John Travolta and Kelly Preston arrived at court with a security escort

Hollywood actor John Travolta has given evidence during an extortion trial in the Bahamas.

Former senator Pleasant Bridgewater and medic Tarino Lightbourne are accused of demanding money from the star after his son died in the Bahamas in January.

They allegedly wanted $25m (£15m) in return for keeping secret a document relating to 16-year-old Jett’s treatment. The pair deny the charges.

Since the death of his son, the actor has rarely appeared in public.

Ms Bridgewater resigned her seat on the Bahamas senate after she was arrested in January. Mr Lightbourne was one of the paramedics who responded when Mr Travolta’s son was taken ill.

John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston arrived at Nassau Supreme Court on Wednesday with a large security escort.

Nannies

The court was told that Mr Travolta and Ms Preston had travelled to a resort on Grand Bahama with Jett and their eight-year-old daughter, Ella, accompanied by four nannies.

The actor began his testimony by recalling the moments before his son’s death.

He said he had been woken by one of the nannies pounding on his door and had run downstairs to find his son on the bathroom floor and one of the other nannies trying to resuscitate him.

Jett was John Travolta’s only son

Mr Travolta said he took over the resuscitation attempts helped by a visitor at the resort.

The actor told the court his son was autistic and suffered from seizures.

Earlier, police inspector Andrew Wells told the court that Mr Travolta had wanted his son flown to the US instead of the nearest Bahamian hospital.

He said Mr Lightbourne had wanted a signature on a statement confirming that Mr Travolta waived medical treatment for his son.

Mr Travolta said he was so intent on saving his son that he signed the medical liability release document - which is thought to be the subject of the alleged extortion - without reading it.

Bahamas prosecutor Bernard Turner testified on Tuesday that Mr Travolta had been threatened with the release of potentially damaging statements if money was not paid.

The case continues.

Magritte’s personal trademark was the bowler hat

A painting by surrealist Rene Magritte worth 750,000 euros (£675,000) has been stolen in broad daylight from a Belgian museum, curators say.

The 1948 nude entitled Olympia was stolen by two unidentified men, one of whom was armed, police said.

It was stolen from a gallery dedicated to Magritte’s life and work at his former home in northern Brussels.

Magritte died in 1967 and is recognised as one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century.

The painting depicts the surrealist’s wife, Georgette, lying on her back with a shell on her stomach.

It was part of a permanent exhibition in a house in Jette where the artist worked for nearly 24 years, and is separate from the city’s Magritte museum which opened in June.

Appointment only

The theft happened shortly after the museum opened on Thursday, officials said.

“Two people, one Asian-type, one speaking English and one French, broke in, armed with a gun,” Andre Garitte, the museum’s curator told AFP.

The thieves forced museum staff to lie down on the grass as the robbery took place and then fled, he added.

Two visitors were reportedly in the museum at the time of the robbery. No shots were fired and no injuries were reported.

Entry to the museum is by appointment only.

Magritte’s work has inspired pop and conceptual art, the cover of a Rolling Stones record, a video by Oasis, and songs by Paul Simon and John Cale.

He was influenced by popular art - from the slapstick of Laurel and Hardy to the detective novels of Dashiell Hammett - and started as a commercial artist, designing covers for sheet-music, posters and even wallpaper.

But in his paintings, he wanted to make people think about what he called “the mystery without which the world would not exist,” by showing familiar objects in shocking or dream-like surroundings.

Phillips sets out her claims in a memoir entitled High on Arrival

The daughter of John Phillips, leader of 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas, has claimed she had a 10-year sexual relationship with her late father.

Mackenzie Phillips, a former child TV star, alleges the consensual incest - disclosed in her recently published memoir - began in 1979 when she was 19.

Speaking on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she said the relationship was a “betrayal”.

Phillips’ claims have been disputed by Genevieve Waite, her father’s wife at the time of the alleged abuse.

In a statement read out by Winfrey, she said John Phillips was “incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child.”

Mackenzie Phillips starred in 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time and appeared in George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti.

The 49-year-old has a long history of drug abuse and was arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin last year.

‘Abuse of power’

In her book, entitled High on Arrival, she alleges she first had sexual intercourse with her father on the night before she was to be married to a member of the Rolling Stones’ entourage.

“I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father,” she writes.

Phillips claims the sexual relationship lasted a decade and ended when she became pregnant.

John Phillips (left) died of heart failure in 2001 at the age of 65

She was unsure who had fathered the child and claims to have had an abortion paid for by her father.

“I never let him touch me again,” she told Winfrey, calling the alleged incest “an abuse of power”.

But she said she forgave her father on his deathbed in 2001, describing him as “very tortured man”.

John Phillips married four times, having Mackenzie - his oldest daughter - with his first wife Susan Adams.

He formed the Mamas and the Papas with his second wife Michelle, whom he divorced in 1970.

In a statement, Michelle Phillips said her stepdaughter’s public disclosure was “an unfortunate circumstance” and “very hurtful for our entire family”.

One of the most popular bands of the 1960s, the Mamas and the Papas are best known for their hits California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday.

Mackenzie Phillips’ half-sister Chynna had pop success with 1990s group Wilson Phillips.

Conditions in the embassy are cramped and getting worse

The interim government of Honduras says it will suspend the curfew it imposed on Monday when ousted President Manuel Zelaya made a dramatic return home.

The authorities, under international pressure to reinstate Mr Zelaya, said the curfew would be lifted in the morning local time (1200GMT Thursday).

Hondurans flocked to the shops on Wednesday during a brief respite.

Mr Zelaya, sheltering in Brazil’s embassy, said several of his supporters died in clashes but gave no details.

Troops and police are surrounding the embassy building in the capital, Tegucigalpa, where Mr Zelaya has been residing with about 40 family members and supporters since staging a dramatic return from exile on Monday.

‘Food for a week’

Some of his supporters tried to march towards the embassy on Wednesday, when the curfew was lifted briefly, prompting riot police to fire tear gas.

A police spokesman confirmed to the BBC that one person had been killed in clashes.

Many other Hondurans used the respite to rush to the shops and petrol stations to stock up on supplies.

“We’re going to buy food for a week, because as things are, who knows how long this situation will last,” Fernando Alvarenga, a 21-year-old student, told BBC Mundo.

“This is too much, we can’t go on like this. I couldn’t work yesterday, so how am I going to feed my children,” said taxi driver Pedro Valladares.

As stores were besieged, the interim authorities made television announcements in Tegucigalpa saying there were enough supplies of food and petrol for two weeks.

The interim government, led by Roberto Micheletti, also announced it would suspend the curfew, from 0600 local time on Thursday.

This appears to be an attempt by the authorities to return to some kind of normality, but in reality the situation in Honduras has been far from normal since 28 June when Mr Zelaya was sent into exile, says BBC Mundo’s Arturo Wallace in Tegucigalpa.

Zelaya supporters took to the streets again on Wednesday

The political crisis erupted after Mr Zelaya tried to hold a non-binding public consultation to ask people whether they supported moves to change the constitution.

His opponents said the move was unconstitutional and was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, so paving the way for Mr Zelaya’s possible re-election. He has denied this.

The curfew is estimated to be costing Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the region, $50m a day.

Elections

The US, the European Union and the Organisation of American States have all urged dialogue to end the crisis.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used his address at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday to call for Mr Zelaya to be reinstated.

“The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil’s diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras,” said President Lula.

In another development, the UN has suspended any assistance for elections scheduled for 29 November.

A statement said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did not not believe conditions were right for “credible elections”.

The suspension is temporary, but a UN spokesperson gave no indication of when assistance might be resumed.

President Obama has set nuclear non-proliferation as a key policy

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for nuclear disarmament, in a session chaired by US President Barack Obama.

The resolution calls for further efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms, to boost disarmament, and to lower the risk of “nuclear terrorism”.

It was the first time US president had chaired a Security Council meeting.

The resolution comes amid growing concerns among world powers over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It also comes a day after Mr Obama’s debut UN speech, in which he warned of a nuclear arms race.

The resolution adopted on Thursday reaffirms the council’s commitment “to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons”, the Associated Press reported.

It does not specifically mention countries by name, such as North Korea and Iran, but reaffirms previous Security Council resolutions relating to their nuclear plans.

Iran’s nuclear programme has been criticised by the US and five nations who are set to hold talks next week.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful energy purposes, but others fear it is developing weapons.

Also on Thursday, a UN conference on a 1996 treaty banning nuclear bomb tests will begin with a speech by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Her appearance is the first US participation at the biannual conference since 1999 when the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty.

On Wednesday, the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Iran’s plans came under fire.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iranian leaders were “making a tragic mistake” if they thought the international community would not respond.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Iran - and North Korea - that the world would be even tougher on proliferation.

In his speech on Wednesday, President Obama said: “For decades, we averted disaster, even under the shadow of a super-power stand-off. But today, the threat of proliferation is growing in scope and complexity.

“If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Moscow might be prepared to soften its opposition to sanctions against Iran over its nuclear plans.

But the Chinese foreign ministry has said that increasing pressure on Iran would not be effective.

In his speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of countries which undermined the development of other nations under the pretext of preventing arms proliferation.

Mr Obama said he and Mr Medvedev shared the goal of allowing Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons.

Lada may be a well-known brand, but sales have dropped 40% this year

Russia’s largest carmaker, Avtovaz, is to cut up to 27,600 jobs as it tries to cope with the global slump in demand.

The job cuts are more than a quarter of the 102,000-strong workforce at Avtovaz, which makes Lada cars.

Reports had suggested that 36,000 job losses were considered, but the company said that it managed to “significantly lower the initial figure”.

Russia had the fastest growing car market in Europe until the financial crisis hit demand.

Overhaul

“Today, 102,000 people work at Avtovaz,” the carmaker said.

“Such a number cannot guarantee effective and profitable production, therefore we have agreed to reduce the personnel by 27,600 people.”

This includes 5,000 job cuts in “white collar” jobs announced last week, it said.

Of the workers being eliminated, Avtovaz said 13,000 employees would retire with pensions while another 5,500 would be forced to take early retirement.

The remaining 9,100 employees would leave the firm, but Avtovaz said 6,000 of those would have the option to work at the carmaker again in 2012.

Sales have dropped 40% this year as consumers, hard hit by the financial crisis, have shunned the carmaker.

Production freezes

Avtovaz, which is 25%-owned by French automaker Renault, had imposed month-long production freezes while it tried to reduce levels of its unsold stock.

No cars were built in August and the plant will work two weeks in four from September to February, which meant that the workers will have to survive for six months on half pay of $300 (£176) a month.

The decision led to large worker protests.

The carmaker was set up with Italy’s Fiat during the Soviet years.

It is a key employer in the southern city of Togliatti based by the Volga River, which has a population of 700,000.

In April, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

It was only after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stepped in with a 20bn ruble (£400m; $600m) rescue package that the company survived.

Yet the package did not cover even half of the 44bn rubles that Avtovaz owed to its creditors.

The airline had said it expected to make a heavy loss this year

Loss-making carrier Japan Airlines (JAL) has asked for a government bail-out to help it survive.

JAL president Haruka Nishimatsu made the requests after meeting Japan’s new transport minister. He also proposed a more drastic restructuring.

The airline recently announced plans to cut 6,800 jobs.

JAL’s shares had already tumbled 18% to a record low on rumours that it was seeking public money, or that it might seek to break up the company.

Tie-up hopes

“Ultimately, we think that the use of more funds will reduce our debts to the public,” Mr Nishimatsu said.

He made the comments to reporters after meeting Transport Minister Seiji Maehara, who took over the role after the Democratic Party took charge of the government.

Mr Nishimatsu plans to apply for public funds under the industrial revitalisation law.

The law means that companies need to obtain approval from the government to restructure. They can then apply for loans from banks, which are backed by the Japanese government’s wholly-owned Japan Finance Corp.

Media reports recently have said that several US and European airlines - including Air France-KLM, Delta Airlines and American Airlines - are in the running to take a stake in JAL and expand into Asia via code-sharing agreements.

Mr Nishimatsu said last week that he hoped JAL would have a deal in place with an international carrier by the middle of October.

Sector suffers

The airline industry as a whole has suffered in the global downturn, hit by a combination of falling passenger numbers and high oil prices.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata) has increased its forecast for losses across the whole industry to $11bn for 2009, from the $9bn it predicted earlier this month.

Airlines have already lost $6bn in the first half of the year alone, Iata said, with Asian airlines among the hardest hit.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Iata predicts airlines will report losses of $3.6bn for 2009.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has warned bankers that the party is over and they must realise that the world has changed.

He made the comments in a BBC interview before leaving for the G20 summit.

He wants a limit on bonuses and rules to allow banks to be able to get them back if bankers make losses later.

He said there was a limit to how much could be achieved by regulation and that bankers must realise that they have to change their behaviour.

The tragedy is that it wasn’t them [the bankers] that suffered it was everybody else because the world economy plunged into a recession Alistair Darling Chancellor of the Exchequer

He wants to use regulations to force banks to limit the proportion of their profits that they can give out in bonuses and make sure there are no rewards for failure.

The UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), is preparing to put such regulations in place.

“The key thing to get across to bankers is that for them the party has got to be over,” he said.

“We’ve got to get into a situation where they behave sensibly.

“After all, there are very few bankers in the world who would still be standing if it hadn’t been for the fact that taxpayers all over the world had to step in and save them last year.”

‘Almighty car crash’

He said that he agreed with the thrust of a speech by Lord Turner, the head of the FSA, who said on Tuesday that “radical change” was needed in the regulation of the banks that had “cooked up” the crisis.

“What’s the origin of this crisis? It’s frankly that banks started buying and selling products that they didn’t understand,” Mr Darling said.

“It’s hardly surprising then that there’s this almighty car crash. The tragedy is that it wasn’t them [the bankers] that suffered, it was everybody else because the world economy plunged into a recession.”

The chancellor has also unveiled a new policy that he wants to introduce at the meeting in Pittsburgh with a view to having it agreed at the G20 finance ministers’ summit in November.

At the summit in London it was agreed that there would be a blacklist of countries that were operating as tax havens.

Mr Darling’s idea is to also have a blacklist of countries that are regulatory havens where the rules and regulations companies have to follow are less onerous.

“People can set up in the Caribbean or South America, the regulators here can’t get the sort of information they want and that sort of secrecy leads to instability,” he said.

“I think we can get an agreement this weekend to outlaw that sort of activity.”

The rules he wants to introduce would allow sanctions to be taken against countries that do not have strong enough regulatory regimes.

The other part of the plan would be that there could be sanctions taken against UK-based companies that did business in blacklisted countries.

So, for example, if a British bank invested in an investment fund based in a blacklisted country, the regulator could penalise it by saying that it has to keep more of its cash in reserve.

Twitter content is user-generated

Medics posting messages on networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are breaching patient confidentiality, a leading journal reveals.

Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association found examples of web gossip by trainee doctors sharing private patient stories and details.

Over half of 78 US medical schools studied had reported cases of students posting unprofessional content online.

One in 10 of these contained frank violations of patient confidentiality.

Most were blogs, including one on Facebook, containing enough clinical detail that patients could potentially be identified.

‘Blue’ blogs

Many postings included profanity and discriminatory language.

Sexually suggestive material and photos showing drunkenness or illicit drug use were also commonplace.

While most incidents resulted in informal warnings, some were deemed serious enough to lead to dismissal from medical school.

But few of the medical schools had policies that covered online social networking and blogging.

The investigators, led by Dr Katherine Chretien of the Washington DC VA Medical Center, said medical students may not be aware of how online posting can reflect negatively on medical professionalism or jeopardise their careers.

Similarly, patient confidentiality breaches may be unintentional.

“Sharing patient stories that are de-identified and respectful, as health professionals might do on personal blogs, can encourage reflection, empathy and understanding.

“However, content may risk violation of patient privacy, even without using names or other identifiers,” they warned.

Also, the line separating freedom of speech and inappropriate postings can be unclear - for example, derisive comments about a student’s institution or profession might not be considered unprofessional by some, they said.

Dr Chretien’s team say medical students should be taught as part of their training about the risks associated with making postings on the Internet.

As a matter of course, students should be shown how to elect privacy settings on social networking sites and should be told to perform periodic Web searches of their own name to vet listed online content.

A spokesman for the British Medical Association said: “Patient confidentiality is paramount and medical students and doctors obviously need to be very careful about any information they post online.”

The UK’s regulator of doctors, the General Medical Council, does not have guidance that covers medics’ blogging.

But a spokeswoman advised doctors: “You must make sure that your conduct at all times justifies your patients’ trust in you and the public’s trust in the profession.”

Briatore and Ecclestone co-own Championship football club QPR

Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone says he thinks Flavio Briatore’s indefinite ban for race-fixing is too severe.

The ex-Renault boss was punished for his role in ordering Nelson Piquet to crash in 2008’s Singapore Grand Prix.

But Ecclestone, who was part of the hearing that dealt with the case, now feels the ban is harsh and has urged Briatore to appeal against it.

“On reflection it wasn’t necessary. It was too much. Definitely too much,” said the 78-year-old Ecclestone.

“I don’t think it was necessary, but I was on the commission so I’m probably just as guilty as anybody.”

Briatore’s nine-year association with Renault ended last week when he, alongside former executive director of engineering Pat Symonds, was implicated in orchestrating Piquet Jr’s crash in order to help team-mate Fernando Alonso win the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

At a subsequent hearing of the FIA, the sport’s governing body, the 59-year-old Italian was handed an indefinite ban from all FIA-sanctioned events, while Symonds was given a five-year suspension.

Renault were hit with a two-year suspended ban.

Now, with the dust beginning to settle on the scandal, Ecclestone has urged Briatore to appeal to the FIA but steer clear of any legal action.

“He should ask to be heard by the court of appeal. He should appeal to the FIA,” said Ecclestone

“If he goes to a civil court… the FIA would have to defend and somebody will say that he sent a young guy out to what could have been to his death. It wouldn’t go down too well, I wouldn’t think.”

Ecclestone and Briatore are friends as well as business partners, having bought Championship football side Queens Park Rangers, along with steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, in 2007.

And Ecclestone admitted his part in Briatore’s ban had affected their friendship.

“He’s not talking to me. He thinks I should have defended him, which I couldn’t,” said the billionaire.

“Honestly, I am a friend of Flavio’s. He has just handled the whole thing badly. He could have handled it in a completely different way… and that would have been the end of it.”

Briatore’s indefinite ban also impacts on the two drivers he manages, Mark Webber and Heikki Kovalainen.

The FIA has the power to withhold their superlicences, which are a mandatory requirement to participate in F1, unless they end their association with Briatore.

Meanwhile, Ecclestone has confirmed he was still working on a scheme to restore the United States Grand Prix to the schedule, two years after the last race at Indianapolis Speedway.

“We are getting there,” he said, admitting his preferred option remains a street race in Manhattan.

BBC Sport understands Ecclestone has already had one short, abortive talk with the New York authorities about the prospect of a race through the streets of the city.

Ecclestone also revealed that circuit bosses at Donington Park had been given an extended deadline to sort out the funding they need to hold next year’s British Grand Prix.

They had been told to have everything in place by the end of September, but the date has been moved to 3 October, with Silverstone waiting in the wings if Donington is not ready.