Canadian pop star Justin Bieber became the youngest artist to land five chart-topping albums in the United States on Wednesday when his latest record, “Believe Acoustic,” debuted atop the Billboard 200 album chart. “Believe Acoustic,” which features stripped down versions of Bieber’s songs from his fourth No. 1 album, “Believe,” released last June, as well [...]

Controversial Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who styles himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” has enlisted action film star Steven Seagal to lead a training exercise for members of his armed volunteer posse on how to respond to a school shooting. The training event will involve six instructors leading 40 armed volunteers through a simulated shooting, with [...]

One of the Bolshoi ballet’s best known ballerinas has fled Russia for Canada after receiving threats, it emerged, as the chief of the troubled company prepared to leave for Germany to receive treatment for wounds sustained in an acid attack. Svetlana Lunkina told the Izvestia daily she had taken leave from the theatre until the [...]

Former German infantryman Hans Himsel lived through scenes in 1944 at the Bayreuth opera house worthy of the finale of Richard Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” when Valhalla goes up in flames. In this bicentenary year of Wagner’s birth, Himsel, 90, recalled the last wartime production at Bayreuth. It was August 9, 1944 and the cast performed “Die [...]

Women lag far behind men in reaching the top jobs in the film business as a study found only 9 percent of directors of the top 250 grossing Hollywood films in 2012 were women – the same level as 15 years ago. The figures from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and [...]

Iran is to make its own movie about the American hostage drama during the 1979 Islamic revolution to counter the “distorted” film “Argo” by Ben Affleck, which swept the Golden Globes awards, media said. Iranian actor and filmmaker Ataollah Salmanian was quoted in the reports as saying the screenplay for the Iranian movie was ready. [...]

Even if they can’t afford the real thing, many American women still strive for that designer look and have no problem buying knockoffs, or cheaper copies, according to a new survey released. Three-quarters of women questioned in the poll admitted that they had knowingly purchased a counterfeit designer fashion item, and many said they had [...]

A 20-year-old beauty queen who plays the cello and is a breast cancer advocate was crowned Miss Universe, the eighth time an American has won the pageant where the world’s most beautiful women parade in bikinis and ball gowns. Olivia Culpo, 20, a brunette from Rhode Island, was chosen by a 10-judge panel from 89 [...]