NEW YORK – Aretha Franklin has a lot more than her 70th birthday to celebrate: She’s reuniting with one of her musical mentors, Clive Davis, for a new album.

In an interview at her swanky birthday party on Saturday, Franklin said she and Davis, who helped engineer her comeback in the 1980s, would be working on new music.

“I have re-signed with Clive Davis, so I’m recording with Clive again,” said Franklin of the music mogul, who is associated with Sony Music Entertainment.

Franklin said that after Davis’ birthday next month, “we’re going to sit together and decide what it is we’re going to record.”

Davis sat next to Franklin for most of the night at the soiree at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, which included dinner, a dance performance and a mini-concert by rising jazz pianist Kris Bowers.

Other guests included Diane Sawyer, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and Willie Wilkerson, Franklin’s longtime companion and briefly this year her fiance.

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Wilkerson stood by Franklin’s side as she cut her three-tier, lime-green birthday cake while the crowd serenaded her with Stevie Wonder’s version of “Happy Birthday.”

When asked whether marriage might once again be in her future, the Queen of Soul simply said: “We’ll see what happens.”

Teen activist among GLAAD award winners

NEW YORK – A teenager who’s campaigning to make it easier for children to see a documentary about bullying, the producers of the NBC musical drama “Smash” and Lady Gaga were among the winners of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media awards announced Saturday.

ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” the popular Spanish-language TV programs “Caso Cerrado” and “Primer Impacto,” and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s recent work “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” also were among the honorees at a ceremony in New York.

The GLAAD awards are designed to honor fair, accurate and inclusive representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

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Katy Butler, 17, of Ann Arbor, Mich., got a special award for gathering more than 400,000 signatures on an online petition pressing the Motion Picture Association of America to lower its R rating for “Bully,” a documentary set for release Friday. The MPAA has said language in the film warrants restricting children under 17 from seeing it without an adult.

‘Survivor’ star confident about election chances

INDIANAPOLIS – Former reality TV star Rupert Boneham said he thinks he has a real shot at becoming Indiana’s next governor after being nominated as a third-party choice Saturday.

The tie-dye wearing fan favorite from 2004’s “Survivor: All-Stars” was unopposed for the Libertarian Party’s nomination.

He will face Republican Mike Pence and Democrat John Gregg in November’s election. Boneham won $1 million on the “Survivor” series and donated some of the prize to his Rupert’s Kids charity, which provides mentoring and job training to at-risk youths.


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