LOS ANGELES: Deforest kelley, the actor who portrayed Dr Leonard `bones' Mccoy on the Star Trek television series and movies died on Friday. He was 79.

Kelley's Mccoy, along with William Shatner's Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy's Spock, was one of three leading characters in the 1966-1969 television series, which has run almost continuously in reruns for three decades and spawned several sequels, movies, and a cult following of fans known as `trekkies'.

Mccoy's curmudgeonly down-home character, emotional and compassionate, symbolised humanity in his frequent clashes and scepticism for the vulcan Spock's reliance on computers and logic.

World's dearest book

COLOGNE: A book on Australian photographer Helmut Newton will be the most expensive in the world, retailing at 1,510 Euros ($1,585) apiece, publishers Taschen-Verlag said.

Entitled Helmut Newton's Sumo, the book will contain 400 photographs on its 480 pages, some of them hitherto unpublished. Weighing 30kilos and measuring 20x28 inches, it has a production budget of 5.1 million Euros. The publisher said the aim of the volume was to pay tribute to the most influential, the most exciting and the most controversial photographer of the century.

Enclosed in a presentation sleeve designed by France's Philippe Starck, the book will have a run of 10,000 copies, each handbound, numbered and signed by Newton. The first 2,500 will be available by the end of the year, with the rest being published up to next April. Distribution will be strictly limited according to the country of sale.

Newton, 79, born in Berlin but of Australian nationality, is famous for his fashion photography and portraits of celebrities.

Online madam nabbed

LOS ANGELES: Police have nabbed a Hollywood madam who catered to the town's rich and famous via a sophisticated Internet operation that is an example of the kind of operation contributing to a huge rise in prostitution online.According to the Los Angeles Times on Friday, JodyDiane `Babydoll' Gibson moved into the illegal but lucrative trade after the arrest of notorious Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss six years ago, and dominated the niche with a client list that included well-known actors, producers, a Chief Executive Officer from a fortune 500 company and a professional athlete. Gibson ran a site on the World Wide Web called California Dreamin', with provocative photographs of more than 25 female models. ``All models available upon request,'' states the web site, which bills itself as a modeling agency with offices in New York and California.Gibson had a documented client list of well over 100 men who paid between $500 and $3,000 for the services of Gibson's prostitutes, police said.