FORT WORTH, Texas - Charles Ray Fuller must have been planning one big record company.

The 21-year-old North Texas man was arrested last week for trying to cash a $360 billion check, saying he wanted to start a record business, authorities said. Tellers at the Fort Worth bank were immediately suspicious — perhaps the 10 zeros on a personal check tipped them off, according to investigators.

Fuller, of suburban Crowley, was arrested on a forgery charge, police said. He was released after posting $3,750 bail.

Fuller said his girlfriend’s mother gave him the check to start a record business, but bank employees who contacted the account’s owner said the woman told them she did not give him permission to take or cash the check, according to police.

In addition to forgery, Fuller was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possessing marijuana, Fort Worth police Lt. Paul Henderson said.

Officers reported finding less than 2 ounces of marijuana and a .25-caliber handgun and magazine in his pockets, police said.

Fuller couldn’t be located for comment by The Associated Press on Friday because there were no phone listings for him in the Fort Worth area.

[Source: Yahoo News]

By DANIEL LOVERING, Associated Press Writer

BROCKWAY, Pa. - A fire engulfed a house in rural Pennsylvania early Thursday, state police said, killing as many as 10 people and forcing one of the survivors to jump naked from the second floor.

Eight people were killed and two were missing and presumed dead, state police said. Two others escaped.

The blaze badly damaged the light blue house, making it difficult to find and remove the two people who were missing, said Trooper Bruce Morris. The eight victims who were found ranged in age from four months to 40 years.

The house’s facade was gone, leaving a view of the inside of the home, remnants of a front porch and a lopsided stove. Two children’s bicycles sat in the rubble.

Crying as she spoke, family friend Carol Paruso said three generations lived there.

“They were a tight family and they all took care of each other. That’s who they were and that’s what makes it so sad,” she said.

Bill Fustini, a mail carrier who lives nearby, said his dog woke him up at about 2:30 a.m. When he saw the smoke, he called his son, a firefighter, who told him the home had gone up in flames.

“There was a little girl living in that house and she met me every day and she was the sweetest thing,” Fustini said.

He said he believed the couple who lived there also had two adult daughters living with them, and that the father worked at a nearby glass container factory.

“They really didn’t have much,” he said.

Jaime Hynds, who lives across the street from the home, said she was awakened at about 2:30 a.m. by a naked woman shouting for help. The woman, believed to be about 19 years old, had jumped from the second floor and ran to Hynds’ home, she told The Courier-Express of DuBois.

Hynds said at least five children lived in the house.

Trooper Mark Schrecengost said fire crews arrived within minutes and the house was already ablaze. The fire was under investigating, but police said the fire did not appear suspicious.

Firefighters brought in wood beams to fortify the structure.

A minivan in the home’s driveway was partly burned. Vinyl siding on the house next door had partly melted away from the heat.

Brockway is a rural town of about 2,000 residents set among rolling hills and farmland 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The home was on Pershing Avenue, a main drag lined with several other single-family homes.

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Associated Press writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS that vehicle in driveway was a minivan, not an SUV)

By RADUL RADOVANOVIC, Associated Press Writer
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo - U.N. forces pulling Serb demonstrators from a U.N. courthouse were attacked Monday by hundreds of furious protesters who massed outside, setting off an hours-long battle with rocks, grenades and live ammunition.
U.N. and NATO forces responded with tear gas, stun grenades and gunshots. At least 42 U.N. and NATO forces and 70 protesters were wounded in the worst violence in Kosovo since its declaration of independence last month.

The U.N. police stormed the courthouse just before dawn to arrest dozens of Serbs who had occupied the U.N. building since Friday to protest Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia.

Hundreds of Serbs surrounded the courthouse as the police tried to leave with the arrested demonstrators. Polish, Ukrainian and Bulgarian members of the U.N. force and NATO troops backing them up were pelted with rocks, Molotov cocktails and hand grenades. Some demonstrators fired guns at the international forces. Witnesses said others surrounded and attacked three U.N. vehicles, pulling out and freeing about 20 of the 53 protesters who had been arrested in the courthouse.

At least one U.N. vehicle and one NATO truck were set ablaze.

Danish military police said they exchanged fire with protesters as they helped evacuate wounded fellow officers.

“The motorcade came under fire and fired back,” Steen K. Nielsen, a spokesman for Denmark’s 300 troops in Kosovo. “No Danish troops were injured.”

The clashes ended by noon, but hundreds of U.N. police decided to pull out of northern Mitrovica after coming under small-arms fire in the Serb-controlled part of the city. The officers retreated, leaving NATO troops to try to restore order.

Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Kosovo, said U.N. staff in Kosovska Mitrovica “have been ordered to relocate” to the regional headquarters in the southern part of the town.

The town is divided between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and the Serb minority, which fiercely opposed the declaration of independence and is furious over Western support for it.

Machine-gun bursts could be heard until midday, although it was not clear who was firing. NATO helicopters hovered above the town.

The protesters have been trying to take control of local institutions that have been run by the U.N. since the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999. Crowds had gathered daily at the courthouse to prevent international and ethnic Albanian judges from returning to work there.

NATO and the U.N. condemned “lethal violence, including direct fire by a mob.” Serbian President Boris Tadic accused the international forces in Kosovo of “using excessive force,” and warned of “escalation of clashes in the entire territory” of Kosovo.

In Mitrovica, Serbia’s government minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, described the action by U.N. police as “brutal and inadmissible.”

Tadic urged the U.N. and NATO to refrain from using force and called on the Serbs not to provoke the international forces. The European Union expressed concern about the violence and called for restraint.

Poland said 26 of its police officers were injured. The French military said three of its soldiers were wounded. Ukraine said 15 of its peacekeepers were hurt.

“Most of the civilians suffered injuries from shock bombs, tear gas and explosive devices,” said Vladimir Adzic, the head of a nearby hospital. One was struck in the eye by a bullet, hospital officials said.

In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, police deployed in front of government buildings and Western embassies, apparently fearing that rioting could erupt as it did in the days after Kosovo’s declaration of independence on Feb. 17. Several thousand nationalists rallied downtown carrying Serbian flags and chanting “Kosovo is Serbia.”

Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo has been under U.N. control since 1999, when NATO launched an air war to stop Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

Serbia, which considers the territory its historic and religious heartland, says Kosovo’s declaration of independence is illegal under international law.

DEWSBURY (AFP) - A nine-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared three weeks ago in a case which has gripped Britain was found alive Friday concealed in the base of a bed, police said.

Shannon Matthews went missing on February 19 after a school swimming trip in Dewsbury, near Leeds, northern England, triggering a huge police investigation amid growing fears she may have been killed.

The schoolgirl, whose picture has been plastered in the media for the last three weeks, was found in a flat in Batley Carr, a short distance from her home, said West Yorkshire police.

A 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of her abduction, with reports saying he was a member of her extended family.

The girl’s mother Karen was said to be “in shock” after being told her daughter was alive, while her father said he was “over the moon.”

“I did say on the news I wasn’t going to give up until she was found,” Leon Rose, who is separated from Shannon’s mother, told Sky News. “I’ve kept going, and every day I went out there as much as I could.”

Shannon’s mother said this week she believed someone known to her had snatched her daughter.

The girl was not immediately reunited with her mother, but placed in the care of police under an “emergency protection order”.

“This will remain in place until we have had time to establish the full facts of what happened in the time since her disappearance,” a police spokesman said.

She was found after police battered down the door of a house.

“During a search of the house, officers located Shannon Matthews who was found concealed in the base of a divan bed,” police said in a statement.

An impromptu party to celebrate the news, complete with fireworks and disco music, broke out outside the home of Shannon’s mother.

The news was welcomed by Gerry and Kate McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal last May in a case covered heavily by the British and foreign media.

“Kate and Gerry are aware that she has been found alive. They feel that is excellent news, they are delighted that she is alive,” said their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.

“It proves that children can go missing for whatever reason and still be found alive.”