Testimony

Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend was urged to send her away for drug treatment but dismissed the advice, saying rehab "would kill her," the late model's onetime bodyguard testified Thursday. Smith overdosed on prescription medication months after a conversation recounted by bodyguard Maurice Brighthaupt at an ongoing preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to try Howard K. Stern and two physicians for illegally furnishing the Playboy playmate with sedatives, opiates and other drugs.

The father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter testified Friday that a physician told him the model's drug use was "under control" two years before her death from an overdose of prescription medication. Larry Birkhead said he believed the Playboy playmate was addicted to methadone and other painkillers, and told her internist, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, in a 2005 conversation that he feared she might be obtaining additional pills from other sources. Kapoor said, " 'I believe we have that under control now,' " Birkhead told a judge presiding over a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to charge Kapoor and two others with conspiracy to illegally furnish prescription medication to Smith.

A bicyclist testified Friday that a Brentwood doctor deliberately slammed on his car brakes in an effort to injure him and a companion last year as they rode down a narrow stretch of Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood. Christian Stoehr recalled hearing the engine noise of an approaching car and then an "angry honk" of a horn. When he and a fellow rider fell into single file to let the driver past, Stoehr testified that the motorist zoomed up alongside them, exchanged angry words and then pulled in front of them and hit his brakes.

A former Congolese child soldier recanted his testimony against an accused warlord in a landmark war crimes trial at The Hague. The witness, whose name and age were not released, was the first witness against Thomas Lubanga, who is charged with recruiting children younger than 15 and sending them into battle in the Ituri region of eastern Congo in 2002 and '03.

A New York judge ordered former Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain to testify about bonuses paid to Merrill employees before the company was sold to Bank of America Corp. New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo filed a motion in the state's Supreme Court asking that Thain be compelled to provide details on the bonuses, which he had declined to give during a deposition Thursday. Thain's attorney, Andrew Levander, later said that the motion was granted and Thain would answer the questions today.

Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford and one of his top executives have asserted their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in the federal government's fraud case against them and Stanford's companies, according to court documents. Stanford said he would "decline to testify, provide an accounting or produce any documents" related to the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil case, which accuses him of running a "massive Ponzi scheme."

Stephen Abraham, a Newport Beach lawyer and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, hardly seemed like whistle-blower material. A decorated intelligence officer, he served after 9/11 as lead counter-terrorism analyst at the Joint Intelligence Center at Pearl Harbor. He was a longtime Republican, a patriot devoted to protecting national security.

Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte and their former strength coach Brian McNamee were asked Friday to testify Jan. 16 before a congressional committee exploring performance-enhancing drug use in baseball. Former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, whose allegations were a central part of last month's report by former Sen. George Mitchell on doping in baseball, also was invited to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep.

A "blood diamond" expert offered the first testimony in the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor on Monday, and a Sierra Leone miner said in videotaped evidence that laughing rebels hacked off his hands and burned his family. The trial before the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try those behind the 1991-2002 civil war, resumed after a six-month adjournment that began in June when Taylor boycotted proceedings and fired his lawyer.

Testifying with the confidence and poise of the expert witness he once was, disgraced Los Angeles police Officer Ruben Palomares told a federal court jury Tuesday how he went from being an idealistic young officer who wanted to be a role model for troubled kids to a cynical and corrupt cop at the center of a home-invasion robbery ring. Dressed in a green prison jumpsuit, Palomares faced the jury, often arching his eyebrows or gesturing as best he could in handcuffs to help make his points.