"The Vampire Diaries," known for its plot twists and supernatural lore, is doing some shape-shifting.

The sixth season of The CW series (Thursdays, 8 p.m. EDT) about vampires, witches, werewolves and the humans who love (or hate them) has a change in tone, with more focus on characters.

Taylor Swift, Pharrell and Maroon 5 are among the acts set to perform at radio station Z100's Jingle Ball 2014 concert in New York City.

Other performers announced Thursday for the Dec. 12 concert at Madison Square Garden include Ariana Grande, Iggy Azalea, 5 Seconds of Summer, Charli XCX, Jessie J, Rita Ora, Meghan Trainor and Rixton.

A university professor says that a western Polish town is taking up his suggestion and will put up a monument to honor the authors of Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia which allows anyone to contribute.

Krzysztof Wojciechowski, director of the Collegium Polonicum in Slubice, said Thursday that he is in awe of the huge and reliable job done by Wikipedia, vastly popular in Poland. More than 1 million entries in Wikipedia are in Polish, rivaling the number in French or Spanish.

Fashion-conscious Muslim women from Kuala Lampur to Los Angeles who wear the Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab, have had to get creative.

By fusing both their sense of fashion with their faith, this growing group, some of whom have dubbed themselves hipster hijabis, is reinterpreting traditional notions of what it means to dress conservatively. They're spawning a new market for niche fashion brands and finding unexpected supporters among some mainstream brands, as well as from conservative Christian and Orthodox Jewish women who also dress modestly.

Archaeologists armed with top-notch technology have scoured one of the richest shipwrecks of antiquity for overlooked treasures, recovering a scattering of artifacts amid indications that significant artworks may await discovery under the seabed.

Lying 50 meters (164 feet) down a steep underwater slope off Antikythera Island, in southern Greece, the Roman commercial vessel's wreck was accidentally located by sponge divers more than a century ago.

Building toilets in rural India, where hundreds of millions are still defecating outdoors, will not be enough to improve public health, according to a study published Friday.

India is considered to have the world's worst sanitation record despite spending some $3 billion since 1986 on sanitation programs, according to government figures. The country is now gearing up to spend 10 times that amount, as new Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes garbage and sanitation troubles a key issue for his first year in office.

Federal police arrested alleged Juarez drug cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes in the northern city of Torreon on Thursday, Mexican officials announced.

After investigators narrowed Carrillo Fuentes' whereabouts to a neighborhood of Torreon, he was taken into custody at a traffic checkpoint without a shot being fired, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.

Patrick Modiano of France, who has made a lifelong study of the Nazi occupation and its effects on his country, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for what one academic called "crystal clear and resonant" prose.

Modiano, a 69-year-old resident of Paris, is an acclaimed writer in France but not well known in the English-speaking world. The Swedish Academy said it gave the 8 million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize to him for evoking "the most un-graspable human destinies" and uncovering the world of life behind the Nazi occupation.

"Sherlock" star Benedict Cumberbatch says his latest role as a code-breaking genius doesn't mean he's only capable of playing brainy characters.

Cumberbatch stars as computer pioneer Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game," which opens the London Film Festival on Wednesday.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in 2011 in Wal-Mart's hometown, Bentonville, Arkansas, with a respectable collection of work by famous artists from Norman Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter" to a George Washington portrait by Gilbert Stuart.

But the museum has just opened a massive exhibition of contemporary art called "State of the Art" that could be a game-changer. The museum is sometimes mocked by critics from outside the region for its location and Wal-Mart connections — its permanent collection was funded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton — but the new show represents a serious effort to introduce contemporary art to a mainstream audience far from the rarefied galleries of hipster neighborhoods and urban centers.