Brains, arts  and creativity: Creativity, some scientists say, may play an important role in healthy aging. The singers' average age is 80; the youngest is 65 and the oldest 96.It's an odd medical meeting that features Rogers & Hammerstein and brilliantly coloured paintings rather than, say, X-rays. What does belting out Oklahoma or putting oil to canvas have to do with brain health? Perhaps a lot, when the singers are active 70- and 80-year-olds and the painters are in the throes of dementia. Creativity, some scientists say, may play an important role in healthy aging; conversely, the ill can shed extraordinary light on just how the brain perceives art. "Even though our brains age, it doesn't diminish our ability to create," says Dr. Bruce Miller, a behavioural neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco...................................139

Teens: Teens face multiple mental-health issues, losing sleep due to stress: study. One in 10 teens is grappling with at least three mental-health issues, a finding that highlights the need for prevention strategies that address a wide range of problem behaviours, say the authors of a study released Monday. "The youth themselves are reporting psychological distress, feeling under stress, having worries, having trouble sleeping at night," said Dr. Joseph Beitchman of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. "Some of these kids, as well, report problems with hazardous drinking, using substances and getting involved in delinquent kinds of behaviours." Of the 6,616 Ontario students in Grades 7 through 12 surveyed in 2003, 38 per cent reported feeling constantly under stress, while 29 per cent were tossing and turning in their beds at night because of anxiety.........................................................................................................................................................140

Friends: Among all the coverage of the Friends finale, call this article The One That Explains What Makes Friends Unique. Many things set it apart from other hugely successful sitcoms like Cheers, Seinfeld and The Cosby Show. Or from MASH, All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore. But Friends is unique, and the reason can be boiled down to a pair of words: Six and Equal. As a final display of this splendid alchemy, the series' hour-long conclusion airs Thursday on NBC at 9 p.m. EDT (preceded by an hour-long retrospective). With that, a fine-tuned, never-fail comedy machine will be dismantled for its principals to go their separate ways. Joey (Matt LeBlanc) will be heading...............................141-142

Jackson: Underwear worn by Michael Jackson and handwritten notes were among Jackson items belonging to a businessman that were turned over to prosecutors in the singer's child-sex case. Robert Honecker, a prosecutor in Monmouth County, confirmed that his office took the items from Henry V. Vaccaro Sr.'s warehouse several weeks ago but declined to say why the items were sought. Honecker said the items were turned over to California authorities, who returned later to pick up additional memorabilia that Vaccaro, an Asbury Park construction company owner, won from the Jackson family in a legal wrangle over a failed business venture. Vaccaro said he found................................142

Short: Posing for disposable cameras and sharing sips of bubbly, Hollywood actors are turning their black-tie charm on the country's often-ignored theatre owners. Michael Keaton, Martin Short and American Pie hunk Chris Klein lit up Show Canada on Saturday, a gathering of 700 directors, producers and exhibitors, hoping to win star-struck promises to show their upcoming Canadian films. The leading men are used to this kind of room-working in the U.S. where production houses require them to air kiss for distribution deals. The more screens they are on, the more Prada they can buy, so in many countries, conventions for theatre owners draw more stars than the Oscars. In Canada, it's taken this long to realize ....................143-145

Gwen Stephanie: No worries: No Doubt isn't breaking up. "I thought it would be a good publicity stunt to say we were breaking up, but really we're not," the group's lead singer, Gwen Stefani, tells Cosmopolitan magazine for its June issue. "We decided after our album Rock Steady that we were going to take some time apart to pursue independent projects," she says. "And I really wanted to do a movie." That movie is The Aviator, the Howard Hughes biography starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese..........................................................................................................................................146

Courtney Love: The prosecutor in the misdemeanour drug case against Courtney Love said Monday she tested positive for cocaine when she was arrested last year. After a hearing, Assistant City Attorney Jerry Baik told reporters outside the courtroom that Love tested positive for several illegal drugs after the October arrest, including cocaine. He declined to identify the other drugs. Love, the widow of grunge rocker Kurt Cobain and former lead singer of the rock band Hole, recently released a solo album, America's Sweetheart. Love did not appear at Monday's hearing, one of two cases stemming from Oct. 2 incidents. She faces misdemeanour charges of being under the influence ...................................................................................................................................................................146

Prince: Prince's career on the front burner. It's been a mere 20 minutes since he starred as the howling, hopping ringmaster of a stunning rock-funk circus, and Prince is serene in his quiet candlelit dressing room. He's just ushered out, after a brief chat, some cable TV suits who were apparently looking to make a deal to air one of his live shows on Showtime. They appear chagrined as they shuffle past the black curtains leading from the dressing room and into the warm Florida night. There's no sign of his bandmates - not Chance, the rotund and flirty keyboard player who shakes his jiggly booty with pride during the show; not Candy, the bodacious blond sax player with the killer backup vocals; they too have steered clear. Prince, touring on his new album Musicology, has made good on his word to grant an exclusive interview to a reporter for The Canadian Press, despite having to postpone it repeatedly ...................................152-153

Naomi: Former Beverly Hills, 90210 star Jason Priestley has become engaged to longtime girlfriend Naomi Lowde, the actor-director's publicist said Monday. No other details of the engagement were immediately available, according to spokeswoman Annett Wolf. Lowde is a makeup artist. The 34-year-old Canadian actor, who played Brandon Walsh on the long-running teen drama, was seriously injured in an August 2002 car crash. The avid race car driver spun out of control and hit a wall nearly head-on...................................................................................................................................................153

Mean Girls: Means to be an updated version of the best teen comedies of the 1980s, like Heathers and Sixteen Candles. While it definitely captures elements of those movies, and features a sparkling performance from rising star Lindsay Lohan, it never quite reaches the same level of instant cult classic. There's the darkly subversive humour and a terrifying trio of queen bees who buzz through the high school halls, like Heathers. There's the acutely observant depictions of various cliques and their labels, particularly in that minefield...........................................................................................154

Uma Thurman: Kill Bill. Oh, there's still plenty of violence in the second half of Quentin Tarantino's samurai-kung fu-spaghetti western-blaxploitation megamix. A knock-down, drag-out cat fight in which Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah destroy a trailer (and each other) with amazonian fury is a prime example. There just isn't the kind of cartoonish blood and gore that saturated the first film, which came out last fall. Vol. 2 ends on a note that could almost be described as heartwarming, with Thurman's character -- a vengeful assassin known as The Bride -- finding happiness in a traditional way...........................................................155-156

 De Niro: This thriller about a couple (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) who replace their dead son with a clone keeps the chills coming in a series of spectacular nightmare sequences. Robert De Niro, meanwhile, lingers on the periphery as an avuncular fertility scientist who wants to monitor the success of his experiment. He's a friendly, neighbourhood Dr. Frankenstein, pushing the limits of science because he can, heedless of the moral and spiritual consequences. In the middle is Adam (steely-eyed 11-year-old Cameron Bright) who does not know that a previous version of him existed and died in an accident years ago. When he ages past the day when his previous self died, Adam begins to have hallucinations and frightening dreams that baffle his parents. ......................157

The Punisher: Not so good. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The makers of The Punisher, Hollywood's latest comic-book adaptation, need a basic civics lesson.............................................................................................................................................................................157-158

Hellboy: Likewise, Hellboy begins as a refreshingly wry alternative among the flood of gloomy comic-book heroes Hollywood has tossed on the big screen. Despite Ron Perlman's merry, self-deprecating presence as the title demon, Hellboy gradually flames out amid the usual chaos of too-loud explosions and too-numerous computer-animated beasties. The movie ends up looking like a concoction of everything remotely demonic that has come before it, a hodgepodge of X-Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and Ghostbusters. Adapted from Mike Mignola's Dark Horse comics by writer-director Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy opens in the closing days of the Second World War as Hitler's occultist forces, aided by legendary lunatic Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden), uncork a gateway from our world to hell to bring about Armageddon.............................................................................................................................................158

Piaf: She is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Still revered as an icon decades after her death, "the Sparrow" served as a touchstone for virtually every chansonnier, male or female, who followed her. Her greatest strength wasn't so much her technique, or the purity of her voice, but the raw, passionate power of her singing. (Given her extraordinarily petite size, audiences marveled all the more at the force of her vocals.) Her style epitomized that of the classic French chanson: highly emotional, even melodramatic, with a wide, rapid vibrato that wrung every last drop of sentiment from a lyric. She preferred melancholy, mournful material, singing about heartache, tragedy, poverty, and the harsh reality of life on the streets; much of it was based to some degree on ...........159-177

IRAQ FILE: Pictures of destruction and civilian victims of the Anglo-American-Iraqi War as the whole world saw them on TV and newspapers around the globe, but were omitted in the USA!! (From March, 2003 onwards). Please note that some of these pictures are not suitable for small children and those who have heart problems. The following photos are only of a very tiny fraction of the thousands of Iraqi civilian victims (children, women, men, elderly and families) humiliated, injured, tortured, maimed and killed through military air raids and bombarding of civilian areas in various cities of Iraq..............................178-191

Performances: CALENDAR: LONDON'S VERY BEST.  EVENTS AND FORTHCOMING PERFORMANCES OF THE STARS IN THE UK. .192-199

Atrocities: SEE THE ALARMING AND CHOKING PHOTOS. On 29 April 2004, 60 Minutes II on CBS reported Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners. But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now. It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report. Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time. The United States army has photographs that show a detainee with wires attached to his genitals. Another shows a dog attacking an ..............200-206