It was Sidney Poitier's second nomination

England have

The acting profession's top award has gone to a black actor for the first time. Sidney Poitier won the best actor Oscar for his role in Lilies of the Field.

In the film, released last year, he played construction worker Homer Smith whom a group of nuns believe was sent to them by God to build their church.

The only other black person to win an Oscar was the best supporting actress award given to Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for her role in Gone with the Wind.

Alongside 'Rat Pack' actor Sammy Davis Jnr and, earlier, Paul Robeson, Poitier is one of only a handful of black men to gain recognition in Hollywood for roles not involving singing or dancing.

It has been a long journey to this moment

Sidney Poitier

It was the second time he had been in the running for an Oscar after losing out in 1959 when he was nominated for his part in The Defiant Ones.

"It has been a long journey to this moment," the actor said after he was presented with the prized statuette by actress Ann Bancroft.

Sidney Poitier's early life seemed unlikely tospawna Hollywood star.

He grew up in poverty in the Bahamas in the Caribbean where his father was a tomato farmer.

In his first months in New York he was so poor he slept in the toilets of a bus station.

He was hampered in his efforts to break into acting by his strong Bahamian accent and was initially rejected by the American Negro Theatre.

His first film was No Way Out alongside Richard Widmark in 1950 in which he played a doctor.

But his big breakthrough came five years later in The Blackboard Jungle.

His roles have been a big move away from the stereotypical dim-witted Negro characters made famous in the 1930s and 1940s by Stepin Fetchit.

Villagers said Israeli soldiers fired without provocation

Thirty people were also reported to have been injured in clashes in Nahalin, a village of 4,500 inhabitants to the south of Jerusalem.

Villagers said they had been verbally abused and harassed by members of the border police for several days.

Israel has recently started to replace army troops- stationed on the West Bank to quell the Palestinian uprising - with specially trained police units.

They contain a large number of non-Muslim Arabs - known as Druses - and Palestinians complain they are more brutal than the Israelis.

Last night members of the border police carried out a surprise search of Nahalin.

They returned with soldiers early this morning at around 0330 and carried out searches of several homes.

Villagers claimed troops and police opened fire without provocation as they were leaving morning prayers at themosque.

Inquiry

But the commander of the Israeli forces on the West Bank said troops had come under attack from about 100 stone-throwing youths.

General Amram Mitzna told reporters: "The company was violently attacked by youths from the village, and they responded.

"They fired tear gas and rubber bullets and, when their lives were in danger, live ammunition."

General Mitzna said the police and soldiers had entered the village to arrest people who persistently stoned the cars of Jewish settlers.

The army has ordered an inquiry into events.

The incident at Nahalin is one of the bloodiest so far in the 17 months of the uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

The two territories, home to approximately 1.7 million Palestinians, were captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

spawn:to give rise to, produce(产生，引起)

mosque: a Moslem house of worship(清真寺)