LOS ANGELES, Feb 14: Lady Gaga canceled the remainder of her “Born This Way Ball” concert tour to undergo hip surgery, promoters Live Nation said yesterday. The 26-year-old singer announced she was suffering from an inflammation of the joints on Tuesday, but the tour operator said Gaga’s injuries were more serious than she realized. (agencies)

LONDON, Feb 14: Singer Kelly Rowland was in floods of tears after an emotional birthday lunch with Destiny’s Child band mate Beyonce Knowles and her rapper husband Jay-Z.
The 32-year-old singing star wiped away her tears after coming out of the restaurant, reported Daily Mail.
Rowland recently gushed about getting to perform with the woman she sees as her sibling, after so long working apart.
“When I looked on the other side of the stage at the Super Bowl and I saw Beyonce and Michelle Williams, my heart just went into my throat. I was so happy. It was just such a beautiful moment,” she said.
“Now everybody’s asking about other things, if we’re gonna do other things. We’re like ‘No, we’re still doing our solo things. Michelle’s doing Fela! B’s about to start the Mrs Carter Tour. We’re just supporting each other. We had a moment for the Super Bowl,” she added. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, Feb 14: US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta today said the daring operation to kill Osama bin Laden at his Abbottabad safe house in Pakistan was very risky as the al- Qaeda chief’s presence there was not 100 per cent confirmed.
As Director of the CIA, Panetta played a leading role in the finding and killing of bin Laden. Subsequently he was made the Defense Secretary by President Barack Obama.
“What I saw… Was a very professional intelligence operation that was able to determine the location of the compound in Abbottabad,” Panetta told reporters in his final press conference as the Defense Secretary.
If confirmed by the Senate, he would be replaced by Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska Senator.
“I think despite all of the work that was done on the intelligence side… We were putting the bits and pieces together, we never had a hundred per cent confidence that it was bin Laden who was located there. So from the very beginning, it was always very risky because we didn’t know that in fact it was bin Laden,” he said.
“We continued to look at the intelligence. It seemed to all point to it being bin Laden, but very frankly, we did not have a hundred percent,” he said.
Panetta disclosed that during planning for the operation, there were a lot of different views that raised questions and concerns about whether or not the US should do this.
“I remained very confident that, with the information we had, the best information we’d had on bin Laden since Tora Bora, that it was important for us not to simply ignore what we had but to take action and to go in and determine whether or not it was him,” Panetta said. (PTI)

NEW YORK, Feb 14: ‘Pink Panther’ star Steve Martin has become a father for the first time at the age of 67.
The comedy legend and his wife, New Yorker writer Anne Stringfield, 41, had their first child in December but managed to keep the news under wraps, reported The New York Post.
“They have had a baby, and how they kept it a secret no one knows. Steve is very private. They are thrilled. They worked hard to have the baby,” a source said.
Martin is keeping mum on the news, even recently tweeting “Can’t stand ’em” to a fan who offered to bear his children (sic).
The couple married in a surprise ceremony in 2007, telling guests including Tom Hanks and Diane Keaton it was just a party.
Martin will no doubt be taking a different parenting approach than his father did toward him. In his bestselling memoir Born Standing Up, the actor and award-winning banjo player revealed his father’s relentlessly cruel, belittling treatment toward his shy son.
Martin was previously married to LA Story co-star Victoria Tennant. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, Feb 14: More US women are taking the “morning-after” pill, but generally just once, according to the government’s first report on how the emergency contraception drug has been used since regulators eased access to it in 2006.
About 11 per cent of sexually active women, or 5.8 million, used the pill between 2006 and 2010, compared to about 4 per cent in 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its report released today.
Among those who used the pill during those four years, 59 percent said they took it just once, while 24 percent said they used it twice, the report said. Seventeen percent said they used it three times or more.
Emergency contraception has been available by prescription in the United States since 1999. One version of the morning-after pill, known as Plan B, has stirred the most political controversy.
Plan B, much like regular birth control, stops pregnancy
By blocking the release of a woman’s egg, or it may prevent fertilization or implantation in the uterus. But it must be taken within days after intercourse to work.
The US Food and Drug Administration approved sales of Plan B to adult women without a prescription in 2006 after years of contentious debate. It later loosened the restriction to include 17-year-olds.
Women’s health groups lauded the move as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But conservatives warned it could lead to promiscuity, especially among youth, and more sexual assaults.
Amy Allina of the National Women’s Health Network said CDC’s findings show morning-after pills are not replacing conventional birth control methods for most women, although “there are some for whom it’s clearly not a one-time thing.”
Activists are still pressing for over-the-counter access
And no age restrictions.
The pill is sold by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd as Plan B. It also is available as a generic. In 2010 the FDA approved another emergency contraceptive called ella, a prescription drug now owned by Actavis Inc. (AGENCIES)

MOSCOW, Feb 14: A suicide bomber killed three policemen and injured another six at a police security checkpoint early today in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan, Russian agency RIA reported, citing information from the local Interior Ministry.
The suicide bomber detonated explosives in his automobile after police stopped the car on the outskirts of the city of Khasavyurt, agencies reported. One person is still unaccounted for.
Dagestan has become the epicentre of violence in an Islamist insurgency across the North Caucasus following two separatist wars in neighbouring Chechnya. (AGENCIES)

CANBERRA, Feb 14: Australia has blocked a visit by North Korean diplomats seeking to reopen an embassy in Canberra because of the reclusive state’s nuclear test this week, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said today.
North Korean officials had been due this weekend to look at possible embassy sites. Cash-strapped Pyongyang closed its mission in 2008 due to high costs.
North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of UN resolutions, drawing condemnation from around the world.
“We postponed the arrival of North Korean diplomats in Australia as a gesture following this detonation,” Carr told an oversight committee of parliament.
Australia, a close US ally, is one of few Western countries to have diplomatic ties with North Korea which opened a Canberra embassy in May 2002.
But Australia, a rotating U.N. Security Council member, has been strongly critical of the nuclear tests and has helped drive international calls for tougher sanctions.
Carr said Australia still planned to let North Korea reestablish a diplomatic presence in Canberra.
“We still adhere to the view that there’s value in having a North Korean diplomatic presence here,” Carr said. (AGENCIES)

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif, Feb 14: Sheriff’s deputies who believed they had cornered a fugitive ex-cop in the mountains above Los Angeles did not purposely torch a cabin where a nine-day manhunt ended, but the deputies may have ignited the blaze by firing tear gas, officials said.
Former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner, 33, was wanted in a killing spree targeting law enforcement officers that left four people dead. A man matching his description was surrounded inside a lodging nestled in the San Bernardino National Forest on Tuesday.
“We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out,” San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said at an afternoon press conference yesterday.
Investigators had not yet formally identified charred remains found in the burned-out structure, although they are believed to be those of Dorner.
“The suspect that we were following … Matched his description,” McMahon said. “Our coroner’s division is working on trying to confirm the identity through forensics and we should know that at some point here soon,” he said.
Dorner lost his job with the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 after a police board of inquiry found he lied in accusing a training officer of using excessive force against a homeless man. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has opened a review of that case.
Last Wednesday, Dorner was named as the prime suspect in
A double slaying that occurred the weekend before, about 40 miles (64 km) south of Los Angeles in Irvine. Police say he killed a university security officer and his fiancDee, the 28-year-old daughter of a retired LAPD captain who represented Dorner in disciplinary action that led to his termination.
The search intensified last Thursday after he was accused of killing a Riverside policeman and wounding another officer in an ambush about 100 km east of Los Angeles.
Law enforcement converged later that day in the San Bernardino Mountains after a pickup truck identified as Dorner’s was found abandoned and burning in the snow near the ski resort community of Big Bear Lake northeast of Los Angeles.
The ensuing manhunt, stretching from the desert north of
The mountains to the Mexican border, was described by Beck as the region’s most extensive ever.
It ended on Tuesday following a shootout at the cabin that saw the slaying of San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremiah MacKay, 35, a married father of two young children, and the wounding of another deputy.
During a lull in the firefight, the cabin caught fire and was quickly engulfed in flames. It remained unclear yesterday how the blaze began.
(AGENCIES)