“I’ve been gored and I played with a crack in my head and three loose ribs, and the ‘donkey’ sings as if nothing happened, and after the show to the hospital!”

More than 150,000 people arrived by boat on the Italian coast last year — many of them landing on the tiny Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. The Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi has been documenting the lives of the local people on the island, as they watch what is unfolding around them.

This week David Franzoni, the screenwriter for "Gladiator," said in an interview that he wants to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as 13th-century Persian poet Rumi in a new biopic. The suggestion sparked the latest social media debate over "whitewashing" in Hollywood.

A massive archive of African songs has been opened up to musicians, the first of its kind. The library was created by legendary ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey over the course of 50 years from the 1920s to 70s. Access to its 35,000 recordings has now been given to a UK project called Beating Heart, which will raise money for the communities where the music was originally recorded.

A new Harry Potter play opens in London tonight. The production has broken records by selling 175,000 tickets in 24 hours, but it has also prompted a discussion about racism in the UK.

The journalists were killed Sunday while traveling with an Afghan army unit that came under fire in southern Helmand province, in a sign of just how dangerous the conflict remains for the media trying to cover it.

For nearly 5 million students in the US, English is not their first language. So, in Austin, Texas, some are sent to a special school for international students — where dozens of languages are spoken.

Herb Alpert plays a horn that's kinda jazzy, kinda loungey, kinda south of the border mariachi. This is the sound he made with The Tijuana Brass. And Herb Alpert's trumpet is still very much alive. He's in the midst of a two-week residency at Café Carlyle in New York.

"You're different, you're the same. You are my old friend and you are my new friend and none of the rest of it just makes any difference."

“I think it was just cool to see everyone together, to see something positive in the school.”