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"Weird Al" Yankovic, the parody singer and cult figure, on Wednesday earned his first No. 1 album on the weekly U.S. Billboard 200 album chart on the strength of several viral videos released online. _0"> Parodying pop hits such as Pharrell's "Happy" ("Tacky") and Lorde's "Royals" ("Foil"), Yankovic's "Mandatory Fun" album sold 104,000 copies in its debut week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. Billboard said it is the first comedy album to top the chart since 1963, adding that "Mandatory Fun" had the most weekly sales for a comedy album since 1994. Yankovic, who has scored hits over the past 30 years with parodies such as "Like a Surgeon"(Madonna's "Like a Virgin") and "Amish Paradise" (Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise") launched a promotional campaign releasing eight new music videos in as many days. The next three spots on

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, was issued a speeding citation in her hometown of Wasilla, court records showed on Wednesday. The July 16 citation carries a potential fine of $154, and Palin has 30 days from the date of receiving the citation to respond to it, the records showed. Police pulled Palin over while she was driving her black Toyota Tundra pickup bearing the license plate LOVUSA, the Alaska Dispatch News reported on Wednesday. It said the former governor was driving 63 miles per hour in a 45-mph speed zone while returning from a bikram hot yoga workout. “I was thinking, I wasn’t speeding, I was qualifying,” Palin told the Dispatch News. Wasilla Police spokesman Officer Rick Manrique declined to comment on the case, and an attorney for Palin could not be reached for comment. Palin, since stepping down as governor of Alaska in 2009, has endorsed and campaigned for a number of conservative candidates for Congress. Last

Actor James Shigeta, best known for his roles in "Die Hard," and "Flower Drum Song," has died, a representative for the actor said on Tuesday. He was 81. _0"> Shigeta, who was born in Hawaii and has Japanese ancestry according film database IMDB, died peacefully in his sleep in Los Angeles on Monday, his agent Jeffrey Leavitt said. The actor rose to prominence in the 1960s with a series of film and television roles, and won a Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer. He played the leads in 1961's musical film "Flower Drum Song" and "Bridge to the Sun," and a vice admiral in 1976's World War II film "Midway." In 1988, the actor was a key supporting cast member in "Die Hard" alongside Bruce Willis. The actor is survived by three brothers and one sister, Leavitt said. (Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy ; Editing by Mary Milliken )

Award-winning American filmmaker Robert L. Drew, a pioneer of the cinema vérité documentary style, died on Wednesday in Sharon, Connecticut at the age of 90, his family said. _0"> Drew, who made more than 100 films on social issues, politics and the arts during a career that spanned more than five decades, died peacefully surrounded by children and friends. "He had been declining for some time and it was not completely unexpected," his son, Thatcher Drew, said. Drew, a former correspondent and editor at Life Magazine and a fighter pilot during World War Two, helped to develop cinema vérité, a direct type of observational or fly on the wall filming to capture reality. He also founded the documentary film company Drew Associates in the early 1960s. Many of his films were shown on television and screened at international film festivals. "He believed in the pure form of cinema vérité. It was a strict code that allowed no directing of subjects, no set up shots

Rock guitarist Dick Wagner, whose prolific session work graced the albums of such acts as Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss and Aerosmith during the 1970s, has died at age 71 in Arizona, his manager said on Thursday. The Michigan-bred musician, featured on scores of albums and hailed by fans as "the Maestro of Rock," suffered from a number of health problems in his later years, including two heart attacks and a stroke. He died on Wednesday at a hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, succumbing to respiratory failure about two weeks after undergoing a cardiac procedure, his manager and business partner, Susan Michelson, told Reuters. Wagner began his rock career in the 1960s with the formation of an early Detroit-area band called the Bossmen. He gained wider notice after establishing the Frost, recording his first three Billboard-charted albums with that group. After moving to New York he formed another band, Ursa Major, whose original but short-lived lineup included Billy Joel on

The news and entertainment website BuzzFeed has fired the writer Benny Johnson after its editors said they found he plagiarized others' work 41 times. _0"> BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith in a note late on Friday called writer Benny Johnson "a creative force" at his best, but said a review of more than 500 posts revealed dozens of instances where he copied sentences and phrases verbatim from other websites. Smith said the plagiarism on the seven-year-old site was brought to light this week by Twitter users. "Plagiarism, much less copying unchecked facts from Wikipedia or other sources, is an act of disrespect to the reader," Smith wrote. "We are deeply embarrassed and sorry to have misled you." Johnson, whose eclectic range of posts with attribution issues cited by BuzzFeed included items on miracle babies, things that are definitely bigger in Texas, and how to avoid eating horse meat, apologized via Twitter on Saturday. "To the writers w

The gloves that boxing great Muhammad Ali wore in his legendary 1971 fight against Joe Frazier in what became known as the Fight of the Century sold at auction on Thursday for almost $400,000. An anonymous bidder bought the gloves for $388,375 at the auction run by Texas-based Heritage Auctions at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland. Heritage previously auctioned a set of gloves Ali wore to claim his first World Championship in 1964 for $836,500. The Fight of the Century, in New York's Madison Square Garden, was the first of three fights between Ali and Frazier during the 1970s. In 1971, Frazier officially held the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World. Ali had been stripped of the title he had held since the 1964 bout against Sonny Liston because of his refusal to participate in the Vietnam War-era draft. The March 8 fight against Frazier was Ali's second after returning to the ring following a 3-1/2 year absence. Ali's conviction had just bee