Salman Khan hints at marriage this year to Romanian beauty

Superstar Salman Khan has hinted at a possibility of getting hitched by the end of this year as he is tired of being single for a long time.

The 48-year-old ‘Jai Ho’ star, who was at his funniest best at last evening’s media Conclave 2014, did not rule out the chances of marrying Romanian beauty Iulia Vantur, whom he is allegedly dating for quite sometime.

“Now I’m in transit period and I like it. From the age of 15, I did not get a transit period. For the first time, I have such a chance to sigh. I am sighing more since it has been two-and-a-half years. It’s time to stop sighing because

“I follow humanity. I follow Islam, Christianity, and follow right thing as much I can. I have been kind of blessed. Father is Pathan, mother is Hindu, second mother is catholic, and brother-in-law is Punjabi. Wife, I am thinking to bring from outside…,” Salman said.

Salman has often been linked with his co-stars and also being termed as a ‘possessive’ boyfriend. He admitted that he was a miserable lover but a great friend.

“When you are in a relationship you try everything to see that she doesn’t leave you. You try to be good. You give her a silent treatment. You yell, cry and when nothing works you say go.

“I thought they were the most correct people for me… Great girls bad boyfriend. I have not been like the most incredible boy friend. I could be the friend and I have heard this from the ex girlfriends also that (he is) a great friend but miserable boyfriend,” Salman said.

The actor also thanked his parents — father Salim Khan and mothers Sushila Charak Khan and Helen — for being with him at his worst times.

“No child would have given them as may problems. I was a naughty kid. They had to hear slanderous things about their son from others — the jail episodes, the cases that have come. If these things would not have come, my father and mother would have looked as young as I look now,” he said.

China says to work with Afghanistan to fight terrorism

China said on Saturday that it will work with Afghanistan to fight terrorism, after it blamed a deadly train station attack on extremists from its western Xinjiang region, which shares a short border with the war-torn nation.

Beijing has become increasingly concerned about security in restive Xinjiang, where it says Muslim extremists receive help from militants in neighboring countries.

China says separatists from the region, home to a large Muslim Uighur minority, launched a terrorist attack in the southwestern city of Kunming last week, killing at least 29 people and injuring about 140.

China will work with the international community for political reconciliation in Afghanistan and support reconstruction, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a press briefing during an annual session of China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament.

“We will also work with Afghanistan and other neighbors to resolutely fight all terrorist forces,” he said.

China will host a foreign ministerial conference on Afghanistan in August to encourage “a move toward lasting peace”, Wang said.

Wang last month visited Afghanistan as U.S. and allied troops prepare to draw down their forces after more than 12 years of fighting Taliban extremists.

China has been stepping up its engagement with other regional players in recent months in Afghanistan, Beijing-based diplomats say, mainly out of concern that the NATO-led force’s pullout may spawn instability that could spill into Xinjiang.

Many Uighurs in the energy-rich region, which borders ex-Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, chafe at Chinese restrictions on their culture and religion. More than 100 people there have been killed in unrest in the past year, according to Chinese state media reports.

China bristles at suggestions from exiles and rights groups that the violence is driven more by unhappiness at government policies than by any serious threat from extremist groups who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.

Experts say militant ideology does in part fuel the unrest, but the level of organization has long been disputed

Hollywood blockbuster ‘Noah’ faces ban in Arab world

Three Arab countries have banned the Hollywood film “Noah” on religious grounds even before its worldwide premiere and several others are expected to follow suit, a representative of Paramount Pictures said on Saturday.

“Censors for Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) officially confirmed this week that the film will not release in their countries,” a representative of Paramount Pictures, which produced the $125 million film starring Oscar-winners Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins, said.

“The official statement they offered in confirming this news is because ‘it contradicts the teachings of Islam’,” the representative said, adding the studio expected a similar ban in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.

The film will premiere in the United States on March 28.

Noah, who in the Bible’s Book of Genesis built the ark that saved his family and many pairs of animals from a great flood, is revered by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Cairo’s Al-Azhar, the highest authority of Sunni Islam and a main center of Islamic teaching for over a millennium, issued a fatwa, or religious injunction, against the film on Thursday.

“Al-Azhar … renews its objection to any act depicting the messengers and prophets of God and the companions of the Prophet (Mohammad), peace be upon him,” it announced in a statement.

They “provoke the feelings of believers … and are forbidden in Islam and a clear violation of Islamic law,” the fatwa added.

Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ” on Jesus’s crucifixion was widely screened in the Arab World, despite a flurry of objections by Muslim clerics.

A 2012 Arab miniseries “Omar” on the exploits of a seventh century Muslim ruler and companion of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) also managed to defy clerics’ objections and air on a Gulf-based satellite television channel.

Japan’s Fukushima Anniversary: Thousands Demand End to Nuclear Power

TOKYO-

Banging on drums and waving “Sayonara nukes” signs, thousands of people rallied in a Tokyo park and marched to Parliament Sunday to demand an end to nuclear power ahead of the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster.

Participants at the demonstration, one of several planned across cities in Japan, said they would never forget the March 11, 2011, nuclear disaster, the worst since Chernobyl.

They also vowed to block a move by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to restart some of the 48 idled reactors and backpedal on the commitment by the previous government to aggressively reduce the nation’s reliance on nuclear power. Oil imports have soared since the disaster, hurting the economy.

Katsutoshi Sato, a retired railway worker at the rally, was holding a fishing pole with a picture of a fish dangling at the end to highlight his worries about radiation contaminating the rivers.

“The protests are growing,” he said, noting he was taking part in his third anti-nuclear demonstration. “All kinds of people are joining, including families with kids.”

Protests like Sunday’s have popped up across the nation over the last three years, as the usually docile and conformist Japanese begin to question the government’s assurances that nuclear power is safe.

The movement has also drawn celebrities like Ryuichi Sakamoto, who shared an Oscar for “The Last Emperor” score, and Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which exploded and underwent three core meltdowns, continues to spew radiation into the air and sea. Decommissioning is expected to take decades.

Robert Geller, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, said it was troubling that after three years there is no full explanation on what went wrong at Fukushima, and how to avoid a recurrence

One killed in accident at Indian nuclear submarine building yard

NEW DELHI-

One worker was killed and two injured in an accident at shipyard building a nuclear submarine in Visakhapatnam in southern India on Saturday evening, the third fatal navy related accident in a month.

The accident took place outside the submarine during testing of a pressure tank at the facility meant for development of submarines, the Defence Research and Development Organisation said in a statement on Sunday.

“The submarines are safe and the accident does not adversely affect the project. An inquiry has been ordered,” the statement added.

An Indian navy officer died on Friday from a gas leak during shipyard work on a new destroyer, just two weeks after a fatal submarine accident prompted the resignation of the country’s naval chief.

The latest fatal accident follows a dockside blast in Mumbai that killed all 18 aboard another submarine last August, raising concerns over India’s ageing fleet and crew training.

Clashes in northwest Yemen leave 30 dead, dozens injured: governor

SANAA-

At least 30 people were killed over two days of clashes between Shi’ite Muslim insurgents and Sunni Salafi tribesmen in Yemen’s northwestern al-Jawf province, the provincial governor said, as chaos reigns two years after mass protests ousted the country’s leader.

Shi’ite Houthi fighters are trying to strengthen their hold on the north – just one of the challenges facing an interim government also battling southern separatists, al Qaeda-linked militants and an economic crisis.

Strategically positioned next to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and to main shipping lanes, Yemen’s security situation is being closely watched by Gulf Arab states and Washington.

“The Presidential Commission intervened to stop the fighting after heavy losses on both sides amounted to 30 people dead and dozens injured,” al-Jawf governor Mohammed bin Aboud, told a local television channel in Yemen.

He said an agreement has been reached to stop the clashes between the two sides under the supervision of the Commission.

The Houthis, who control much of the northern Saada province bordering Saudi Arabia and next to al-Jawf, were trying to take the town of Dammaj from Salafis allied to the al-Ahmar clan. The Houthis say the Salafis are recruiting foreign fighters to attack them, an accusation they deny.

Fighting in the north escalated in October and there have been bursts of fighting since then. Last month at least 13 people were killed when Houthi fighters clashed with security fighters in northern Yemen.

U.S.-allied Yemen is struggling to stabilize a country that is home to one of al Qaeda’s most active branches.

Russia & Ukraine: warning shots fired to turn monitors back from Crimea

SEVASTOPOL-

Shots were fired in Crimea to warn off an unarmed international team of monitors and at a Ukrainian observation plane, as the standoff between occupying Russian forces and besieged Ukrainian troops intensified.

Russia’s seizure of the Black Sea peninsula, which began 10 days ago, has so far been bloodless, but its forces have become increasingly aggressive towards Ukrainian troops, who are trapped in bases and have offered no resistance.

President Vladimir Putin declared a week ago that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens, and his parliament has voted to change the law to make it easier to annex territory inhabited by Russian speakers.

Tempers have grown hotter in the last two days, since the region’s pro-Moscow leadership declared it part of Russia and announced a March 16 referendum to confirm it.

The worst face-off with Moscow since the Cold War has left the West scrambling for a response. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to Russia’s foreign minister for the fourth day in a row, told Sergei Lavrov that annexing Crimea “would close any available space for diplomacy,” a U.S. official said.

President Barack Obama spoke by phone to the leaders of France, Britain and Italy and three ex-Soviet Baltic states that have joined NATO. He assured Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which have their own ethnic Russian populations, that the Western military alliance would protect them if necessary.

A spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said no one was hurt when shots were fired to turn back its mission of more than 40 unarmed observers, who have been invited by Kiev but lack permission from Crimea’s pro-Russian authorities to cross the isthmus to the peninsula.

They had been turned back twice before, but this was the first time shots were fired.

Ukraine’s border guards said an unarmed observation plane took rifle fire flying 1,000 meters over the regional border.

Hackers targeted Kiev’s security council with a denial of service attack designed to cripple its computers, the council said. The national news agency was also hit. Russia used similar cyber tactics during its war against Georgia in 2008.

Crimea’s pro-Moscow authorities have ordered all remaining Ukrainian troop detachments in the province to disarm and surrender, but at several locations they have refused to yield.

Moscow denies that the Russian-speaking troops in Crimea are under its command, an assertion Washington dismisses as “Putin’s fiction”. Although they wear no insignia, the troops drive vehicles with Russian military plates.