Sting

Kenny Chesney, Elton John, Juanes, John Legend and Sting are just a few of the artists who have been tapped to pay tribute to Bruce Springsteen on Feb. 8 in Los Angeles.  The MusiCares Person of the Year, staged by the Recording Academy two days before the organization hosts the Grammy Awards, has a reputation for gathering some of the biggest names in pop. It's a high-priced gala full of one-of-a-kind performances, and this year's crop features young...

When the Recording Academy scaled back 31 Grammy categories last year, protests arose from many corners of the music world. Perhaps as a consolation, this year three new categories - classical compendium, Latin jazz album and urban contemporary album - have been added to the previously scaled-back field. The new award for urban contemporary album takes the place of several more R&B-related categories that were previously cut, and is perhaps the most relevant in a year that proved game-changing for the genre.

In the run-up to election day, a Riverside County private investigator said he was hired to gather dirt on two Costa Mesa councilmen seeking re-election, and sent a woman into a local sports bar to flirt with one of the elected leaders with the hope of catching him behaving inappropriately. The alleged setup came the same August night that the investigator called police to alert them that another councilman appeared to be driving under the influence. A subsequent field sobriety test revealed that Councilman Jim Righeimer was sober.

“You never think it's going to be your home, where you grew up.” So said Jon Stewart, native New Jerseyan, explaining that he'd often participated in telethons to help aid victims in faraway places. This was different, it was obvious. The effects of the storm were in every line on his face.  That look was everywhere during the hourlong NBC telethon to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast on Monday: a hardened look, a statement of purpose. PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy benefit concert It was in Sting's acoustic version of "Message in a Bottle," which used the theme of being lost at sea to send a different kind of SOS. Holding his acoustic guitar neck high, he plucked out complicated runs.

JUAZEIRO, Brazil - Under normal circumstances, Cicera Maria da Silva would be less than excited about a researcher intentionally releasing thousands of mosquitoes just outside her husband's corner grocery store. Mosquitoes here are not just a ubiquitous annoyance; they spread deadly diseases, including dengue fever, which struck Da Silva's mother a year ago. But that's why she's OK with the truck that passes through this poor corner of Brazil a few times a week and pours so many of the winged creatures into the hot streets.

Honeybees have defensive weapons at both ends of their bodies, Greek and French researchers have found: They can not only sting their enemies, as has long been known, but they can also bite them, injecting a venom that paralyzes invaders. The venom might be useful as an anesthetic in humans and other animals, the researchers speculate, and a British company has already patented the application and conducted preliminary tests suggesting that the venom works much like the well-known lidocaine.

After the coffee. Before figuring out how to put an air conditioner in French windows. The Skinny: Has anyone else gotten multiple bills from the folks at the Department of Water and Power? Something odd is going on over there. If only I knew a reporter who could check it out. Wednesday's headlines include a look at how Hollywood workers suffer from runaway production, speculation about whether Kristen Stewart will play Snow White again and Larry King talks about why he can't retire.

When Marvin Hamlisch auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music, he played not Chopin or Mozart but the American folk standard "Goodnight, Irene," a choice that could have had lamentable results for any other prospective student. But Hamlisch quickly established there was little about his talent that was ordinary: He could perform the song in any key the admissions committee requested - and he was but 6 years old. By the time he was 30, the former prodigy - the youngest student the prestigious New York school had ever admitted - was a wunderkind composer for Broadway and Hollywood, whose contribution to American popular music would bring comparisons to Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin.

Question: We recently received a registered letter from the Commune of Lucca, Italy, notifying us that we were in violation of "circulating inside a pedestrian area" on May 5, 2011. Because we did not contest the violation immediately, it said, we must be considered guilty. We were to send immediately 123.76 euros, about $152. If we delayed more than 60 days, the fine would increase to about $245. We did visit Lucca on May 5, but we never received a ticket or anything else in writing.

"Downton Abbey,"the royal wedding, more "Downton Abbey," the Silver Jubilee, the wind-up to the Summer Olympics - American popular culture hasn't been so Anglophilic since the halcyon days of Merchant Ivory and Emma Thompson's Oscar noms. It's gotten a bit sickening, really, all those plummy vowels and absurd hats, with the dandelion-haired mayor of London, Boris Johnson, showing up on Letterman to pitch his new book and Kate Middleton fever. Fortunately, no one skewers the British quite like the British, and if ping-pong did not in fact originate on the table tops of Britain (as Mayor Johnson in one of his wackier pre-Olympic moments suggested)