BBC News with Jerry Smit.

The award-winning American actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead at his flat in New York. He was 46. The cause of his death is being investigated. Mr. Hoffman had previously suffered from drug problems. Beth Mcleod reports from Washington.

According to New York police, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in the bathroom of his apartment in Manhattan late on Sunday morning after a friend made an emergency call. A spokesman from the police department said that the 46-year-old died from an apparent drug overdose. Last year, Philip Seymour Hoffman told the celebrity news website TMZ that he'd completed a rehab course for substance abuse. He made his name as a character actor in films including "The Big Lebowski" and "Boogie Nights". He received 3 Academy Award nominations as best supporting actor and won the best actor Oscar in 2005 for his portrayal of the American author Truman Capote.

A leading Ukrainian opposition activist Dmytro Bulatov who says he was kidnapped and tortured during anti-government protests has been allowed to travel to Lithuania for medical treatment. Duncan Crawford reports from Ukraine.

The ordeal that Dmytro Bulatov has been through has made headlines around the world. He said he was kidnapped, beaten and tortured for 8 days. After being found last week, police travel to the hospital to question him, he was accused of organizing riots. The interior ministry also suggested that Mr. Bulatov's kidnapping might have been staged. A statement dismissed it as false by anti-government protesters. The Ukrainian authorities' handling of the case has sparked condemnation from Western governments.

Anti-government protesters in Thailand have disrupted voting in some constituencies in Bangkok and in the south of the country in a general election that was boycotted by the main opposition party. Officials said there was no voting at all in nine southern provinces where the opposition is strongest, but 89% of polling stations elsewhere operated normally. The Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told the BBC that the election was a sign that the people had chosen to address their differences in a peaceful way.

I think sometimes when we have the conflicts of different opinion. At least we can choose some side that people would like to see an election, would like to continue on the democratic process.

The election followed months of tension as opposition supporters try to bring down the government and replace it with an unelected council.

Police in Sri-Lanka say they have arrested a man in connection with the murder of a prominent female journalist. They said the suspect had been in possession of the journalist Mel Gunasekara's mobile phone. Officials believed the suspect stabbed her during a break-in after she recognized him as a laborer who had been hired over a month ago to paint her house. While working for the AFP news agency, she covered the Sri-Lankan civil war which ended in 2009.

World News from the BBC.

Voters in El Salvador have been casting their ballots to elect a new president. Correspondents say so far, the turnout has been patchy with queues at some polling stations while others remained half empty. The current Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren from the leftwing FMLN party is facing Norman Quijano, mayor of the capital San Salvador from the opposition Arena party. Neither is expected to win an outright majority.

The United Arab Emirates has summoned the Qatari ambassador to lodge a formal protest about sermons broadcast from Qatar by a well known Islamic preacher. The state news agency said the Qatari ambassador was told that his government should stop Yusuf al-Qaradawi from insulting the UAE. Sebastian Usher reports.

Shiekh al-Qaradawi has won fame with his weekly religious program on the TV station Al Jazeera which is financed by Qatar. He is both an influential and a controversial figure. He has strongly criticized the way in which Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the army last year as well as the subsequent outlaw of the Muslim Brotherhood. That issue has become a foot-line between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar backed Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. In contrast the UAE welcomed Mr. Morsi's fall and provided urgently needed finances to support the military backed government that replaced him.

The governor of the US State of New Jersey Christ Christie has responded angrily to accusations by a former ally that he was involved in a possible attempt to discredit a political opponent. David Wildstein said on Friday that he had evidence that Mr. Christie was lying when he denied knowing about the closure of lanes on a major road in a town of a Democratic opponent. The lane closures caused a 4-day traffic jam in September. Governor Christie sent an email to supporters, saying that his former ally Mr. Wildstein will do and say anything to save himself.

BBC News.