Adele dominated music this year, and iTunes was no exception.

The British songstress had iTunes' best-selling album and song, and she was named its top artist.

A Bangladeshi television channel said Thursday it was launching the country's first reality show for transgender people in an effort to break down widespread suspicion of the country's "hijra" community.

The ATN Bangla show, "Amra Tomadery" (We are for you), is now accepting applications to be one of around 40 contestants who will showcase their dancing and acting skills to win audience votes.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose party lost support in parliamentary elections, Thursday named a top Russian film director to head his campaign to return to the Kremlin in March presidential polls.

Stanislav Govorukhin, who directed the classic Soviet television series "The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed,” will mastermind Putin's bid to reclaim the presidency in the elections on March 4, 2012.

Beloved comic book boy reporter Tintin is leaping on to videogame consoles ahead of the U.S. release of a film by Hollywood powerhouse Steven Spielberg.

Ubisoft released "The Adventures of Tintin: The Game" in North America with versions tailored for play on all major videogame consoles as well as personal computers and handheld Nintendo 3DS devices.

Zany experiments testing scientific theories in real-world settings have earned the TV show "MythBusters" a devoted following, but a stunt gone awry met with an unhappy audience when an errant cannonball went shooting through a California family's bedroom.

Sheriff's deputies are still measuring how, exactly, the cannonball flew from a bomb range in the rolling hills flanking a suburban San Francisco Bay area neighborhood and rocketed into the front door of a home and through its master bedroom before landing in a neighbor's parked minivan.

Alec Baldwin issued an apology Wednesday to fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight that was delayed by his refusal to stop playing a cellphone game — but stopped short of apologizing to the airline or the flight attendant he later mocked on Twitter.

The "30 Rock" actor's note, posted to the Huffington Post (http://huff.to/sENHR2 ), instead lamented the state of modern air travel. Baldwin noted the financial struggles of airlines, saying the result is that air travel has devolved into an inelegant experience, akin to riding a Greyhound bus.

Actor Tom Cruise was the undisputed star on the red carpet at the opening of the Dubai Film Festival, sharing the limelight with Bollywood stars and the widow of late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.

Cruise attended the screening of his latest release, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," which was filmed in Dubai and includes a dramatic scene where the U.S. actor climbs the sides of the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 meters high.

Welcome to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guns N' Roses.

The seminal rock band of the late 1980s and early '90s, best known for hits like "Welcome to the Jungle," ''Sweet Child O' Mine" and "November Rain," leads the 2012 class of inductees announced on Wednesday.

Eccentric pop diva Lady Gaga took her anti-bullying campaign to the White House on Tuesday where she was lauded as a source of strength for many young people who are scared at school.

Her visit follows a White House bullying conference earlier this year, called to mitigate the plight of nearly a third of U.S. schoolchildren, or 13 million students, who are bullied each year, according to official figures.

Former Miss USA Rima Fakih was speeding and weaving through traffic with an uncorked, half-empty bottle of champagne and a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when she was arrested in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park, according to a police report released Tuesday.

The report on her drunken-driving arrest obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request says the 26-year-old from Dearborn was pulled over early Saturday going 60 mph, weaving in heavy traffic and changing lanes without using a turn signal.