Thai authorities said Monday they had arrested the owner of a sex show visited by pop icon Rihanna -- the latest crackdown inadvertently triggered by the singer's tweets.

The bar owner on the island of Phuket has been charged in connection with the lewd performance, local district chief Veera Kerdsirimongkol told Agence France Presse.

The annual sale of Rio Tinto's rare pink-hued diamonds attracted unprecedented interest with at least two of the stones fetching record prices of over $2 million, the mining giant said Monday.

The 2013 Argyle Pink Diamonds Tender of 64 red, pink and blue stones drew a record number of bids over $1 million from established markets such as Japan and Australia as well as emerging markets China and India.

Indian actress Freida Pinto urged the world on the International Day of the Girl Child to ensure that 66 million girls who are not in school today get an education.

The "Slumdog Millionaire" star told an event sponsored by the U.N. children's fund, UNICEF marking Friday's second annual observance of the international day that she had a chance to be educated and "I feel every girl in the world, in respect of where she comes from, what her social status is, needs to be given the same,"

The palatial U.S. villa where fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered closed its doors Friday following its multi-million-dollar sale last month, realtors said.

Casa Casuarina, where Versace was living when he was shot dead on the steps of the property in 1997, was sold for $41.5 million on September 17 by VM South Beach, a company that owns the neighboring Hotel Victor.

Cher may have her ideal burial place all mapped out, but the veteran pop star is far from having one foot in the grave with a new album and feisty views on feminism and the "genius" of Miley Cyrus.

At 67, Cher is one of a generation of 1960s performers holding out against retirement -- from the still-touring Rolling Stones to Paul McCartney who has also just finished another album at the age of 71.

Two wildly diverse takes on modern love and obsession have taken the top prize Asia's largest film festival, which draws to a close Saturday.

Jurors in the New Currents award at the 18th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) lauded Korean director Ahn Song-Kyoung's "Pascha" for its "intimate, highly original expression of an unusual love story".

Lebanese-U.S. director Ziad Doueiri said Friday he was willing to face jail to film his award-winning movie "The Attack" in Israel, flouting Lebanon's laws against entering the neighboring Jewish state.

Describing the production there as a "crazy trip", he told an audience at the Frankfurt Book Fair that it still bothered him that the movie, released this year, had been banned in the Arab world.

Two-time Oscar winner Quentin Tarantino today revealed he was afraid to make any film about a serial killer, because such a production would "reveal my sickness far too much".

"The planet Earth couldn't handle my serial killer movie," claimed the American director, who has a long history of ultra-violence in his films, from breakthrough box office smash "Pulp Fiction" (1995) through to last year's "Django Unchained".

The lawyer for a photographer who is suing Kanye West for alleged assault hit out at the U.S. rapper in a TV interview Thursday for apparently threatening other cameramen.

Gloria Allred branded as "shameful" West's comments on the late-night Jimmy Kimmel show, in which the latter declared himself a genius and warned cameramen not to "antagonize" him.

India's biggest film star Shah Rukh Khan says the family spirit of Bollywood movies is what makes them so popular while revealing he struggled to combine dance with serious acting.

In a career spanning three decades, Khan has made himself one of the biggest box office draws in Bollywood as the hero of romantic dramas and high-octane action flicks, and he said he quickly learned there are certain ingredients that make a movie successful.