When Justin Bieber Tweeted Wednesday morning that he would be playing a free “surprise concert” in Oslo that evening, fans reacted so strongly that a state of emergency was nearly called upon the city.

Personal music listening habits have come a long way over the years — from record players in the bedroom and boomboxes in the street to headphones in your ears and, believe it or not, MP3 players in your mouth.

Oscar winner and Downton Abbey star Maggie Smith is set to be feted by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

CTV is winding down its police drama Flashpoint this fall and has ordered a new Canadian police procedural to start next January, the network said as it announced its fall-winter season.

West Coast author Kit Pearson has won a 2012 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award for her novel The Whole Truth.

Canadian opera producer Dairine Ni Mheadhra and linguist Keren Rice have each won $50,000 Molson Prizes from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Quebec director Ken Scott is relishing the challenge of heading to Hollywood to remake his francophone hit Starbuck in English.

Italian architect Renzo Piano is joining American Zoltan Pali to transform a heritage building in Los Angeles into a new museum for Oscars organizer the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hundreds of works of rare art have been damaged at one of Montreal’s main museums by heavy rains that battered the city, flooding basements and overwhelming the city’s aging infrastructure.