Guy told the court that his only motive in filing the suit is to

Guy told the court that his only motive in filing the suit is "to prevent Louis Gottschalk from continuing to be victimised by these devious Nigerian scams".Dr Gottschalk has not commented on his son's legal action. But he and his lawyer accuse Guy in court papers of carrying on a "vendetta" against his father. A hearing has been set for 14 March for the new suit, filed with the Superior Court in Orange County, California.. The late Billy Wilder once said that the first nine rules of making movies were all the same: "Thou shalt not bore the audience." With days to go before the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is working overtime to teach Wilder's maxim to its award nominees in anticipation of their statuette-clutching moment in the limelight. Every year, the Academy begs Oscar winners - mostly in vain - not to spend their allotted minute thanking their armies of anonymous agents, lawyers and accountants, or hugging and kissing so many people on their way to the stage that they run out of time to say anything.. President Bush's slumping fortunes have taken another blow after the leak of a video in which he insists everything is under control ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina - even as he was being warned by officials in the starkest terms of the devastating potential of the storm. The video, along with transcripts of other meetings of federal and state officials just before and after the hurricane struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast last August, has emerged almost exactly six months after the storm.

He adds: "I realise that I was taken advantage of."Family members assert that Dr Gottschalk promised several years ago never to make the same mistake again but that he nonetheless continued his contacts with the Nigerians, wiring them additional sums even up until last autumn. In his own statements to the court, Dr Gottschalk now says he may have lost $900,000 through "bad investments". He shot to fame in 1987 when he revealed results of his own studies suggesting, for the first time, that President Reagan had begun losing his mental faculties as early as 1980.It was about a year after he first got sucked into the scheme and had already made his foreign trips that Dr Gottschalk first told his family he had lost about $300,000 The FBI concluded he had been the victim of fraud. But those who are always end up losing whatever they give away.

Today, common variants include e-mails suggesting recipients have won some obscure foreign lottery and others declaring that they are beneficiaries of a grant trust set up under the name of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.Dr Gottschalk is 89 years old and still works at the University of California, Irvine, in a medical plaza that bears his and his wife's names. The recipients are offered a slice of the cash if they help, but first they must wire money to cover alleged fees. They never see the money again.Experts in internet crime say only a tiny percentage of people are duped by these phony appeals. Usually they begin with an e-mail sent to millions of would-be victims from Nigeria, pleading for help in getting huge fortunes out of the country and in to a foreign bank account. Guy Gottschalk is asking the court to remove his father as the administrator of the family's $8m estate.The scams, named 419s after the Nigerian statute that outlaws fraud, are familiar to most internet users. Over a 10-year period, it alleged, he may have given away as much as $3m (about £1.7m). "While it seems unlikely, even ludicrous, that a highly educated doctor like him would fall prey to such an obvious con, that is exactly what happened," a lawyer for the son wrote in court papers. Louis Gottschalk, a prominent American psychologist and neuroscientist who earned world renown after studying the mental degeneration of the former president Ronald Reagan, has lost millions of dollars to a Nigerian internet scam, according to court papers filed in California by his son.

Dr Gottschalk was first hooked by the fraud more than 10 years ago, the suit said, and even travelled to Nigeria and Amsterdam for meetings with the shadowy figures involved, including one called "The General". Velvet revolutions have toppled Soviet-era regimes in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in recent years and Mr Lukashenko is clearly anxious not to be next on the list.He claimed that the Belarussian intelligence service had uncovered 72 radical organisations that had received "hundreds of millions" of dollars from the West to bring him down by falsifying election results.He showed a resolute face: "If we give up our country without a fight it won't just be our children who will curse us Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will remember it I will never allow this to happen.". He altered the constitution so he could stand for a third successive term. The former Soviet collective-farm boss is so confident of retaining control of the country of 10 million people that he has scarcely bothered to campaign.But yesterday he told the congress that the behind-the-scenes intrigues were taking a toll on his nerves and his health, that there was "enormous" pressure on the security forces, and that the West was agitating to overthrow him and topple what he described as "the last stronghold" between the West and Russia.He argued that Moscow would not allow his regime to be overthrown "without a fight". "The authorities have demonstrated their loutish behaviour and lack of respect for the law and human rights These elections have turned into a farce.

The authorities realise they can't win in a fair fight so have chosen to break the law and repress opponents."The violence foreshadows a fraught election in which the result appears to be a foregone conclusion - another win for Mr Lukashenko. He and three members of his nationalist Social Democratic Party were attacked, bundled into a van and taken to a nearby police station.Supporters who gathered outside to demand his release were given short shrift. Police fired warning shots into the air before launching a baton attack. Journalists observing the fracas were beaten up, and security forces opened fire on a car, puncturing a tyre and smashing a window.Mr Kozulin was charged with hooliganism before eventually being released.Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate, said the incident showed Mr Lukashenko was panicking. He was set upon by plain-clothes security agents outside a Communist-style party congress chaired by Mr Lukashenko in Minsk, the capital. Alexander Kozulin, one of three opposition candidates standing against the President, who has ruled Belarus for the past 12 years with a Soviet-style iron fist, was assaulted and jailed, and a further 60 opposition members were reported to have been rounded up. Mr Lukashenko is expected to win almost total support in the 19 March election that independent monitors fear will be little more than a charade of democracy.The crackdown took place as Mr Lukashenko accused "radical" opposition figures financed by the West of plotting to overthrow him in an orange revolution-style coup following the ballot.The fiery autocrat vowed to do everything in his power to prevent such a scenario, promising to "dismantle" the opposition after the elections.What happened to Mr Kozulin, a 50-year-old former university rector, appeared to be a warning to other opposition politicians.