continues at a furious pace, and citizens of other countries besides the U.S. are finding it difficult to obtain tickets.

In a report by France 24 TV, French residents are having a tough time finding tickets to popular events, and some are being urged to visit U.S. secondary ticket broker websites for deals.

Not many bands can lay claim to having their own plane, and even fewer of them can say that the lead singer is the pilot. Such is the case with legendary heavy metal band Iron Maiden, whose lead singer Bruce Dickinson is a licensed pilot who can fly the band’s 757 jumbo jet.

The band, currently on a world tour, recently touched down in New Jersey where ABC News caught up with Dickinson to discuss what it means to be a pilot by day and hard rock singer by night.

As Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue their quest for their party’s nomination, both aspirants are eagerly courting young voters with rallies at colleges and universities, through concerts and with big-name endorsements.

Younger voters, those who are generally considered between the ages of 18 and 35, are a formidable bloc of the nation’s electorate, as evidenced in 2000 and 2004. In those years, their lack of involvement helped to make both races extremely close; had they voted for President Bush, he would have likely won comfortably, or if they voted for Al Gore or John Kerry, either of them may be president today.

During his recent historic papal visit to the U.S., Pope Benedict XVI held a mass before 40,000 people in Nationals Ballpark in Washington DC, his first papal mass in the American capital.

The pontiff met with President George W. Bush at the White House, and spoke before the United Nations, and was scheduled to hold a mass in Yankee Stadium during his visit. At the Washington DC mass, the Pope entered to a rendition of "Holy God We Praise Thy Name" and circled the grounds of the newly constructed baseball stadium in his pope mobile.

What deep, rich voice and commanding presence gets your attention across the spectrum from Star Trek to Shakespeare? If you said the voice and presence belonging to Patrick Stewart, you’d be in agreement with a lot of fans. Now he brings those marvelously attractive qualities to the footlights of the Lyceum Theatre for 64 performances of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. After finishing its sold-out run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on March 22, previews begin at the Lyceum on Friday, March 28 with an official opening night Tuesday, April 8. Performances of this production, nominated for five Olivier Awards, will continue through May 24. Also, for this production, Stewart was given the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor and the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Shakespearean Performance. The production is presented in two 80-minute acts with an outstanding cast, in particular Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth. The The New York Times visited the performance and a gala for a video on its website.

Passing Strange, a new musical that debuted on Broadway Feb. 28 at the Belasco Theatre, is a hybrid: a rock comedy musical. Taking its inspiration from the punk rock movement of the 70s, the loosely autobiographical story centers on the life of 45-year-old Stew and his alter-ego “Young Stew. The New York Times recently posted a video about the show, which you can view here.

A year ago, the real life Stew was playing to 150 people in Joe’s Pub in downtown New York City, along the way collecting fans. The Public Theater of New York commissioned him to tell the story of a young man’s journey to find “the real,” taking the viewer on a raucous trip from middle-class America to Amsterdam and on to Berlin. That lead to the Sundance Theater Lab, then the Anspacher Theater, and finally to Broadway. Stew, with composer and collaborator of 10 years Heidi Rodewald, is co-author, lyricist, librettist and star. In an interview Stew said “We just want this to be accepted as both theater and music. There’s never enough headbobbing in the audience!” It looks like the audience “got it,” having as much fun as the members of the cast.

For the first time since 1964, the four key Academy Awards for acting went to performers from across the Atlantic, during the 80th annual Oscars ceremony in Hollywood Sunday night.

"No Country for Old Men" took four Oscars, including best movie, director and adapted screenplay for Minnesota-born brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. The film, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a Texas drug deal gone awry, also scored the best supporting actor prize for Javier Bardem’s portrayal of a killer. Bardem, a native of Spain, is the first Spanish actor to take home an Oscar in the 80-year history of the awards.

The New York Times is serving up a video love letter to New York City’s old jazz scene that encompassed the neighborhoods around Lincoln Center. The video, which features recollections from artists, historians and residents of the area, chronicles the heyday of jazz in the City, offering a primer on what it was like for many of its residents, especially African-Americans.

International movie superstar Jackie Chan is better known for his martial artistry than his riding skills, but the action actor is taking some time off this year from filming to promote the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to the Reuters news service.