Pakistan's cricketers on the catwalk
The former Pakistan cricket captain Younis Khan and paceman Umar Gul turned heads at a bridal fashion show this weekend with a rare turn on the catwalk.
Wearing a blackish grey shirwani - a long suit worn by grooms in Pakistan - Khan smiled all down the runway in his first-ever appearance in a fashion show in Karachi on Saturday, while Gul wore an off-white shirwani.
Gul said he enjoyed the experience but had no intention of swapping the wicket for the catwalk.
"A friend had invited me to walk on the ramp and although I enjoyed it, I have no plans to join modelling in the future because my focus is only on cricket," he said.
* AFP
Alec Baldwin shares his views of TV network
Alec Baldwin can't seem to stay out of the news lately. The actor and star of 30 Rock tweeted angrily last week that he was "leaving NBC just in time" after a Today show crew camped outside his apartment building, but has since said he is still a fan of the network.
The actor said that a big draw of joining the cast of 30 Rock was working at NBC and that he will finish the seventh season of the hit show. He also said NBC needs to redo its line-up to get out of ratings trouble.
Baldwin was speaking from Washington on Monday, where he was pushing for an increase in federal funding for the arts. Speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, Baldwin used Italy as an example of a nation where "art counts".
He will appear on Capitol Hill today to plead his case.
* AP and AFP
Malcolm X historian wins posthumous Pulitzer
The late Manning Marable won the Pulitzer Prize for history on Monday, honoured for a Malcolm X book he worked on for decades but did not live to see published. For the first time in 35 years, no fiction prize was given.
"The main reason [for the fiction decision] is that no one of the three entries received a majority, and thus after lengthy consideration, no prize was awarded," said Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. "There were multiple factors involved in these decisions, and we don't discuss in detail why a prize is given or not given."
Fiction judges have withheld the Pulitzer 10 times before, according to Gissler, most recently in 1977.
Marable, a longtime professor at Columbia University, died last year at age 60 just as Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention was being released. Years in the making, the book was widely praised, although some of Malcolm X's children objected to the troubled portrait Marable offered of the activist's marriage to Betty Shabazz.
Another long-term project, John Lewis Gaddis's George F Kennan: An American Life, won the Pulitzer for biography.
Quiara Alegria Hudes's play Water by the Spoonful, which centres on an Iraq war veteran's search for meaning, won the Pulitzer for drama.
Life on Mars, by Tracy K Smith, won the poetry prize.
The general nonfiction prize was given to The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt's telling of the 15th-century rediscovery of a masterpiece from ancient Rome.
* AP
Al Hamra Golf Course to host fund-raiser
Al Hamra Golf Course, part of Al Hamra Village in Ras Al Khaimah, will host a series of fund-raising golf events for the MacMillan Cancer Support group, beginning on Friday and continuing until May 1. Simon Mees, the general manager of Al Hamra Golf Course, will be playing golf from 7am to 7pm non-stop on May 1 in a "Dawn to Dusk Challenge" to help raise funds for individuals and families who have been affected by cancer.
Golfers will enjoy a team scramble format, including 18 holes of golf with a shared cart with GPS, on-course events, BBQ dinner, exciting prizes to win and an auction of sports memorabilia by Urban Auctions.
Founded in 1911 by Douglas Macmillan, Macmillan Cancer Support has grown to become the largest cancer care and support charity in the UK. The golf club will raise funds to help Macmillan provide cancer support and push for better cancer care.
Cobain may have been working on solo album
The Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was working on a solo album when he committed suicide in 1994, a former guitarist for the band of Cobain's widow said in an interview with the music TV channel Fuse.
"That's really what he was going toward, a solo album, but working with different people," Eric Erlandson - who played with Hole, a band founded by Courtney Love - told Fuse TV.
Erlandson said Cobain was writing and producing songs that transcended his previous work.
Erlandson spoke with Fuse last week after publishing a book about his relationship with Cobain, titled Letters to Kurt.
An album of Cobain's rough demo recordings could still be released, he said.
* AFP
Hologram takes the stage at Coachella music festival
Concert goers at the Coachella 2012 music festival in the US were knocked back on their feet when a hologram of the late Tupac Shakur appeared on the stage. The hologram, realistic enough, was made more so by interchanging lyrics with Snoop Dogg.
Could this herald the biggest change in live performance in recent history? What next? An Elvis Presley concert?
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