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At least one of the girls held captive in a Cleveland house for a decade was chained to the wall 'like some kind of trophy', it was revealed today, after police confirmed that ropes and chains were found in the hall of the house. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are believed to have been kept in multiple rooms of the house at 2207 Seymour Avenue where chains, tape and other bondage devices were found. Cleveland's police chief says the three women were often restrained and allowed out into the back yard occasionally. Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said...

Yolanda Araujo stood at the front of a crowd of marchers today in downtown Los Angeles carrying a cardboard sign bearing the words "Resident Alien" and having a large cutaway for her own face, as if the card was her own she herself was an immigrant who had received legal status. In Spanish, Araujo declared she was marching to send a message to President Barack Obama, who has called for legislation that would allow many of the estimated 11 million immigrants who have entered the country illegally the possibility of acquiring citizenship Making her declaration, Araujo stood in front of...

Seven people are recovering from injuries after violence erupted at the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach police are investigating three shootings, a stabbing, several robberies, an assault and an argument in which two people were injured by a thrown bottle. Police say all the incidents occurred between late Saturday and early Sunday morning. None of the victims’ injuries was life-threatening. No additional details were available Sunday.

Hundreds of families have signed up to join a new community dubbed the Citadel, an armed and 'defensible' fortress city where their freedoms and liberty will be fiercely protected. Organisers have outlined plans for a community of 3,500 to 7,000 families of 'patriotic' Americans in western Idaho and more than 200 have already signed up through their website. The group has already purchased 20 acres in the area where they intend to build arms factory which will be used to fund the project.

In a remote fishing town on the tip of Scotland's Black Isle, the last native speaker of the Cromarty dialect has died, taking with him another little piece of the English linguistic mosaic. Scottish academics said Wednesday that Bobby Hogg, who passed away last week at age 92, was the last person fluent in the dialect once common in the seaside town of Cromarty, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) north of Scottish capital Edinburgh. The Biblically-influenced speech — complete with "thee" and "thou" — is one of many fading dialects which have been snuffed out across the British Isles.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes... the morning after. Inna Shamis, of Manalapan, N.J., says she wanted to do something a little different to remember her March wedding. So she hired photographers Michelle Jonne and Manny Cabo to take pictures of her and her new husband, Daniel, to recreate the intimate moments that happened the morning after the wedding. "I think that they're extremely sexy and if there's any time in my life or my husband's life to do these pictures it's now, why not," Shamis said. The so-called morning after photo shoot shows the pair getting undressed,...

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Three police officers were injured during a clash with protesters in downtown Los Angeles during the monthly Art Walk on Thursday, officials said. The officers were taken to a local hospital to be treated for minor injuries. Two were released, but one remained hospitalized Friday morning. The trouble started just before 9 p.m. when a crowd started filling the area around Fifth and Spring streets. Among the group were Occupy Los Angeles protesters, who were in downtown for a "Free Chalk for Free Speech" event to show support for people previously arrested for chalking on...

Luka Rocco Magnotta, the 29-year-old sought by Montreal police in connection with a suspected homicide linked to the mailing of body parts to political offices, is a self-described model and adult film actor with a sprawling online presence. He is wanted on charges of first-degree murder and performing an indignity to a human body. Police issued a Canada-wide warrant for Magnotta on May 30, but say he flew out of Trudeau airport in Montreal on May 26 to an undisclosed foreign destination. Police are not ruling out that he may have returned to Canada under an alias. Originally from Toronto,...

Nothing in Monte Carlo is understated, from the baubles to the yachts to the bank accounts. Now add traffic pile-ups to that list. The Hope Diamond of fender benders unfolded yesterday in possibly the most conspicuous stretch of asphalt in the .75-square-mile principality — the round-about in front of the James Bond-worthy casino — when three blondes in a jelly-bean blue Bentley Azure ($363,000) scraped the rear of a white Mercedes-Benz S-Class (a paltry $91,000). And that was merely the appetizer Served up for the main course were a hapless black Ferrari F430 ($186,000), which was hit nose-first by the...

Authorities say a woman drove around with a mummified corpse for about ten months before the body was discovered by police. Officers made the gruesome discovery on Monday while responding to a report of an illegally parked car. Police say the woman tried to cover the remains with pieces of clothing. The car was blocking a driveway in the 2000 block of Tustin Avenue in Costa Mesa. Officers could smell a foul odor coming from the car, and after seeing a leg underneath the clothing, broke a window to get access inside. Inside the car, officers also found a box...

UPDATE: Law enforcement sources tell us ... the unruly passenger had an anxiety attack during the flight and that's what caused the ruckus. Upon landing she was taken to a local hospital. TMZ has learned ... JetBlue flight attendants have just subdued a passenger who went nuts on a flight from Boston to Santo Domingo.

KADAPA: In a shocking incident, a man sold his six-year-old daughter in an open auction in Kadapa district on Wednesday in his desperation to buy liquor. Krishnaiah, 40, a daily wage labourer, of Lakkireddypalle in Rayachoti constituency sold his daughter to one Mohd Basha for Rs 1,000 in Ramapuram. With the news spreading like wild fire, police entered the scene and rescued the girl. It all started when Krishnaiah, a drunkard, went to a liquor shop in the morning but the shop owner denied him liquor since he has incurred a heavy debt. In dire need, the man took his...

A frustrated JetBlue flight attendant allegedly fled his plane via emergency chute -- beer in hand -- after getting into a fight with a passenger and then cursing out the entire cabin over a loudspeaker. The JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after noon. As the plane was taxiing to the gate, one of the passengers apparently got out of his seat to grab a bag from an overhead compartment. The flight attendant walked over to tell him he had to sit down. The two reportedly got into an argument and somehow...

A Round Lake Park woman was held in contempt and jailed because a judge found a message on her T-shirt offensive. Associate Judge Helen Rozenberg held Jennifer LaPenta, who was attending a hearing in a friend's case, in contempt of court for wearing a T-shirt that read: "I have the p----, so I make the rules." The judge asked LaPenta, 19, if she thought her shirt was appropriate. LaPenta said she told the judge that it would have been inappropriate if she had been the defendant. "They should be out looking for people who are breaking the law, not arresting...

Carly A. Houston was taken to the Naperville police station over the weekend, after she allegedly became embroiled in a heated, early morning dispute with a taxicab driver. A police officer dutifully supplied the 29-year-old Chicago woman with a telephone, instructing her she could make one call to find a relative or friend who could come to the station to post her bail. Instead, Houston used her call to dial 911, which immediately connected her to Naperville police dispatchers. She pleaded for help, complaining she was "trapped inside the detention facility," police said Monday. Which, in turn, earned her another...

The president of natural gas firm Sequent Energy Management, was hanging out on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with coworkers around 2 a.m. last Friday morning. He hasn't been seen since. Schantz, who lives in Houston, went to New Orleans last week to present a donation from his company to Tulane University and to visit his daughter, a student there. He and his colleagues went out on Bourbon Street Thursday night. According to news reports, he was last seen at Club Razzoo at two o'clock in the morning. Now his company and his family are looking for him, along with...

An animal rights group has called for Knut the polar bear, who shot to global stardom as a cub in 2007, to be castrated to avoid incest with his cousin. The three-year-old darling of Berlin Zoo was given a female companion, Giovanna, last year but the German chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) warned against their mating. The group's zoo expert, Frank Albrecht, noted that Knut and Giovanna, known as Gianna for short, had the same grandfather. Any offspring would threaten the genetic diversity of the polar bear population in Germany and risk exposing the bear...

Faye Miller, a 51-year-old mother of two, discovered she was not her husband’s only wife after going to therapy, according to reports by the Detroit Free Press . At her therapist’s suggestion, Miller began to examine her marriage to Kenneth Mitchell, 48, a successful podiatrist in the metro Detroit area. Through Google searches and phone records, she uncovered that her husband of 10 years was already married to a California woman in 1999. And in 2003, he married another fellow podiatrist in Quebec. Court documents reveal that Mitchell believed he was divorced from his wife in California, Daphne Mitchell, and...

POMONA, Calif. (AP) ― Police said four men have been arrested after being found sleeping in a California garage stacked with stolen property. Pomona police Lt. Alex Rilloraza says officers discovered the suspects Friday while investigating the robbery of electronics from a nearby home. They followed messy footprints from the ransacked home down an alley to a garage. There, officers said, they found the burglary suspects asleep amidst piles of stolen goods. Rilloraza says some of the stolen items were in the suspects' pockets. The house next to the garage was believed to be the home of at least one...

Barack Obama does not have Angelina Jolie's seal of approval. "She hates him," a source close to the U.N. goodwill ambassador, 34, tells the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now). She's into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts. She thinks Obama is really a socialist in disguise," adds the source. But don't expect to see the Salt actress rally against Democrats on Fox News like her staunch Republican father, Jon Voight. "Angie isn't Republican, but she thinks Obama is all smoke and mirrors," the source says.

One might argue that Angelenos are by nature always in costume, but the pressure of outward appearance is never greater than on Halloween. Although many have been crafting their costumes since July, others among us will scramble around the house with mere hours to spare, trying to piece together something passable. In the event that you've procrastinated -- or are barely making the rent -- here are some free, last-minute get-ups that will, if nothing else, get you past a "costumes mandatory" policy. Lady Gaga Although pop star-fashion maniac Lady Gaga has a reputation for nonsensical outfits involving everything from...

For more than two hours on a dark Saturday night, as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was allegedly gang raped and beaten outside a high school homecoming dance, authorities said. As hundreds of students gathered in the school gym, outside in a dimly lit alley where the victim was allegedly raped, police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed. "As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN. The witnesses failed to report...

Last night on Jay Leno's new show, Chris Rock put on blast some of the attitudes surrounding director Roman Polanski, ripping into the rhetorical dances being done around what Polanski actually did - which was rape a thirteen year old. The conversation around Roman Polanski has been a hard one to follow. Part of it is annoyance - it is unnerving to see how certain celebrities fall under scrutiny for consorting with minors and others can make it seem like an unfortunate lapse in judgment. Jill at Feministe points out how many actors seem to feel that this is just...

<p>Does being an 'artist' trump being a rapist?" asks Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood. According to 138 people in the film industry who signed a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from Swiss custody, yep!</p> <p>And they're joined by another group of writers and artists Bernard-Henri Lévy is rounding up! On his roster: Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert, Mike Nichols, Diane von Furstenberg, and Paul Auster, among others. As for the other petition (launched by French film industry association SACD), in addition to the signatories posted at The Wrap last night (Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Monica Bellucci, Stephen Frears, Tilda Swinton?!?), new big-name rape apologists are signing on all the time! Today, we can add Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and — wait for it — Woody Allen to the list.</p>

FORT WORTH, Texas - Police in Fort Worth are searching for an exotic dancer after she apparently zapped a co-worker with a stun gun. Cops have been looking for Kathleen Bennett since Saturday night's run-in with a waitress at a joint called the Cabaret North. Bennett was apparently fired by the club's manager and went off on the waitress, Jennifer McReynolds. That's when McReynolds says she was shocked by the device -- in the face. "She was arguing with our waitress before and we warned her about the argument, to calm down. And we were just gonna have her leave...

Courtney Love is still floating on the charm offensive that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez launched at Wednesday's screening of Oliver Stone's new documentary, "South of the Border." The singer, who came dressed to thrill in a short zipper-front skirt, says she noticed the twice-divorced Chavez checking her out during a Q&A afterward. "It was the third wink that sold me," Mrs. Kurt Cobain told us. "He's a sexy dawg. He invited me to visit his country and I'd like to go. I'll rock Caracas!" The ebullient, espresso-sipping Chavez also had smooches and smiles for Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Shia LaBeouf...

Gordon Brown and other political leaders scheduled to speak in a tight schedule were forced to wait in the wings as the famously eccentric Col Gaddafi delivered a sustained rant against the UN Security Council that ran to an hour and 36 minutes. The Libyan leader has not visited the UN since he took power in 1969 and clearly wanted to make up for it by giving his views on the past four decades of history. He called for a UN inquiry into the investigation of John F Kennedy's assassination, castigated the organisation for failing to stop 65 wars since...

Robin Katz is a "sexy 25-year-old financial planner working at Chase's Midtown headquarters," according to the New York Post, who allegedly ripped off a client to the tune of $110,000 so she could spend it "shopping" and "going out." Katz is a graduate of Smith College, and to judge by her Facebook friends—who hail from Yale, Harvard, Wellesley, Princeton, the Phillips Exeter Academy, etc.—she is pretty firmly ensconced in the ranks of America's elite youth. She certainly seemed pedigreed and trustworthy enough for her clients to entrust her with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mistake! Because she is also a...

TMZ has learned "Three's Company" star Joyce DeWitt was arrested for DUI on July 4th in El Segundo, California. Law enforcement sources tell us DeWitt drove past a barricade Saturday afternoon -- and when an officer approached her, she smelled like booze. She was given field sobriety tests and then arrested for suspicion of DUI. The 60-year-old actress, who played Janet Wood on the 80's sitcom, posted bail for $5,000.

American Poultry Queen Oprah Winfrey gave the commencement address to the starry-eyed, chickenless graduates of Duke University yesterday. Her message to them: I really love my private jet! "It's great to have a nice home. It's great to have nice homes! It's great to have a nice home that just escaped the fire in Santa Barbara," she told the students. "It's great to have a private jet. Anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isn't great is lying to you."

Perhaps Victoria Principal thinks she's gone from Dallas to Dynasty, because she may have pulled quite the Alexis Carrington. The erstwhile Pamela Ewing is the target of an assault lawsuit brought by a former maid who claims Principal pulled a gun on her after she took too long walking the actress' dog one evening. According to the complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, before she allegedly brandished a firearm, Principal fired housekeeper Maribel Banegas and told her to leave after accusing her of staying away from the house for too long with the pooch. Principal then went upstairs,...

France has a law against depicting smoking in advertising — so to avoid prosecution, the company that sells ads on Parisian public transportation banned a poster featuring Audrey Tautou as Coco Chanel holding a cigarette. Never mind that Chanel herself smoked up to 50 clopes a day. The company, Metrobus, demanded that the poster above be replaced with this more anodyne shot of Tautou and the male lead, Alessandro Nivola. Metrobus also airbrushed a film still of legendary French comedian Jacques Tati in Mon Oncle, which originally featured Tati smoking a pipe while riding a bicycle. (The still serves as...

The aging Wilshire Grand hotel and adjoining offices in downtown Los Angeles would be demolished and replaced with a $1-billion hotel, office and retail complex under a plan by one of South Korea's largest business conglomerates. The proposal is unexpected at a time when builders are backing away from big projects, and when the market for office space and condominiums has softened considerably because of the recession. At 1.8 million square feet, the project is also a testament to the rising clout of L.A.'s Korean community, the largest outside of Seoul. "This will be an icon of the Korean community...

A Tampa Bay middle school teacher has resigned after officials say she was drunk at school. Kylene Nelson, a language arts teacher at Rushe Middle School in Land O'Lakes, faced dismissal over last week's incident. In a letter to the district, she said her last day would be April 21, the date of the next school board meeting. The 42-year-old reportedly forced students to dance with her before being removed from class. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office says Nelson later ran from campus and passed out at a nearby recreation center. Authorities say her blood-alcohol level was more than three...

CNN) -- There's something about being naked that makes a person forget a layoff, pay cut or a shrunken retirement account. At least that's how the promoters of nude travel see it. The economic recession is "doing us a lot of favors, maybe because there's the idea that if you've lost the shirt off your back, you should go nude," said Erich Schuttauf, executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation. He added: "You go to a [nudist resort] and when you take off all your clothes, all the cues that tie you to the workaday world -- the...

Reporting from Phoenix -- In broad daylight one January afternoon, on a street of ranch-style houses with kidney-shaped swimming pools, Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was kidnapped in front of his wife, daughter and three neighbors. Two men with a gun grabbed the 34-year-old from his van and dragged him 50 yards to a waiting SUV. His wife threw rocks at the car, then gave chase in her own SUV. Neighbors in northwest Phoenix called police. Yet when police found her later, she at first denied there was a problem.

Don't expect all the usual trimmings on the Hollywood party circuit this holiday season. Showbiz party planners have begun to scale back soirees as part of industrywide belt-tightening. Several congloms have cancelled their holiday bashes, while others are simply toning down the revelry. After-preem bashes are also being reassessed in this economy. "It would be foolish if we weren't taking a look at it," one studio exec said. However, scaling back preem parties is especially tricky for studios, which are bowing their biggest awards contenders in coming weeks. Number crunchers may not feel like celebrating right now, but studio execs...

March 11, 2008 -- Cheers erupted on trading floors around the city yesterday as word spread of the stunning downfall of Gov. Spitzer - who spent most of his term as attorney general torturing Wall Street with his witch hunt for financial wrongdoing. An employee of a major investment bank, who requested anonymity, said the company chef had been instructed to break out bottles of champagne so that the staff could party and swap jokes about "client No. 9." Meanwhile, at another giant firm, Merrill Lynch, "everyone broke into cheering on the trading floor," an employee said. Merrill got socked...

A Manhattan millionaire had a devil of a time selling his Upper West Side apartment after his real-estate broker trashed it in a "satanic" frenzy, court papers claim. Daniel Farash said he returned home to his three-bedroom apartment on West 79th Street after a weekend away to discover many of his mattresses had been urinated on, his belongings broken and laid out in strange patterns - and his broker naked and chanting in a closet. "I was ambushed. She came out of that closet like a lunatic. She was naked holding my mother's vase in one hand and a towel...

Passengers traveling on a train from Basel, Switzerland, to Dusseldorf, Germany, unexpectedly learned the answer to that age-old question, "What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?" The news flash came compliments of a drunken Scotsman, who lifted his kilt in the packed dining car. "I have to say we were all a bit amused," said a Dusseldorf police spokesman after the sloshed gent was removed from the train. "The man did not assault or grossly offend anyone, apart from showing everyone what Scotsmen wear under their kilt - namely, nothing at all." **** A frustrated dad in Whitehaven, England,...

PRINCE William will have an amazing array of security at Sandhurst — including crack Gurkha soldiers AND royal protection officers. They are part of a £2million ring of steel thrown around the future heir as he arrived yesterday to join brother Harry for training at the military academy. Top brass ordered the unprecedented security alert after The Sun told how a reporter was able to wander unchecked on to the base with a fake bomb. Security alert ... our expose They are determined to ensure the Berkshire centre is secure as it makes history by simultaneously hosting the second and...

According to this movie, nothing says holiday entertainment like incest jokes. Aniston plays Sarah, an irritating, crabby New Yorker who, on a visit home to Pasadena with her fiancé (Mark Ruffalo) to attend her sister's wedding, learns that her tough-broad grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) may have been the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate." Supposedly Pasadena tongues have been wagging about this forever, and MacLaine's character is a gossipy lush who can't keep a secret for more than one glass of bourbon — yet we're supposed to believe Sarah would not have heard this story for more than 30 years....

Roses are red but florists are blue now that the strike is threatening to destroy their business. "We're down 80 percent," said Alexander Barbagianis. "This is supposed to be our busiest time of the year." Barbagianis, who co-owns Ariston Flower Shop in Union Square with his brother Thomas, said his profits started seriously wilting the first day of the strike. "We'd normally make up to $5,000 a day during the holidays," he said. "Yesterday we did less than $2,000." He gazed out at his nearly idle shop and said dismally, "God knows how much we'll do today." It's not just...

A soldier just home from Iraq sprang into action yesterday when a busy Brooklyn street suddenly turned into a battlefield — and didn't even realize he'd been wounded as he worked to save two casualties of a gang shooting. Louis Olander, 22, a sergeant with the battle-hardened "Fighting 69th" New York National Guard unit, was in the right place at the wrong time when a violent dispute over turf broke out at 3 p.m. in front of a shoe store at Nostrand and Flatbush avenues, sources said. Olander had been walking with a friend, Luke Palus, 20, when bullets started...

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — For 40 exhausting minutes, Wayne Goldsberry battled a buck with his bare hands in his daughter's bedroom. Goldsberry finally subdued the five-point whitetail deer that crashed through a bedroom window at his daughter's home Friday. When it was over, blood splattered the walls and the deer lay dead on the floor, its neck broken. Goldsberry was at his daughter's home when he heard glass breaking. He went back to check on the noise and found the deer. "I was standing about like this peeking around the corner when the deer came out of the bedroom," said Goldsberry....

Hugh Hefner is pushing 80, and he's sired four children - one of whom, Christie, runs Playboy Enterprises - but he sounds ready to spawn again. "Holly and I have talked about that," Hef told me yesterday as he held forth in his trademark red velvet smoking jacket in a bedroom at the Peninsula Hotel. "I wouldn't reject it out of hand. I certainly think it's possible." As for grownups David and Christie, from Hef's first marriage, and teenagers Marston and Cooper, from his second, they won't be consulted. "It's not a committee decision," Hef said. Holly is 25-year-old Holly...

French anti-fur activists said they struck Anna Wintour, editor of the U.S. edition of Vogue, in the face with a cream pie on Saturday to protest against her support for the use of animal fur by the fashion industry. Wintour, dressed in a fur-trimmed black jacket, was hit in the face with a tofu cream pie as she left the Chloe fashion ready-to-wear show at the Tuileries Gardens in central Paris, members of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said. It was the second such attack this year on Wintour, an unapologetic fur supporter decried by...

They aren't exactly Thelma and Louise, but senior citizens Almeda and Louise took a long, strange road trip over the weekend. Luckily for the women, who had been reported missing from a Philadelphia suburb, their ride had a happier ending. Cousins Louise Marshall, 68, and Almeda Brooks, 85, mysteriously disappeared from Moorestown in southern New Jersey Friday, promoting a frantic search by friends, family and local police. They were found days later, 80 miles away from home, wandering Manhattan. Apparently, they were simply lost. The duo was last seen leaving their friend Ophelia Harris' house in Moorestown about 9:45 p.m....

The Pataki administration has quietly begun locking up dangerous sex fiends in a Manhattan mental institution after they complete their prison terms, The Post has learned. Frustrated that the Democrat-led Assembly has thus far refused to act on a civil-confinement law that would allow the state to keep sexual predators who finish their prison sentences locked up and away from the public, Gov. Pataki decided to take matters into his own hands, aides said. Pataki three weeks ago directed the Office of Mental Health and the Department of Correctional Services to "push the envelope" by applying the state's existing law...

Valerie, in fresh clothes and clutching a new teddy bear yesterday, was found in Middle Village early Sunday. A 4-year-old girl was found wandering a Queens street in the middle of the night — and city authorities are trying to figure out who she is and why she was all alone. The girl — who has told police that her name is Valerie — was found on 76th Street in Middle Village Sunday at around 1 a.m., according to the city's Administration for Children's Services. She is extremely bright and understands that she is lost. But she was only able...