The Fendi fashion house is financing a €2.18 million ($2.93 million) restoration of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, famed as a setting for the film "La Dolce Vita" and the place where dreamers leave their coins.

The 20-month project on one of the city's most iconic fountains was unveiled at a city hall press conference Monday featuring Fendi designers Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi, who said the project combined a love of Rome's past with a need to preserve its future.

Two science projects — one to map the human brain, the other to explore the extraordinary properties of the carbon-based material graphene — were declared the winners Monday of an EU technologies contest and will receive up to €1 billion ($1.35 billion) each over the next 10 years.

The projects were selected from four finalists that been chosen from 26 proposals.

Sarah Bertness slipped into her seat at a recent staging of the musical "Million Dollar Quartet" and, when the lights dimmed, started doing something that's long been taboo inside theaters: typing away at her iPhone.

The 26-year-old freelance writer from Providence wasn't being rude. She had a spot in the "tweet seat" section at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

It sounds, at first, like a bold, next-generation solution: personalizing guns with technology that keeps them from firing if they ever get into the wrong hands.

But when the White House called for pushing ahead with such new technology as part of President Obama's plan to cut gun violence, the administration did not mention the concept's embattled past. As with so much else in the nation's long-running divisions over gun rights and regulation, what sounds like a futuristic vision is, in fact, an idea that has been kicked around for years, sidelined by intense suspicion, doubts about feasibility and pressure tactics.

In years past, Novak Djokovic marked his victories at the Australian Open with rowdy late-night celebrations and bleary-eyed photo shoots the next morning in downtown Melbourne.

This year's win made history but inspired a more sober reaction.

The Los Angeles Clippers arrested their four-game losing skid while their city rivals the Los Angeles Lakers provided a rare bright spot in their dire season by beating the NBA-leading Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.

The Clippers were again without star guard Chris Paul but this time his teammates picked up the slack and beat the Portland Trail Blazers 96-83.

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo warmed up for their teams' upcoming Copa del Rey clash with high-scoring displays on Sunday to help Barcelona and Real Madrid cruise to comfortable wins against helpless Spanish league opponents.

After Ronaldo hit his 20th career hat trick in an 11-minute span to help Madrid rout Getafe 4-0, an insatiable Messi did him one better by netting four times in Barcelona's 5-1 thrashing of 10-man Osasuna.

Cape Verde joined host South Africa in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations on Sunday after the small island nation scored two late goals to secure advancement in its first appearance in the tournament.

Cape Verde netted an injury-time winner through Heldon Ramos to come from behind and advance with a 2-1 victory over Angola, preventing the Angolans from stealing through from last place in the group.

Japan launched two intelligence satellites into orbit on Sunday amid growing concerns that North Korea is planning to test more rockets of its own and possibly conduct a nuclear test.

Officials say the launch Sunday of the domestically produced HII-A rocket went smoothly and the satellites — an operational radar satellite and an experimental optical probe — appear to have reached orbit.

He's acted, danced and sang his way through movies, television and the stage, making Dick Van Dyke an entertainment triple-threat long before Hollywood used such hyphenates.

The 87-year-old actor, best known for the 1960s hit comedy "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Disney's big-screen musical "Mary Poppins," can now add lifetime achievement honoree. He added that honor to his resume at Sunday night's 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.