Vampires, Transformers, singing high-schoolers: They can all be tough to outrun.

But at the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival, a number of young Hollywood stars are attempting to do just that. By striking out on their own, they hope to move their careers beyond mega franchises and toward more mature roles in bolder films.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell celebrated her 42nd birthday on Tuesday with a trip to the birthplace of Jesus, wishing for "good vibrations, not destruction" in the troubled Middle East.

Campbell, wearing a white shirt and black sunglasses, was flanked by Palestinian guards and her own private security detail as she toured the biblical town of Bethlehem.

Eugene Polley, who in 1955 invented the first wireless remote control for television, has died of natural causes, his longtime employer Zenith Electronics said Tuesday. He was 96.

In a statement, Zenith -- a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Electronics formerly known as Zenith Radio Corporation -- said the Chicago native passed away in hospital on Sunday.

Survivors of acid attacks whose plight became the focus of an Oscar-winning documentary now fear ostracism and reprisals if the film is broadcast in Pakistan.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made history earlier this year when she won Pakistan's first Oscar, feted across the country for exposing the horrors endured by women whose faces are obliterated in devastating acid attacks.

Brazil's children's television show host Xuxa has revealed that the late Michael Jackson wanted to marry her and that she had been sexually abused as a child.

Maria da Graça Meneghel, better known as "Xuxa," made the surprise disclosure in a television interview that shocked the country late Sunday.

An Iranian film noir about an academic who returns home after two decades in the West to a family and country he no longer recognizes made a splash at the Cannes festival this week.

"A Respectable Family", the feature film debut of the 39-year-old Tehran documentary maker Massoud Bakhshi, is rooted in the director's own experiences as a teenager growing up during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.

Agence France-Presse photographer Massoud Hossaini received the Pulitzer prize in New York on Monday for his wrenching shot of the aftermath of a suicide bomb in Kabul.

Hossani, 30, traveled from his native Afghanistan to attend the ceremony at Columbia University for winners of the most prestigious U.S. journalism prize, the first for Agence France Presse.

Lady Gaga will be allowed to hold a second concert in Manila on Tuesday night after state censors ruled her "provocative" act was within legal bounds, a city official said.

Officials who monitored the first show on Monday found no violations of the permit terms banning nudity, blasphemy, and lewd conduct, said Antonino Calixto, mayor of Pasay City, the district where the event was held.

Lady Gaga's Philippine concerts will go ahead as planned, organizers said Sunday, despite a series of protests from Christian groups and calls for the controversial singer to be banned.

Allan Florendo, assistant vice president of the sprawling SM Mall of Asia, whose arena will be the venue for the concerts Monday and Tuesday, said they were ready for the thousands of Gaga-fans and even any stray protesters.

British rocker Pete Doherty, whose cocaine-snorting and carousing have landed him in jail, on Sunday appeared in his first film role in Cannes as a debauched young man in 19th-century France.

"Confession of a Child of the Century" sees Doherty star in an adaptation of French writer Alfred de Musset's autobiographical novel of the same name alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg.