30 September 2010
Last updated at 12:49 ET

Tributes are being paid to Hollywood star Tony Curtis who has died at his US home in Nevada aged 85.

Sir Roger Moore, who worked with Curtis on 70′s TV series The Persuaders!, called him “a fine actor”.

He added: “He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humour and wonderful ad libs.”

Curtis’s daughter Jamie Lee Curtis praised her father saying he “leaves behind a legacy of great performances in movies and in his paintings”.

“He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him and a wife and in-laws who were devoted to him. He also leaves behind fans all over the world,” she added.

The Oscar-nominated actor, who starred in Some Like it Hot opposite Marilyn Monroe, passed away peacefully in bed, a family spokesman said.

The star received an Oscar nod in 1959 for The Defiant Ones, in which he starred with Sidney Poitier.

His career spanned six decades and he made more than 120 films including Trapeze, Spartacus and The Vikings.

‘Wonderfully indiscreet’

Clark County coroner Mike Murphy told the Associated Press that the actor died at 2125 local time on Wednesday.

Sir Michael Parkinson, who interviewed Curtis several times, said his performance in Some Like It Hot would live forever.

“Some Like It Hot is one of the greatest comedies of all time,” he said.

“Billy Wilder, did not suffer fools so for Tony Curtis to work with him and make that film shows just how good he was. He was an extraordinary man.

“Hollywood tried to make him into a sex symbol in the 1950s and 1960s but he was his own man. He was a great chatshow guest and was wonderfully indiscreet but he was very bright and did not take himself too seriously,” he added.

He is survived by his wife, Jill Vandenberg Curtis, and six children.

30 September 2010
Last updated at 12:35 ET

A court in India has said that a disputed holy site in Ayodhya should be split between Hindus and Muslims, but both sides plan to appeal.

In a majority verdict, judges gave control of the main disputed section, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus.

Other parts of the site will be controlled by Muslims and a Hindu sect.

The destruction of the mosque by Hindu extremists led to widespread rioting in which some 2,000 people died.

It was some of the worst religious violence since the partition of India in 1947.

Officials urged both sides to remain calm and respect the Allahabad High Court’s verdict.

Hindus claim the site of the Babri Masjid is the birthplace of their deity, Ram, and want to build a temple there.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appealed for calm. In a statement, he said: “My appeal to all sections of the people is to maintain peace and tranquility and to show respect for all religions and religious beliefs in the highest traditions of Indian culture.”

The court ruled that the site should be split, with the Muslim community getting control of a third, Hindus another third and the remainder going to a minority Hindu sect, Nirmohi Akhara, which was one of the early litigants in the case.

It said that the current status of the site should continue for the next three months to allow the land to be peacefully measured and divided.

The Hindus will keep the area where a small tent-shrine to Ram has been erected, lawyers said.

“The majority ruled that the location of the makeshift temple is the birthplace of Ram, and this spot cannot be shifted,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, a lawyer for one of the parties to the suit.

‘No-one’s victory’

Both Hindu and Muslim lawyers say they will appeal against the ruling in the 60-year-old case to the Supreme Court, which is likely to delay a final decision still further.

“We have to study the judgement in details,” said Zafaryab Jilani, lawyer for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

“It’s an 8,500-page order. The court has said a status quo will be maintained at the site for three months so we have time to appeal in the Supreme Court.”

He told the BBC: “We hope peace and tranquility will be maintained.”

The head of the right-wing Hindu group Rashtriya Samajsevak Sangh, Mohan Bhagwat, said: “It is no-one’s victory, no-one’s defeat.

“The temple for Lord Ram should be built; now everyone should work unitedly to ensure that the temple is built at the site.”

Nearly 200,000 security personnel were deployed across northern India to quell any unrest in the wake of the verdict.

However, there have been no reports of violence so far.

Some Muslims have given a cautious welcome to the judgement, suggesting it could begin a process of reconciliation, says the BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in Delhi.

Correspondents say the Ayodhya ruling could not have come at a worse time for the authorities – they already have their hands full dealing with security preparations for the Delhi Commonwealth Games which begin on Sunday.

However, the BBC’s Soutik Biswas in Delhi says the verdict is a test of India’s secular identity and much has changed in the country since the mosque was destroyed in 1992.

30 September 2010
Last updated at 12:15 ET

Nato in Afghanistan says its aircraft crossed into Pakistan and fired at suspected militants, in an attack Pakistan says killed three soldiers.

Nato said its aircraft killed “several armed individuals” as the crew believed they were being fired on.

Pakistan says the helicopter attacked a military checkpoint, and that it “strongly disapproves” of violation of its sovereignty.

It has blocked supply routes for US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

It is not clear whether the closure is in retaliation for the attack.

However, if it becomes permanent, the blockade of one of two important routes could lead to a major escalation in tensions between Pakistan and the United States.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said after the border attack on Thursday: “We will have to see whether we are allies or enemies.”

A Nato spokesman said US Gen David Petraeus, commander of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, had contacted Pakistani government officials to explain what had happened during the attack, why it happened and to pass on his condolences.

The spokesman, Brig Gen Josef Blotz, said the border closure was having “no impact” on the supply of goods and transport logistics.

‘Self-defence’

In a statement, Nato said that after striking what was believed to be an insurgent group “the aircraft received what the crews assessed as effective small-arms fire from individuals just across the border in Pakistan”.

“Operating in self-defence, the… aircraft entered into Pakistani airspace killing several armed individuals,” it said.

A Pakistani military spokesman told the Agence France-Presse news agency that troops fired at the helicopter “to indicate that the helicopters were crossing into our territory”. Three soldiers were killed and three were injured.

President Ali Asif Zardari said “any violation of internationally agreed principles is counter-productive and unacceptable”.

A queue of about 100 Nato vehicles was waiting to cross the border into Afghanistan earlier on Thursday.

However, local officials said the closure was carried out as a security measure to ensure Nato vehicles were not attacked by the Taliban in retaliation for the helicopter attack.

The route through the Khyber area supplies Kabul and is one of two key supply lines linking Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Another route – going though Quetta and Chaman to southern Afghanistan – remains open.

New pattern

Meanwhile at least five suspected militants have been killed in a suspected drone strike some 30km (18 miles) west of Miramshah, officials say.

There has been a major escalation in such strikes this year – with 64 in North Waziristan and six in South Waziristan.

The latest strikes have set a new pattern in the US-led “war on terror” in Pakistani tribal areas

Previously, drones have been carrying out strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the area, but it seems that coalition forces have now decided to start using the “hot-pursuit” option as well, says the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

Thursday’s strikes come after months of pressure from the Western coalition urging Pakistan to launch a clean-up operation against militant groups in its North Waziristan tribal area.

Pakistan has argued that this would be difficult because troops are already spread too thinly to open a new front against the militants, especially when many soldiers have been helping out with recent flood relief operations.

WILMINGTON, N.C. – Driving rain from a storm system moving up the East Coast brought flooding to parts of North Carolina on Thursday, caused soggy morning commutes in the Northeast and prompted worries of additional flooding as far north as Maine.

Tornado watches were issued from North Carolina to New Jersey.

In North Carolina, the nearly 21 inches collected in Wilmington since rain started falling Sunday topped Hurricane Floyd’s five-day mark of 19 inches set in 1999, the National Weather Service said.

In the eastern part of the state, officials evacuated about 70 people overnight from a mobile home community in Kinston because of high water, Roger Dail, director of emergency services in Lenoir County, said.

“The water’s still up,” Dail said. “I would suspect it’s going to be later today, maybe tomorrow, before the water goes out of there.”

In Carolina Beach, N.C., the rains caused a pond in the center of the town to overflow, filling nearby streets with water.

About a half-inch of water covered the floor in Jackie Woody’s home.

“It’s the worst it’s been in years,” he said.

Next door, Fran Casteen left her job as a manager at McDonald’s to come home and put sandbags in front of her house.

“I have to defend what’s mine,” she said. “I’ve been flooded out twice and the water is getting pretty dag-gone close.”

Farther north, parts of eastern Virginia were under flash flood warnings. The National Weather Service also issued a tornado watch for 33 eastern Virginia counties and 21 cities, including Richmond, Williamsburg, Arlington and the Hampton Roads area. Flash flood watches were also in effect for areas in Maryland, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

In Maryland, authorities said 26 people including high school students were hurt after a Metro bus rear-ended another bus from the Washington-area transit system in pouring rain. The Thursday morning accident came a day after a tour bus carrying DC sightseers plunged off a highway in another Maryland suburb, killing the driver and injuring more than a dozen people.

The 26 Metro bus injuries Thursday morning were not life threatening, Montgomery County fire department Assistant Chief Scott Graham said.

The weather also caused rail delays throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said there were scattered delays Thursday morning because of high water and tree limbs falling onto tracks.

In the Northeast, where abnormally dry weather had recently threatened brush fires and forced some states to issue drought warnings, the storms brought promise of relief even as authorities cautioned about possible flooding later Thursday in a swath from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine.

Nancy Furbush, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service on Long Island, N.Y., said the recent drier-than-normal conditions in the East would help keep larger rivers in New Jersey from flooding as quickly as they might otherwise, but that smaller rivers might flood more quickly. Whether they flood at all depends on how much rain falls and how quickly.

The storm system was good news to northern New England farmers who’ve endured a dry summer. At Abenaki Springs Farm in western New Hampshire, Erin Bickford was happy to see heavy rain falling on her eight acres of vegetables Thursday morning after months of dusty fields.

“We had almost no rain at all,” Bickford said. “Often, we could see it raining across the river, but it didn’t come here. It was just dust. Even if it did rain, it would be a tiny bit, maybe half an inch.”

Rain made for a messy morning commute but the heaviest of the storms had not reached Philadelphia and New York by the morning rush hour.

In southeastern North Carolina, about 9 inches of rain fell at the Sunny Point military terminal in Brunswick County between midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday, the National Weather Service in Wilmington reported.

Officials urged motorists not to drive through water that was washing over roads.

“Back during Floyd, we had a lot of people lose their lives that way,” Red Cross regional director Lynwood Roberson said.

The downpour came as a low pressure system from the west mixed with the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole. Nicole dissipated over the Straits of Florida on Wednesday and its remaining rainbands were expected to remain mainly offshore while tracking northward.

___

Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela in New York and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is not providing any financial assistance to the three suspended players in their legal battle against the International Cricket Council (ICC).

“The three have hired lawyers who are representing the players in their effort to get the suspensions removed and their names cleared in the spot-fixing allegations,” a PCB source said.

Mohammad Asif will be represented by a British lawyer, Elizabeth Robertson, while Salman Butt’s lawyers are Khalid Ranjha and Aftab Gul.

“Mohammad Aamer’s case is being fought by Shahid Karim who also represented Asif in his doping suspension case two years ago,” the source said.

Butt had earlier approached Pakistan’s top lawyer and a former Federal Minister, Aitzaz Ahsan to represent him but they couldn’t settle on a fee.

“Since the players have been told they have to pay the lawyers themselves, Butt couldn’t afford Ahsan’s fee,” the source said.

Karim said that his client (Aamer) is yet file a detailed reply to the ICC notice sent to him explaining the suspension.

“We had asked for an extension from the ICC to file the detailed reply and they have given us time until October 5. We are in the process of filing an appeal against the provisional suspension and also against the allegations made against Aamer,” Karim said.

The lawyer said that the ICC had, in its notice, said that Aamer had bowled two no-balls on purpose in the fourth Test against England at Lord’s, which amounted to fixing and betting under ICC’s Anti-Corruption Code of Conduct.

“We will file two appeals to the ICC, one against the suspension and one against the allegations,” Karim said.

Butt has already filed an appeal against his suspension while a board official said that Asif’s reply would be filed directly in London to the ICC.