The Gulf country that gave the world indoor skiing in the desert, a Ferrari theme park and a half mile-high skyscraper is back at it with plans for an entire resort island based around the brand of one of the world's richest football clubs.
If all goes according to plan, the $1 billion Real Madrid Resort Island should open in January 2015 on a now nearly barren manmade island in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, a little more than an hour's drive north of Dubai.

Barcelona has filed a complaint to UEFA about the state of the San Siro pitch in its 0-0 draw with AC Milan in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals.
The defending champions said they filed the complaint late Wednesday after the match in which their players lost their footing and kicked up clumps of turf from the ground.

In the past, if you wanted to listen to a thumping, European-flavored dance jam on the radio, you waited for that Friday or Saturday night club mix.
Today, you can shake your body on your daily drive to work.

Medical student Gregory Shumer studied the electronic health record and scooted his laptop closer to the diabetic grandfather sitting on his exam table. "You can see," he pointed at the screen — weight, blood sugar and cholesterol are too high and rising.
The man didn't reveal he was too nearsighted to see those numbers, but he'd quietly volunteered that he'd been ignoring his own health after his wife's death. The future-Dr. Shumer looked away from the computer for a sympathetic conversation — exactly the point of Georgetown University's novel training program.

After Egypt's ruling military sealed off streets around Cairo's Tahrir Square with walls of imposing concrete blocks, a group of artists decided to reopen the avenues on their own — in the public imagination, at least.
On one of the walls, they painted an exact trompe-l'oeil reproduction of the street behind it, as if it were open. The perspective painting matches up with the architecture of the neighboring buildings and even has some "pedestrians" strolling along the boulevard. The street's new name is "No Walls Street."

An intense and controversial restoration of the last great work by Leonardo da Vinci goes before the public Thursday at the Louvre Museum, revealing "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" in the full panoply of hues and detail painted by the Renaissance master 500 years ago.
The 18-month-long restoration of the painting that Leonardo labored on for 20 years until his death in 1519 will go a long way to raising "Saint Anne" to its place as one of the most influential Florentine paintings of its time and a step towards the high Renaissance of Michelangelo.

Aerosmith has reunited with longtime producer Jack Douglas and the band says it will release a new album in three months.
Steven Tyler said Aerosmith was finishing two final songs for the album, its first since 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo." Joined Wednesday by Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer at a Los Angeles mall, Tyler revealed three track titles: "Legendary Child," ''Beautiful" and "Out Go the Lights." Earlier in the week, the band announced that its 18-stop "Global Warming Tour" begins June 16 in Minneapolis.

Ernest Hemingway shows a tenderness that wasn't part of his usual macho persona in a dozen unpublished letters that became publicly available Wednesday in a collection of the author's papers at the Kennedy presidential library.
In a letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich written in Cuba and dated February 1953, Hemingway wrote of euthanizing his cat "Uncle Willie" after it was hit by a car.

Insurgents ambushed a NATO coalition supply convoy in a mountainous area of western Afghanistan, sparking a three-hour firefight in which an Afghan soldier, five Afghan security guards, and 14 attackers were killed, officials said Thursday.
Najibullah Najibi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army's western region, said the battle raged Wednesday along a highway regularly used by coalition supply trucks in Bala Buluk district of Farah province.

Struggling cellphone maker Nokia Corp. launched its first smartphone for China on Wednesday, looking to the world's biggest mobile market to help drive its 1-year-old turnaround effort.
Nokia said its Lumia 800C will be supported by China Telecom Ltd., one of the country's three major state-owned carriers.
