The customer known only as "Cesar of Huizache" had an odd request for shoemaker Dario Calderon: He showed him a cell-phone photo of a sequined cowboy boot with pointy toes so long, they curled up toward the knees. He wanted a pair, but with longer toes.

"I thought 'What's up with this dude?'" Calderon said at his shop in Matehuala, a northeastern Mexican city of farmers and cattle ranchers accustomed to a more stoic cowboy look. The boot in the photo measured 60 centimeters (23 inches) "but we made him a pair that were 90 centimeters (35 inches) long."

South Korea's capital city has told Italian fashion house Fendi to remove all fur items from a show of its fall/winter collection due to complaints from animal rights groups, officials said Monday.

"We have received complaints from animal rights activists and saw negative public opinion on the Internet... we can't let such a controversial thing be staged at a public property," a spokesman for the city government told Agence France Presse.

NBC is betting on the Playboy club, Chelsea Handler and a raft of romantic comedies among the dozen new series it has ordered in its latest attempt to come back from a long slump that has made it television's fourth-place broadcast network.

The network outlined its fall plans on Sunday, opening a hectic week in which broadcasters unveil their fall schedules to advertisers in hopes they will make multimillion dollar commitments to buy commercials. It was the first new schedule formulated by NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt, appointed when Comcast took over NBC Universal.

Berlin's Philharmonic Orchestra is ending a 45-year association with the Salzburg Easter Festival from 2013 after a dispute over the number of opera performances it can put on.

Festival director Peter Alward said in a statement Saturday that it had not been possible to meet a demand from the orchestra headed by Sir Simon Rattle to stage four performances instead of two.

Riding the wave of the Arab Spring, Egyptian film star Khaled Abol Naga and his international backers have launched a revolutionary bid to bring quality Arab cinema to the global market.

Kicking off at the Cannes film festival, Pacha Pictures aims to be the place to go for Arab "auteur" cinema, for which Abol Naga and his French and Lebanese partners say there is huge demand and little supply. Until now.

Whether you think it was wonderful or wacky, the flamboyant hat worn by Princess Beatrice at the British royal wedding last month could now be yours after she put it up for sale Thursday on eBay.

The princess, the oldest daughter of Prince Andrew and a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, has put the Philip Treacy creation on the online auction site with a starting price of £5,000 ($8,000, 5,700 euros).

Troubled American starlet Lindsay Lohan pleaded no contest Wednesday to stealing a $2,500 necklace, in a deal expected to allow her to serve a jail term at home.

The 24-year-old was sentenced last month to 120 days in jail for violating probation and ordered to complete community service at the Los Angeles County morgue and a women's center.

Online social game star Zynga on Tuesday said pop queen Lady Gaga will be hitting "Farmville."

Cuts from Gaga's upcoming "Born This Way" album will make their world debuts at her in-game "GagaVille" farm beginning May 17.

The 64th edition of the Cannes film festival gets underway on Wednesday with up-and-coming directors and Hollywood A-listers rubbing shoulders at the world's biggest cinema gathering.

Woody Allen's latest romantic comedy "Midnight in Paris" opens the 11-day event on the French Riviera at a black-tie evening screening that already has tongues wagging.

Italian fashion brand Roberto Cavalli said it will open 85 new stores in China within the next five years under a deal signed on Tuesday with Shanghai-based retail giant UCCAL Group.

The company will open its first stores under the new deal in Beijing and Shanghai between late 2011 and early 2012, it said in a statement.