LONDON, June 23:  ‘One Direction’ star Louis Tomlinson reportedly charges fans 250 pounds a selfie with him to raise funds for his football club.
The 22-year-old singer, who is the new owner of  the Yorkshire club, hopes the pre-match shots and other promotional gimmicks will boost funds by 123,500 pounds, reported Daily Mirror.
The boyband singer has teamed up with the club’s former chairman John Ryan to set up the Tomlinson Ryan Trust.
He is also apparently offering supporters the chance to be mascot for 200 pounds, take part in a half-time freekick challenge for 300 pounds and 12,000 pounds a match day VIP box. (PTI)

LONDON, June 23:  Wanted star Max George has revealed that he is still on good terms with former fiancee Michelle Keegan and would happily sing at her wedding to Mark Wright.
The 25-year-old singer, who was previously engaged to the former ‘Coronation Street’ actress, said they are friends now, reported Contactmusic.
“Ha! I don’t think so, although I am around. I’m not touring. I’m free if they want a wedding singer. I’d do it!” he said, when asked if he has been inivted to Keegan’s wedding.
The star was reported to have had an altercation with his former girlfriend when they both showed up at the same nightclub in Marbella, but he has rubbished the rumours, insisting they have no issues with each other.
“Nothing happened. It was a misunderstanding. We weren’t at the same place, it’s all got a bit out of hand. We’re all friends again,” he said. (PTI)

CAMBRIDGE (US), June 23:  A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who went missing more than a week ago in northern India has been found dead in a ravine after she reportedly slipped while jogging and fell several hundred feet off a cliff, MIT officials have said.
Kaitlin Goldstein, 28, of Providence, Rhode Island, was found dead Saturday in a remote region of northern India known as Ladakh, in a ravine below a trail where she went running on June 14. She hadn’t been seen since. Her parents, who went to India to look for their daughter, told MIT officials that she apparently slipped on some loose rock before falling off the cliff.
Goldstein, a competitive runner, was working on a doctorate in architecture at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She arrived in India on June 7 to take part in a workshop on energy and development on the campus of the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh near the city of Leh.
The workshop was organized by the MIT-affiliated Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. She had been scheduled to stay after the workshop and help install solar panels at a nearby Buddhist monastery, MIT officials said.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif sent an email to the members of the MIT community yesterday notifying them that Goldstein had died and that counselling services were available on campus.
“She was passionately interested in energy solutions for the developing world, a subject she was exploring in a remote region of northern India at the time of her death,” Reif wrote. “The death of someone so young and promising is a terrible loss; we should all take time to reach out to those around us.”
When Goldstein went missing, students and instructors at the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh began searching for her.
The search grew to include local police, the Intelligence Bureau of India, the American embassy in New Dehli, the US State Department and the FBI. MIT also hired a private security firm based in Mumbai.
Goldstein’s parents, Jack Goldstein and Jean Plover, went to India to search for their daughter. (AGENCIES)
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MUMBAI, June 23:  Shares of companies engaged in railways-related businesses today rallied on the back of a hike in passenger fares and freight rates to improve finances of Indian Railways.
Cash-strapped railways has increased passenger fares by over 14 per cent and the freight charges by over 6 per cent and the move is expected to result in additional revenue mop-up of Rs 8,000 crore. The hike would come into effect from June 25.
Reacting to the development, shares of Kalindee Rail Nirman rose by about 2 per cent to Rs 121.75, Texmaco Infrastructure by 3 per cent at Rs 39.65 and Texmaco Rail Engineers by over 3 per cent at to Rs 121 in morning trade on the BSE.
Titagarh Wagons also gained over 2 per cent to Rs 320.25, while Simplex Castings rallied nearly 5 per cent to Rs 53.3 and Container Corporation of India rose nearly 2 per cent to Rs 1179.95.
The rail stocks have also been in focus in recent days on expectations of FDI being allowed in certain railways-related businesses. The gains seen today in rail stocks was in sharp contrast to the overall sluggishness in the market. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, June 23:  Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier freed in a swap with the Afghan Taliban, has been released from a Texas medical center and is now in outpatient care, the US Army has said.
Bergdahl spent nearly five years in captivity at the hands of Taliban-linked Haqqani insurgents after he went missing from his post in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.
He was released on May 31 as part of a controversial swap with the Taliban and had been receiving treatment and counseling at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, since his return to the United States on June 13.
“Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s medical status has changed from inpatient care at Brooke Army Medical Center to continued reintegration and medical care as an outpatient on Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston,” a US Army statement said.
“His reintegration process continues with exposure to more people and a gradual increase of social interactions.”
The brief statement said Bergdahl was continuing to receive psychological counseling “to ensure he progresses to the point where he can return to duty.”
The Army did not provide details on Bergdahl’s whereabouts, saying it was refraining from sharing specifics about his location “in order to safeguard the reintegration process.”
Days after his return to the United States, the Army said it had launched an investigation into why Bergdahl went missing and was later captured.
The probe was announced amid persistent speculation that Bergdahl deserted his post in late June 2009, with some soldiers in his unit alleging he walked away alone.
Bergdahl has yet to speak to the news media about his ordeal. (AGENCIES)

BEIRUT, June 23:  Human Rights Watch today urged Syrian rebel groups to stop enlisting teenagers in their ranks and warned their foreign backers that they could be implicated in “war crimes”.
The New York-based rights watchdog accused rebels of using “children as young as 15 to fight in battles” as they try to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in a bloody conflict that has lasted more than three years.
Some rebel groups recruit teenagers “under the guise of offering education,” HRW said in the report published today.
Radical Islamists in Syria, including the powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) “have specifically recruited children through free schooling campaigns that include weapons training, and have given them dangerous tasks, including suicide bombing missions”.
The HRW report was based on the experiences of 25 child soldiers – some of whom are still fighting – who were involved in ISIL, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Islamic Front, Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front as well as Kurdish forces.
The children interviewed by HRW said they took part in combat, worked as snipers, manned checkpoints, spied, cared for the wounded, or carried munitions or other supplies to the front line.
Many said they had joined up to follow friends or family, while others said they enlisted after taking part in the peaceful demonstrations calling for political change that sparked the conflict in March 2011.
“Syrian armed groups shouldn’t prey on vulnerable children – who have seen their relatives killed, schools shelled, and communities destroyed – by enlisting them in their forces,” HRW’s Priyanka Motaparthy said.
“The horrors of Syria’s armed conflict are only made worse by throwing children into the front lines.”
The number of child soldiers fighting in the Syrian conflict is unknown, but the Violations Documentation Centre, a organisation close to the opposition, reported that 194 “non-civilian” children have been killed since September 2011.
HRW also urged countries supporting the uprising against Assad to press for an end to child recruitment.
“Governments supporting armed groups in Syria need to press these forces to end child recruitment and use of children in combat,” Motaparthy said.
“Anyone providing funding for sending children to war could be complicit in war crimes.”
A number said they had joined opposition groups after being personally mistreated by Assad’s security forces.
Some of the children interviewed by HRW said they had joined opposition groups after being mistreated by Assad’s security forces. (AGENCIES)

MITROVICA (Kosovo), June 23:  Kosovo police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse hundreds of ethnic Albanians upset because minority Serbs had reinforced a barricade in the center of the city of Mitrovica.
At least seven police officers were injured and five cars set ablaze by protesters yesterday, police spokesman Avni Zahiti said. Protesters had tried to break through police lines to reach the main bridge over the river that divides the city between the southern ethnic Albanian district and the predominantly Serb north.
“There was an attempt by the protesters to pass the police cordon placed here on the bridge,” Zahiti said. “The police were forced to use means at their disposal to manage a crowd that turned violent.” He said protesters were throwing bricks and rocks at the police.
The local police then called for assistance from the NATO-led peacekeeping force to contain the crowd, said Lt. Col. John Cogbill of Richmond, Virginia, and US armored vehicles blocked access to the bridge. The alliance leads a 5,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo.
US soldiers supported by German police in riot gear from the European Union’s rule of law mission then cordoned off the bridge.
The violence comes just days after Serbs reinforced an earthen barrier set up to block ethnic Albanians from crossing the bridge. Kosovo leaders quickly condemned the Serbs for a move seen as an attempt to deepen the division of Kosovo along ethnic lines.
Minority Serbs in the region have often clashed with the NATO peacekeepers, accusing them of supporting Kosovo’s 2008 secession from Serbia. But yesterday’s flare up was the first in more than four years in which ethnic Albanians rioted in Mitrovica.
Kosovo’s ethnic-Albanian government and Serbia are engaged in EU-led talks to overcome their differences. But despite some progress the two sides remain far apart.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The US and the majority of the 28 EU countries recognize the new state, but Serbia rejects Kosovo’s independence, as do many Serbs now living in Kosovo.
The NATO peacekeeping force came to Kosovo in 1999 after a three-month alliance bombing campaign pushed out Serb forces from the predominantly ethnic Albanian province. (AGENCIES)