Steven Spielberg caught the filmmaking bug as a 12-year-old boy, and half a century on still goes "crazy" when he doesn't have a story to tell, he admitted to fans packing a master class in Paris Monday night.

Greeted with a standing ovation, the U.S. director -- whose works from "E.T" to "Indiana Jones" are the focus of a retrospective at Paris' Cinematheque film center -- told the room in French, hand on his heart: "Je t'aime!"

In fall 2009, the theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss gave a talk about recent discoveries in cosmology that he engagingly titled, "A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing."

The popularity of the video, viewed nearly a million times on YouTube, prompted Krauss to develop the ideas in the talk into this short, elegant account of the origins of the universe and its likely demise trillions of years from now.

Rapper Snoop Dogg is facing a minor drug charge in Texas after border agents say they found several joints on his tour bus.

Hudspeth County sheriff's office said in a statement that Snoop Dogg, whose name is Calvin Broadus, was arrested Saturday at the Sierra Blanca highway checkpoint and cited for possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor typical in cases involving small amounts of marijuana.

San Francisco is launching the 75th anniversary celebration of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge with a string of parties, guided tours and festivals to be held along the waterfront.

Authorities, however, won't be throwing open the orange span for a mass public walk.

Authorities in southern Wisconsin are facing a tongue twister thanks to the arrest of Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.

The unusually named 30-year-old man was in jail Sunday in Madison. Police say he violated his bail conditions from a previous run-in with the law.

Venus Williams withdrew from the Australian Open on Monday, prolonging her absence from the tennis tour because of an autoimmune disease that can cause fatigue and joint pain.

The seven-time Grand Slam title winner announced on Twitter and her website that she wouldn't play in the year's first major tournament, which starts next week. She added, though, that she plans to be back in action next month.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday accused foreign parties of seeking to destabilize Syria but stressed that he would not step down over increased demonstrations against him.

"We will declare victory soon," he said in a speech at Damascus University broadcast live on state television.

A bomb targeting a militia opposed to the Pakistani Taliban exploded in a market close to the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing 35 people in the deadliest blast in the country in several months, officials said.

The explosion hit vehicles being used by the militia in the Khyber region, said local security officer Khan Dad Khan.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed 21 people across the country, 13 of them in the flashpoint central province of Homs, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed eighteen civilians and three army defectors, “nine of them under torture.”

Both Ryan Seacrest and Fox executives say they want Seacrest to remain as host of "American Idol" beyond this season. But Fox entertainment chief Kevin Reilly says it's been a "tough negotiation" to make that happen.

Both sides were tight-lipped about the state of those talks at news conferences on Sunday, a few weeks before the nation's most popular television show begins its 11th season.