Crossings

Irish writer John Banville, 59, an outsider in the £50,000 Man Booker stakes, wins with The Sea, a novel on marital grief, childhood trauma.... 

Madurai N. Krishnan, 76, a noted Carnatic ‘vaggeyakara’ who’s composed music for dance dramas and works like Thiruppavai, Divya Prabhandam etc, dies. 

Harold Leventhal, 86, folk impresario who got Bob Dylan his first show and showed off Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar to US audiences, dies. 

MIT student Gauri Nanda wins the Ignobel in Economics for ‘Clocky’, an alarm clock which runs away and hides, forcing the owner out of bed. 


The first magazine for ‘Gen ex’, or divorcees, is out: Rosenkrieg, German for War of the Roses.

New UK fathers to get 6-month paternity leave.

Veteran British broadcaster Sir David Frost, 85, joins "subversive" Arab channel, Al Jazeera International.