AP - Rachel Smith realized she had a real shot at the Miss USA crown when she made it to the top 15. Next up was the swimsuit portion of the pageant, and the journalism graduate from Tennessee told herself: "I'm just going to work it." Smith, 21, ultimately bested 50 other aspiring beauty queens to win the title of Miss USA on Friday night.

AP - British authorities denied rapper Snoop Dogg a visa for a series of planned concerts, publicists for his tour said in a statement Saturday.

E! Online - Mel Gibson apparently went all Apocalypto the other night on a critical college professor after she lobbed a few pointed questions at him regarding his visually compelling yet grotesquely violent Mayan epic.

Reuters - Pink's previous album was, by her standards, a flop in the United States.

Reuters - The Christian/gospel community hopes the Gospel Music Channel will do for faith-based music what networks like MTV and CMT did for pop and country.

Reuters - The sophomore slump. Second-year blues. The "difficult" second album. None of these phrases are in Alex Turner's vocabulary.

Reuters - What do Rick James' funk classic "Super Freak," Appalachian folk singer Roscoe Holcomb's "Across the Rocky Mountain" and Bruce Hornsby's "Mandolin Rain" have in common? The answer isn't a punch line. Truth is, they all appear on a new collaboration between Ricky Skaggs and Hornsby.

Reuters - For the past two decades, Puerto Rican singer Chayanne's career has been a steady stream of album followed by tour, album followed by tour, each cycle slightly more successful than the next.

AFP - Latin American multiple Grammy award singer Shakira arrives in Mumbai this weekend for her first hip-shaking Indian performance, organisers said.