NEW YORK (Reuters) - American actress Amanda Bynes appeared in court on Friday and denied charges of possessing marijuana and tossing a bong out of the window of her 36th-floor Manhattan apartment.

The former Nickelodeon child star, who appeared in court dressed in gray sweatpants, a long-sleeved black shirt and a disheveled platinum blonde wig, was released on her own recognizance after spending a night in jail after her arrest on Thursday.

She was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, reckless endangerment and attempted tampering with physical evidence, according to court documents. All the alleged offenses are classified as misdemeanors rather than felonies.

Her attorney at the hearing denied the charges and accused police of entering the actress' apartment illegally.

"Clearly a search was made for the bong and nothing was recovered," attorney Andrew Friedman told the court. "My client completely denies ever having thrown anything out the window. She was followed illegally into her apartment for no reason."

The actress, 27, who has had several brushes with the law in the past year and is on probation for driving on a suspended license in California, was ordered to return to court on July 9.

Bynes said, "Thank you, sir," to the judge before leaving court and entering a taxi cab, flanked by paparazzi.

New York police were called to Bynes' 47th Street midtown high-rise building after an employee there reported that someone was smoking marijuana in the building's lobby.

Police said they were then directed to Bynes' apartment, where the actress invited them in.

Officers said they detected a strong smell of marijuana in the apartment and observed the bong - a tube-shaped water pipe commonly used for smoking marijuana - in the apartment.

Bynes then grabbed the bong and threw it out the window and the actress was taken into custody, police said.

Bynes, who had her own TV comedy sketch show on Nickelodeon at the age of 13, has gained a strong Internet following for her recent bizarre behavior and statements on her Twitter social media account.

The actress has not appeared in a film since 2010's "Easy A" and has appeared in court over a slew of driving violations in the past year, including drunk driving, and hit and run.

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

Investors were also registering disappointment with the European Central Bank after it failed to fulfill hopes for a dramatic step to spark economic activity in the recession-mired region. Confusion about which direction the U.S. Federal Reserve might go with its bond-buying stimulus also kept investors edgy.

"I think market sentiment is still weak because there is still concern about what the next move of the Federal Reserve will be," said Linus Yip, strategist at First Shanghai Securities in Hong Kong.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke has said the U.S. central bank might pull back on its $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program if economic data, especially hiring, improves. But other Fed officials have spoken about a winding down of asset purchases sooner. Stock markets, which have been pushed up by investors looking for returns that outpace bonds, might feel the pinch if the Fed scales back purchases that have kept interest rates low.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index lost 1.3 percent to 12,734.91 after the yen climbed against the dollar. That pummeled Japan's exporters, which generally welcome a weaker currency to make products more competitive overseas. Isuzu Motors plunged 7.9 percent. Yamaha Motor Ltd. sank 6.4 percent. Toshiba Corp. dropped 6.1 percent.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.3 percent to 21,549.68. South Korea's Kospi lost 1.5 percent to 1,930.80. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.7 percent to 4,746.40.

Later Friday, the U.S. Labor Department will release its employment report for May. The report is closely watched for signs of improvement in hiring, critical for an economy trying to pick up the pace of a sluggish recovery. A recent batch of weak manufacturing reports has also heightened concerns about the economy's strength.

On Thursday, investors were disheartened by the lack of new initiatives from European Central Bank president Mario Draghi that might help boost ailing European economies.

Even though the ECB cut its 2013 growth and inflation forecasts for the 17-country euro currency grouping, Draghi said the governing council felt there was no reason to act now, especially as recent data suggest an improvement in the current gloomy economic conditions.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong called the ECB's pronouncements "fairly disappointing for anyone looking for some signal of more easing to come."

Wall Street posted a modest recovery Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.5 percent to 15,040.62 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 added 0.9 percent, to 1,622.56 points. The Nasdaq composite index rose 0.7 percent, to 3,424.05 points.

Benchmark oil for July delivery was up 8 cents to $94.85 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.02 to close at $94.76 a barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3258 from $1.3245 late Thursday in New York. The dollar fell to 96.19 yen from 97.22 yen.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

Hip-hop iconin disruption at the University of Southern California (USC).

The influential rapper, record producer and headphone magnate has made a $70 million donation to USC with longtime music partner Jimmy Iovine.

The vision and generosity of Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young will profoundly influence the way all of us perceive and experience artistic media. USC provides an extraordinarily rich academic, research and artistic environment, USC President C. L. Max Nikias said in a statement. We are committed to encouraging our students to use their intellectual and creative resources to effect change in all segments of society. Our goal is to ensure that the academy is the most collaborative educational program in the world.

Iovine and Young first announced the donation in May, but now some specific details surrounding the program have emerged. For example, some of the required coursework will include, "Advanced Methods in 2-D and 3-D Visualization," "Creativity," "Design Theory," and "The Entrepreneurial Mindset."

The USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation will accept 25 students in the fall of 2014 who will be asked to specialize in a broad array of multimedia and creative pursuits. Or, as Valley Wag puts it, nearly every Silicon Valley buzzword simultaneously.

More specifically, the program will focus on four core areas of study, including, Arts and Entrepreneurship, Technology, Design and Marketability, Concept and Business Platforms, and Creating a Prototype.

The academys core education will create a common, multi-lingual literacy and fluency across essential disciplines, said Erica Muhl, Inaugural Director of the USC Iovine Young Academyand Dean of the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. This big picture knowledge and skill will equip graduates with a leadership perspective that is unparalleled in an undergraduate degree, and that will be applicable to virtually any industry.

Of course, Young and Iovine arent just throwing their money blindly into higher education with purely altruistic intentions. Theyre hoping one of their future students will come up with the next great invention to help bolster the pairs ever-expanding business empire.

If the next start-up that becomes Facebook happens to be one of our kids, thats what we are looking for, Iovine told the .

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Reigning champ "Fast & Furious 6" has the inside track this weekend at the box office, but Will and Jaden Smith could put them in the rear-view mirror with their sci-fi thriller "After Earth."

That's if "After Earth" delivers at the high end of analysts' projections -- and Universal's cars and criminals sequel takes a big dip, as other entries in the franchise have.

"Fast and Furious 6" will wind up around $40 million if it drops roughly 55 percent from its opening, when it drove the box office to a Memorial Day weekend record. That would be enough to hold off Sony's "After Earth," which is projected to finish at around $35 million in its debut, according to industry analysts.

But the "Fast & Furious" movies have historically taken major skids in their second week. "Fast Five," the series' highest-grossing entry, dropped 62 percent in its second week after opening to $86 million in 2011. The previous movie, "Fast and Furious," fell 61 percent after a $70 million debut in 2009.

"While 'After Earth' and 'Now You See Me' aren't particularly strong contenders, they both will go directly after 'Fast & Furious' audiences," said Exhibitor Relations vice-president and senior analyst Jeff Bock. "Typically, the franchise's films have dropped an average of 60 percent in their second weekends, and with everyone rushing out to see 'Fast 6' on its opening weekend, the dropoff could be very similar."

It may be close for third, too. The weekend's other wide opener, the Lionsgate thriller "Now You See Me," is expected to come in at around $17 million for Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment. Also likely to finish in that same range are last weekend's No. 2 movie, "The Hangover Part III," Paramount's "Star Trek Into Darkness," which is in its third week, and Fox's animated family film "Epic," back for its second week.

Will Smith has been in just one movie since 2008, last year's "Men In Black 3," and cedes much of the spotlight in this film to his son, Jaden. Will remains a box-office force internationally - "MIB 3" brought in $180 million in the U.S. and $445 million abroad - but "After Earth" will offer a heat-check in terms of his appeal domestically.

M. Night Shyamalan co-wrote "After Earth" with Gary Whitta and is directing, but you wouldn't know it unless you've been paying close attention. The studio's marketing campaign has emphasized the father-son adventure elements of the plot, rather than the director, whose 2010 film The Last Airbender," disappointed.

In the PG-13-rated "After Earth," a crash landing leaves Kitai Raige (Jaden) and his father Cypher (Will) stranded on Earth,1,000 years after humanity has left. Zoe Kravitz and Sophie Okonedo also appear in the film, but the real co-stars are the computer-generated creatures that menace Kitai, who embarks on a perilous journey.

The critics have been cruel - it's at 14 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes - but the social media indicators have surged in the past few days. "After Earth" had more than 1.1 million Facebook "likes" earlier this week.

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Shyamalan are producers on the Columbia Pictures and Overbrook Entertainment project, which carries a production budget estimated at $130 million. Sony has it in more than 3,000 theaters.

Summit Entertainment's "Now You See Me" is the PG-13 tale of an FBI agent and Interpol detective tracking a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money.

Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Common, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman top the ensemble cast, which is directed by Louis Leterrier ("Clash of the Titans").

The challenge for "Now You See Me" is to not get lost amid the heavyweight holdovers, and find an audience looking for something other than superheroes and sequels. Summit released the first four minutes of the movie on the site of online ticket broker Fandango during the opening week of "The Great Gatsby," hoping to connect with moviegoers drawn to distinctive fare.

"Now You See Me" was produced by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Bobby Cohen and has a production budget of around $75 million. Boaz Yakin, Michael Schaefer and Stan Wlodkowski are executive producers.

"Now You See Me" will screen in 2,925 theaters.

Two films that made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year top the week's limited releases.

CBS Films is rolling out "The Kings of Summer" in four theaters. This big-screen debut from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was known as "Toy's House" when it heated up Park City. In it, three teenage friends (Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso and Moises Arias) decide to spend their summer building a house in the woods and living off the land.

Chris Galletta wrote the screenplay for the R-rated film, which has a glossy 79 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally and Alison Brie co-star.

Fox Searchlight is debuting Zal Batmanglij's thriller "The East," starring Brit Marling, Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgard, in four theaters as well.

Batmanglij and Marling co-wrote the screenplay, which follows a former FBI agent (Marling) who infiltrates an anarchist collective but begins to fall in love with one of its leaders (Skarsgard).

The singer will accept the Top Touring Artist award at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on May 19th for the tour that grossed more than $305 million from 88 sold-out shows and attracted an audience of 2.2 million people.

"A cultural icon, Madonna is one of the most successful and influential entertainers of all time and was recently named Billboard's Top Money Maker of 2012," Billboard said in a statement.

The chart-topping singer holds numerous other Billboard awards, including the record for the most top 10 singles (38).

In addition to her music, Madonna is also an avid art collector. On Tuesday she sold a 1921 painting by the French artist Fernand Leger, "Trois Femmes a la Table Rouge," for $7.16 million to raise money for the non-profit Ray of Light Foundation, to fund girls' education in poor countries.

The mother of four, including two adopted children from Malawi, is planning to build 10 schools in the African nation.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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The email that Republicans originally thought was a Benghazi smoking gun turned out not to be one. Earlier this month, they released towhat seemed like emails from White House advisor Ben Rhodes saying the talking points needed to "reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department." It turned out to be a , which changed its meaning. Rhodes actually said the talking points needed to be resolved "in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation." That means Issa needs more Benghazi material to work with. He already has his conclusion: "Publicly available information about the talking points creates the appearance that Administration officials were interested in sparing the State Department from political criticism in the wake of the attacks," Issa wrote  on Tuesday. Issa made this conclusion at least a month ago, when he signed a  saying the same thing: "to protect the State Department, the Administration deliberately removed references to al-Qaeda-linked groups and previous attacks in Benghazi in the talking points used by Ambassador Rice."

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All Issa needs now, apparently, is the evidence.

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"The documents the enclosed subpoena covers will help the Committee understand why, although on the day after the attacks senior State Department leadership believed that Islamic extremists were involved, there were reservations about publicly acknowledging any such involvement just three days later," Issa's letter says. But the committee needs more than State Department emails to figure that out. From the 100 pages of emails about the talking points released by the White House, we know that it was the CIA deputy director Mike Morell who  (right) to the CIA's warnings that terrorists could attack the diplomatic post. Why did he do that? To protect the investigation? After relentless badgering from the State Department? To know for sure, the committee needs CIA emails, too, doesn't it? Perhaps the CIA has provided them to Issa, and Issa hasn't made that public yet.

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In fact, the result of Issa's investigation has been to raise more and more questions about the CIA's role in Benghazi. As we found out several weeks after the attack, the Benghazi post was a CIA installation. The CIA created the talking points. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger requested them, fearing that newer lawmakers would accidentally release classified information, and then-CIA directorto, in 's analysis, shield his agency from recriminations. The CIA wrote that the Benghazi attack was inspired by protests in Cairo, which Susan Rice repeated, and which was not true. Thewho died in the second wave of the Benghazi attack,reports, might have accidentally led militants to the CIA annex in Benghazi when they evacuated the main site. It's not clear whether the militants knew about the annex before hand, our found out by following the rescue convoy.

Issa writes, "I prefer to advance the Committee's investigation without having to use the compulsory process to obtain the entire universe of documents that the Department has withheld from Congress. With that in mind, the enclosed subpoena is narrowly tailored to cover documents and communications related to the Benghazi talking points." Maybe it's too narrow. 

[More from BGR: ]

Eurogamer on Tuesday managed to have a lengthy chat with a Microsoft PR rep in an effort to clarify Microsofts policies surrounding buying and selling Xbox One games. There are still plenty of open questions, but the blog managed to clear the air in a number of key areas.

[More from BGR: ]

First, games will be available for purchase on discs just like Xbox 360 games. The main difference is that games will not be played off the discs. Instead, they will be installed directly to the Xbox Ones 500GB hard drive, though new games can be played immediately as they install from the discs.

Once installed, games are registered and tied to a users Xbox Live account. They can be played only by that user and other users in his or her household. If a gamer wants to take that disc to a friends house and play that game on someone elses console, he or she will have to log into Xbox Live on the other persons console.

As the game is played on the new console, it will be installed on the hard drive and will remain installed after the game owner logs out and leaves. If the owner of that console wants to continue playing the game, he or she will be prompted to purchase it online at full retail.

The bits are on your hard drive, Microsofts Phil Harris told Eurogamer. At the end of the play session, when I take my disc home or even if I leave it with you if you want to continue to play that game [on your profile] then you have to pay for it. The bits are already on your hard drive, so its just a question of going to our [online] store and buying the game, and then its instantly available to play.

The big question mark that remains is how Microsoft will handle reselling used games. Logic dictates that once a player is done with a game, it can be unregistered from his or her Xbox Live account and then resold, but Microsoft hasnt confirmed anything at this point.

We will have a system where you can take that digital content and trade a previously played game at a retail store, Harrison said. Were not announcing the details of that today, but we will have announced in due course.

The potentially good news, however, is that Microsofts Xbox Support team seemingly slipped and , contradicting earlier rumors.

Finally, as we confirmed on Tuesday, .

This article was

Neymar cried profusely as the Brazilian national anthem was sung before the match against Flamengo on Sunday in the opening round of the Brazilian league.

''It was very emotional,'' said Neymar as he bid farewell to his team and Brazilian soccer. ''The movie of my life since I was a little kid came to my mind at that moment.''

Neymar announced his move to Barcelona late Saturday, a day after Santos accepted offers from both the Spanish champion and rival Real Madrid and said the 21-year-old forward should pick.

He is set to sign a five-year contract with Barcelona on Monday, becoming the latest addition to a star-filled roster that already includes four-time FIFA Player of the Year Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta.

''It's a dream come true to be able to play for a team like Barcelona. I've always dreamed about doing that and now it's happening,'' Neymar said. ''It will be a great honor to play with players like Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Dani Alves.''

He played Sunday to wear Santos' jersey one more time and to hear the fans chant his name again. But when he was introduced, he was booed by the Flamengo fans dominating the crowd at the Estadio Nacional in Brasilia.

He cried during the anthem as he stood alongside his teammates, closing his eyes and dropping his head down. He said he also cried a lot at the team's hotel before heading to the stadium and in the locker room, as well.

''It's not easy for him, but we tried to help him as much as possible,'' Santos defender Leo said.

Neymar didn't play particularly well in his last Santos match, though, struggling in the 0-0 tie.

He had a few chances in the first half, the most significant one a missed shot from outside the penalty area in the 16th minute. He almost scored with a well-placed free kick in the 69th, but goalkeeper Felipe made the stop before the ball reached the upper corner.

More than 60,000 attended the farewell match, which also served as the final test event at the venue ahead of the Confederations Cup. It will host the opener of the World Cup warmup tournament on June 15, when Neymar will be back for Brazil's game against Japan.

Neymar is leaving Santos a year before the end of his contract, which was intended to keep him with the club until the 2014 World Cup.

He began playing for Santos as a kid and quickly became its biggest star since Pele left in the 1970s. Neymar joined the senior team in 2009 and has helped the club win six titles, including the 2010 Brazilian Cup, the 2011 Copa Libertadores and three straight Sao Paulo state championships. He is Santos' leading scorer in the post-Pele era with 138 goals in 230 matches.

''It's a great honor to have played for Santos for so long, I've been here nearly my entire life,'' Neymar said. ''Today it ends part of my history with the club but I'll be back. I'm saying goodbye but I'll be back.''

Fans faced lines of up to six-tenths of a mile to get into the Estadio Nacional, one of the most expensive built for the Confederations Cup and the World Cup. The stadium's lighting system failed partially, but it did not affect the match's progress.

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Follow Tales Azzoni at http://twitter.com/tazzoni