Ali Khan

She is known for portraying outgoing and expressive characters on-screen but actress Shraddha Kapoor says in real life she is a reserved person.

The 26-year-old actress made lukewarm debut with Amitabh Bachchan starrer “Teen Patti” in 2010 but she got fame two years back with her stint as a budding singer in “Aashiqui 2”, opposite rumoured boyfriend Aditya Roy Kapur.

Shraddha, however, feels fame has not changed her reserved self much and she becomes a bundle of nerves whenever she is in public eye.

The relationship between India and Pakistan is critical to advancing peace and stability in South Asia, the US has said and asked the two countries to take steps to reduce tensions.

“The relationship between India and Pakistan is critical to advancing peace and stability in South Asia, so we welcome any steps India and Pakistan can take to reduce tensions and move toward resuming dialogue,” State Department Spokesperson Jeff Rathke told reporters at his daily news conference.

India declared their first innings on the overnight score of 462 for six against Bangladesh on the fourth day in the rain-hit one-off Test here today.

Brief Scores:

India 1st Innings: 462/6 in 103.3 overs (Shikhar Dhawan 173, Murali Vijay 150, Ajinkya Rahane 98; Shakib Al Hasan 4- 105, Jubair Hossain 2-113).

A group of 21 pilgrims, including six children, were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in fell off a bridge here early today, while they were returning after visiting Tirupati Temple, police said.

The victims include nine women, six men and six children, they said, adding, a young boy survived the accident.

Citing preliminary information, a police official at the spot said, “a group of people were returning from Tirupati after visiting the temple. The vehicle driver appeared to have lost control and hit a wall of the bridge and fell off into Gaodavari River.”

126th birth anniversary celebration of founder of Salarjung Museum, Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan Bahadur, Prime Minister of Hyderabad state will begin on June 14.

Mr. Mohammed Mahmood Ali Deputy Chief Minister will inaugurate the celebration at Nawab Mir Turab Ali Khan Bhawan Western Block of the Museum. Khanwada Salarjung Nawab Ehteram Ali Khan member Salar Jung Museum Board will preside over.

Every year on the occasion of Independence Day some life convict prisoners are released including dreaded criminals accused in more serious crimes. In this connection human rights activities and organisations have to say that every year on the occasion of Independence Day majority of the life convicts who are released have political backing. But family of a prisoner in Hyderabad always has to suffer disappointment. We are talking about ex-constable Abdul Qadeer who is serving a life sentence at Cherlapally jail.

In a unique initiative to save girl child in Haryana, where the sex ratio has been dismally low, a village panchayat in Jind has started a contest for clicking “selfie with daughter”.

Bibipur village panchayat has launched the contest in which parents from across the state have to take selfies with their daughters and send it to village Sarpanch Sunil Jaglan through social messaging app Whatsapp.

The best three selfies would be awarded with trophies, certificates and cash prize, the village panchayat declared.

A rocket fired from Yemen killed one civilian and wounded another at a mosque during Friday prayers in the Saudi border region, the Saudi-led coalition said.

“They fired one missile, a Katyusha… At the time of Friday prayer,” Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, the coalition spokesman, told AFP.

Assiri initially said two people had died in the attack.

The incident came two days before Yemen’s exiled government and rebel forces are set to hold talks in Geneva sponsored by the United Nations in an effort to end the war that has killed more than 2,000 people.

Saudi lawyer Waleed Abu Al-Khair, who is defending a blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes in the Middle East country was today awarded the prestigious Ludovic Trarieux Prize for his work defending human rights, organisers said.

The annual legal award — one of the world’s oldest — is presented to lawyers who “through their work, activities or suffering defend the respect for human rights,” the prize’s founder Bertrand Favreau said from Amsterdam.

The best-known portrait of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach goes on public display for the first time in centuries today in his former home city after an odyssey sparked by the Nazis’ rise.

The 1748 oil painting by Elias Gottlob Haussmann shows the bewigged composer aged around 60 holding the score to one of his canons.

It will be unveiled in a ceremony at around 5:30 pm (1530 GMT) in the eastern city of Leipzig, accompanied by a choir.

“Bach is coming home!” announced the Leipzig Bach Archive in April.

UN-sponsored talks aimed at brokering a peace in Yemen will begin next week in Geneva, officials said today.

The talks had originally been due to start on Sunday, but the arrival of one of the Yemeni delegations has been delayed, said UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon will brief envoys from the Gulf Cooperation Council and the G16 group, comprising Security Council members and Western powers, on Sunday, before meeting Yemeni delegates the following morning.

Russia’s negotiator said today there has been a “very worrying” slowdown in progress in nuclear talks between Iran and six major powers ahead of a June 30 deadline to finalise a historic accord.

“The rate of progress… Is progressively slowing down,” Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by Russia’s RIA Novosti as saying as he arrived for the latest round of talks in Vienna.

“This is very worrying to us because there is very little time before the deadline and we urgently need to enter the final stage.”

Madras High Court has described multi-level marketing schemes as Pyramid schemes stated to be non-sustainable business model and asked the government to consider preventive measures so that people are not lured by such schemes.

“The state government may look into the issue from the perspective of not only prosecuting the offending parties, but taking preventive measures, including appropriate publicity, so that people are not lured by such schemes,” it said.

World oil prices rallied this week, supported by a drop in US stockpiles, while traders on the metals markets took their lead from movements in the dollar and Chinese data.

OIL: Crude futures rallied as data showed a much bigger than expected drop in US crude inventories, while OPEC said demand would pick up.

Oil prices had surged more than two dollars Tuesday on expectations that the US inventory data would reveal a drop,

Central Railway (CR) today said that it had installed rain water harvesting units at 50 locations in the last five years, and one at the busy Lokmanya Tilak Terminus here is expected to save Rs 1.44 crore a year.

“Notable among the installations is the one at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus which is a low-cost and no-maintenance RWH costing approximately Rs 10 lakh,” it said in a statement.

The system comprises a trench filled with crushed stones of various sizes.

Canada’s lawmakers and staff were warned today of an ongoing cyberattack targeting the country’s parliament, local media reported.

A government email published by the daily Ottawa Citizen said “private and public sector employees, including House of Commons employees, are currently being targeted by several cyberattacks.”

The security bulletin from the House of Commons chief information officer also said the attacks have so far resulted “in the theft of large volumes of personal data” and urged vigilance against hacking, warning against opening suspicious email links or attachments.

Two men were charged today with conspiring to help the Islamic State group by plotting with a Boston terror suspect to kill US citizens to support the objectives of the terrorist organisation.

Nicholas Rovinski, 24, was arrested yesterday. David Wright, 25, was arrested last week.

Both men are charged with conspiring with Usaama Rahim, 26, who was killed last week by terror investigators who had him under 24-hour surveillance.

Authorities say Rahim lunged at police with a military-style knife, but his family has questioned that account.

Some 400 million people worldwide lack access to essential health services, and the cost of healthcare is forcing many into poverty, the World Bank and World Health Organisation reported today.

A new report by the bank and WHO on tracking universal health care (UHC) coverage said more people than ever around the world, 80 percent, have access to key health services.

An investigation into the death of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold in a mysterious plane crash in southern Africa more than 50 years ago has come up with new information, a UN spokesman said today.

A three-member panel has presented its final report on the Swedish diplomat’s death to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who plans to make it public soon.

The federal trial of a north Alabama police officer accused of injuring an Indian man during a confrontation could become a battle of experts.

Court records show both prosecutors and the defence intend to present expert testimony in the trial of Eric Sloan Parker, set for September 1 in Huntsville.

Prosecutors plan to present testimony from Parker’s boss, police Chief Larry Muncey of Madison, a Huntsville suburb.

Standard & Poor’s said today it switched to negative the outlook on Britain’s top AAA credit rating due to the government’s decision to hold a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.

“We believe that the UK government’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership by 2017 indicates that economic policymaking could be at risk of being more exposed to party politics than we had previously anticipated,” the credit ratings agency said in a statement.

A car exploded today in a roundabout in the Swedish city of Goteborg, leaving several people seriously injured, police and rescue officials said.

Police said there were four or five people in the car when it exploded this afternoon in the district of Torslanda. The local rescue service could only say there were multiple injuries and possible fatalities.

The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.

The US House of Representatives sidetracked a high-profile White House-backed trade bill today, a humiliating defeat for President Barack Obama inflicted by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and dozens of rank-and-file lawmakers from his own party.

The 302-126 vote came a few hours after Obama journeyed to the Capitol to deliver a last-minute personal plea to fellow Democrats to support the measure, which would allow him to negotiate global trade deals, including one with 11 Asian nations near completion, that Congress could approve or reject but not change.

The Station House Officer of Faridabad police station Bhartender Singh, who was allegedly attacked by a group of men two days ago, was today sent to police lines after district income tax lawyers went on strike accusing the police official of falsely framing two of their members in the attack.

Two days ago, Singh was manhandled by a group of around 25 men in the police station when he tried to mediate a matter in the police station.

11 people, including Rajesh and Adesh, were arrested after additional force was called in to control the situation.

A civil rights leader who claims to be part African-American came under the glare of the US media Friday, after her parents said she was white and had lied about her ethnic identity.

With coils of dark hair and tawny skin, Rachel Dolezal, 37, looked the part as she built a career around a black racial identity.

She rose to become the president of the Spokane, Washington branch of the National Association for the Advancement Colored People (NAACP) and also served as an independent mediator for the Spokane police.