The Las Vegas Strip's newest concert space will open its doors just before the new year with a performance by pop star Bruno Mars

Mars will play shows on Dec. 29 and 31 at a new Eastern European glass factory-themed venue at the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, and then return six more times during 2014, casino management announced on Tuesday.

NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" will be paying tribute to its ripped-from-the-headlines heritage this season, the drama's executive producer said.

The show returns for its 15th year at 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday, picking up on last season's cliffhanger finale that had New York City police Detective Olivia Benson (series star Mariska Hargitay) held at gunpoint by a rapist.

President Michel Suleiman said Tuesday that Lebanon was struggling under the weight of at least a million Syrian refugees as the U.S. pledged tens of millions of dollars in aid to offset the costs of the war spillover.

Suleiman spoke of the crisis in his address to world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Hours earlier, he met with President Barack Obama, who praised Lebanon for its generosity in welcoming refugees fleeing the crisis in neighboring Syria.

There will be no rose ceremony for a 430-pound bachelor gorilla that failed to form any meaningful relationships with fellow apes during an 18-year stay at the Dallas Zoo.

Patrick, the 23-year-old Western lowland gorilla known for being gregarious with zoo staff and the public, while being ambivalent toward his female counterparts, has been handed his walking papers. The silverback will be transferred to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, S.C. where he'll be allowed more solitude, according to a statement issued Monday by the Dallas Zoo.

U.S. researchers have been working on a system to measure and predict the destructiveness of wildfires — similar to the way officials use the magnitude scale for earthquakes and other tools to rate and evaluate tornadoes and hurricanes.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes its Wildland Urban Interface Hazard Scale will tell residents the likely intensity of a wildfire burning into their neighborhood.

One of the matchups between the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets this year may feature a slightly different lineup, with King James, The Truth and KG replacing the more familiar names of the players on the floor.

The NBA is considering having members of the two Eastern Conference rivals wear their nicknames on the backs of their jerseys in at least one of their four games this season.

A international aid organization has said that millions of children in Syria are at risk of malnutrition as the conflict rages well into its third year and food production is collapsing across the country.

Save the Children aid group said four million Syrians — more than half of them children — are unable to produce or buy enough food.

Pandora Media Inc. shares fell Monday after Apple Inc. reported a strong response to its new radio service.

THE SPARK: Apple said Monday that more than 11 million listeners have already tuned in to its iTunes Radio service in the first few days since its debut. The music service comes with new iPhones and the free iOS 7 mobile operating system update, both of which hit the market Friday.

A new commercial spaceship will wait all week before aiming again for the International Space Station.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus capsule was supposed to arrive Sunday, four days after its launch. But the rendezvous was aborted because of a discrepancy in navigation data between the two vessels.

Some of surfing's biggest names aren't just catching waves. They're also talking about making them.

Surf parks — massive pools with repeating, artificial waves — are the latest buzzword in the surf community, as everyone from top athletes to retailers look for ways to expand the sport, boost sales and create a standardized way to train that could help surfing earn an Olympic pedigree.