Katie Holmes' return to Broadway will be much shorter than she would have liked.

The former Mrs. Cruise's play "Dead Accounts" will close within a week of the new year. Producers said Thursday that Theresa Rebeck's drama will close on Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

Unilever, the maker of Vaseline, Axe deodorants and Dove soaps, among other cosmetic and hygiene products, says it will phase out the use of microplastics by 2015.

Many soaps, skin scrubs and shower gels contain microplastics, which are tiny polyethelene beads. Scientists and environmental groups are concerned that they contribute to polluting oceans.

Two contemporary stagings of Puccini's "La Boheme" from 2012 have been released on DVD: director Stefan Herheim's reimagining that opened in January at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo (on Electric), and Damiano Michieletto's staging that premiered in July at the Salzburg Festival in Austria (on DG). Both are equally fascinating and frustrating.

Taking the 1963 sets by Heike Scheele that he grew up watching, Herheim begins the opera with Mimi's death — usually the performance's final moment. And she succumbs to cancer rather than consumption.

Brazilian health officials say doctors will be required to notify authorities of every HIV case in the nation.

Until now, doctors were only required to notify state and federal officials when patients developed AIDS.

The Los Angeles Clippers routed Boston 106-77 on Thursday, becoming the first NBA team to win 15 consecutive games since the Celtics four years ago.

Also Thursday, the Oklahoma City Thunder won their 11th straight home game but needed overtime to do it, edging the Dallas Mavericks 111-105.

Avery Johnson was fired Thursday as coach of the Brooklyn Nets, who have struggled recently in their season of new surroundings and elevated expectations.

After a strong start to their first season in Brooklyn, the Nets have lost 10 of 13 games to fall well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home.

Serena Williams has arrived for the Brisbane International and says she's fine after minor foot surgery that forced her to withdraw from a Thailand exhibition.

Williams, who will be chasing a sixth Australian Open singles title beginning January 14 in Melbourne, has been affected by chronic foot problems since treading on glass and badly cutting both feet in 2010.

Andy Murray had a shaky start to his preparations for the 2013 season Thursday, losing in straight sets to Janko Tipsarevic in the opening match of the World Tennis Championship exhibition tournament.

Two early breaks in each set helped Tipsarevic dispatch the third-ranked Murray 6-3, 6-4.

Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in 1991 but kept a low public profile in controversies over the second Gulf War against Iraq, has died. He was 78.

A sister of Schwarzkopf, Ruth Barenbaum of Middlebury, Vermont, said Thursday that he died in Tampa, Florida, from complications from pneumonia. "We're still in a state of shock," she said by phone. "This was a surprise to us all."

British scientists have called off the hunt for exotic life in an ice-bound Antarctic lake after their mission was hit by a technical hitch.

Researchers with the British Antarctic Survey had hoped to drill into Lake Ellsworth, which they believe has been frozen over for hundreds of thousands of years, in the hope of finding microbial life forms that might provide new insight into the evolution of life on Earth. They also hoped the lake floor's sediments might yield a new record of the Earth's climate.