UAE debut for Arab Idol winner Hazem Sharif

Plus, Chinese star gets marriage proposal via drone; Bruce Jenner ready to supply cellphone records to police investigating car crash; Turkish singer Muzeyyen Senar dies at age 96.

Arab Idol winner Hazem Sharif. Courtesy MBC

This latest winner of Arab Idol is set to perform in the UAE for the first time as part of Dubai Food Festival's free concert series. Hazem Sharif will take the stage as part of a special show featuring all three Arab Idol winners. The Syrian will be joined by the 2013 victor, Mohammed Assaf, and the show's first winner, Carmen Suleiman, on February 20 at the Global Village. The shows kick off on Thursday with the Emirati double bill of Balqees and Fayez Al Saeed. The concert series ends with Haitham Khalaily, Dounia Batma and Ramy Ayach on February 27 and a closing concert on the 28th featuring Hala Al Turk. – The National staff

Chinese star gets marriage proposal via drone

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi has accepted a marriage proposal from her rock star boyfriend, who delivered a diamond ring to her by drone. Wang Feng sent the white drone flying into Zhang's 36th birthday party. Pictures posted online showed Wang reaching into a basket attached to the hovering drone, as Zhang covered her face. Zhang, who starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha, accepted Wang's proposal at a party on Saturday, February 7. On Sunday, a microblog account thought to be Zhang's had a picture of fireworks with the words "I do", attracting thousands of comments. – AFP

Bruce Jenner ready to supply cellphone records to police investigating car crash

Bruce Jenner was not texting while driving when he got into a chain-reaction crash in Malibu that left a woman dead, a publicist for the Olympic gold medallist said.

Jenner will provide his cellphone records if requested by investigators looking into the cause of the four-vehicle crash on Pacific Coast Highway, Alan Nierob said.

“The evidence will show that Bruce was not texting at the time of the accident,” he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials said investigators will likely seek cellphone records for all the drivers to determine if distracted-driving played a role in the accident. Jenner was driving a black Cadillac Escalade when he rear-ended a Lexus sedan that slammed into a Toyota Prius that had slowed down or stopped on the coastal highway, sheriff’s sergeant Philip Brooks said.

The Lexus veered into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with a black Hummer. The driver of the Lexus – Kim Howe, 69, of Calabasas, California – was pronounced dead at the scene. In his first comments since the crash on February 7, Jenner called the accident “a devastating tragedy” and vowed to cooperate with investigators. “My heartfelt and deepest sympathies go out to the family and loved ones, and to all of those who were involved or injured in this terrible accident,” Jenner said in a statement released on Sunday evening. “It is a devastating tragedy, I cannot pretend to imagine what this family is going through at this time. I am praying for them.”

The moment of impact was captured by celebrity photographers, who quickly posted the images on the internet. The photos show the white Lexus mangled in the front and back, facing the Hummer, which had a heavily damaged engine and its hood popped open. Jenner’s Escalade, which was pulling an off-road vehicle, had a damaged front end.

There was no indication that Jenner was being chased by paparazzi at the time of the crash, authorities said. “Being a celebrity, he is often followed by paparazzi. He was aware of that, and it doesn’t appear he took any evasive action to avoid the paparazzi,” Brooks said.

Authorities said Jenner passed a field sobriety test and voluntarily submitted a blood sample to determine whether he was intoxicated.

The sheriff’s department has custody of all the vehicles and will be inspecting them to ensure they are mechanically sound or to check whether a defect prevented somebody from stopping in time.

Investigators could also request search warrants, if necessary. The information gleaned from those records could help inform prosecutors, if they were to consider charges against the drivers involved.

However, Brooks said it is difficult to determine if a driver was texting at the exact time of a collision. Investigators will look at signs of driver behaviour such as multiple texts that span a period of time leading up to, or including, the crash, he said.

The crash comes at a time of widespread talk that Jenner, 65, is becoming a woman. Though Jenner himself has declined public comment, his appearance has gradually become more traditionally feminine. Those in his inner circles have not challenged speculation that he is preparing to live as a woman and perhaps will appear in a new reality series about his transition.

Jenner won a gold medal in the men's decathlon at the 1976 Summer Games, but he is known to a younger generation as Kim Kardashian's stepfather. He and Kris Jenner appeared on the reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians along with their children, and the pair's relationship and its troubles have been featured prominently on the show. The two finalised their divorce late last year, ending 23 years of marriage. – AP

Turkish singer Muzeyyen Senar dies at age 96

The Turkish traditional music singer Muzeyyen Senar, known as the “diva” of the modern republic and whose career spanned half a century, died on Sunday. She was 96. Senar died in hospital in the Aegean city of Izmir after contracting pneumonia, the official Anatolia news agency reported. Senar was born in 1918 in the final years of the Ottoman Empire and her talent as a singer of traditional Turkish classical music was recognised rapidly. She made her stage debut in 1933 and made early records. It is said her voice was admired by modern Turkey’s secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who even attended her concerts. Senar kept up her career into the 1980s, becoming a link for many Turks between the modern age and a bygone era. She recorded 30 albums. She became known affectionately by Turks as the “Cumhuriyetin Divasi” – the “Diva of the Republic”. She suffered severe health problems after a stroke in 2006. “Muzeyyen Senar was not comparable with anyone else. She was the pride of Turkey and a great artist,” culture minister Omer Celik wrote on Twitter. – AFP