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Since the economy has taken a dive, some very big celebrities are realizing their lavish estates just aren't worth as much as they used to be. In fact, now might be the best time in history to buy the extravagant former home of one of your favorite stars. Here are some of the celebrity palaces that have recently been put on the real estate clearance rack: * Eddie Murphy's 32-room manor in Englewood, New Jersey, which he calls Bubble Hill, has been on the market for $30 million for five years without a sale, so last month Murphy slashed the...

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery RACHEL L. SWARNS and JODI KANTOR October 7, 2009 WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475. In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a...

There is the dread of leaving the house that morning. People might stare, or worse, yell insults. Prayers are more intense, visits with family longer. Mosques become a refuge. Eight years after 9/11, many U.S. Muslims still struggle through the anniversary of the attacks. Yes, the sting has lessened. For the younger generation of Muslims, the tragedy can even seem like a distant memory. "Time marches on," said Souha Azmeh Al-Samkari, a 22-year-old student at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Yet, many American Muslims say Sept. 11 will never be routine, no matter how many anniversaries have passed.

Posters depicting President Barack Obama in makeup similar to the Joker from the most recent Batman movie have popped up across Lake County. A U.S. Post Office in downtown Clermont had a couple of the posters glued to a collection box. Clermont Postmaster Willie Montgomery said today that the posters were discovered yesterday. Customers complained about the pasted images, he said. "Everybody that saw those posters found them to be very offensive," Montgomery said. "These are personal attacks on the president. We don't have to necessarily agree with the way they're running the country, but we have to respect the...

WASHINGTON --A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries. "Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species," the letter said. "Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets." The broadcasters told Mr. Geithner they can bounce back if they are given some temporary assistance while the credit markets are slow. "Unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years," their letter said. The broadcasters appeal follows a proposal sent in...

There is outrage over the state budget crisis. Thousands vented their pain and anger at a rally downtown Thursday. Chanting people first not politics, they supported a state income tax hike instead of doomsday cuts. Vital services for kids, seniors, the disabled and the homeless are about to be cut in half. Their backers want to send a message to lawmakers in Springfield. "Work it out or there's a mood now developing in the state where you won't be there in the next election," said Chuck Nilles, Community Support Services. "Change is now." That's the big picture, but the impact...

The song title "Cry Me A River" brings Justin Timberlake to mind for Generation Y. But that is likely to change thanks to Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing sensation whose Britain's Got Talent appearance wooed millions of broadcast and online viewers. Boyle's moving rendition of "Cry Me A River" was uploaded to YouTube Thursday night, sparking further interest and frenzy over the extremely talented singer. Boyle's "Cry Me A River" is a remake of the blues standard, not Timberlake's pop ballad. Boyle's track went virtually unnoticed when it was independently released 10 years ago on a charity CD reported Times...

PLAINFIELD, N.J. –- Dozens of unemployed Central American immigrants who lost their jobs and can't afford to pay rent have moved into caves, reports El Diario/La Prensa. Immigrants have been living in the makeshift homes in Plainfield and North Plainfeld, N.J. for three months, and call their new residence the “Devil’s Cave.” Their decision to move into caves is a testament to the harsh climate of the current economic crisis, which has had a greater impact on the undocumented who have more difficulty accessing government aid after losing their jobs.

A Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo Bay says the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Washington Post reported. "We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," Susan J. Crawford told the Post. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution. Crawford is the first senior Bush administration official who investigates Guantanamo dealings to publicly say a detainee was tortured.

BREAKING — About two years ago, Mexico native Carlos Perez left his job at a factory in Dayton, Tenn., to start Perez Produce, a distributing company for local Hispanic restaurants and stores. Now, Mr. Perez said he regrets leaving a stable job at the La-Z-Boy factory because the produce business is not going well and he is on the verge of closing. “When I first started with the business two years ago it was going well, but starting about three months ago it started going down, down,” he said in Spanish. “If the situation continues to get worse, I think...

According to the latest (9/28) Rasmussen Poll, Barack Hussein Obama now enjoys a 57% approval rating among American voters. What does this mean? It means that those Friday night debates didn't change a thing. It means that no matter how poorly Barack Obama acquitted himself that night it makes no difference. That revealing "America is the greatest nation in the world, BUT..." statement doesn't matter. That embarrassing soldier's bracelet gaff doesn't matter. His recently exposed contemptuous betrayal of our courageous military in Iraq by his behind-the-scenes attempts to manipulate our troop withdrawals for his own selfish political agenda doesn't matter....

<p>TIJUANA, Mexico – The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: "The End."</p> <p>For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.</p>

Excerpt - A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet early Tuesday morning. The 10-minute video posted just after 5 a.m. ET is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian officials in late February 2003. ~ snip ~

"Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa." "The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May. Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in...

The director of the FBI is not happy with the Supreme Court's recent handgun ruling. Robert Mueller says he tends to believe that "weapons harm people, and more often than not they harm the people carrying them." Mueller said the high court's decision, which threw out a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., "does throw a lot of things up in the air." Mueller said communities will now have to decide their own licensing programs. Mueller was speaking at a convention of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators in Hartford, Connecticut. He says with his grandchildren going to college,...

"Francelia Menchaca drove with her family from Phoenix to the Tijuana border to see her mother at the fence on Saturday." You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca's immigration lawyer advised her, but don't put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said.But when, after a year apart, Menchaca's mother arrived in her flowered straw hat to the border in Tijuana on Saturday and put her small, wrinkled hands up to the cast-iron gate, Menchaca reached out and touched them. "Were you anxious to touch my hand?" Menchaca asked in Spanish. Tears...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Baby boomers say they are worried about achieving a comfortable retirement, but a new study suggests Generation X is even more pessimistic.

It used to be a high point of Goldy Anthony's life. Every six weeks or so, as a kind of personal morale booster, she and a group of girlfriends would make appointments to see a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon for little touch-ups -- getting lips plumped and frown lines on the forehead smoothed out. He was "an artist" with Botox and Juvederm, she said. Afterward, in a carefree mood, the ladies would dine at a popular restaurant on the Sunset Strip. No more. The sub-prime loan crisis, the housing slump and the general decline of the economy have claimed another...

For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth. This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements. “It’s a major crisis,� he said. “We’re very short on work force. We’ll be looking at opening a little later, closing a little earlier, looking at how we do our menus.� Mr. Zammer is caught up in a...

CAIRO - Many Muslims are asking whether some Europeans actually enjoy angering the Islamic world. As Danish newspapers republish inflammatory cartoons that portray the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban and a Dutch member of parliament calls for the Koran to be banned, Muslims wonder about the so-called tradition of European tolerance. The day after Danish police arrested three Muslims of North African decent for allegedly planning to murder the Jyllands-Posten cartoonist, who drew the offending cartoons, newspapers across the country republished those cartoons. They said freedom of the press was under threat and the cartoons have come...

A national American-Islamic group is calling on local, state and national law enforcement authorities to investigate an alleged incident in which a Muslim woman was ejected from the Oakwood mall near Gretna for refusing a security guard's demand to remove her headscarf, known as a hijab.

IT'S MY (DEM) PARTY Hillary's new "Crying Game" song... CLICK HERE FOR MUSIC (then minimize WMP window) It's my (dem) party and I'll cry if I need to cry if I need to, cry if I need to If this don't work then Bill will cry too Nobody knows where my voters have gone But Barak left the same time Why was he holding their hands When they’re supposed to be mine It's my (dem) party and I'll cry if I need to cry if I need to, cry if I need to If this don't work then Bill...

Representatives David Obey (D-Wis.) and John Murtha (D-Pa.) called the Pentagon’s move to cut expenses in the wake of congress’ efforts to back the administration into a corner over Iraq War funding “despicable.” “The Pentagon’s plan to meet the projected funding shortage by laying off Washington bureaucrats—the majority of whom are reliable Democratic voters—in order to free up funds for troops in the field—the majority of whom vote Republican—is pure politics at their worst,” Murtha complained. “They’re scaring the families of these hard-working government employees. That’s the thing that’s so despicable.” Obey seconded Murtha’s remarks, saying “The Administration is toying...

NEW BEDFORD — After his second deportation to Guatemala, Ricardo Gomez Garcia made yet another perilous journey across the U.S. border to reunite with his wife and autistic son following their six-month separation. Within 24 hours of arriving home to his city apartment, the 40-year-old illegal immigrant died at St. Luke's Hospital. His widow is questioning whether his death is related to inadequate medical treatment he received at an El Paso, Texas, detention center, where he was held for six months after being arrested in the March 6 federal immigration raid at the Michael Bianco factory. "His needs were not...

PALMDALE - Carrying signs and chanting, about 60 people protested in front of Knight High School on Friday over the arrests of three students and a parent after a scuffle with school security officers over a spilled birthday cake. One security guard twisted the arm of 16-year-old Pleajhai Mervin behind her back and slammed her against a lunch table, fracturing her wrist, parents said. "I want justice," said Mervin's mother, Latrisha Majors, who also was arrested. "I want justice for my daughter. I want the guards to be held accountable for their actions." Majors and her daughter were arrested in...

It’s not clear why a major section of the nation’s interstate highway system collapsed Wednesday night over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, causing a still unknown number of fatalities and indefinitely severing an important transportation link. But one thing has been all too clear for decades: America is neglecting its vital physical infrastructure, and the bill is coming due. As a nation, we’ve long borrowed from our future; everybody knows about the inevitable Social Security and Medicare crises that will happen in the next three decades as the number of retirees expands in relation to the number of workers. Far...

LONDON: Some 35,000 Pakistanis living in Glasgow face a threat of a violent backlash from the white British community amid overnight wall-chalking urging people to “kill all the Pakis”, after two apparently Asian men tried to blow up the city airport on Saturday. This is the first time that any such terrorist activity has taken place in Glasgow where around 50,000 Muslims, including 35,000 Pakistanis, live. The Pakistanis now feeling under siege after this incident. The first minister of the British government was rushing to Glasgow to hold urgent meetings with intelligence agencies, police departments and the local community leaders...

Here again, as always, after Muslims are caught plotting mass murder of innocent civilians in the West, the mainstream media focuses on Muslim fears of a backlash that hardly ever materializes. And here again, as always, the Muslims say nothing -- nothing at all -- about being spurred by the latest uncovered jihad plot to start working harder to identify jihad terrorists within their ranks and turn them over to authorities. From AP (thanks to Twostellas): "Name-calling, anxiety, fear and anger rippled through Britain on Sunday after three failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow. Government and religious leaders appealed...

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. -- On Dec. 12, just after 7:30 a.m., Superintendent Steve Joel got a call from the police chief saying "something big" was about to happen at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant. Mr. Joel realized what that meant: Dozens of Swift workers were about to be rounded up in an immigration raid. What would happen to their children, students in his district? Would some seniors ever be able to graduate? "It was like a tornado," says the head of the Grand Island School District. The twister that struck this Midwestern town was part of far-reaching operation targeting...

PARKING Crews find more eligible cars in those communities, city says Minority neighborhoods on the West and South sides are getting kicked harder by city booting crews than other parts of the city, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of city data. But the city says no neighborhood is safe from the dreaded booting vans, it's just that they happen to find more boot-listed cars in minority communities. The neighborhood with the most cars booted per person in 2006 was the Near West Side, where 1,699 vehicles got the clamp, or 3 for every 100 residents. Though it includes gentrifying...

Pastor John Hagee, the firebrand evangelical Christian minister from San Antonio, Texas, had thousands of pro-Israel activists standing, clapping and chanting at this year’s annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hagee’s virtuoso performance at the conference in March underscored his emergence as a linchpin in the growing political alliance between Jewish and evangelical pro-Israel activists. Less well known is that Hagee, who in February 2006 founded the first Christian pro-Israel lobbying group — Christians United for Israel — is working to extend his influence beyond power centers in Washington, to Jewish and evangelical communities across the country....

NEW YORK Potentially sacked with $13 billion in debt on top of weak Q1 results the Tribune Co. is planning a new wave of job cuts, sources told the Chicago Tribune. According to Michael Oneal at the Chicago Tribune, 100 positions at his paper could be targeted for buyouts. It's not known how many cuts Tribune plans to make company-wide. If not enough people step forward to take the packages, Tribune could result to layoffs. On Thursday, Tribune reported a net loss of $15.6 million in Q1. Operating cash flow fell to $238 million from $271 million compared to the...

Iranians stole my iPod, sys freed British sailor AFP April 09, 2007 LONDON: The youngest British captive held by Iran said in an interview published on Monday that the gifts the Iranians gave to the seized sailors were a cheap load of old junk -- and they stole his iPod. Royal Navy Able Seaman Arthur Batchelor, 20, said the suits they were given were "tacky," the CDs and DVDs do not work and there was no sign of his iPod portable media player, worth 160 pounds. The 15 sailors and marines, seized in the northern Gulf on March 23, were...

Anna Nicole Smith collapsed in her hotel room at the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino in Hollywood, Fla., and was rushed to a hospital on Thursday. A Hollywood, Fla., fire department spokesman told MSNBC TV that the actress was unresponsive when the rescue unit arrived on the scene. Sources confirmed to Access Hollywood that Smith was transported to Memorial Regional Hospital shortly after 2 p.m. EST on Thursday. Access Hollywood also is reporting that Smith was intubated at the scene. Officials told the Miami Herald, "it does not look good."

Muslims' Request For Space Rejected Athletic officials will allow prayer throughout arena Paul Takahashi Posted: 2/20/07 By Paul Takahashi The Daily Northwestern Athletic officials will not establish a designated prayer space for Muslim students at sporting events held at Ryan Field and Welsh-Ryan Arena, said John Mack, Northwestern's associate athletic director of external affairs. Instead, officials will grant certain concessions, such as allowing prayer rugs into the stadiums and letting students pray in places that do not block traffic flow. The decision came after Muslim students expressed a need for clean prayer areas in January. Associated Student Government passed a...

MEXICO CITY - U.S. and Mexican officials will review reports of an intrusion on Mexican soil by workers erecting U.S. border fences between Douglas, Ariz., and the Mexican border city of Agua Prieta, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said. Garza, in a news statement released Thursday, stressed that the United States respects Mexican sovereignty and works to avoid intruding on its territory. Mexican legislators said they had photos and video showing U.S. workers and equipment crossing about 10 yards into Mexico on Monday. Garza said U.S. and Mexican officials would visit the site to ascertain what happened. "The U.S. is sensitive...

WHAT IS San Francisco State University teaching that makes student leaders think that if they don't like what other students say, they can use student organizations to stifle those with dissenting views? Do they even know about the First Amendment? This story starts with an "anti-terrorism rally" held last October on campus by the College Republicans. To emphasize their point, students stomped on Hezbollah and Hamas flags. According to the college paper, the Golden Gate (X)Press, members of Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization showed up to call the Republicans "racists," while the president of the General Union...

Hamdi El-Hilu from Ramallah is expelled in police raid. One way or another I will come home, he says Roi Mandel Published: 02.08.07, 14:35 / Israel News "I cannot live without my wife and daughter. I will do anything to return to my family," said Hamdi El-Hilu after he was deported to the West Bank by Israeli police. El-Hilu, who lives in southern Israel, is married to an Israeli and has a three-year-old daughter. He was expelled after being arrested on Wednesday following a raid on the quarry at which he works. El-Hilu had previously requested Israeli citizenship on account...

Muslims Complain of Hollywood 'Bad Guy' Image Western movies from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Aladdin" promote negative stereotypes of Muslims by casting them all too often as villains, a British Muslim pressure group said on Thursday. "There is no such thing as a Muslim good guy," said Arzu Merali, co-author of a report by the Islamic Human Rights Commission that argued that movies played a crucial role in fostering a crude and exaggerated image. The commission's study, based on soundings taken from almost 1,250 British Muslims, also found that 62 percent felt the media was "Islamophobic" and 14...

Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama '24' cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America. Now, after a one-year respite during which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight. Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb. Being portrayed again as the heartless wrongdoers has drawn renewed protests from Muslim groups, including one...

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season's premiere. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."

Forum: How is the immigration issue impacting your community?(please enable pop-ups to see the gallery)When he came to the United States from Brazil on a tourist visa four years ago, the carpenter decided he would stay, even if it meant living here illegally. And when he thought about where he would live, Riverside, in Burlington County, seemed the natural choice.  The old industrial town's quaint feel and modest homes were reminiscent of his native village in Brazil. And many residents and merchants spoke Portuguese because there was an established community of immigrants from Portugal.  Now, he is planning to...

I’m greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation (“Shame on Demagogues for Exploiting ‘North American Union’!”, 12/28) of their self-promoting paranoia regarding an alleged conspiracy to merge the US, Canada and Mexico. The defensive tone of their commentary suggests that these two have been appropriately embarrassed: Farah, in particular, dramatically deescalated his rhetoric. While previous commentary on WorldNetDaily prominently and regularly featured the noun “plot” in defining this non-issue, his answer to my purposefully harsh attack omits that key word entirely and uses language in a...

Prime Minister Tony Blair believes the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution was "completely wrong". Blair has been under fire for refusing to speak on the subject, and criticism of his silence mounted after both his deputy and his finance minister condemned the hanging of the deposed Iraqi dictator as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable". In his first engagement since returning from a New Year holiday in Miami, Blair said he would speak about the execution next week. Downing Street declined to say when and how Blair would make his comments on Saddam's hanging. "In terms of what he will say next...

Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay for four years, is rapidly losing his sanity, according to three lawyers who have visited him during the past month. Al-Rawi, 35, who was arrested by the CIA and local security forces during a business trip to Gambia in 2002, is showing clear signs of secure housing unit psychosis, a clinical condition that afflicts high-security prisoners, said Clive Stafford Smith, one of the lawyers. "I have had several clients on American death rows who have developed it and it's clear to me that he is sliding down that path," Smith said....

A dangerous divide is forcing Australian Muslims to abandon their homes, says Sydney cleric Feiz Mohamed in Lebanon reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov ---------- AUSTRALIA'S most influential firebrand cleric feels like an alien in his own country. And Sheik Feiz Mohamed is not alone. He believes a rising anti-Islamic tide has made Muslims wary of their countrymen, forcing at least eight families to abandon their homeland for the Middle East. From the foothills of his ancestral village in north Lebanon, the man with the most sway over the nation's Islamic youth says five years into the war on terror...

Theresa Marie Schindler was born to Robert and Mary Schindler on December 3, 1963. She was the first of three children the Schindlers would have. Terri was a shy, but comical, child who had an affinity for music, animals and the arts. She kept a small circle of friends and was dear to schoolmates, neighboring families and her own extended family. Following high school, Terri came into her own. She developed a knack for sketching and doodling. She enjoyed outings with her friends. She was an adoptive mother to the family’s dog, Bucky. Terri attended Catholic School while growing up...

A KORAN has been torn up and smeared with faeces and the floors of a Melbourne prayer hall urinated on, in an apparent retaliation to Muslim schoolboys desecrating the Bible. The Islamic community was last night furious as the police continued their investigation into the "criminal damage" done to the Melbourne airport facility on Wednesday morning. Muslim spiritual leader Fehmi Naji El-Imam condemned the desecration as "ignorant and immature", fearing that it was in retaliation to an incident earlier this month where young boys at a Melbourne Islamic school burned and urinated on the Bible. "This kind of behaviour just...

First it was the chaos. Then it was the confusion as to who was arrested and where they would be taken. Now, the Spanish-speaking residents of Cactus, Dumas and other neighboring communities who escaped Tuesday's raid because they either are here legally or do not work at the Swift meat plant, face an even bigger problem: what is going to happen to the more than 100 children whose parents were rounded up and arrested? "Right now the children are being taken care of by relatives or friends of those who were deported," said Orlando Gajardo, spokesman for the St. Peter...