Reuters - Christie's has put a record price tag on an important Picasso painting from his celebrated Blue Period that will be offered for sale in London in June. -- read full article
Reuters - Ugandan security forces killed two people and wounded five on Wednesday after fire destroyed historic royal tombs, heightening tension between the government and the powerful Bugandan kingdom.
Playbill - The New York City premiere Marisa Wegrzyn's Killing Women, a dark comedy about corporate America, will play May 13-June 5 at the Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row. -- read full article
Reuters - Literary heavyweights Andrea Levy and Hilary Mantel are up against seven first-time novelists in the longlist for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction honoring women writers in the English language. -- read full article
Reuters - Hysterical and tearful messages from Italians imploring Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to persevere after being attacked last year fill a new book that hits stores just as campaigning for regional elections steps up. -- read full article
Reuters - The discounted claims of an 18th century author to have re-shaped the words of Shakespeare into a play are finally being taken seriously by a respected publisher of the Bard's works nearly 300 years on. -- read full article
Reuters - Considering her scant film career and that her last stage appearance was more than half a century ago, actress Tallulah Bankhead has proven a surprisingly irresistible subject for stage biographies. -- read full article
Playbill - Prior to the Broadway arrival of Sondheim on Sondheim, the Attic Theatre in California presents the earlier Sondheim revue, Side by Side by Sondheim, beginning March 12. -- read full article
Reuters - The leading lights of U.S. musical theater will sing "Happy Birthday" to the great Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim on his 80th birthday in two New York Philharmonic concerts next week. -- read full article
Reuters - In a macabre echo of the punishments Belgian colonials once meted out to their Congolese laborers, a faded bronze statue of the explorer who carved out the country is missing two of his limbs. -- read full article
Reuters - The Bolivian woman who inspired Mario Vargas Llosa's 1977 novel "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," and married Peru's best-known writer when he was 19, has died at age 84.
Playbill - Tony Award-winning lyricist-librettist Steven Sater told Playbill.com that the film version of Spring Awakening, his Tony-honored musical with composer Duncan Sheik, could begin production in Europe as early as this fall. The picture is one of many projects on Sater's plate at the moment. -- read full article
