LONDON, Apr 29: “Avatar” star Zoe Saldana says she is desperate to start a family after spending years waiting to become a mother with ex-fiance Keith Britton.
The 33-year-old, who was engaged to Britton, said she has always dreamed of a brood of kids, reported Daily Express.
“I want two or three or four or five. I don’t care. They’re so delicious and I love the pressure and anxiety of, like, a loud room full of yapping kids. I’m a kid myself, so I get along very well with animals and children. I dig them, I get them. They make perfect sense to me,” she said.
But Saldana said the timing was never right for her to get pregnant during her 11-year romance with Britton, which ended last year.
“I’m Latin, we start young… At 22, you’re like, ‘I’m getting an itch to hold something; I just wanna have a little critter.’
“I was dating my partner and you wanna be respectful… he wasn’t ready… And then when he got ready I didn’t have time. Making the decision to wait with him was one of the most mature things… Had I been, like, the traditional person that I really am, I would have been, ‘I’ll find somebody that can give me a baby…’ I’m glad that I respected him,” she said. (PTI)

LONDON, Apr 29: Reality TV star Kim Kardashian has dismissed rumours that the star has become embroiled in a nude pictures scandal online.
In leaked photos online, a dark-haired woman is seen standing in a kitchen naked while cracking eggs into a frying pan. It is said to be an old shot of Kardashian, Daily Mail reported.
However, the 31-year-old’s spokesperson is adamant it is not Kardashian in the pictures.
“It’s not her. You can totally tell. It looks nothing like her,” the representative said in a statement.
A number of stars, including Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis, have previously been caught out by hackers who have stolen personal photographs and posted them online. (PTI)

LONDON, Apr 29: Britain’s military has told residents of an upscale apartment development near the Olympic Park in east London it is installing a missile battery on top of a tower within their housing complex to defend the 2012 Games this summer.
The site is one of a number around the capital the army is considering as bases for surface-to-air missiles to protect the London games from an aerial attack, the Ministry of Defence said.
It is the first time such missiles have been deployed in London since the end of World War Two, shocking some residents at the Bow Quarter housing development, sited in a converted red-brick Victorian match factory.
‘There was no consultation, no one knocked on the door,’ Brian Whelan, a 28-year-old journalist, told Reuters. ‘You just wake up one morning, there’s a leaflet telling you they are going to put missiles on the  roof.’
The measure was excessive and had upset his girlfriend, he said. ‘I can’t imagine the circumstances that would require you to fire missiles over a highly populated area.’
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond first announced the plans in November, saying Britain would follow the precedent set by previous Olympics such as the Beijing games in 2008 where surface to air missiles were stationed a kilometre south of its showpiece stadiums.
The defence ministry said in a leaflet sent to occupants on Saturday it had chosen the former water tower in the Bow Quarter complex because it offered ‘an excellent view of the surrounding area and the entire sky above the Olympic Park.’
The tower was in fact ‘the only suitable site in this area for the HVM (High Velocity Missile) system,’ it  added.
The rooftop missile battery is one of a number of extraordinary measures Londoners can expect during the high-profile sporting festival, including restrictions on road lanes  for Olympic use and a security bill of more than a billion pounds.
($1.6 billion).
(AGENCIES)

BEIJING, Apr 29: China has dismissed Japan’s claim of UN backing for the extension of its continental shelf as “baseless”.
“The UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf has not announced its decision concerning the case of the outer limits of Japan’s continental shelf. I don’t know on what grounds did Japan make such a claim,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Liu Weimin said.
He was reacting to reports from Tokyo stating that Japanese government has welcomed the backing of the UN Commission for its claims to the extension of the Continental Shelf to the seabed north of the Okinotori atoll.
The international mainstream views do not support Japan’s claim, Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
China insists that according to the international law, the Okinotori atoll shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf, Liu said.
The Okinotori atoll, some 1,700 kilometers south of Tokyo, is only about 10 square meters above the sea at the flood-tide.
According to Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, rocks that cannot sustain human habitation or an economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf, the news agency report said. (PTI)

BEIJING, Apr 29: North Korea, a close ally of China, has permitted for the first time a tourist train from across the border to carry Chinese tourists to some of its scenic spots.
A tourist train in northeast China’s Jilin province went into service yesterday, offering trips between the city of Tumen and Chilbo Mountain in the neighbouring Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), state-run Xinhua news agency said.
A total of 65 Chinese tourists took the train into the DPRK (North Korea) for its first trip and will spend three days and four nights in the country, Zhao Renjie, deputy director of the Tumen Municipal Bureau of Foreign Affairs and Tourism was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
The group will visit Mount Chilbo and the city of Chongjin in Hamgyong, and hot spring spas in Kyongsong County during their stay, Zhao said.
The train, which will make one trip between the cities each week, went into service as part of Jilin’s efforts to promote cultural exchanges with the DPRK, the news agency added.
The province launched a one-day walking tour of Namyang in May 2008.
China decided to grant approved outbound destination status to the DPRK in September 2008. The first Chinese group toured the DPRK in 2010. (PTI)

MANILA, Apr 29: China is likely to be high on the agenda at top level US-Philippine security talks tomorrow as Washington refocuses its foreign policy on Asia and Manila realises its limits in trying to solve territorial disputes with Beijing alone.
China has maritime spats with several countries in the South China Sea, believed to be rich in oil and gas and crossed by important shipping lanes, and its neighbours fear its growing naval reach in staking claims.
Those disputes are pushing the Philippines to seek closer cooperation with the United States, which in turn has prompted China to warn Washington against getting involved, denouncing last week’s US-Philippine military drills as bringing the risk of armed conflict closer.
“I’m sure we need to be diplomatic, but I don’t think we should tip-toe around the Chinese on this,” said Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center with the conservative Washington-based Heritage Foundation think  tank.
“…There is nothing new about the US exercising with the Philippines.  We shouldn’t refrain because the Chinese don’t like it. In fact, I expect the (Washington meeting) will come up with some agreement on increasing the frequency and variety of exercises, ship visits. Also expect agreement on hardware, joint use of Philippines’ training facilities and bases.”
The talks also coincide with a potential new source of tension between Washington and Bejing after blind activist Chen Guangcheng was reported late last week to have sought US protection in the Chinese capital after an audacious escape from 19 months under house arrest.
Manila’s moves to strengthen security ties with its former colonial master coincide with the US foreign policy “pivot” towards Asia to concentrate on, among other things, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s military buildup.
Twenty years after the Philippines voted to remove American bases, it now wants to give US troops more access to its ports and airfields.
“We enjoy a really close military-to-military relationship with the Philippines and I think certainly coming out of this two plus two, we’ll be looking for ways to improve and enhance that relationship,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain John Kirby, referring to talks between the defence and foreign secretaries, the highest-level security talks yet between the two sides.
“But it is safe to say that … Our relationship with the Philippines is part and parcel of the larger shift to focus on the Asia-Pacific.”
A Philippine general familiar with the discussions to be held in Washington said the United States had a list of airfields in the Philippines that it could use for routine deployment of tankers, fighters and transport planes.
“These are not new bases for the Americans, these are still our facilities,” said the general who declined to be identified. “They are only asking us if we can share some of our idle space with them.”
Kirby said the United States wanted to continue “a rotational and training” relationship. “We’re certainly not looking … For permanent basing there.”
This is nevertheless a sensitive area for Philippine President Benigno Aquino, some of whose political advisers are uncomfortable with an expanding US role.
The US plan to use Philippine airports is not new. At the height of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the mid-2000s, Manila allowed U.S. Military planes to refuel at an airport in northernmost Batanes province, close to  Taiwan.
“We don’t want them back, they create noise when most of us are already asleep,” Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad said of US transport planes landing at night in Basco airport.
Abad is one of Aquino’s closest political advisers. Another political adviser told Reuters Aquino would not allow a de facto basing arrangement.
“That’s a violation of our constitution,” he said.
Philippine foreign and defence officials, however, will use the Washington talks to try to get US backing on its position in the South China Sea, invoking freedom of  navigation.
“I think we would want all nations, including the US, to make a judgment as to what is happening there (in the South China Sea) and what the implications are to their own security,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario has said.
A retired Philippine flag officer said Washington, which is shuffling and redeploying its forces around Asia, including in Japan and Australia, wanted to rebuild the “air bridge” between Northeast and Southeast Asia.
“They are trying to plug these holes when they left Clark in 1992,” he said, referring to a former US air base in the northern Philippines. “They need airfields more than ports because most of their tactical aircraft are based too far from potential hotspots in Southeast Asia.”
Richard Jacobson, of Pacific Strategies and Assessments, cautioned both sides against playing the China card, saying he did not see naval standoffs in the South China Sea as dramatic enough to improve US-Philippines relations.
“It appears more likely that any new strategic partnership will evolve gradually over time,” Jacobson told Reuters.
(AGENCIES)

SYDNEY, Apr 29: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard today moved to distance herself from growing anger at a series of government scandals, suspending a lawmaker accused of misusing funds, a week after the parliament Speaker stood down over a sexual harassment lawsuit.
The suspension of Craig Thomson from the ruling Labor Party was seen as unlikely to weaken Gillard’s already tenuous grip on power as he is expected to support the government as an independent.
The prime minister has been struggling after months of poor polls, which predict a landslide victory by opposition leader Tony Abbott in an election which must be held by next year at the latest.
Her government has relied on independents since a 2010 general election, which returned a hung parliament.
Gillard said the accusations against Thomson, coupled with the sexual harassment lawsuit against parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper, had shaken public confidence in  parliament.
“I believe a line has been crossed about respect for the parliament,” she told a media confidence, adding that Australians now saw “a dark cloud” over parliament.
Slipper denies allegations he sexually harassed a male staff member and misused taxi vouchers.
Thomson has been under investigation for almost four years for misusing funds from his time as a union official. He denies the allegations.
Veteran political commentator Malcom MacKerras said Gillard’s action was astute by saving the Labor Party from further embarrassment and help it see out its three-year term.
“I think that she has handled it extremely well,” MacKerras, of the Australian Catholic University, told Reuters.
But Gillard was still likely to lose the election, he  added.
(AGENCIES)

MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Apr 29: The Philippines says a Chinese government ship has made dangerous manoeuvres close to two Philippine coast guard vessels in a disputed shoal but that there was no collision.
Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez says the Philippine vessels were not provoked by the “bullying” of the Chinese ship yesterday at the Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines, where the two countries have been locked in a tense standoff since April 10.
Hernandez says the Chinese ship made two threatening passes near the Filipino vessels at about 20 knots, getting as close as 183 metres to one of the vessels before veering away and generating waves that lashed the two ships.
Hernandez said today that Manila would protest the Chinese ship’s act. (AGENCIES)

TOKYO, Apr 29: A bus carrying dozens of holidaymakers has crashed on a highway while heading for Tokyo Disneyland, killing seven passengers.
Police say the other 38 passengers and the 43-year-old driver were injured, 13 of them seriously, in the accident today morning on a highway in Gunma, north of Tokyo. The bus crashed into a roadside wall, with steel wall panels slicing its body in half.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Six of the dead were women in their 20s, and the seventh was a man in his 40s or 50s. Police were having difficulty identifying the mangled bodies.
The passengers were mostly holidaymakers heading for Tokyo Disneyland as Japan headed into this week’s “Golden Week” holidays. (AGENCIES)

VERACRUZ,  MEXICO, Apr 29: The body of a correspondent for leading Mexican newsmagazine Proceso was found inside her home in Veracruz state and authorities believe the journalist who often wrote about drug trafficking was murdered.
Regina Martinez’s body was found by police inside the bathroom of her home in the state capital, Xalapa, yesterday and there were signs of heavy “blows to her face and body,” the state’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
Authorities said initial evidence suggested she died of asphyxiation.
Martinez was the Xalapa correspondent for Proceso, one of Mexico’s oldest and most respected investigative newsmagazines, and she often wrote about drug cartels in the area.
Authorities provided no possible motive for her killing. But recently Veracruz has been plagued by cartel violence, some of it between the powerful Zetas and the so-called Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which is believed to be linked to the Sinaloa cartel. The coastal state is also on a human trafficking route north to the United States.
Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte has ordered an exhaustive investigation into her death, the statement said.
Police found Martinez’s body after receiving a tip from a neighbour that her house had been left open since early in the day.
In the past year, at least three journalists have been found dead in Veracruz, including Martinez.
In July 2011, a reporter on police matters with the newspaper Notiver, Yolando Ordaz de la Cruz, was found with her throat cut.
A month earlier, gunmen killed Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, a columnist and deputy editor with Notiver. He was shot together with his wife and one of his children.
Media watchdogs considered Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist.
There is disagreement on the number of journalist killings. Mexico’s national human rights commission says 74 were slain from 2000 to 2011. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 51 were killed in that time. (AGENCIES)