LOS ANGELES, July 16:  Country singer Justin Moore and his wife Kate welcomed their third baby daughter together, a representative for Moore said.
The baby, born earlier this week, was named after her paternal great grandmother but she will go by her middle name, reported Ace Showbiz.
“We’re very excited to welcome Rebecca Klein Moore into the world. Both Mom and Klein are healthy,” the Moore family said in a statement.
The couple’s new daughter joins sisters Ella Kole, 4, and Kennedy Faye, two and half months.
“Her two older sisters helped with her first bath and are thrilled to have a little sister! We are blessed,” the ‘Small Town USA’ crooner said.
Although the couple did not try to find out the baby’s gender during the pregnancy, the singer had predicted that they would have another girl.
“I would want to know, but my wife wanted to wait and she wins most battles. I’ve got all girls as of right now. I am sure I will have another one,” Moore had said. (PTI)

LONDON, July 16:  Singer Kerry Katona wants to have more children with her fiance George Kay.
The former Atomic Kitten star, who has a three-month-old daughter with Kay, is keen to add more kids to her brood with her future husband, reported Contactmusic.
When asked if she wanted to have more children, Katona said, “Yeah. George would have another one.”
The 33-year-old singer, who suffers from bi-polar disorder, also admitted to being the “happiest she’s ever been” with Kay, whom she first got to know in her teens.
“He’s my best mate. We’ve known each other since we were 14. George asked me out when I was 17. In fact he asked me to marry him and I said no,” she said. (PTI)

LOS ANGELES, July 16:  Actress Jennifer Garner has revealed that dancing and swimming as a child has helped her keep in shape as it set her up for an active lifestyle.
The ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ star believes swimming competitively and ballet dancing as a youngster, reported Hello! magazine.
“I’ve always been active. When I was growing up I was a ballet dancer and I also swam competitively, so, although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was setting myself up for a lifetime of activity,” she said.
Garner, 42, who has three children, Violet, eight, Samuel, two, and Seraphina, five, with her actor husband Ben Affleck, is also grateful to her personal trainer, Valerie Waters, for helping her stay in shape.
“I have a wonderful personal trainer called Valerie Waters – she’s my sunrise sister because we watch the sun rise together and then she puts me through a workout. She’s wonderful because I always feel I’ve had a good workout with her but we also have a good chat along the way.” (PTI)

LONDON, July 16:  Cheryl Cole’s stepfather Anthony Leighton has revealed that only a small group of people were aware of her wedding plans.
The 31-year-old singer surprised fans by announcing that she had got married last week to boyfriend Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini after just three months of dating, reported Daily Mirror.
“I am over the moon for her. If she’s happy then I’m happy. It is a right surprise. She’s lovely and I am really happy for her.
“I found out through Facebook, she doesn’t bother with us much. She phones her sister and she phones her brother sometimes, but what we hear is just back and forward. This is a bit of a surprise for everyone. I’m pleased for her,” he said.
Cole’s mother married Leighton when she was 11. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, July 16:  The US has said Russia has not done much to de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine and is discussing further possible steps with its allies if Moscow did not meet their expectations.
“As a general matter, our allies share the view with the United States that Russia has not done as much as we would like to see them do to contribute to a de-escalation of that conflict (in Ukraine),” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday.
However, Earnest didn’t provide any clear cut information about the probable ‘timing or scope’ of sanction that the US wants to impose.
“It wouldn’t be particularly strategic for us to announce in advance possible timing or scope of a specific sanctions regime that’s being contemplated,” he said.
“But suffice it to say that conversations that are actively being held among the United States and our allies about the next step — and each day that goes by that Russia doesn’t take the kind of very specific steps that I’ve laid out here many times Russia is at greater risk of facing the kinds of economic costs that have been imposed on them in the past,” he added.
The United States has been working in very close coordination with its allies to impose sanctions on Russia for destabilizing actions along its border with Ukraine.
“We have also taken specific steps to isolate Russia, and there are a variety of measures that indicate those steps have had an impact, a negative impact on the Russian economy,” he said.
“We have signalled pretty clearly that additional steps may be imposed if Russia doesn’t take the kinds of steps that we have asked them to take.  Those steps include things like securing the border to ensure that heavy weapons and materiel can’t be transferred from the Russian side into the hands of pro-Russian separatists,” he said.
America has also asked the Russian President Vladimir Putin to coordinate with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in terms of a border-monitoring mechanism.
“We’ve also asked the Russians to support a road map for talks under the OSCE-mediated contact group.  And we’ve asked President Putin to use the influence that he has with Russian separatists to encourage them to lay down their weapons and abide by a cease-fire agreement, and allow this contact group to negotiate the kind of settlement that would deescalate the conflict that we’ve seen in that country,” he added.
“What we are primarily concerned about is the long-term impact that all of this is having on Ukraine, that ultimately we would like Ukraine to be a stable, peaceful, democratic country. And the more that Russia plays a destabilizing influence on Ukraine, it makes it harder for them to be secure both politically and economically,” he said.  (PTI)

LOS ANGELES, July 16:  Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and activist Jose Antonio Vargas, who revealed in 2011 that he is an undocumented immigrant, has been detained by US border patrol agents, inflaming an already fiery immigration debate.
Campaigners and leaders including the mayor of New York immediately called for the Philippine-born 33-year-old’s release from detention in a Texas border town, some urging President Barack Obama to intervene.
Vargas was in the southern US state to join other lobby groups “to stand in solidarity with and humanise the stories of the children and families fleeing the most dangerous regions of Central America,” the campaign group Define American said.
A high-profile campaigner for the rights of fellow immigrants, he was detained at the airport in McAllen yesterday, where he planned to board a flight to Los Angeles.
“This morning, Vargas attempted to board a plane to Los Angeles… Vargas did not make it through security at the airport,” said Ryan Eller, campaign director of Define American.
“Our understanding is that he is currently being questioned by border patrol,” he added in a statement.
“We are calling on President Obama and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Jeh) Johnson to exercise prosecutorial discretion and immediately release (Vargas) from Customs and Border Protection custody.”
Vargas, quoted in the statement, added: “Our America is better than this – more humane, more compassionate – and we are fighting for a better America: a country we love but has yet to recognise us.”
A spokesman for the US Customs and Border Protection agency, Joe Gutierrez, told AFP: “Yes, we have him in detention,” but declined to give further details.
Vargas, who was part of a Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, revealed in a 2011 New York Times magazine essay that he was undocumented.
He was 12 years old in 1993 when his young mother put him on a flight in Manila to be raised by his grandparents in California, in the hope he could live the American dream.
What happened since that Times essay is the subject of “Documented,” written, produced and directed by Vargas, which got its world premiere last June.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said border agents had made a mistake.
“I stand in solidarity with journalist and advocate Jose Antonio Vargas – an exemplary man whose tireless work has helped raise awareness around the lives of millions of undocumented immigrants living on American soil,” he said.
US authorities are currently dealing with a surge of unaccompanied and undocumented children coming over the country’s southern borders with Mexico. (AGENCIES)

UNITED NATIONS, July 16: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Ameerah Haq is stepping down as the UN undersecretary-general in charge of providing logistics and support for the more than 100,000 UN peacekeepers deployed around the world.
Ban expressed “tremendous gratitude” yesterday to Haq “for her outstanding service” during a 38-year UN career which has included a wide range of development, humanitarian and peacekeeping roles from East Timor to Sudan, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Laos.
Ban did not name a replacement, and neither he nor his UN spokesman gave a reason for Haq’s sudden departure.
Haq, who is from Bangladesh, was the top UN envoy in East Timor until she replaced Susana Malcorra a year ago as undersecretary-general for field support.  (AGENCIES)

UNITED NATIONS, July 16:  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging all countries to enforce an arms embargo, financial sanctions and travel bans against the Islamic State extremist group that has captured a vast stretch of territory in Iraq.
Ban says in a report to the UN Security Council, obtained yesterday by The Associated Press, that “terrorism must not be allowed to succeed in steering Iraq away from its path towards stability and democracy.”
The UN chief says reports of mass summary executions by the group are “extremely disturbing” and the use of water as a weapon to cause deliberate flooding and force people to flee “presents a dangerous trend.”
Ban urged Iraq’s leaders to unite behind a political process and form a new government “in the spirit of national unity and inclusiveness.” (AGENCIES)

LONDON, July 16:  Britain’s lower house of parliament has voted in favour of emergency legislation to allow police and security services to continue accessing Internet and mobile phone data following angry exchanges between lawmakers.
A group of 56 members of parliament yesterday confronted the three main parties, which had agreed to rush the new legislation into law, claiming the move was an abuse of parliament.
The bill, which will allow mobile networks and Internet providers to keep information on communications between people in case they are needed for investigations, was ultimately passed in the House of Commons by a large majority.
But it must still be approved in the upper chamber House of Lords, and has a sunset clause allowing it to be reviewed at six-month intervals.
Prime Minister David Cameron had argued that the emergency laws were necessary to protect national security, after the European Court of Justice threw out a law that forced companies to retain data for at least six months, saying it breached the right to privacy.
“Without these capabilities we run the risk that murderers will not get caught, terrorist plots will go undetected, drug traffickers will go unchallenged, child abusers will not be stopped and slave drivers will continue in these appalling trade in human beings,” Home Secretary Theresa May said during the debate.
The legislative process was sped up to rush the bill through the lower house in a single day — criticised by one opposition labour MP as “democratic banditry resonant of a rogue state.”
The government insists the bill does not increase existing surveillance powers, but merely ensures communications companies do not begin deleting data that might be needed in investigations.
Civil liberties campaigners have criticised the bill as intrusive, saying it could infringe privacy rights. (AGENCIES)