PARIS: The 2012 Cannes Film Festival jury line-up is set in stone and will include French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, the festival director confirmed Wednesday on French television. "We have a tradition of inviting people who we know are cinephiles but who are not necessarily in cinema," Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux said on Canal+ about the 60-year-old designer. He added that the film-buff designer -- who has long expressed interest in being part of the nine-person jury -- ...

LAGOS: African designers are fast re-defining styles emerging from the continent as they defy stereotypes and move beyond outsiders' clichéd ideas of how Africans dress. Without abandoning their roots, designers have long embraced a range of new ideas and continue to expand, spreading their influence globally while staying in sync with evolving tastes back home. "The African designer and African fashion in general is moving in a more global direction," said Tsemaye Binitie, a Britain-based Nigerian designer ...

ABADIANIA, Brazil: Every week using mainly his hands but also armed with scissors, a knife and scalpel, Joao Teixeira de Faria, a self-styled Brazilian medium and "psychic surgeon," treats thousands of sick people. Among the thousands who claim to have been cured by the healer known as "John of God" is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the popular Brazilian ex-president, now said to be in remission from larynx cancer. "I am going to cure you," de Faria ...