2014 Nov 7th - Q91

What do the following make up?

☞ The Elves from Mirkwood

☞ The Men from Lake-town

☞ The Dwarves from Iron Hills

☞ The Orc from the Misty Mountains, with the Wargs

☞ The Eagles from the Misty Mountains

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=> The Five Armies in the 'Battle of the Five Armies' in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. The movie, The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies, is set to release next month.

2014 Nov 7th - Q90

Rob O'Neill, 38, is currently a motivational speaker, and was - until a few years ago - a member of the USA's SEALs. In his 16 year career, O'Neill was decorated fifty-two times, took part in more than four-hundred combats, and fought in four seperate war zones. He was a member in the team that rescued Richard Phillips during the Maersk Alabama hijacking - later depicted in the movie Captain Phillips.

Early November this year, he was confirmed by the special operations community blog, Sofrep.com, and his father Tom O'Neill, as for doing a certain deed. What deed?

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=> He shot Osama Bin Laden in Operation Neptune Spear, at Abbottabad.

2014 Nov 6th - Q89

On 3rd November 2014, this family estate tried to bring in a case to the English Supreme Court, about a certain family member's creation. According to the case filed, the estate claimed that people who wanted to use the creation, must pay a fee. But the Court refused to hear the case, stating that the creation was open-source, since June 2014.

The case started last year, when the estate sued a company Pegasus, for releasing an unofficial version of this creation. This eventually lead to Pegasus' favour, and resulted in the open-sourcing of this 19th century creation in June 2014. 

Give funda, or what is the creation?

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=> Sherlock Holmes - the Doyle Estate claimed that all authors willing to publish Sherlock Holmes-based works, must pay a fee to the Estate. They sued Pegasus for publishing a collection of Holmes stories, written by contemporary authors, and titled In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon. Now, Sherlock Holmes is in public domain.

2014 Nov 6th - Q88

This person [on the right], named ____ Christopher LaBeouf, recently appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. During the talk, when Ellen asked him of his talents, he replied, : “I can apparently bag groceries pretty well”. Give his first name.

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=> Alex, from #AlexFromTarget - he became popular on the Internet, after a picture of him in Target, bagging groceries, was published online. His "cutie looks" gained him a booming 50,000 followers on Twitter in few days.

2014 Nov 6th - Q87

In May 2014, Russia and China signed the deal for a $400 billion gas deal, with Gazprom. In this, $70 billion was to be for constructing pipelines in both territories, making it the largest construction project in the world. This partly helped in establishing Vladimir Putin as the Most Powerful Person in the world, according to Forbes, this year.

In the same month, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in an interview, said that Russia hopes to create such cooperation to both the East and the West, and remarked that, just like the ______-______ _____ in Russia's coat-of-arms, the country looks to both sides.

Fill in the blanks with the name of a common vexillologic and heraldric symbol.

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=> Double-headed Eagle

2014 Nov 5th - Q86

How are the following three connected?

☞ Peter Sunde ran for European Parliament in May 2014 with the Piraattipuolue, a registered political party of Finland. Days later, on 31st of May, he was arrested in a rural area - Oxie - in  Malmö.

☞ Gottfrid Svartholm was extradited to Denmark, on 27 November 2013, where he was charged with violences such as infiltrating the Danish social security database and driver’s licence database. On October 31st, 2014, he was sentenced to three-and-half years in prison. 

☞ Frederik Neij, in early November 2014, was caught by the Thai police force, who were executing an Interpol warrant, while Neij was crossing the border from Laos to Thailand. Apparently, he was wearing the same shirt he wore from his arrest warrant, published in 2010.

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=> Co-founders of Pirate Bay - following a police raid on their servers in 2006 May 31st, the police issued warrants for the three arrests. Piraattipuolue stands for "Pirate Party".

2014 Nov 5th - Q85

Nielsen SoundScan, a sales-tracking system, started recording the weekly sales of albums since 1991. This week, which album became the fastest-selling album since The Eminem Show released 12 years ago? Also, name the artist with the most number of albums that sold more than million copies in a week, and the artist with the fastest-selling album since 1991 [when the tracking began].

Note : All data as of the US survey.

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=> Taylor Swift's 1989 is this week's album. The artist with the most number of albums sold more than a million in a week is also Taylor Swift, with Speak Now, Red and 1989. The fastest selling album, with more than two millions sold in a week, is *NSYNC's No Strings Attached.