MONTREUX, Switzerland Pop star Lady Gaga and crooner Tony Bennett brought a mix of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and even Edith Piaf to a sell-out crowd spanning generations at the Montreux Jazz Festival on Monday night. Legendary producer Quincy ... More »
LOS ANGELES Comedian Bill Cosby testified in 2005 that he had obtained Quaaludes with the intent of giving the sedatives to young women in order to have sex with them, according to court documents unsealed on Monday. Cosby, 77, made the admission during testim... More »
LOS ANGELES The “happiest place on Earth” will keep a special tax exemption in Anaheim, California, for 30 more years if the City Council approves the Walt Disney Co’s plan for a $1 billion-plus expansion of its theme park complex in the city. The five-member ... More »
LA PAZ A Bolivian avant-garde restaurant hopes this week to serve a well-known non-paying customer and receive a holy seal of approval for its new creation: a quinoa-based communion wafer. Chefs at the restaurant, Gustu, in La Paz expect Pope Francis to receiv... More »
NEW YORK The world’s oldest living person, the daughter of sharecroppers and granddaughter of slaves, celebrated her 116th birthday on Monday in New York. Susannah Mushatt Jones marked the occasion privately with family but a public celebration is planned for ... More »
CHICAGO The Grateful Dead gave what they say will be their last group performance on Sunday, playing to some 70,000 singing, dancing and tearful fans in Chicago’s Soldier Field. The four surviving members of the band ended their 50-year-run this weekend with t... More »
LONDON The sun was out for double-Grammy-award-winning U.S. rapper Kendrick Lamar this weekend as he performed an energetic set of his hits to an enraptured young North London crowd. On stage at the Wireless festival on Saturday, less than a week after winnin... More »
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – “Inside Out” delivered the firepower at the five-day holiday weekend box office as it finished in first ahead of “Jurassic World” and new entries “Terminator: Genisys” and “Magic Mike XXL.” In a tight race, Disney-Pixar’s animated c... More »
LONDON A restored World War Two Spitfire which was shot down over northern France in 1940 is expected to raise about $3 million for charity when it goes up for auction in London next week. The wreckage of the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire Mk.1A was recovered in... More »
HONOLULU A Swiss man attempting to circumnavigate the globe with an aircraft powered only by the sun’s energy has broken a world record for the longest non-stop solo flight, the project team said on Thursday. The Solar Impulse, which took off from Japan on Mon... More »
WASHINGTON Woolly mammoths spent their lives enduring extreme Arctic conditions including frigid temperatures, an arid environment and the relentless cycle of dark winters and bright summers. An exhaustive genetic analysis of these bygone Ice Age giants and th... More »
LONDON The British Broadcasting Corporation will cut more than 1,000 jobs to cover a 150-million-pound gap in license fee income next financial year as millions of viewers turn off their televisions and watch programs on tablets and mobile phones. The BBC, the... More »
VATICAN CITY Pope Francis will decide for himself if he chews coca leaves in order to ward off altitude sickness when he lands next week at La Paz, Bolivia, the highest international airport in the world, the Vatican said on Tuesday. A Bolivian minister said o... More »
TOKYO Two passengers on a Japanese Shinkansen bullet train died after one doused himself in oil and set himself ablaze on Tuesday, media reports said. The train, carrying about 1,000 passengers, made an emergency stop on its way from Tokyo to the western city ... More »
WASHINGTON More than half a billion years ago, a peculiar little creature with rows of spikes on its back and delicate, feather-like front limbs to strain bits of food from the water thrived in the primordial seas of what is now China. Scientists on Monday ann... More »
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Larry Kramer’s confrontational style has mellowed. Now 80, the playwright, novelist and AIDS activist, speaks softly and looks almost frail in a big leather armchair in his New York apartment overlooking Washington Squar... More »
LOS ANGELES Mike may have the magic, but it’s the ladies that have the control in “Magic Mike XXL,” as five buff men cater to the female gaze in the supercharged raunchy male stripper movie sequel. The film, out in U.S. theaters July 1, follows 2012’s surprise... More »
SYDNEY Justin Bieber arrived in Sydney on Monday to attend a week-long gathering at a Hillsong pentecostal church, after the pop star this year vowed to discard his hard-partying image. “Justin is here, like tens of thousands of others, as a delegate who is se... More »
LOS ANGELES, (Variety.com) – The party wasn’t as wild the second time around. Universal’s “Ted 2” debuted to an underwhelming $32.9 million across 3,442 theaters, roughly $15 million less than most analysts had expected the pot-smoking teddy bear comedy would ... More »
CHICAGO Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage will give a huge boost to the retirement security of LGBT Americans. That will be especially true in the realm of Social Security – where it pays to be married. The ruling will affect everything f... More »
NEW YORK Aerialists descend in a giant chandelier and lift a guest back up with them, a showgirl leads an audience member back in time to a 1920s Parisian nightclub and actors single out guests for a mysterious experience yet to come. Immersive theater product... More »
LONDON Harry Potter, the world’s most famous boy wizard, is set to make his debut on the London stage next year in a new play called the Cursed Child which has been created in collaboration with author J.K. Rowling. Rowling said on her Twitter feed that the ne... More »
MEXICO CITY The love story of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo has played out in books, opera and a Hollywood movie. Mexico City is also a memory lane of their stormy romance, with murals and museums marking their early encounters, shared Comm... More »
NEW YORK Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate developer, is planning to sue U.S. Spanish-language TV network Univision for hundreds of millions of dollars for dropping coverage of the Miss USA pageant, which he partly owns, his lawyer said on Thursday. Mi... More »
LONDON Italian luxury car maker Maserati is showcasing its hand-crafted Quattroporte S in an unlikely setting: at the Masterpiece London art and antiques fair, which opened on Thursday in a plush tent on the grounds of Chelsea’s Royal Hospital. Featuring among... More »
WASHINGTON It was a creature so strange that experts literally could not make heads nor tails of it. But scientists said on Wednesday a new analysis of fossils of Hallucigenia, so named for its fantastical appearance, has given them for the first time a comple... More »
LONDON A Gustav Klimt portrait of a young woman that had been the subject of an ownership dispute fetched the highest price of 24.8 million pounds ($39.1 million) in an auction at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday evening. Sales at the auction topped 178.6 mill... More »
LONDON Christie’s kept the international art auction caravan rolling with an impressionist and modern art sale that brought in $113 million on Tuesday. A Claude Monet study of mauve irises swaying against a pale blue sky in his Giverny garden was the star lot ... More »
A woman walks past icons for Apple applications at the company’s retail store in San Francisco, California April 22, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Tired of the same restaurants and clubs? Not sure if friends would want to venture to a new cafe or bar? New app... More »
