Black operation

A black operation or black op is a covert operation by a government, a government agency, or a military organization. This can include activities by private companies or groups. Key features of a black operation are that it is secret and it is not attributable to the organization carrying it out. The main difference between a black operation and one that is merely secret is that a black operation involves a significant degree of deception, to conceal who is behind it or to make it appear that some other entity is responsible ("false flag" operations).

A single such activity may be called a "black bag operation"; that term is primarily used for covert or clandestine surreptitious entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations. Such operations are known to have been carried out by the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency,Mossad, MI6, ISI (Pakistan), RAW, MSS, and the intelligence services of other nations.

Etymology

"Black" may be used as a generic term for any government activity that is hidden or secret. For example, some activities by military and intel agencies are funded by a classified "black budget," of which the details, and sometimes even the total, are hidden from the public and from most congressional oversight.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a military science fiction first-person shooter video game, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It is the twelfth entry in the Call of Duty series and the sequel to the 2012 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 6, 2015. A feature-limited version developed by Beenox and Mercenary Technology that only supports multiplayer modes was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Upon release, the game received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success.

Plot

Single-player campaign

Setting and characters

Call of Duty: Black Ops III takes place in 2065, 40 years after the events of Black Ops II, in a world facing upheaval from climate change and new technologies. In response to the drone assaults of Black Ops 2, several countries around the world have developed high-tech air defenses that render conventional air forces virtually useless. As such, most of the warfare between countries is done by covert operatives fighting behind enemy lines. Military technology has progressed to the point where robotics play a major role in combat, and both fully robotic humanoid drones and cyborg supersoldiers have been developed to fight in the battlefield. As a result, there is speculation and fear about an eventual robotic takeover. The game follows a team of black ops soldiers, like previous installments in the Black Ops series.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a 2010 first-person shooter video game. The game was developed by Treyarch, published by Activision, and released worldwide on November 9, 2010 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii consoles, with a separate version for Nintendo DS developed by n-Space. Announced on April 30, 2010, the game is the seventh installment of the Call of Duty series. It is also the first to be set in the Cold War and the fifth to be set in World War II. It is the third in the series to be developed by Treyarch, and is the sequel to Call of Duty: World at War.

Within 24 hours of going on sale, the game had sold more than 5.6 million copies, 4.2 million in the U.S. and 1.4 million in the UK, breaking the record set by its predecessor Modern Warfare 2 by some 2.3 million copies. After six weeks on release, Activision reported that Black Ops had exceeded $1 billion in sales. On August 3, 2011, Activision confirmed that the game had sold over 25 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling games of all time in the US, UK and Europe. A sequel, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, was released on November 13, 2012.Call of Duty: Black Ops III was announced on April 9, 2015 as the fourth installment in the Black Ops series and was revealed on April 26, 2015 and released on November 6, 2015.

Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group, Inc. (legally known as UMG Recordings, Inc., abbreviated as UMG) is an American-French worldwide music corporation that operates as a subsidiary of Paris-based French media conglomerate Vivendi. It claims to be the largest music corporation in the world. UMG also owns Universal Music Publishing Group, which is cited as the second largest music publishing company in the world. Universal Music Group's global corporate headquarters are in Santa Monica, California, United States.

History

Early history

Universal Music was once the music company attached to film studio Universal Pictures. Its origins go back to the formation of the American branch of Decca Records in 1934. The Decca Record Co. Ltd. of England spun American Decca off in 1939.MCA Inc. merged with American Decca in 1962. The present organization was formed when its parent company Seagram purchased PolyGram in May 1998 and merged it with Universal Music Group in early 1999. However, the name had first appeared in 1996 when MCA Music Entertainment Group was renamed Universal Music Group. The PolyGram acquisition included Deutsche Grammophon which traces its ancestry to Berliner Gramophone making Deutsche Grammophon UMG's oldest unit. UMG's Canadian unit traces its ancestry to a Berliner Gramophone breakaway firm the Compo Company.