Teri Shields raised eyebrows when she allowed her 11-year-old daughter, Brooke, to be cast as a prostitute in 1978's "Pretty Baby." A few years later, she permitted a teenage Brooke Shields to famously star in a series of commercials for Calvin Klein jeans, provocatively professing that nothing comes between "me and my Calvins."

Teri Shields died last week in New York City, according to Jill Fritzo, a spokeswoman for Brooke Shields. She was 79. The New York Times reported the elder Shields died following a long illness related to dementia.

Careful media coverage of a close presidential election Tuesday exploded so suddenly Tuesday that it left the bizarre spectacle of Fox News Channel analyst Karl Rove, a major fundraiser for Republican Mitt Romney, publicly questioning his network's declaration that President Barack Obama had been re-elected.

ABC News was also frantically trying to repair a power outage that left much of its set inoperable precisely at the time the election was being decided.

About 2.7 million viewers watched Sunday's television premiere of the first movie about the U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the National Geographic Channel said Monday.

"SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden" caused a stir when it was announced in October that it would screen on the American cable channel just two days before the U.S. presidential election.

South Korea has awarded one of its highest cultural honors to the rapper Psy for taking the world by storm with his "Gangnam Style" hit.

The culture ministry announced Tuesday that the 34-year-old singer, whose real name is Park Jae-Sang, would receive the Okgwan Order of Cultural Merit, awarded for "outstanding meritorious services" to the arts.

From a giant, bug-eyed Gollum sculpture looming over passengers at Wellington Airport to promotional banners covering the facades of office blocks, the upcoming "The Hobbit" movie is impossible to ignore in New Zealand.

Tourism chiefs, hoping to recreate the surge in visitors inspired by the original "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, have launched a massive marketing campaign around director Peter Jackson's latest Middle Earth three-parter.

He may not be The Boss, but The Kid lent his high-octane rock & roll late Monday to the final rally of Mitt Romney's 18-month campaign, on the eve of the U.S. presidential election.

Kid Rock was the star attraction at an arena in New Hampshire, the state where the Republican nominee's presidential bid began 18 months ago, and several thousand supporters gave him and the Romneys a rousing welcome.

South Korean pop sensation Psy caused a riot in Paris on Monday, drawing up to 20,000 people for a "Gangnam Style" flashmob held opposite the Eiffel Tower.

Alerted on social media by the record label Universal Mercury, together with radio station NRJ, a massive crowd packed the Trocadero square to join the artist in a rendition of his much-imitated horse-riding dance.

Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after finding out she carries a gene which increases the risk of getting breast cancer, the British television personality said in an interview published on Monday.

Osbourne, 60, a former judge on America's Got Talent who is married to rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, battled colon cancer ten years ago and told Hello magazine she could not endure the ordeal again.

Sting may be celebrating 25 years in music, but the one-time "Police" frontman hates to look back, he told Agence France Presse on the final stretch of a year-long tour that wraps up in Asia in December.

"I'm not a very nostalgic person. It's just not in my nature," the singer said in an email interview, before arriving in France this week for the latest leg in the "Back to Bass" tour, launched in 2011.

Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, have arrived in Australia as part of their two-week tour of the Pacific.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall landed in the Outback Queensland town of Longreach on Monday following a visit to Papua New Guinea.