Sprinter Melissa Breen has been handed a place in Australia's athletics team for the London Olympics, despite missing the automatic qualifying standard by two thousands of a second.
The 21-year-old Breen was named on Wednesday to run the 100 meters and the 4x100 meters relay after posting a series of quick times in her hunt for selection. Selectors also took into account her domination of the domestic season and named her among a 54-strong team, the second-largest Australian team for an Olympic games.

Tom Cruise was in Manhattan to collect an award, and, yes, promote a movie.
On Tuesday night, the actor received the fourth ever Friars Club Entertainment Icon Award. The evening was a toast, not a roast. Alec Baldwin hosted at the Waldorf-Astoria, where speakers included such former co-stars as Cuba Gooding Jr. and Kevin Pollak.

When Grammy Awards producers learned of Whitney Houston's death less than 24 hours before the live telecast, they scrapped parts of the script, added performances and puzzled over how best to honor the Grammy-winning singer who died unexpectedly at age 48.
Host LL Cool J said that addressing the Grammy audience at the Staples Center after Houston's death was "definitely the most challenging moment I've faced in my career."

Five years after being treated for breast cancer, "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts has a new health fight on her hands.
Roberts said Monday she is beginning chemotherapy treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, a blood and bone marrow disease once known as preleukemia. She is expected to get a bone marrow transplant sometime this fall.

NetJets, which sells partial ownership interests in business jets, said Monday that it plans to spend up to $9.6 billion on as many as 425 new planes from Cessna and Bombardier.
CEO Jordan Hansell said the orders reflect that NetJets, which is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is "optimistic about the economy over the long term."

A team of Japanese astronomers using telescopes on Hawaii say they've seen the oldest galaxy, a discovery that's competing with other "earliest galaxy" claims.
The Japanese team calculates its galaxy was formed 12.91 billion light-years ago, and their research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the Subaru and Keck telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea.

Finally, some good news for older fathers. A new study hints that their children and even their grandchildren may get a health benefit because of their older age.
It's based on research into something called telomeres — tips on the ends of chromosomes.

A new pan-Arab TV station that went on the air Monday courts viewers who see mainstream coverage of the political upheaval sweeping the Middle East as biased against the regimes in Syria and Iran and their close ally in Lebanon, the powerful Shiite militant group Hizbullah.
The Beirut-based station Al-Mayadeen, Arabic for The Squares, hopes to counter the influence of regional media heavyweights like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, both funded by oil-rich Sunni Gulf Arab countries that have backed the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad. It also promises to support the Palestinian cause and all forms of "resistance" — a term in Mideast parlance usually used to describe Hizbullah and other groups that fight Israel.

Rain or shine, clay or mud, Sunday or Monday, Rafael Nadal rules Roland Garros.
The man they call "Rafa" won his record seventh French Open title Monday, returning a day after getting rained out to put the finishing touches on a 6-4, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 victory over Novak Djokovic. He denied Djokovic in his own run at history — the quest for the "Novak Slam."

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to show off new iPhone software, updated Mac computers and provide more details on future releases of Mac software when he kicks off the company's annual conference for software developers on Monday.
The announcement of new software for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch has been confirmed by banners that appeared at the Moscone conference center in San Francisco on Friday, reading "iOS 6." It's not much of a surprise. Apple has used its Worldwide Developers Conference as an opportunity to announce new iPhone software for the past few years.
