Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice performed in a piano quintet Monday night for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

-- A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts finds that women in the arts earn less than men.

-- Musicians union and La Scala reach contract agreement, averting a strike that had threatened the gala opening of "Don Carlo."

-- Financial woes force the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, one of the Bay Area's longest-running cultural institutions, to close.

-- A $300,000 sculpture is crushed to pieces en route from Venice to Art Miami.

-- The Shubert Organization is expected to name a new leader today to succeed Gerald Schoenfeld, who died last week.

-- Sir David Frost says the film "Frost/Nixon" is better than the stage play it is based on, but "there are one or two small bits it could do without."

-- Dance pioneer David Gordon revisits his 1982 piece "Trying Times."

-- Video artist Mark Leckey blasts "shock art" after winning the 2008 Turner Prize.

-- Bartlett Sher is set to direct the Lincoln Center revival of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."

-- YouTube hosts a classical music contest with a Carnegie Hall performance as the prize.

--Work begins on the 2,074-foot-tall Shanghai Tower, slated to be the tallest building in China. 

-- Lisa Fung

Photo: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greets U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before a private concert at Buckingham Palace. Credit: John Stillwell / Associated Press