Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan announces new baby

NEW DELHI: Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan has confirmed that he's the father of a new baby amid feverish media speculation.

Talking to reporters at a news conference to promote the music from his latest film, Khan said late Wednesday that the news was "extremely personal."

There's been much speculation in Indian media over the last few weeks that Khan and his wife became parents to a baby boy via a surrogate and that the actor knew the baby's gender ahead of the birth — an act that is illegal in India to prevent the practice of aborting female fetuses due to a cultural preference for sons.

Khan did not give any details Wednesday and did not mention the baby's gender, but said he would share more publicly when the speculation settles down.

Khan said he wanted everyone, including government officials who are investigating whether he knew the baby's gender before the birth, to work with the same "alacrity in finding out and doing the enthusiastic investigation they are doing upon my baby upon other things which they should be lending their thoughts to right now."

"When the sad part gets over, I will share everything with you," Khan said.

Khan and his wife have two other children, a son and a daughter, both in their teens.

The 47-year-old actor is busy promoting his latest film, "Chennai Express," which is set to be released in August.

In 2011, actor Aamir Khan spoke openly about how he and his wife, filmmaker Kiran Rao, had struggled with fertility issues before they decided to have a baby using a gestational surrogate

Indian film 'Raanjhanaa' banned in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has banned an Indian film about the love affair of a Muslim-Hindu couple on the grounds that it could offend viewers in the conservative Islamic republic, officials said Friday.

"Raanjhanaa" was scheduled for release in June, but Pakistan's Film Censor Board refused to clear it for cinema showings.

"The censor board did not clear this movie because of its controversial story," Arshad Ali, a senior government official and chairman of the board, told AFP.

"The board recommended that the movie's storyline could offend the majority Muslim population in the country and a law and order situation could arise in response," he said.

According to press reports the film is the love story of a Hindu man and a Muslim woman.

While a huge array of Western and Bollywood films can be bought over the counter on pirated DVD in Pakistan, the censor board routinely bans productions deemed too sensitive for cinemas.

Pakistani movie distributors boycotted Hollywood film "Zero Dark Thirty" about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US troops in Pakistan on May 2, 2011 to the country's humiliating.

In 2012, Pakistan banned Agent Vinod, India's answer to James Bond in which an Indian secret agent thwarts Pakistani spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947.

In 2010, censors also refused permission for Indian film "Tere bin Laden", which poked fun at bin Laden. The board claimed it would incite suicide attacks.

Pakistan's own film industry declined in recent years, finding itself unable to compete with the huge popularity of Bollywood productions.