The 71-year-old singer-songwriter known for such hits as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got A Friend” is being awarded the nation’s highest prize for popular music Tuesday. She’ll receive the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song at the Library of Congress and will be honoured Wednesday by President Barack Obama at the White House.

King told The Associated Press it’s a tremendous honour to be recognized at such an historic place.

Last year, King hinted she might retire. Now she plans to introduce a new song for the Gershwin Prize that she wrote with Hal David entitled “I Believe in Loving You.” She plans to release it as a single next month in tribute to David.

Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “A Castle in Italy” both feature wealthy characters whose lives have an emptiness at their centre.

Bruni Tedeschi — the only woman among the 20 directors competing for Cannes’ Palme d’Or and the sister of former French first lady Carla Bruni — focuses on a Franco-Italian clan facing the loss of its crumbling mansion, its art treasures and possibly its future.

Bruni Tedeschi, who stars and co-wrote the script, incorporated many elements of her own family’s life into the story, including her brother’s death from AIDS. She cast her mother, Marisa Borini, as the mother of her character, Louise, and her ex-partner Louis Garrel as Louise’s younger lover.

The director said using her own life and family members in her work was natural.

“For me, work is a form of therapy,” she told reporters. “It helps me sleep better at night.

“I think work protects us from what might be a psychodrama.”

Borini said being directed by her daughter was no different to working with any other filmmaker.

“I viewed it as work,” she said. “When Valeria said to me cry, I cried. When she said laugh, I laughed. Dance, I danced.”

“A Castle in Italy,” whose mix of family drama and almost slapstick comedy charmed some viewers and bemused others, is a tragicomedy partly inspired by the plays of Anton Chekhov.

The most obvious point of reference for Sorrentino’s film is “La Dolce Vita,” Federico Fellini’s 1960 portrait of a Rome’s wealthy, beautiful and absurd.

Sorrentino said he didn’t want to dwell on the comparisons — except in one respect.

“‘La Dolce Vita’ is a masterpiece,” he said, “and my film will become a masterpiece too.”

“The Great Beauty” is exuberantly Fellini-esque, with its parade of offbeat and sometimes grotesque characters and its love affair with the city of Rome.

Sorrentino follows Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a writer and man-about-town who has drifted into aimlessness after an early success and is turning 65 with a sense of missed opportunities. The film contrasts bacchanalian revels and vapid dinner parties with soaring music and excursions through the gorgeous squares, churches and palazzi of the Italian capital.

The film is suffused with an air of melancholy and sense of spiritual emptiness, which Sorrentino explained by quoting a character in the movie, a Mother Teresa-style living saint.

“She says, ‘You don’t talk about poverty. You can only live poverty.’ It’s like a summary of the film,” the director said. “The film doesn’t try to tell a tale. It simply tries to portray a poverty that isn’t a material poverty, but a different kind of poverty.”

Spiritual poverty has rarely looked so lush. “The Great Beauty” of the title is life, but also Rome, a city stuffed to bursting with the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane.

Journalists were generally enthusiastic, though some felt the almost two-and-a-half-hour movie was too much of a good thing. The Guardian called it “the film equivalent of a magnificent banquet composed of 78 sweet courses.”

Sorrentino, making his fifth trip to Cannes as writer or director of a competing film, said he simply “let myself be overwhelmed by the beauty of the city.”

“The city always surprises me, stuns me,” said the director, who won Cannes’ second-place Jury Prize in 2008 with “Il Divo.”

“What I tried to do was let myself be swept along by the beauty of these sights in Rome.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

“We are implementing changes across the company to enhance our continued growth while smartly managing costs,” the sports media giant said in a statement Tuesday. “While difficult, we are confident that it will make us more competitive, innovative and productive.”

The company would not say how many jobs are being eliminated, but they include unfilled positions. ESPN has about 7,000 employees worldwide, with about 4,000 at its headquarters in Bristol, Conn. The vast majority work behind the scenes.

In April, Disney laid off about 150 people at LucasArts, the video-game making division of Lucasfilm, four months after acquiring the company behind “Star Wars” for $4.06 billion. Disney also laid off about the same number at the movie studio in April to cope with the decline in DVD sales as consumer habits shift to digital forms of home entertainment.

Still, Disney has been on a roll financially, beating or matching earnings per share estimates for the last eight quarters. After it reported a 32 per cent gain in net income for its fiscal second-quarter earnings two weeks ago, more than a dozen Wall Street analysts raised their price targets on Disney stock to an average of nearly $72.

Fees from distributors for ESPN grew faster than expected in the latest quarter, while ad growth came in below expectations because of smaller audience numbers.

ESPN has also seen costs increase with skyrocketing prices for the broadcasting rights to live sports. For instance, the 12-year deal announced in November to televise the new college football playoff system will be worth about $470 million annually. The current four-year contract to air the Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls along with the BCS title game is worth about $125 million per year.

Live sports have become increasingly valuable in an age of fractured audiences and DVRs. That drives up rights fees, but also makes the programming more appealing to advertisers and allows ESPN to try to charge more from cable and satellite operators.

While announcing cuts Tuesday, ESPN will still be expanding in other areas. Earlier this month, it revealed that it was forming a network with the Southeastern Conference. The new network will launch in August 2014 under a 20-year agreement.

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AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

“I kind of freaked out,” said 16-year-old Iris Wu, describing her reaction to the recent news. “I was like: ‘This is not real life.’”

The early shock now fading, the choir sounded relaxed and polished during a recent run-through of the performance ahead of the May 25 engagement to sing with the British rock titans.

The 24-person choir will be split in two for the gig, stationed at opposite sides of the stage with the Stones in-between and two conductors leading the separate singers in tandem. They were told to wear black, and not to take pictures of the band.

Of course, the talented youngsters making up the choir — most of whom were born in the mid-late ’90s — might not be uniformly starstruck by the rock legends.

“I actually knew of them through ‘Glee,’” said 17-year-old Grade 12 student Nicholas Cunha. “After I found out I was singing with them, I went and looked up all of their songs and I actually started to become a fan, because I really do love their music.”

Choir director Bob Anderson, who will conduct the teens along with Sherri Collins, was a little more familiar with the rockers’ well-loved oeuvre.

“The Rolling Stones, right now, are my absolute favourite group in the world,” he said with a smile, noting that in fact he mainly listens to choral music but grew up dancing to the Stones.

Still, he relates that the choir pretty much went berserk after he gradually teased out the details of the performance.

“They were on the floor, they were on their chairs, they were all over the place,” he said.

Many of their parents might have had a similar reaction.

“Both of my parents, they were born in the ’50s, so they definitely grew up with them and they knew all their songs,” Cunha said. “I texted them (when I found out), and they texted back with gibberish, because they were so excited.”

Yet not all those families are going to be able to witness the show in person.

The tour, which has been dogged by reports of slow sales and accusations of price-gouging, is still a bit pricey even for many proud parents.

“I’m pretty sure it’s like $900 a ticket,” said 18-year-old Grade 12 student Natalie Panacci, a “really big Stones fan” who whipped her water bottle to the ground and burst into tears when she heard the news that she was going to get to join them onstage.

So will she aim for a word or two with her heroes?

“I don’t want to be that fangirl to go up screaming at them because they’re probably going to be in a different world focusing on the show and everything,” Panacci said. “I would be very mature about it, or at least I’d try to be.”

Cunha, meanwhile, planned a similarly cautious approach.

“I would say hi,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be all buddy-buddy with them because I’d be afraid of being taken away by a bodyguard.”

Eight Mile Style filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit on Monday alleging that a 30-second Facebook ad broadcast online last month copied music from Eminem’s 2000 song “Under the Influence.”

The Detroit Free Press (http://on.freep.com/10LFB2N ) reports that the ad was featured in a webcast by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce Facebook Home, an interface for Android phones.

The complaint says Portland, Ore., ad agency Wieden+Kennedy copied Eminem’s music “in an effort to curry favour” with Facebook by catering to Zuckerberg’s personal likes and to “invoke the same irreverent theme” of the song.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes declined comment. A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with the ad agency.

It happened all right. After years of clamouring from fans and rumours firing them up while the cast hung on for a green light, “Arrested Development” has risen from the dead with 15 half-hours premiering en masse on Netflix on Monday at 3:01 a.m. EDT.

“Arrested Development” is the cock-eyed comedy blessed with a king’s ransom of talent and the twisted vision of its mastermind, Matt Hurwitz, that aired on Fox for three seasons as a cult favourite, then was cancelled for low ratings — and maybe because it befuddled everyone who wasn’t hooked on its lunacy. (Those original three seasons are available for streaming on Netflix, too.)

“I think the show scored some ‘cool points’ for dying before its time,” says Cera. “But there are still a lot more places for it to go.”

Yes, “Arrested Development” died young with a beautiful, if funny-to-look-at, corpse. But its fans weren’t ready to bury it. And said so.

“Clearly a lot of people DIDN’T like the show,” Jason Bateman allows, “so I guess all we were hearing from were those who do — and that happens to be a brand of people who are not afraid of speaking their minds.”

Now reanimated by public outcry, “Arrested” is going new places.

“Mitch and the cast didn’t want to do something not as good as the old series,” says Bateman (who plays Michael Bluth, the fractious family’s would-be mediating presence). “We didn’t want to do something lateral or just a retread.”

“I think it’s new at every opportunity,” says Cera (who plays Michael Bluth’s straight-arrow son), “while retaining the show’s original heart.”

The new Netflix season takes the form of what you might call an anthology as it updates viewers, character by character with each episode, on the Bluth family — that once-wealthy, now-broke and at-each-other’s-throats clan squabbling in Newport Beach, Calif.

A wicked homage to the scandals of Enron and Tyco and a loopy foreshadowing of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, “Arrested” premiered in 2003 as a sendup of high-end vanities, greed and corruption as displayed within the Bluth family circle.

Besides de Rossi, Cera and Bateman, the cast of “Arrested” Redux brings back Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter, who reconvened in a strategic yet catch-as-catch-can fashion.

“There was no reality where we could get everybody for a full 7- or 8-month period,” explains Hurwitz. “That gave birth to the form we came up with for the new series.”

The 15 episodes dwell on individual characters during the six-year span from when the series was cancelled in 2006 up through 2012. That structure was supposed to make it simple to book each actor for an isolated shooting schedule.

Then Hurwitz took his creativity another step. Since all the episodes are happening simultaneously, he couldn’t resist including crossover appearances from other actors in each episode. He wanted characters and story lines from different episodes to intersect. But his ambition made it all the trickier getting all the actors he needed in place for any given episode.

“In a quarter of the scenes, someone is green-screened in,” says Hurwitz, who goes on to concede that what began as a solution to a problem of logistics inspired him to create new problems for himself. For instance: “If two characters are having a conversation in one of those characters’ episodes and that character’s life changes, then in the other character’s episode you show the other side of the conversation and the result of it on THAT character.”

The overall effect is a sort of hypertext array for the 15 episodes.

“Matt made it a choose-your-own-adventure season, in that you can watch any episode out of order and it makes sense but, depending on which order you watch them, the series kind of tells a different story,” says de Rossi (who plays spoiled materialist sister Lindsay).

Not that “Arrested Development” has ever chosen the simple or obvious path. From the start, it was dense, convoluted and layered, packed with sight gags, self-referential jokes, flashbacks, hand-held cinematography with run-on sequences (promoting improvisation to enhance Hurwitz’s scripts) and, of course, its droll, documentarylike narration by Ron Howard, one of the show’s executive producers.

On Fox, the show won six Emmys and a Peabody as well as critics’ love while always fighting for its life in the ratings. But Hurwitz is philosophical about the obstacles his show has faced. They seem to have given him license to obliterate boundaries that otherwise would have hemmed him in.

“All of the limitations,” he says brightly, “are great creative opportunities.”

That applied to the new episodes’ shooting pace, which Arnett describes as “run-and-gun and crazy.”

“But it really worked to our advantage. It was ‘OK, get over here, here we go,’ and we were right back into it,” says Arnett (who plays Lindsay’s older brother, Gob, a preening, mediocre stage magician). “After working together on the series before, all of us just kind of knew what we’re doing. There’s an implicit trust there. I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.”

This is a mutual admiration society: The cast heaps praise on Hurwitz, who volleys it back at his actors. And they all join in celebrating “Arrested” viewers, but for whom the show would be long dead and forgotten.

“There are way, way more fans of ‘The Big Bang Theory,’” notes David Cross (who plays Tobius Funke, a quack-psychiatrist-turned-actor-wannabe). “But they’re not as passionate as ‘Arrested Development’ fans — because there’s more to be passionate about.”

“In either a conscious or unconscious way, our audience thinks — and rightly so — it’s THEIR show,” says Jeffrey Tambor (who plays jailbird-patriarch George Bluth Sr.).

“A lot of people have told me over the years that they would build friendships around the show,” Ron Howard adds. “They would judge first dates on whether that person likes ‘Arrested Development’ or not. It was a means of evaluation.”

Does that mean there might be children walking around today whose parents were united by “Arrested Development”?

“I think that’s fair to assume,” Howard says with a laugh.

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Online:

http://www.netflix.com

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier.

1. Five Finger Death Punch, “Lift Me Up” (Prospect Park)

2. Mariah Carey, “Beautiful” (The Island Def Jam Music Group)

3. Robin Thicke, “Blurred Lines” (Star Trak LLC)

4. Lorde, “Royals” (Lava Music/Republic Records)

5. Hoodie Allen feat. Kina Grannis, “Make It Home” (Hoodie Allen)

6. Lana Del Rey, “Young and Beautiful” (Lana Del Rey)

7. Sebastian Ingrosso, “Reload — Vocal Version/Radio Edit”(Astralwerks)

8. Thomas Rhett, “It Goes Like This” (The Valory Music Co. LLC)

9. Daft Punk, “Get Lucky — Radio Edit” (Columbia Records)

10. Fergie, Q-Tip and GoonRock, “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” (Water Tower Music/Interscope)

UNITED KINGDOM

1. Hoodie Allen feat. Kina Grannis, “Make It Home” (Hoodie Allen)

2. John Grant, “GMF” (Universal Music GmbH)

3. Sub Focus, “Endorphins” (Universal Music Ltd.)

4. DJ Khaled, “No New Friends — SFTB Remix” (Cash Money Records Inc.)

5. Passenger, “Let Her Go” (Sony Music Entertainment)

6. Various Artists, “Only Teardrops — Eurovision 2013 — Denmark” (MBO — The Music Business Organisation A/S)

7. Kill It Kid, “Run” (One Little Indian Records)

8. Editors, “A Ton of Love” (Play It Again Sam)

9. Icona Pop feat. Charli XCX, “I Love It (Original Version)” (Big Beat Records/Atlantic)

10. Bibio, “A tout a l’heure” (Warp Records)

Keith issued a statement saying Monday’s tornado in Moore, Okla., devastated the community in which he grew up.

The city has embraced Keith’s celebrity and his name is on the Moore water tower.

Keith says he remembers riding his bicycle through the stricken neighbourhoods. Rescuers are still working to pull people from the rubble in the community that’s southwest of Oklahoma City.

Keith says Moore “is strong and will persevere.”

The Riverdale teen finds his life turned upside down after locking lips with his boyfriend, Devon, in Pop Tate’s diner, drawing the ire of at least one disapproving Riverdale mom.

The woman “gets very offended and kind of pitches a bit of a fit,” said Dan Parent, who writes and draws the issue, “Kevin Keller” No. 10 that is released Aug. 7.

“Kevin is kind of used to that, but Veronica records the whole thing and of course uploads it to the Riverdale equivalent of YouTube and that starts a bit of a debate,” said Parent.

For Archie Comics it’s a bit of art imitating life. Parent said he wrote the story after efforts to remove a comic magazine showing Keller getting married drew at complaints. One Million Moms, a project of The American Family Association, asked Toys R Us not to display “Life With Archie” No. 16 near its checkout aisles. Toys R Us did not, and the issue went on to sell out its print run.

Parent called the new story a “playful poke” at the protest.

Keller debuted in “Veronica” No. 202 in September 2010. It resulted in Archie Comics’ first-ever second printing. It was quickly followed by a four-issue miniseries and the current monthly title.

Publisher and co-CEO Jon Goldwater said the fact that any kiss is being shown in the pages of an Archie Comics book is a step in and of itself.

“There aren’t that many on-panel kisses in the pages of Archie, but you often see the lipstick on Archie’s face afterward,” he said.

Goldwater said Keller’s character has let the company weave in contemporary issues to its imaginary world.

“We certainly pride ourselves on being contemporary, but that’s not the reason why we’re showing ‘The Kiss.’ Just like when Kevin first told Jughead he was gay, it was in the natural course of conversation,” said Goldwater. “We are creating this in the same way. It’s just part of the story.”

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Follow Matt Moore at www.twitter.com/mattmooreap.

A Broward County judge ordered Johnson jailed Monday until he posts a $1,000 bond. Another hearing was set for June 3. An arrest warrant was issued earlier this month when Johnson failed to meet his probation officer.

The six-time Pro Bowl player formerly known as Chad Ochocinco is serving a year of probation after Lozada said he head-butted her during an argument last August. She quickly filed for divorce. They had been married only since July 4.

Johnson was released by the Miami Dolphins after the incident. He also played for the Cincinnati Bengals and New England Patriots.

Lozada is on the “Basketball Wives” TV show.