Blasts echo in the distance as two longtime friends and neighbors sit along a narrow street in old Damascus chatting about Syria, when one of them calls the civil war raging in their home country a "crisis."

"It is called a revolution!" the other shouts. "If you are one of those who believe in a foreign conspiracy, then move away from here," roars the man, whose son has been detained by regime forces for nine months for taking part in pro-democracy protests.

Two married actors from the CW series "The Vampire Diaries" are splitting up.

Paul Wesley, who plays vampire Stefan Salvatore, is ending his marriage to Torrey DeVitto after two years of marriage. They have no children.

Angelina Jolie has topped Forbes magazine's annual list of top-earning actresses after pulling in an estimated $33 million in a year marked by her decision to have a double mastectomy.

Last year's top earner Kirsten Stewart slipped to third in the list with $22m, behind Jolie and second-placed Jennifer Lawrence, whose Oscar for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook helped her pick up $26 million.

South Korean "Gangnam Style" rapper Psy plans to release a new album in September and says he has already recorded three songs for the project.

"Already done with three songs and they are kinda nice," the singer announced on his Twitter account on Tuesday.

France's former first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is threatening legal action after an online petition asked her to repay nearly half a million euros used to fund her website while her husband was president.

A website developer started a petition asking her to repay 410,000 euros, the amount the website cost French taxpayers from January 2011 to May 2012, when her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, left office. As of Monday afternoon, the petition had already been signed by more than 80,000 people.

U.S. border agents have found marijuana on a bus with singer Justin Bieber's tour as it crossed into Detroit from Windsor, Canada.

The Detroit Free Press reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ken Hammond confirmed that the bus was stopped Sunday as it attempted to enter the U.S. on the Ambassador Bridge.

Michael Jackson's dismal public image in his final years meant his final concert series had no sponsors, despite record advance ticket sales for the 50 planned shows, a witness said Monday.

The testimony of Eric Briggs, of FTI Consulting, opened the 14th week of the Jackson family's lawsuit against concert promoters AEG LIve.

Double Oscar winner Denzel Washington relished the opportunity to tread new ground alongside Mark Wahlberg in their new film "2 Guns," an action caper by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur.

Washington, 58, is renowned for heavyweight roles including anti-apartheid campaigner Steve Biko and Malcolm X. But he jumped at the chance to move to the lighter side, particularly as he was coming off the back of 2012's "Flight", in which he played an airline pilot struggling with addiction issues.

Movie star and director Angelina Jolie urged a Japanese audience Monday to join her fight to stop sexual violence in war zones.

Jolie said she hoped "In the Land of Blood and Honey," her first film as writer and director, would inspire viewers to think about rape in war.

Peter Jackson has wrapped up filming "The Hobbit" trilogy and shared pictures of his last day on the set with his Facebook fans.

The New Zealand filmmaker provided a steady stream of updates and photos from the set of the final film, "The Hobbit: There And Back Again," on Friday. The second film, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," will be released in December, and the finale appears in 2014.