The Dutch city of Deventer transformed Saturday into a pocket of 19th-century England, with 950 people in costumes bringing characters from Charles Dickens' books to life.

Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge and Miss Havisham were among the characters at hand, mingling with chimney sweepers, livestock and Christmas carol singers in Deventer's historic center. Onlookers bowed when Queen Victoria passed through.

Taylor Swift has made a surprise stop at a Kansas City children's hospital, shocking parents and patients alike as she laughed with them, posed for photos and exchanged gifts.

All parent Cassie Thomas was told beforehand was that she might want to brush her hair and teeth because there was going to be a special visitor. But she was stunned when Swift, fresh off her Eras Tour and one day before her 35th birthday, walked into her son's room on Thursday at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser, the Lebanese-American Massad Boulos, has enjoyed a reputation as a billionaire mogul at the helm of a business that bears his family name.

Boulos has been profiled as a tycoon by the world’s media, telling a reporter in October that his company is worth billions. Trump called him a “highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene.”

Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney, who in a decades-long career has tackled many a thorny issue, wasn't planning a film about Israel — until one day last year, when a stunning leak fell into his hands.

The leak turned out to be more like a deluge.

Selena Gomez is having quite a year, and it's being capped with an engagement to music producer and songwriter Benny Blanco.

The Grammy- and Emmy-nominated performer announced she was off the market in an Instagram post Wednesday of her ring and an embrace with her fiancé, with the caption "Forever begins now."

The hardest movie ticket to get this weekend was for a film audiences have been able to watch at home for years: Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar."

The science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway earned $4.5 million from only 166 screens in the U.S. and Canada. Its 70mm IMAX film presentations sold out in minutes, leaving theaters scrambling to add more and people paying up to $300 on the re-sale market. Those 10 film screens alone had a staggering $70,000 per theater average, one of the highest of the year and usually the bragging rights of acclaimed arthouse movies playing on only four screens.

The Golden Globes nominated more than 40 individual films Monday — and yet still managed to overlook quite a bit. That may just be the brutal truth of awards season: The field narrows and suddenly great performances and wonderful films are simply left in the dust.

The Globes have always had quirks, like A-lister tunnel vision, and while there might not be anything quite as glaring as the infamous year of "The Tourist," this batch is not without its oddities: Some good, some bad, some simply perplexing.

Legendary Arab singer Fairouz, whose ballads have told of love, her native Lebanon and the Palestinian cause, turned 90 on Thursday as her conflict-weary country is wracked by the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Vice President Kamala Harris will team up with Beyoncé on Friday for a rally in solidly Republican Texas aimed at highlighting the perilous medical fallout from the state's strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump.

It's a message intended to register far beyond Texas in the political battleground states, where Harris is hoping that the aftereffects from the fall of Roe v. Wade will spur voters to turn out to support her quest for the presidency.

New England leaf-watching season is in full swing, as people from as far as Florida and Berlin flock to the region for scenic drives, train rides and bus tours to soak in the splendid hues of red, orange and bronze. With quaint towns and covered bridges scattered through swaths of changing forest, the rural Northeast provides an ideal setting to view nature's annual show.

"Leaf-peeping is one of the most accessible tourism things that you can do," said Teddy Willey, the general manager of the Frog Rock Tavern in Meredith, New Hampshire. "You don't have to have the athleticism to be a hiker, you don't have to have the money to own a boat."