A company helping British soprano Sarah Brightman prepare a flight to the International Space Station says she has put off the mission.

Space Adventures said in a statement Wednesday that the 54-year-old singer announced that "for personal family reasons her intentions have had to change and she is postponing her cosmonaut training and flight plans at this time."

The Cannes Film Festival was to slip into high gear on Thursday by screening a new "Mad Max" film and firing the starter's gun on its competition for the Palme d'Or prize.

The second day of the 12-day event on the Riviera promised greater star power than the opening day, when a French social drama starring Catherine Deneuve, "Standing Tall", was shown out of the competition. 

Johnny Depp's pet dogs Pistol and Boo have been ordered by Australia to "bugger off" back to Hollywood or face being put down after he flew the terriers into the country illegally -- as thousands signed a petition to save them.

The actor, who is in Australia to film "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", was given the grim warning by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce on Thursday.

Jennifer Lopez, a pop sensation starting in the late 1990s whose career has since matured, will turn her repertoire into a Las Vegas show.

The New York-born star of Puerto Rican heritage announced Tuesday night that she will start a residency in Las Vegas in January next year, running with breaks through June.

Britain's Prince Harry performed a fearsome Maori war dance, or haka, and mingled with tattooed ex-convicts on his trip to New Zealand Wednesday.

Red-faced and sweating with exertion, the fifth in line to the throne participated in a chest-thumping, foot-stomping haka alongside about 30 soldiers at the Linton army camp north of Wellington.

The Cannes film festival eschews its usual blockbuster kick-off on Wednesday, opening with a gritty French film that marks only the second time a female director has won the coveted first slot.

Normally reserved for flashy hits such as "Moulin Rouge" or "The Fifth Element", the opening selection this year is "Standing Tall", starring French icon Catherine Deneuve.

Happily-married Oscar-winning Australian actress Cate Blanchett has revealed she had "many" past relationships with women in an interview with an American magazine.

The Australian, 45, made the comment while promoting her latest film "Carol", in which she plays a bisexual woman in 1950s New York.

Daredevils have posted a heart-stopping video of them scaling one of the world's tallest buildings, currently under construction in the Chinese boom town of Shenzhen.

The duo, who identify themselves on their website as 25-year-old Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov, 22, climbed the Pingan International Finance Centre, which is said by designers Thornton Tomasetti to be 600 metres (1,968 feet) high.

There will be no selfies on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this year, but, rest assured, there will be every other type of image-making at the French Riviera extravaganza.

Photographers will form flashing gauntlets through which many of the top stars and filmmakers in movies will stream on their way to premiering hotly anticipated films on screens that are less theaters than movie cathedrals.

Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef has been chosen to host the 2015 International Emmy Awards Gala in New York in November.

Youssef became one of the Arab world's most famous TV personalities as host of the groundbreaking TV political satire show "Al-Bernameg ("The Program"). He canceled the show last year after former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was elected president.