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MUMBAI: Bollywood megastar Amitbah Bachchan says he couldn't bid for an Indian Premier League (IPL) team because he doesn't have "as much money as (Kolkata Knight Riders owner) Shah Rukh Khan"."I don't have as much money as Shah Rukh. He has money and so he owns a team," Amitabh said on a celebrity chat show.Amitabh sent a congratulatory SMS to skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his Padma Shri and didn't get a response. But he says he holds no grudge against the cricket star."He must have been busy, there's no need to make an issue out of this."The sexagenarian otherwise makes for an avid viewer of the IPL and says he watches "almost all the matches".

DAMASCUS: Syrian Foreign Minister Walidal-Moualem said resuming peace talks with Israel would be useless without a commitment by the Jewish state to withdraw from the Golan Heights. Responding cautiously to an Israeli offer to open the talks without preconditions, Moualem reiterated Syrian calls for an Israeli commitment to restore the Golan and described it as "not a precondition but a requirement for peace". "If Israel does not honour these requirements then there is no point of conducting useless negotiations," Moualem said. "Negotiations will be futile if there is no true Israeli will to make peace and no U.S. involvement. We will not go back to wasting time," he told Syrian state television.

MANILA: Twelve people were killed and 57 rescued after a ferry sank in waters south of the Philippine capital on Saturday, the coast guard said.The boat, the MV Commander 6, was carrying people from Batangas to a resort beach on the island of Mindoro when it was hit by large waves, which cracked its hull, causing the vessel to sink, the coast guard report said.Coast guard rescue vessels and private boats rushed to the scene to rescue the people. There were no immediate reports on whether any of the people onboard were still missing. The boat had only 42 people on its manifest, indicating that many people had boarded without being listed, coast guard officials said. Small, poorly-maintained ferries are the backbone of inter-island travel in this archipelagic country and many ferry owners resort to overloading their vessels, leading to frequent maritime mishaps.

LONDON: Veteran Hollywood actor Robert De Niro is celebrating the arrival of his grandson.De Niro’s son Raphael and Claudine DeMatos became proud parents of Nicholas De Niro at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center on May 2.According to the New York Post, the baby weighs seven pounds, 11 ounces.Meanwhile, the actor, who owns more than 20 restaurants around the world, has now set his sights on one of New York’s most famous restaurants - Central Park’s Tavern on the Green.The Oscar winner is a regular diner at the Tavern, which has appeared in movies such as ‘Wall Street’, ‘The Out-of-Towners’ and ‘Ghostbusters’ and is currently the second highest grossing restaurant in the U.S.

SEOUL: Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, embroiled in a broadening corruption scandal, jumped to his death while hiking in the mountains behind his rural southern home, his lawyer said. He was 62.Roh had been hiking in the village of Bongha on Saturday morning when he threw himself off a mountainside rock, lawyer Moon Jae-in told reporters. In a suicide note left for his family, Roh called life "difficult" and apologized for making "too many people suffer," a TV report said.Roh was rushed to a hospital in the nearby port city of Busan around 8:15 a.m. (2315 GMT) and died around 9:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) from head injuries, officials at Busan National University hospital said.The lawyer confirmed that Roh left a "brief" suicide note for his family. Investigators have not seen the note, a Busan police official said. He did not give his name, citing department policy.MBC television said the note asked that his body be cremated.The apparent suicide — the...

CHARLOTTE: Regulators on Friday shut down two more banks, boosting the number of federally insured bank failures this year to 36.The latest banks seized were Strategic Capital Bank and Citizens National bank, both in Illinois. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will continue to insure regular deposit accounts of up to $250,000 at both banks.The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's banking division took over Strategic Capital Bank, based in Champaign, Ill., while the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency took control of Citizens National Bank, based in Macomb, Ill. The FDIC was appointed receiver of both banks.The closures brought this week's total to three, after federal regulators seized struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB on Thursday. That closure was expected to cost the FDIC $4.9 billion, representing the second-largest hit to the FDIC's insurance fund since the financial crisis began felling banks last year.The costliest was last yea...

MUMBAI: Indian actor Sanjay Dutt after saying goodbye to politics has decided to focus fully on film-making.Reports said that Sanjay Dutt is giving his attention towards establishing his own production house.David Dhawan will reportedly be the director of the first film, being produced under his company banner. Sanjay Dutt and Ranbir Kapoor will play central roles in the movie. Shooting will begin next year.Sanjay is also playing an important role in a film ‘No Problem’, being produced by Anil Kapoor.