Bikers of Libya’s Mediterranean city of Benghazi, the cradle of its 2011 revolution and a one-time Islamist bastion, rev up their motors to show another side to their war-scarred country.

In a cocktail of gleaming chrome and rumbling engines, dozens of heavy-duty motorbike enthusiasts in their leathers tear up the asphalt in regular parades through the streets of the wind-strewn city.

The convoy of Harleys, Hondas and Kawasakis emerges from the headquarters of the Benghazi Motorcycles Club.

For the club’s members, biking is not only a passion, it’s also a way of portraying the city in a different light — a semblance of normality despite Libya’s pervasive divisions and violence.

“There are those who fight, and there are those who have a passion,” the club’s proud president Ahmed al-Fitouri says from behind a thick beard and long hair.

“We’ve had French and British crews film us, and we’ve shown them that not all Libyans make war, they’re not all criminals,” he says.

Two by two, the bikers parade through Benghazi’s alleys and main roads, arms perched on the handlebars.

Onlookers watch or film and honking car drivers contribute to the cacophony as they ride past war-battered buildings.

– ‘Parades for peace’ –

The motorcycle club, which has a Harley-Davidson-inspired eagle as its emblem, boasts 120 members and they are “all enthusiasts”, says Fitouri.

It was established in 2014 on the initiative of a group of amateurs, right in the thick of a second battle for control of their city, three years after the fall of Libya’s longtime leader Moamer Kadhafi.

Even at that time of rampant insecurity before Islamist militias were expelled, club members staged public shows.

Before the revolt that put an end to more than four decades of dictatorship, bikers were “marginalised” members of Benghazi society, says Fakhri Mustapha al-Hassi, the club’s vice president.

“But that image has changed,” says Hassi, a lively character sporting a leather waistcoat and a black bandana.

“Now families and children come to have their picture taken with us.”

Club members also raise funds for charities, stage “parades for peace” and take part in official functions, such as a recent tribute to Omar al-Mokhtar, a hero of Libya’s resistance to Italian occupation in the early 20th century.

The Titanic is being brought back from the deep, more than a century after its ill-fated maiden voyage, at a landlocked Chinese theme park where tourists can soon splash out for a night on a fullscale replica.

The project’s main backer was inspired to recreate the world’s most infamous cruise liner by the 1997 box office hit of the same name — once the world’s top-grossing film and wildly popular in China.

The original luxury vessel, the largest of its time and branded “unsinkable” by its owners, has become a byword for hubris ever since it plunged into the depths of the Atlantic in 1912 after striking an iceberg, leaving more than 1,500 people dead.

Investor Su Shaojun says he was motivated to finance the audacious, 260-metre-long (850-foot-long) duplicate to keep memories of the Titanic alive.

“I hope this ship will be here in 100 or 200 years,” Su said.

“We are building a museum for the Titanic.”

It has taken six years — longer than the construction of the original Titanic — plus 23,000 tons of steel, more than a hundred workers and a hefty one billion yuan ($153.5 million) price tag.

Everything from the dining room to the luxury cabins and even the door handles are styled on the original Titanic.

It forms the centrepiece of a Sichuan province theme park more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the sea.

The site features a replica of Southampton Port seen in James Cameron’s 1997 disaster epic, where Leonardo DiCaprio’s fictional character Jack swings on board after winning his ticket in a bet.

Tour buses play the film’s theme tune, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, on repeat.

It costs up to 2,000 yuan (around $150) to spend one night on the ship for the “five-star cruise service”, Su says, adding that with a functioning steam engine guests will feel that they are really at sea.

He was so excited by the challenge that he sold his energy industry assets, including a stake in several hydropower projects, to invest in the Titanic.

A painting by Pablo Picasso has sold for more than $100m – marking the fifth work by the Spanish artist to sell for a nine-figure sum.

Woman Sitting Near a Window (Marie-Therese) sold for $103.4m (£73.5m) on Thursday at Christie’s auction house in New York.

That figure comprises $90m for the painting itself, with fees and commissions on top, Christie’s said.

The auction house had estimated the painting would sell for $55m.

The work, titled Femme Assise Pres d’Une Fenetre (Marie-Therese) in Spanish, was sold after 19 minutes of bidding.

Bonnie Brennan, president of Christie’s America, said the success of Thursday’s auction “signals a real return to normal and also a message that the art market is really back on track”.

Thursday’s auction marked the fifth work by Picasso to have sold for more than $100m.

He is one of a very small number of artists to have sold multiple works above this threshold, alongside Jackson Pollock, Vincent van Gogh and Francis Bacon.

The record for a Picasso is $179.4m (£127.6m), which was paid for his painting The Women of Algiers in 2015.

The last painting to fetch more than $100m was Claude Monet’s 1890 work Meules, which reached $110.7m in New York in 2019.

This is the first time in two years that a work has broken the $100m mark since an 1890 Claude Monet Meules painting reached $110.7m (£78.7m) at Sotheby’s, also in New York.

The long-awaited “Friends” cast reunion will be broadcast on May 27 and will feature a slew of celebrity guests including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and K-Pop band BTS, streaming service HB0 Max said on Thursday.

“Friends: The Reunion,” featuring all six of the original cast, was originally supposed to have been filmed more than a year ago but was repeatedly delayed by the pandemic.

The unscripted, one-off special was filmed earlier this year on the same sound stage in Los Angeles as the original comedy about six young 20-somethings, played by Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry, living in New York.

“Friends,” which ended its 10 year-run on NBC television in 2004, was one of the most popular TV shows of the 1990s and found a new life on streaming platforms where it is one of the most watched shows worldwide.

News of the broadcast date for the reunion quickly became the top trending item worldwide on Twitter.

“The one with us finally getting together,” quipped Kudrow on Instagram.

Cox said she felt “blessed to have reunited with my Friends… and it was better than ever.” HBO Max said more than 15 celebrity guests would also take part, including former “Friends” cast members Tom Selleck (Richard), and Maggie Wheeler (Janice) and others such as British soccer star David Beckham, “Game of Thrones” actor Kit Harington and Pakistan’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

Standing in a makeshift Paris metro station at London’s Criterion theatre, actress Audrey Brisson performs a heart-warming song during a rehearsal for the musical “Amelie”.

It has been over a year since the production was on the stage in London, and as England takes the next step out of lockdown, the musical, based on the hit 2001 French film, will be one of the first to open in the capital’s West End.

“It feels wonderful, it feels heart-warming, it feels exciting, exhilarating. It feels like coming back home,” Brisson, who plays the title role, said in an interview.

“I’ve missed storytelling. I have missed seeing in the eyes of the audience that glimmer of forgetting reality and just being swept off their feet and imagination.”

The pandemic shut down theatres in the West End. As of Monday, they will be able to welcome back audiences but only at 50% capacity and with protective measures in places.

Director Michael Fentiman said “Amelie The Musical” could re-open thanks to financial support from the British government’s Cultural Recovery Fund as well as for being a “nimble” production, where the 16 cast members are also the orchestra.

“We thought it was an imaginative way to … tell their story. However, it also means we are a bit less expensive than other musicals,” he said.

“We’re a show about coming out of isolation … about the joy of moving from … an isolated, anxious place into one of … connection and joy and empathy … so we … had to be here in the moment where theatre turns the light on for the first time.”

Amongst the shows returning next week are “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”, “Les Miserables – The Staged Concert” and “The Mousetrap”.

Lighting designer Elliott Griggs, who worked as a supermarket delivery driver during lockdown, said it was “amazing being back”.

“So many people are still waiting for that call to come,” he said. “So I feel very lucky to be here and back doing this job.”