PEOPLE

AN INDIAN court yesterday ordered a stay against the auction of Mahatma Gandhi's papers, scheduled to be held in London this …

AN INDIAN court yesterday ordered a stay against the auction of Mahatma Gandhi's papers, scheduled to be held in London this month.

Many of the 450 pages in Gandhi's handwriting are in a cheap notebook and others were written on the backs of used envelopes.

The papers, now in London, reveal Gandhi's anxieties in the months before India gained independence in 1947 and his distress at the sectarian conflicts that erupted on partition.

A Manila court has rejected a petition by former first lady Imelda Marcos (67) requesting permission to go to the US for glaucoma treatment, ruling that Filipino eye doctors were as competent as Americans.

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The ruling was issued by an anti corruption court which in 1993 convicted Marcos of corruption and sentenced her to 18 years in jail.

Marcos, who is free on bail while appealing against the verdict, needs court permission to travel.

US actor Robert Downey Jun, who starred in Chaplin, has been sentenced to three years probation for drug and weapons possession.

Downey (31) was also sent to a rehabilitation centre for three months, ordered to do 100 hours of community work, pay a $250 fine and to submit to random drug and alcohol tests.

EastEnders actor Sid Owen is being sued for libel damages by the woman who brought him up after his mother died.

Dr Jac Kevorkian remained jailed yesterday following his arrest earlier in the day and was likely to face new charges for assisting in a woman's suicide in a small central Michigan town in August, his lawyer said.

Dr Kevorkian's attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, condemned the arrest as "despicable" and said it was political grandstanding by Ionia County Prosecutor Raymond Vote.