The new advertising campaign for Martini Gold by Dolce & Gabbana directed by Jonas Åkerlund and starring Monica Bellucci features a special cameo performance from Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, themselves.

In an interview at his festival in Japan, the conductor Seiji Ozawa spoke about his health and plans for the future.

The National Capital Planning Commission reviews all plans concerning the National Mall in Washington, where everyone wants their memorial to be.

“The Warmth of Other Suns,” Isabel Wilkerson’s book about the Great Migration of blacks in America, took 15 years and much hands-on research to finish.

“Skippy Dies” by Paul Murray has a lot on its mind: M-theory, lost youth, Irish history and parallel dimensions, not to mention sex, drugs and schoolboy humor.

The actress Florencia Lozano of “One Life to Live” has written “underneathmybed” — an Off Broadway play about Argentina’s “disappeared” — that is anything but soapy.

The Chicago metal band Disturbed can now, with the success of “Asylum” (Reprise), its new CD, claim a rare chart distinction: along with Metallica and the Dave Matthews band, it is the only other rock band to have four consecutive releases go to No. 1.

Dr. Chopra’s fictionalized biography about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, will go on sale early in e-book form, weeks ahead of the print book’s publication date of Sept. 21.

Juan Luis Guerra, Alejandro Sanz, Jorge Drexler and Mario Domm lead the list.

Two Icelanders have challenged traditional scholarly thinking about the 800-year-old Norse Lewis Chessmen, suggesting they were made not in Norway, but in Iceland.