Despite its flawless superhero pedigree, there's always been apprehension about "Guardians of the Galaxy."

Since the president of Marvel Studios first teased the possibility of making a movie based on the comic book about a team of intergalactic do-gooders, the proposition has been called risky — by critics, by fans and by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige himself. That never mattered to writer-director James Gunn, the horror maven best known for 2006's "Slither."

An Australian airline apologized on Wednesday for a warning a flight attendant gave passengers who might have been flying high that there were drug-sniffer dogs awaiting them at Sydney airport.

Many of the 210 passengers aboard the Jetstar flight from Gold Coast city on Sunday night had attended the Splendour in the Grass weekend music festival at Byron Bay and were returning home.

Dustin Moskovitz is plotting an escape from email.

The 30-year-old entrepreneur has learned a lot about communication since he teamed up with his college roommate Mark Zuckerberg to create Facebook a decade ago, and this wisdom is fueling an audacious attempt to change the way people connect at work, where the incessant drumbeat of email has become an excruciating annoyance.

Kent Brantly always wanted to be a medical missionary, and he took the work seriously, spending months treating a steady stream of patients with Ebola in Liberia.

Now Brantly is himself a patient, fighting for his own survival in an isolation unit on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, after contracting the deadly disease.

Rhapsody International Inc. said Tuesday its partnership with T-Mobile U.S. Inc. has helped boost its number of paying subscribers to more than 2 million, up from 1.7 million in April.

Last month, Rhapsody teamed up with the nation's fourth-largest carrier on a new service called unRadio. It allows users to stream randomly generated songs along a genre, artist or song name without ads. It also lets them save 25 favorite songs to their device and lets them skip an unlimited number of tracks.

German voice and data encryption specialist Secusmart, which helps equip the German government with secure smartphones, says it's being acquired by BlackBerry for an undisclosed sum.

Secusmart said Tuesday that the deal with Canada's BlackBerry Ltd. "will open the global market in secure mobile communications" for the company. The transaction requires regulatory clearance.

Let's face it: In today's hurry-up culture, there always will be a need for fast food. Even when you're enjoying a leisurely vacation in a place like Traverse City, a Lake Michigan resort community with a nationwide reputation for restaurants serving high-quality, farm-to-table fare.

You could head for the outskirts and one of the chain eateries your kids so cherish. But if you're sunbathing on the Grand Traverse Bay waterfront, shopping in downtown's many boutiques or taking in a film at the glamorous State Theater, chances are you'll have no appetite to navigate the traffic for another assembly-line lunch.

When Arun and Usha Pancholi were deciding where to spend their retirement years, they wanted a place that combined the culture and camaraderie of life in India with the comforts and conveniences they had grown accustomed to after nearly five decades in America.

They found both at Florida's ShantiNiketan, the first retirement community in the United States catering to people born in India. ShantiNiketan — Bengali and Hindi for "House of Peace" — is one of a number of growing niche retirement communities aimed at people of specific ethnic backgrounds, hobbies or college allegiances.

Embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling lost his attempt to block the $2 billion sale of the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

In allowing the deal to go forward, Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas sided Monday with Sterling's estranged wife, Shelly Sterling, who negotiated the record sale after the NBA banned the 80-year-old billionaire for making offensive remarks about blacks.

Barcelona's vice-president in charge of finances says it had a record income of 530 million euros ($711 million) over the past year, and managed a profit of 41 million euros ($55 million).

Javier Faus presented the club's financial report for 2013-2014 on Tuesday, and said it made money on it operations, year-to-year, and reduced its net debt.