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Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, has defended the coffee chain’s new campaign ‘Race Together’. Schultz asked Starbucks employees to write the name of the campaign on the side of customers’ cups to start a dialogue with the customers.

Earlier, the campaign was criticized by many people. Now, it has taken on arguably the most polarizing political debate in the United States. But, Schultz has decided to defend the campaign.

The American global coffee company has also announced a new plan to begin publishing “conversation guides” for the coffee tables in retail outlets. According to the company, it wants customers to make sure that color of coffee that they have chosen remains at the forefront of their mind.

A Wednesday report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has revealed that digital music sales have reached an all-time high of $4.51 billion.

In particular, streaming services overall earned $1.87 billion in 2014, an increase in value of one-third from 2013. The leaders in the streaming segment were Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora and SiriusXM and total of $7.7 million was earned in paid subscriptions last year.

RIAA reported a retail revenue value of $6.97 billion in 2014. The industry's revenue mix last year was more balanced between physical, digital and streaming sources than ever before.

Permanent downloads remained the largest source of revenue at 37%. Downloads and audio-streaming services together accounted for 64% of the total market value.

According to reports, Yahoo is closing its office in China and this will lead to reduction of 200 to 300 jobs. Search and content major Yahoo, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has been merging offices and reducing staff around the world. There were approximately 12,500 workers of the company worldwide at the end of 2014. The company didn’t reveal how many employees will be affected in China, but according to sources, Yahoo employed 200 to 300 people there.

According to Yahoo, “We are constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration and innovation across our business. We currently do not offer local product experiences in Beijing but the office has served as a research and development centre”.

Retail giant Target has come up with a proposal, under which it will pay $10 million for the settlement of a class-action lawsuit related to a data breach during the 2013 holiday shopping season.

On Thursday morning, the proposed settlement, which requires the approval of a federal judge, will be the subject of a hearing in St. Paul, Minn.

While citing court documents, KMSP has reported that the money would be used for the establishment of a general fund, with individual victims eligible for up to $10,000 in compensation. Reuters has reported that a dedicated website would be set up for the handling of individual claims.

With the help of data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), Professor Jay Melosh and a team of researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette have discovered one of the widest craters on the moon.

According to the researchers, the discovered moon crater has been provisionally named after the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. Announcement about the discovery has been made at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The crater was undetected by lunar observations from centuries. According to the researchers, the newly discovered crater is 124-mile-wide.

Researchers from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen have unveiled that billions of stars in Milky Way have one to three planets that can support life.

With the help of the Kepler satellite and other instruments, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets in the galaxy. Many of these exoplanets have many planets orbiting the host star.

The researchers have evaluated these planetary systems and calculated the probability for the number of stars in the Milky Way that could have planets supporting life. After the analysis, the researchers reached at the conclusion that there are billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy having one to three planets in the habitable zone.