80s stars Duran Duran plan comeback

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will meet members of chart-topping J-pop band SMAP in Tokyo on the sidelines of a weekend East Asian summit, a press report said Friday.Wen, known as the "people's premier" for his populist approach, is due to meet the group late Saturday as well as a Tokyo university baseball team with whom he played catch during his visit to Tokyo a year ago, Jiji Press said.The two countries are expected to arrange a concert tour to China by SMAP next year to mark the 40th anniversary of the normalisation of their diplomatic ties, the news agency said.

Tim Trainor / East Oregonian / The Associated PressNine people were killed when a tour bus heading to Vancouver careened through a guardrail along an icy highway and several hundred fee

Mitt Romney embarked on a week long trip abroad and controversy appeared to follow him, as CNN's Jim Acosta reports.

Sony Music apologised on Wednesday for the Nazi-style uniforms worn by a Japanese pop band under its management in an MTV broadcast that triggered a protest from a US-based Jewish rights group.The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles had voiced its "shock and dismay" at the appearance of the six-member J-Pop band Kishidan in SS-style uniforms with Nazi insignia such as the Iron Cross, death skull and eagle.

Two China concerts next month by Japanese pop band SMAP could fall victim to a diplomatic row between the two countries after ticket sales were suspended at the weekend, media reports said Tuesday.The five-member pop group is scheduled to perform before some 80,000 fans at the Shanghai World Expo on October 9-10, but a Chinese ticket agency abruptly stopped selling the tickets Sunday, the Sports Nippon tabloid said.

New York's Metropolitan Opera said Tuesday two of its leading stars have pulled out of a tour in Japan at the last minute for fear of radiation from the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant.Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko and Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja have changed their minds about coming to Japan, forcing the company to "scramble over the weekend to find replacement stars," the Met said in a statement.The Met troupe arrived in the central Japan city of Nagoya late Monday for a 14-performance tour, their seventh visit to the country, starting Saturday.