In brief: Amanda Knox goes on trial

Reporters and photographers were enclosed in a cage first built to contain terrorists when Amanda Knox (pictured), the American student accused of killing her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in November 2007, arrived for the start of her trial in Perugia, Italy, today. Prosecutors will claim that Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, killed Kercher after a group sex game turned violent. The judge denied a request from Kercher family lawyers to hold the case behind closed doors.......... Steven Spielberg, famous in Hollywood for not using his own money to back films, has had to fork out nearly $13m to help finance three new DreamWorks films after losing promised funding from the insurance giant AIG when it collapsed last year....... Otis Ferry, the hunting-obsessed son of rock star Bryan Ferry, was granted bail yesterday, allowing him to leave Gloucester Prison where he had been held on remand since September following an alleged assault on a hunt monitor and a subsequent claim that he perverted the course of justice…………. 1980s pop star Boy George has received a 16 month prison sentence for shackling Norwegian Audun Carlsen to a radiator at his London flat………… Actor Daniel Radcliffe had to change the name of the horse character Trojan in the Broadway version of Equus after successive audiences laughed at one of the play’s most tense moments – because Trojan is the name of an American condom brand.......... ·