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Searching for Bobby Fischer No More
After an international hunt that lasted more than a decade, U.S. authorities have finally nabbed a slippery fugitive from justice: former chess wunderkind BOBBY FISCHER, 61. (We feel safer already.) Fischer has been a wanted man since 1992 when, in violation of a U.S. ban, he headed to Yugoslavia for a highly publicized rematch with his cold war era rival Boris Spassky, whom Fischer had defeated 20 years earlier in Reykjavik to become the first American world chess champ. Fischer beat Spassky again in 1992 and won $3.3 million. Since then the eccentric grand master has been living secretly in the Philippines, Japan, Switzerland and Hungary, and claims to have quit playing chess in favor of a game of his own creation, Fischerandom chess, in which traditional playing pieces are put in mostly random places on the board. Last week immigration authorities took the renegade gamester into custody at Tokyo's Narita Airport as he attempted to board a flight with a canceled passport. U.S. to Fischer: checkmate.

Shaq Attack on Florida Coast!
Talk about some huge shoes to fill. The city of Los Angeles lost one of its biggest celebrities--7 ft. 1 in., 340 lbs., with size-22 sneakers when the L.A. Lakers traded their indomitable center, SHAQUILLE O'NEAL, to the Miami Heat last week. After the Lakers' surprising loss to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA finals last month and coach Phil Jackson's subsequent departure, Shaq packed his bags and said he wanted to "play for a team that's willing to win." (As opposed to all those fools who think the point is to lose.) So, in a power-sapping trade, the Lakers let O'Neal go in return for three Heat starters Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and Caron Butler plus a future first-round draft pick. The Lakers did manage to hang on to guard and persistent O'Neal rival Kobe Bryant, whose sexual-assault trial begins in August. What's sports lingo for Pyrrhic victory?

Try This for Blunt Force
Remember when Friends was still around? Those were happier times for actors when the ones with hit shows could band together and demand sky-high salaries from their networks. TV actors JORJA FOX and GEORGE EADS, longtime supporting-cast members of CBS's No. 1--rated drama, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, must have been clinging to that million-dollar dream when they recently asked the network for bumps in their pay. Eads never arrived on the set the first day of filming, despite having signed a letter promising CBS that he would show up for work, whereas Fox failed to sign the letter altogether. The network, in a heck of a negotiating ploy, fired them. For advice on how to find their way back from hit-show has-beendom, we suggest they get CSI: Miami compatriot David Caruso on a conference call, like now.

Meet the Winner of the Bad-Choice-of-Spouse Award
Every new bride fears she'll end up with the in-laws from hell. But if you think yours are bad, try comparing notes with CARMEN BIN LADIN. In 1974 this half-Swiss, half-Persian daughter of an aristocrat married a Saudi named Yeslam and inherited more than 50 sisters-and brothers-in-law, one of whom was Yeslam's younger half brother Osama bin Laden then a mere religious zealot she describes as "not strikingly different from the other brothers." In her new book, Inside the Kingdom, bin Ladin details the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and within the bin Laden clan. Her first child was a girl and, writes bin Ladin, "Yeslam simply walked out when he learned that turned on his heel and walked out of the hospital." After two more girls, the couple split. Still, he left her with something: a notorious name.