Bangladesh's most popular fiction writer Humayun Ahmed has died in the United States after a near year-long battle against colon cancer, his family said Friday. He was 64.

Ahmed, also the country's leading film director and TV drama-maker, "was pronounced dead by doctors at Bellevue Hospital in New York" on Thursday, his brother Ahsan Habib told Agence France Presse.

"Mad Men" dominated nominations for the primetime Emmy awards on Thursday, a triumph for the 1960s-themed series that almost failed to return for its fifth season this year.

The show is up against "Boardwalk Empire," "Breaking Bad," the British-made "Downton Abbey," "Game of Thrones" and "Homeland" for best drama series, but unlike any of its rivals, it figures in all nine drama-related categories.

Spanish film star Javier Bardem joined a mass street protest Thursday against economic crisis measures that he said are ruining Spain's cultural sector and the country generally.

The Hollywood star, bearded and wearing dark sunglasses and a simple blue t-shirt, joined hundreds of fellow artists in a demonstration outside the culture ministry, part of a wider workers' protest in the streets of Madrid.

Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry was taken to hospital after suffering a minor head injury while shooting a fight scene in her latest film, her spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Berry hit her head on concrete after a "nasty" fall Tuesday and then began to vomit -- a sign of concussion -- triggering alarm from aides who advised her to go to hospital, the celebrity news website TMZ reported.

American country music star Glen Campbell has cancelled a farewell tour of Australia and New Zealand due to worsening Alzheimer's disease, his promoter said Thursday.

Campbell, whose hits include "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Southern Nights", was due to play six shows next month with Kenny Rogers and one solo performance in what would have been the final overseas concerts of "The Goodbye Tour".

Tom Cruise's lawyer condemned as "grotesquely false" Wednesday a report that the Hollywood star had abandoned his six-year-old daughter amid the shock of his wife's divorce bombshell.

Attorney Bert Fields said a cover story in Life and Style magazine, with the strapline "Abandoned by Her Dad," was clearly designed to make money on the back of falsehoods about the A-list actor and his daughter Suri.

Mourners gathered in Mumbai under heavy monsoon rain to bid farewell and catch a final glimpse of Bollywood's first superstar, Rajesh Khanna, who was to be cremated on Thursday.

His body was driven from his residence on an open-back trailer with only his face showing from beneath a blanket of jasmine flowers. Onlookers, many under umbrellas, threw white petals as the funeral cortege passed.

British singer George Michael has revealed that he woke from his three-week coma talking in the broad West Country accent spoken in western England.

London-born Michael, who almost died of pneumonia at the end of last year, said he was unable to revert to his usual accent for two days after gaining consciousness and his family feared he would be stuck with the new one forever.

Could Charlie Sheen be a judge on "American Idol"? The actor says he's game.

In an interview Tuesday on Ryan Seacrest's radio show, Sheen said "Idol" producer Nigel Lythgoe publicly threw his name out there as a possible judge and the idea piqued people's interest — including his own.

Singer Madonna is courting controversy again ahead of an August 1 gig in Warsaw, having already been threatened with legal action in France for projecting a swastika on an image of far-right party leader Marine Le Pen.

A group of young Catholics has launched an online petition to have the concert cancelled as it coincides with the Polish capital's annual World War II commemoration of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the city's Nazi's occupiers.