Peter Jackson has wrapped up filming "The Hobbit" trilogy and shared pictures of his last day on the set with his Facebook fans.

The New Zealand filmmaker provided a steady stream of updates and photos from the set of the final film, "The Hobbit: There And Back Again," on Friday. The second film, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," will be released in December, and the finale appears in 2014.

"The Wolverine" slashed monsters and minions to debut atop the weekend box office.

The Fox film featuring Hugh Jackman's sixth turn as the claw-wielding superhero opened with $55 million in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Melanie Costa made a little bit of history with her silver medal in the women's 400-meter freestyle on Sunday — and the Spaniard didn't even know it.

By finishing second behind runaway winner Katie Ledecky at the raucous Palau Sant Jordi pavilion on Sunday, Costa became the first woman born in Spain to win a medal at a long-course swimming world championships.

The Syrian regime on Monday said the army recaptured a rebel district of Homs, a key symbol of the country's revolt, after a relentless one-month offensive.

Activists on the ground told Agence France Presse government troops now controlled 90 percent of Khaldiyeh neighborhood.

Dominika Cibulkova avenged one of the worst losses ever in a WTA Tour final, outlasting Agnieszka Radwanska 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 to win the Bank of the West Classic on Sunday.

Seven months after failing to even win a game against Radwanska in the Sydney final, Cibulkova came out aggressively and put the top-seeded Radwanska on the run. The third-seeded Cibulkova overcame two service breaks in the final set — both on double-faults — to win the final four games.

Top-seeded John Isner won the Atlanta Open on Sunday, beating second-seeded Kevin Anderson of South Africa 6-7 (3), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2) in the tallest final in ATP history.

The 6-foot-10 (2.08-meter) Isner, who lost in the Atlanta final in 2010 and '11 to fellow American Mardy Fish, won his seventh career title. Anderson, standing 6-foot-8 (2.03 meters), was seeded second.

Retired rider Erik Zabel has told a German newspaper he used banned substances including the blood-booster EPO and cortisone over several years of his career.

Zabel, who won 12 Tour de France stages and earned the sprinter's green jersey six times on the Tour, retired in 2008. Last year he said he briefly used EPO in 1996.

Taiwan on Monday named a civilian to head up a defense ministry that is struggling to attract recruits and facing protests over the heat-stroke death of a soldier while he was confined in a military brig.

Andrew Yang, 58, had previously been deputy defense minister and replaces Kao Hua-chu, who resigned on Monday. Premier Jiang Yi-huah announced the appointment without elaborating on the reasons for Kao's departure.

A new documentary on former Olympic figure skating rivals Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding that includes an exclusive interview with Kerrigan will air during NBC's Winter Olympics coverage in February.

Mary Carillo will interview both women on the 20th anniversary of their dramatic showdown at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

When Cate Blanchett was last in New York, in between her nightly performances in the acclaimed touring production of "Uncle Vanya," she would slip uptown, to the East Side, to stealthily research her role in Woody Allen's latest, "Blue Jasmine."

In it, Blanchett plays Jasmine, a socialite in breakdown, a modern Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett played a few years ago on stage, the "detritus" of which she says stays with her), distraught and destroyed by the betrayal of her Bernie Madoff-like financier husband (Alec Baldwin). On Jasmine's stomping ground, the Upper East Side, Blanchett bent her ear to the neighborhood's accents of affluence.