Most London shoppers rush by 165 Oxford Street without a second glance -- but it was here 50 years ago that The Rolling Stones played their first gig and changed the landscape of pop music forever.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones played The Marquee Club on July 12, 1962 with three others, the first time they performed under the band name which would become synonymous worldwide with excess and musical flair.

Police forces use them; shops can't do without them; power companies have them -- and sack them when they become unpopular. No marketing or public information campaign is complete without them. Cute, cuddly -- or startling -- characters are everywhere in Japan.

While marketers the world over have long understood the value of an oversized cartoon animal who can persuade children to part with their pocket money, those in Japan know it is also an effective way to reach their parents.

Overall U.S. music album sales dropped slightly in the first six months of the year, but digital album sales are up more than 13 percent over a year ago.

Tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan said Thursday that 57 million digital albums have been sold so far in 2012, compared to 50 million during the same period last year. Digital album sales comprise 38 percent of all album purchases for the first half of the year.

The American University of Beirut hosted renowned Lebanese singer Magida El-Roumi on July 4 at a special event in which El-Roumi announced her decision to donate the full proceeds from the sales of the first edition of her new album, Ghazal [Words of Romance], to the AUB Scholarship Fund which helps finance the education of needy students, an AUB press release said Friday.

After singing two songs from her new album to resounding applause and the delight of her numerous fans, El-Roumi thanked AUB for giving her the opportunity of helping develop the next generation of Lebanese who are expected to build a country whose message is peace, education and culture.

Suddenly, it seems, more U.S. entertainers are coming out publicly as gay, lesbian or bisexual -- a welcome sign of a more accepting America, activists say, amid a fierce debate over marriage equality.

Hip-hop artist Frank Ocean, 24, a member of the Odd Future collective, and talk-show host and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper both made headlines this week when they openly acknowledged their sexual orientations.

Oliver Stone's latest movie pits a pair of Californian neo-hippy cannabis growers against Mexican drug barons aiming to move their business north of the border, with predictably violent results.

In what he stresses is fiction, Stone's "Savages" returns to the theme of drugs and violence that helped make his name in "Midnight Express" (1978) and "Scarface" (1983).

Iranian-born Las Vegas resident Antonio Esfandiari took out some of poker's biggest names to claim the richest ever tournament prize, more than $18 million, event organizers said Wednesday.

The $1 million buy-in "Big One for One Drop Texas Hold'em" event was held Sunday through Tuesday at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas as part of the World Series of Poker.

Eric Sykes, a giant of British comedy for sixty years and a familiar face to fans of the Harry Potter films, has died aged 89, his manager announced on Wednesday.

A statement released by Norma Farnes confirmed that the veteran performer died on Wednesday morning, surrounded by his family, after a short illness.

New music license fees could threaten the livelihood of Berlin's legendary all-night clubs, or drive them underground in a return to the heady post-Wall 1990s, the city's tourism body said Wednesday.

The head of the public-private marketing group Visit Berlin, Burkhard Kieker, said the German capital's renowned nightlife remained one of its biggest draws and warned against a planned hike in levies on discos.

Elie Saab used Ottoman motifs to give his fall-winter 2012-2013 show an imaginative lift.

The move expanded his strict repertoire of va-va voom column dresses and created a strong offering for this year's couture season.