SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — When the Miss Universe beauty pageant takes place in a few weeks, Chile will be represented by a slender brunette who has a killer smile and speaks Spanish with an unmistakable Venezuelan accent.

Andrea Diaz was born and raised in Valencia, Venezuela, where from the ...

BANGKOK (AP) — A Paraguayan beauty pageant winner swooned on stage after admitting the anticipation just before the announcement was unbearable.

Miss Grand International 2018 Clara Sosa fell as soon as she was announced this year’s winner. At the time, she was holding hands with the first ...

PANAMA CITY (AP) — She spent much of her life in an indigenous village without electricity, using wattles to cross rivers and make it to her school in the poorest region of Panama. The hardships she endured as a child still make her cry.

From those humble beginnings, Rosa Iveth Montezuma ...

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — Naomi Osaka’s victory in the U.S. Open has added her to a growing list of athletes, Nobel Prize winners, and beauty pageant contestants who have raised the issue of what it means to be Japanese.

The daughter of a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, Osaka was born ...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — At a small home with a leaking tin roof near Venezuela’s capital, Johandrys Colls proudly shows off two metal crowns with plastic gemstones and nine satin sashes won in local beauty pageants.

The 16-year-old daughter of a butcher and a teacher is pinning her hopes ...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Sarah Idan, Iraq’s 2017 Miss Universe beauty pageant contestant, is visiting Israel this week, a trip that has enraged people back home.

Idan was criticized and received death threats after taking a selfie with Israeli contestant Adal Gandelsman during last November’s ...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The Miss America Organization is putting women in its three top leadership positions following an email scandal in which male officials were caught making vulgar and insulting comments about past winners of the beauty pageant.

The organization told The Associated ...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivered a speech without sex jokes and expletives Monday, telling a gathering of Miss Universe contestants that he was told to be careful with his language.

Duterte told pageant contestants at the Malacanang presidential ...

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) — Hillary Clinton is criticizing Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against a former beauty pageant winner, calling it “unhinged, even for him.”

“Who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack?” Clinton asked at an event in Coral Springs. She said ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alicia Machado says that when she gained weight after being crowned Miss Universe for 1996, Donald Trump labeled her with a sexist nickname — “Miss Piggy” — that caused her shame and humiliation.

Two decades later, Machado’s dealings with Trump, her one-time beauty ...

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Despite facing violence and discrimination in many countries, 28 transgender women found a place to shine.

The women competed last weekend to be crowned Miss Trans Star International, Europe’s largest beauty pageant for transgender women and one of a growing number ...