Tourists from around the world are drawn to a stretch of palm-fringed shoreline known as "Seven Mile Beach," a crescent of white sand along the turquoise waters of Jamaica's western coast. But the sands are slipping away and Jamaicans fear the beach, someday, will need a new nickname.

Each morning, groundskeepers with metal rakes carefully tend Negril's resort-lined shore. Some sections, however, are barely wide enough for a decent-sized beach towel and the Jamaican National Environment and Planning Agency says sand is receding at a rate of more than a meter (yard) a year.

Facebook is apologizing to drag queens and the transgender community for deleting accounts that used drag names like Lil Miss Hot Mess rather than legal names such as Bob Smith.

The world's biggest online social network caught heat recently when it deleted several hundred accounts belonging to self-described drag queens, other performers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Facebook has long required its users to go by their "real names" on the site for security purposes, to stand out from other social networks and so it can better target advertising to people. Now, the company says the spirit of its policy doesn't mean a person's legal name but "the authentic name they use in real life."

The Chinese government might be using smartphone apps to spy on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, a U.S. security firm said.

The applications are disguised as tools created by activists, said the firm, Lacoon Mobile Security. It said that once downloaded, they give an outsider access to the phone's address book, call logs and other information.

Four people who were infected with a virus causing severe respiratory illness across the country have died, but what role the virus played in the deaths is unclear, health officials said Wednesday.

A 10-year-old Rhode Island girl died last week after suffering both a bacterial infection and infection from enterovirus 68, Rhode Island health officials said. The virus is behind a spike in harsh respiratory illnesses in children since early August.

Louis Vuitton's show caused traffic chaos early Wednesday with photographers clambering to get the must-have shot of guests Jennifer Connelly, Selena Gomez, Sofia Coppola and Michelle Williams.

Designer Nicolas Ghesquiere's only second ready-to-wear collection since Marc Jacobs' departure last year, was an ode to the '60s. It moved the storied house in a younger direction.

New Mexico transportation officials are hoping a "singing road" along historic Route 66 will curb speeding.

Tigress Productions is creating the road between Albuquerque and the mountain community of Tijeras for a new National Geographic Channel series dubbed "Crowd Control" that will debut in November.

A New York supermarket employee has been accused of leaving the store with $1,200 worth of meat hidden in his pants.

State police say Gregory Rodriguez, of Ossining, is charged with fourth-degree grand larceny.

Scientists looking at 16 cases of wild weather around the world last year see the fingerprints of man-made global warming on more than half of them.

Researchers found that climate change increased the odds of nine extremes: Heat waves in Australia, Europe, China, Japan and Korea, intense rain in parts of the United States and India, and severe droughts in California and New Zealand. The California drought, though, comes with an asterisk.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is holding its first exhibit in the space that will become Hollywood's premier museum devoted to the movies.

"Hollywood Costume" opens Thursday inside the historic May Co. building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is set to reopen as the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in 2017.

Warm ocean temperatures have caused large expanses of coral to bleach in the pristine reefs northwest of Hawaii's main islands, scientists said Tuesday.

Mass bleaching has occurred at Lisianski atoll, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northwest of Honolulu, said Courtney Couch, a researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. Coral also bleached at Midway, Pearl and Hermes atolls, but not as severely.