NEW YORK — Labrador retrievers are still tugging hardest on U.S. dog lovers’ heartstrings, but poodles just strutted back into the American Kennel Club’s top five most popular dog breeds for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. The club’s annual popularity rankings came out ...

Dolly Parton has announced she is pulling out of this year’s nominations for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, saying she hasn’t “earned that right.” The music icon who has been elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame explained her decision in a statement posted on her official ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The story of The Four Tops, the famous Motown harmony group, began at a high school graduation party in Detroit, when four young men were hoping to impress the girls with an impromptu performance. That night in 1954, when Abdul “Duke” Fakir, Levi Stubbs, Renaldo ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Walter R. Mears, who for 45 years fluidly and speedily wrote the news about presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it, has died. He was 87. “I could produce a story as fast as I could type,” Mears once acknowledged — and he was ...

NEW YORK — Soprano Anna Netrebko withdrew from her future engagements at the Metropolitan Opera rather than repudiate her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, costing the company one of its top singers and best box-office draws. “It is a great artistic loss for the Met and for ...

NEW YORK — Warner Bros. is halting the release of “The Batman” in Russia, just days before it was to open in theaters there, as Hollywood moved to cease distribution plans in the country following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Warner Bros., the Walt Disney Co. and Sony ...