The Associated Press

Han Solo may be a hunk. But “Pan Solo" is a hunk of bread.
              
That's what a bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area has dubbed its 6-foot (1.8 metres) bread sculpture of the “Star Wars" character as he appeared after being frozen in carbonite in “The Empire Strikes Back."
              

HONG KONG (AP) — A pink diamond was sold for $49.9 million in Hong Kong on Friday, setting a world record for the highest price per carat for a diamond sold at auction.

              The 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star diamond, auctioned by Sotheby’s Hong Kong, sold for $392 million Hong Kong dollars ($49.9 million). It was originally estimated at $21 million.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sylvia Wu, whose famed Southern California restaurant drew Hollywood's biggest stars for four decades, has died at age 106, according to a news report. 

              Madame Wu’s Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica became a dining destination shortly after it opened in 1959, popular for its cuisine and pagoda-style decor featuring jade statues, a stone waterfall and a koi-filled fountain. 

Pharoah Sanders, the influential tenor saxophonist revered in the jazz world for the spirituality of his work, has died, his record label announced. He was 81.

Sanders, who launched his career playing alongside John Coltrane in the 1960s, died in Los Angeles early Saturday, said the tweet from Luaka Bop, the label that released his 2021 album, “Promises.” It did not specify a cause. A phone message to Luaka Bop in New York was not immediately returned.

NEW YORK (AP) — Fiction by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and the book-length edition of the 1619 Project are among the nominees for Kirkus Prizes, $50,000 honors given in three competitive categories. 

The nominees were announced Thursday by the trade publication Kirkus Reviews. 

Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision as doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health.”

The announcement on Thursday comes a day after the 96-year-old monarch canceled a meeting of her Privy Council and was told to rest.

The palace says the queen is “comfortable” and remains at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she has spent the summer.

Prime Minister Liz Truss said “the whole country will be deeply concerned by the news from Buckingham Palace this lunchtime.”

The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths reported globally continued to fall nearly everywhere in the world in what the World Health Organization described as a “welcome decline” at a media briefing on Wednesday.

The number of monkeypox cases reported globally dropped by 21% in the last week, reversing a month-long trend of rising infections and a possible signal the outbreak in Europe may be starting to decline, according to a World Health Organization report issued Thursday.

The number of coronavirus deaths fell by 9% in the last week while new cases remained relatively stable, according to the latest weekly pandemic report released by the World Health Organization Wednesday.

The U.N. health agency said there were more than 14,000 COVID-19 deaths in the last week and nearly 7 million new infections. The Western Pacific reported a 30% jump in cases while Africa reported a 46% drop. Cases also fell by more than 20% in the Americas and the Middle East.

The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths reported globally fell everywhere last week except the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to the World Health Organization.

In its latest weekly update on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said Wednesday that confirmed cases dropped 12% to more than 3 million and reported deaths declined 22% to about 7,600.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the continuing decline of COVID-19, which peaked in January, as “a very encouraging trend.”