Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of March 2-8. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses:

1. "Burn Notice" (Thursday, 10 p.m.), USA, 4.44 million homes, 6094 million viewers.

2. "ICarly" (Saturday, 8 p.m.), Nickelodeon, 4.1 million homes, 6.29 million viewers.

3. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.92 million homes, 5.76 million viewers.

4. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.58 million homes, 5.25 million viewers.

5. "NCIS" (Monday, 7 p.m.), USA, 3.42 million homes, 4.67 million viewers.

6. "NCIS" (Monday, 8 p.m.), USA, 3.4 million homes, 4.5 million viewers.

Recordingartist Chris Brown accepts the Artist of the Year award onstage duringthe 2008 American Music Awards held at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE onNovember 23, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by KevinWinter/Getty Images for AMA) **



I've learned that Chris Brown turned himself into the LA PD for alleged assault with his gf, Rihana.

Chris and Rihana were scheduled to perform at Grammy's Sunday night, but it was announced that they won't be attending.

The reason why Rihana couldn't attend is facial injury from one certain car accident.
However, everybody guess that alleged assault domestic felony battery could be related to Rihana.

They are one of nice couples. I like R&B Chris. What the hell is going on?

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The man who police say dressed as Santa Claus and killed nine people at a Christmas Eve party lived with guilt from an incident that left his son from a previous relationship a paraplegic, according to an attorney who once represented the woman in that relationship.

Prime suspect Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, who police said committed suicide hours after he went on a shooting rampage and started a raging house fire in the Los Angeles suburb of Covina, had a son who sustained severe brain damage several years ago in an apparent swimming pool accident while he was in Pardo's care, according to attorney Jeffrey Alvirez.

Police have said Pardo targeted his rampage at his former wife, Sylvia Ortega Pardo, and her family at the family's Christmas Eve party.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Pardo had kept his son's existence and condition a secret from his wife. When she found out, her anger over the situation and also finding out that Pardo had claimed the child as a tax dependent for several years became a major factor in divorce proceedings, the paper said, quoting an unidentified source close to the investigation.

Covina Police Chief Kim Raney said Friday that a divorce between the two was finalized in court December 18 in a "somewhat contentious proceeding."

On Saturday, Covina police released the names of the nine people unaccounted for since the shooting and fire. Nine bodies were recovered from the rubble of the house, but authorities said they are having to work with dental records to establish identities.

"The bodies were so badly burned they cannot be identified any other way," Covina police Lt. Pat Buchanan said.

The nine unaccounted for are Sylvia Pardo, her parents, her sister, her two brothers, both brothers' wives and a nephew. Ages of the nine range from 17 to 80, police said.

Police said Sunday a car believed to have been rented by Pardo on December 19, a gray Toyota RAV4, was found in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale. Authorities had cautioned the missing car might be booby-trapped or contain explosives, but it was unclear whether any had been found.

Another rented car that Pardo used to flee the scene was found booby-trapped after the shooting, police said. That car burned as the Covina bomb squad was trying to disconnect an explosive device in it, police said.

In an interview Saturday with CNN, Alvirez -- who represented Pardo's former girlfriend Elena Lucano in a child support case against Pardo -- said that Pardo and Lucano were in an "off-and-on again relationship" in 2001 and that Pardo was watching their 13-month-old son, Matthew, one Saturday while Lucano went grocery shopping.

When Lucano returned a short time later, she found Pardo frantically holding the unconscious toddler, Alvirez said.

"The child did get away from him for a few minutes and managed to crawl out of a patio door and slip into the pool," Alvirez said.

The couple rushed the child to a nearby hospital, where paramedics resuscitated him. Later, the gravely traumatized child was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, a world-renowned trauma center that specializes in severe pediatric care, for specialized treatment, Alvirez said.

During the first week in the intensive care unit, Pardo never left his son's bedside, Alvirez said. But a few weeks after the child was stabilized, doctors concluded that severe brain damage would confine him to a wheelchair for life, Alvirez said.

Less than six months later, Pardo and Lucano ended their relationship, and Pardo stopped visiting his son. Pardo also neglected to contribute to Matthew's medical costs, which surged up to $340,000 within the first year, Alvirez said.

"We had to sue [Pardo] on his $100,000 homeowner's insurance policy, and I recommended that Elena sue Bruce beyond the policy," he said. "She was not a vindictive type, and she knew he was living with overwhelming guilt and wanted to only pursue his policy."

Alvirez said he never had any problems with Pardo and was able to collect the $100,000 policy to pay off medical bills and set up a special needs trust of $240 per month for the rest of Matthew's life. The boy is now 9 years old, Alvirez said.

"Once the settlement was reached in August 2002, Bruce stopped communicating completely and never saw Matthew or Elena again," Alvirez said.

He said Lucano had maintained occasional contact with Pardo's mother over the years but she was unaware that Pardo had remarried and never anticipated the violent path that ended his life and left nine other people dead.

"She is overwhelmed by all of this, but Elena has managed to provide for Matthew as a single parent with a part-time nurse and a full-time job," Alvirez said.

Lucano declined to be interviewed by CNN, Alvirez said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush's low approval ratings, people will soon "start to thank this president for what he's done."

"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that aired on CBS' "Sunday Morning."

The secretary of state brushed off reports that suggest the United States' image is suffering abroad. She praised the administration's ability to change the conversation in the Middle East.

"This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sorry, it isn't. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans' interests and values in the long run -- not for today's headlines, but for history's judgment," she said.

"And I am quite certain that when the final chapters are written and it's clear that Saddam Hussein's Iraq is gone in favor of an Iraq that is favorable to the future of the Middle East; when the history is written of a U.S.-China relationship that is better than it's ever been; an India relationship that is deeper and better than it's ever been; a relationship with Brazil and other countries of the left of Latin America, better than it's ever been ...

"When one looks at what we've been able to do in terms of changing the conversation in the Middle East about democracy and values, this administration will be judged well, and I'll wait for history's judgment and not today's headlines."

Asked by CBS' Rita Braver why some former diplomats say Americans are disliked around the world, Rice said that's "just not true."

"I know what U.S. policy has achieved. And so I don't know what diplomats you're talking to, but look at the record," she said.

Rice said she wasn't bothered by criticism about her or the administration's polices, saying if a person in her business is not being criticized, "you're not doing something right."

"I'm here to make tough choices, and this president is here to make tough choices, and we have. And yes, I -- there are some things that I would do very differently if I had it to do over again. You don't have that luxury. You have to make the choices and take the positions that you do at the time," she said.

Asked about historians who say Bush is one of the worst presidents, Rice said those "aren't very good historians."

"If you're making historical judgments before an administration is already out -- even out of office, and if you're trying to make historical judgments when the nature of the Middle East is still to be determined, and when one cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this President has taken on what the Middle East will become -- I mean, for goodness' sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington. Good historians are certainly still writing books about Harry Truman," she said.

Rice, 54, said she has enjoyed working in the Bush administration during the last eight years, first as national security adviser, then as secretary of state.

"There is no greater honor than to serve this country," she said, adding that there is also no greater challenge.

Rice said when the new administration takes over, she plans to return to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and write two books -- one on foreign policy and one about her parents.

The number of people filing for unemployment benefits hit a 26-year high last week, as the deepening recession forced more employers to cut jobs.

First-time claims for unemployment rose 5.4 percent, to 586,000 for the week ending Dec. 20, the Labor Department reported this morning. The last time claims were that high was Nov. 27, 1982. The four-week moving average, which is a less volatile indicator, rose to 558,000 from 544,250, also a 26-year high.

Orders for durable goods, such as appliances and televisions, dropped 1 percent to $186.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. It was the fourth consecutive monthly drop but a much smaller decline than the 8.4 percent drop in October, thanks largely to orders for defense-related goods. Excluding those, which can vary widely quarter to quarter, new orders decreased by 0.9 percent.

Prices fell 1.1 percent last month, compared with 0.5 percent, the Commerce Department reported today. Much of that was due to falling gasoline and food prices. When food and energy are excluded, prices were actually flat.

Consumer spending continued to decline in November, falling 0.6 percent, even as consumers benefited from falling gasoline prices and retailers attempted to lure them into stores with deep discounts in an effort to salvage the holiday shopping season.

Retailers might have succeeded to an extent. November's drop was smaller than the 1 percent drop in spending in October. But just as they did in October, consumers also kept a chunk of their savings at the pump in their pockets. Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income was 2.8 percent in November, compared with 2.4 in October.

ASHLAND, Ohio (CNN) -- An Ohio bakery shut down in October is bustling again, with 60 eager employees who had expected a Christmas on the unemployment rolls.

Some 300 workers lost their jobs when the Archway cookie factory in Ashland, Ohio, was suddenly closed by the private equity firm that owned it. The workers also were left without benefits like health insurance.

But then Lance Inc., a Charlotte, North Carolina-based snack food company, purchased Archway at a bankruptcy auction. And last week 60 workers were asked to return immediately, with perhaps more coming back in the months ahead.

Kathy Sexton, a worker at the bakery, had been preparing her children for a very modest holiday. Watch the holiday brighten for workers »

"They said they understood," Sexton recalls. "They said, 'That's all right, Mom.' You always want to give them more, but ... I didn't think I would be able to."

Now she can.

Tiny Ashland has been struggling. Ohio has lost 200,000 jobs over the past eight years. The recent presidential campaign saw both candidates visiting frequently.

The outlook in Ashland became especially bleak when the Archway plant closed. Workers at the bakery said they felt betrayed when Archway at first said there would be more work in a day or two, but then changed the locks.

Rita Devan remembers.

"They just kept taking and taking until there was nothing left to take," Devan says, "and they didn't care that they were putting 300 people out of work."

Things are different now.

When it promised to reopen the bakery, Lance gave all 300 former Archway workers a $1,500 prepaid debit card.

"I was crying," Devan says of the gift. "I am like, 'What are these people doing? They don't know me. They don't know us. They don't know any of the Archway people. And they are giving each and every one of us $1,500.' "

Sexton -- the woman who'd been preparing her kids for a meager holiday -- says of the $1,500 gift: "It was awesome. My first thought was, 'I can give my kids a Christmas.' "

David Singer, CEO of Lance, says the gift cards were a way of letting Ashland know the new owners are different. "We wouldn't do it willy-nilly," Singer says. "We do want to make money. But this is the pool of folks that we intend to hire. We just wanted to let them know who we were."

The 60 workers rehired so far are earning their previous salary and retained their seniority. They also were provided health insurance from day one.

The bakery now produces Lance cookies that are sold to big chains like Target and Wal-Mart. But production of Archway cookies is scheduled to resume soon. Lance has told the employees that it hopes to have the plant fully operational by the end of 2009 -- that is, five lines of cookies being produced simultaneously.

The new owners say that if new orders keep flowing in, more jobs will follow.

Terry Mowry is another worker rehired by Lance. He says what has happened is hard to describe: "You just saw life being breathed right back into the face of these people."

And Devan says with a laugh: "I walked into the garage last night, and my husband says, 'You actually smell like a cookie again.' "

(CNN) -- No one expected to find Donna Molnar alive.

Searchers had combed the brutal backcountry of rural Ontario for the housewife from the city of Hamilton, who had left her home three days earlier in the middle of a blizzard to grocery shop.

Alongside his search-and-rescue dog Ace, Ray Lau on Monday tramped through the thick, ice-covered brush of a farmer's field, not far from where Molnar's van had been found a day earlier.

He kept thinking: Negative-20 winds? This is a search for a body.

"Then, oh, all of a sudden, Ace bolted off," said Lau. "He stooped and looked down at the snow and just barked, barked, barked."

Lau rushed to his Dutch shepherd's side.

"There she was, there was Donna, her face was almost totally covered except for one eye staring back at me!" he said. "That was, 'Wow!' There was a thousand thoughts going through my head. It was over the top."

With one ungloved hand near her neck, Molnar, 55, mumbled and tried to scream as Lau yelled to other rescuers. Dressed in a leather coat, sweater, slacks and winter boots, Molnar was carefully extracted from a 3-foot-deep mound of snow that had apparently helped to insulate her.

Then, rescuers got their second shock.

"She was lucid, and said, 'Wow. I've been here a long time!' and then she apologized and said, 'I just wanted to talk a walk, I'm sorry to have caused you any trouble,' " said Staff Sgt. Mark Cox of the Hamilton Police Department, one of the leaders in the hunt. "And we're all thinking this is incredible, this is really something."

"I've been doing search and rescue for seven years, and this is the wildest case I've had in finding someone alive," he said.

Even more incredible: Molnar's body temperature was 30 degrees Fahrenheit, Cox said. She was rushed to a hospital and immediately sedated to begin the agonizing steps of hypothermia treatment.

"I think the snow must have worked to trap her body heat, and that's what really saved her," he said. "This really speaks to what's possible."

David Molnar is calling his wife's survival his "Christmas miracle."

He wasn't able to speak with her immediately after she was taken to the hospital. But while she was under sedation, he leaned over her and whispered in her ear, "Welcome back, I love you."

"My wife, you know, doesn't pump iron. She is strong physically and spiritually," he said. "When people say to me how do I explain how she survived, I said I believe God reached down and cradled her until the rescuers could find her, because there's no rational explanation."

In addition to hypothermia, Donna Molnar is being treated for severe frostbite, and her recovery will take months.

But his wife's condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious. "That may not sound like a great thing to everyone, but to us, that is the best news we could possibly get on Christmas Eve," David Molnar said.

As for Ace, he's still awaiting his reward: a T-bone steak. It's the least that can be done for a dog who, in his own way, paid it forward.

"A while ago, Ace was rescued from a home where he didn't belong, and now he got to rescue someone. I can't describe the magnitude of that, what that means to me," Lau said.

"He's definitely getting his steak. I'm grocery shopping right no

PUEBLO, Colorado (CNN) -- Orphan Train rider Stanley Cornell's oldest memory is of his mother's death in 1925.

"My first feeling was standing by my mom's bedside when she was dying. She died of tuberculosis," recalls Cornell. "I remember her crying, holding my hand, saying to 'be good to Daddy.' "

"That was the last I saw of her. I was probably four," Cornell says of his mother, Lottie Cornell, who passed away in Elmira, New York.

His father, Floyd Cornell, was still suffering the effects of nerve gas and shell shock after serving as a soldier in combat during WWI. That made it difficult for him to keep steady work or care for his two boys.

"Daddy Floyd," as Stanley Cornell calls his birth father, eventually contacted the Children's Aid Society. The society workers showed up in a big car with candy and whisked away Stanley and his brother, Victor, who was 16 months younger. See the Cornell family album »

Stanley Cornell remembers his father was crying and hanging on to a post. The little boy had a feeling he would not see his father again.

The two youngsters were taken to an orphanage, the Children's Aid Society of New York, founded by social reformer Charles Loring Brace

"It was kind of rough in the orphans' home," Cornell remembers, adding that the older children preyed on the younger kids -- even though officials tried to keep them separated by chicken wire fences. He says he remembers being beaten with whips like those used on horses.

New York City in 1926 was teeming with tens of thousands of homeless and orphaned children. These so-called "street urchins" resorted to begging, stealing or forming gangs to commit violence to survive. Some children worked in factories and slept in doorways or flophouses.

The Orphan Train movement took Stanley Cornell and his brother out of the city during the last part of a mass relocation movement for children called "placing out."Watch Cornell share ups and downs of his family story

Brace's agency took destitute children, in small groups, by train to small towns and farms across the country, with many traveling to the West and Midwest. From 1854 to 1929, more than 200,000 children were placed with families across 47 states. It was the beginning of documented foster care in America.

"It's an exodus, I guess. They called it Orphan Train riders that rode the trains looking for mom and dad like my brother and I."

"We'd pull into a train station, stand outside the coaches dressed in our best clothes. People would inspect us like cattle farmers. And if they didn't choose you, you'd get back on the train and do it all over again at the next stop."

Cornell and his brother were "placed out" twice with their aunts in Pennsylvania and Coffeyville, Kansas. But their placements didn't last and they were returned to the Children's Aid Society.

"Then they made up another train. Sent us out West. A hundred-fifty kids on a train to Wellington, Texas," Cornell recalls. "That's where Dad happened to be in town that day."

Each time an Orphan Train was sent out, adoption ads were placed in local papers before the arrival of the children.

J.L. Deger, a 45-year-old farmer, knew he wanted a boy even though he already had two daughters ages 10 and 13.

"He'd just bought a Model T. Mr. Deger looked those boys over. We were the last boys holding hands in a blizzard, December 10, 1926," Cornell remembers. He says that day he and his brother stood in a hotel lobby.

"He asked us if we wanted to move out to farm with chickens, pigs and a room all to your own. He only wanted to take one of us, decided to take both of us."

Life on the farm was hard work.

"I did have to work and I expected it, because they fed me, clothed me, loved me. We had a good home. I'm very grateful. Always have been, always will be."

Taking care of a family wasn't always easy.

"In 1931, the Dust Bowl days started. The wind never quit. Sixty, 70 miles an hour, all that dust. It was a mess. Sometimes, Dad wouldn't raise a crop in two years."

A good crop came in 1940. With his profit in hand, "first thing Dad did was he took that money and said, 'we're going to repay the banker for trusting us,' " Cornell says.

When World War II began, Cornell joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He shipped out to Africa and landed near Casablanca, Morocco, where he laid telephone and teletype lines. Later he served in Egypt and northern Sicily. While in Italy, he witnessed Mount Vesuvius erupting.

It was on a telephone line-laying mission between Naples and Rome that Cornell suffered his first of three wounds.

"Our jeep was hit by a bomb. I thought I was in the middle of the ocean. It was the middle of January and I was in a sea of mud."

With their jeep destroyed and Cornell bleeding from a head wound, his driver asked a French soldier to use his vehicle to transport them. The Frenchman refused to drive Cornell the five miles to the medical unit.

"So, the driver pulled out his pistol, put the gun to the French soldier's head and yelled, 'tout suite!' or 'move it!' " Cornell recalls.

Once he was treated, Cornell remembers the doctor saying, "You've got 30 stitches in your scalp. An eighth of an inch deeper and you'd be dead."

Cornell always refused to accept his commendations for a Purple Heart even though he'd been wounded three times, twice severely enough to be hospitalized for weeks. He felt the medals were handed out too often to troops who suffered the equivalent of a scratch.

His younger brother served during the war in the Air Force at a base in Nebraska, where he ran a film projector at the officers' club.

As WWII was drawing to a close, Stanley Cornell headed up the teletype section at Allied headquarters in Reims, France. "I saw [Gen. Dwight] Eisenhower every day," he recalls.

On May 7, 1945, the Nazis surrendered. "I sent the first teletype message from Eisenhower saying the war was over with Germany," Cornell says.

In 1946, the 25-year-old Stanley Cornell met with his 53-year-old birth father, Daddy Floyd. It was the last time they would see each other.

Cornell eventually got married and he and his wife, Earleen, adopted two boys, Dana and Dennis, when each was just four weeks old.

"I knew what it was like to grow up without parents," Cornell says. "We were married seven years and couldn't have kids, so I asked my wife, 'how about adoption?' She'd heard my story before and said, 'OK.' "

After they adopted their two boys, Earleen gave birth to a girl, Denyse.

Dana Cornell understands what his father and uncle went through.

"I don't think [Uncle] Vic and Stan could have been better parents. I can relate, you know, because Dad adopted Dennis and me. He has taught me an awful lot over the years," Dana Cornell says.

Dana Cornell says his adoptive parents have always said that if the boys wanted to find their birth parents, they would help. But he decided not to because of how he feels about the couple who adopted him. "They are my parents and that's the way it's gonna be."

(InStyle.com) -- So you're finally ready to settle down and make that marriage proposal? There's no better time to do it than engagement season, which, lucky for you, is now! Get inspired by these uber-romantic celebrity proposals.

Tia Mowry and Cory Hardrict

Although the set of a slasher movie seems an unlikely place for romance to bloom, that's just where it happened for actors Tia Mowry and Cory Hardrict. Shortly after shooting began in 1999 on their film "Hollywood Horror," the co-stars started spending time together.

Seven years later, on Christmas Day 2006, Hardrict, 32, told Mowry, 30, that he wanted to give her a promise ring. Then, as her entire family looked on, the "Lincoln Heights" actor yelled, "Psych!" and got down on one knee to present her with a 1.5-carat diamond engagement ring.

Antonio Pierce and Jocelyn Maldonado

Antonio Pierce, an NFL linebacker, met Jocelyn Maldonado during a celebrity appearance at an ESPN Fantasy Football Draft. Maldonado, a model at the event, instantly caught his eye. Pierce and Maldonado (who now hosts Mets Weekly) were inseparable over the next six months.

In February 2007, Pierce treated Maldonado to a helicopter ride above Manhattan, New York, before dining at Brooklyn's The River Café. Famous for its chocolate Brooklyn Bridge cake, Pierce conspired with the restaurant's manager to place the engagement ring atop the confection, which was covered with pink rose petals.

Howie Dorough and Leigh Boniello

Backstreet Boy Howard "Howie" Dorough got more than he bargained for after hiring Leigh Boniello to be the band's webmaster in December 2000. Boniello went on tour with the group and quickly grew close to Dorough.

Six years later, the couple attended a New Year's Eve party at the New Jersey home of Boniello's father. "I figured, what better timing," says Dorough, "because all of her family was going to be there, including her 92-year-old grandmother."

Just before the stroke of midnight, Dorough made a toast and presented Boniello with a custom-designed three-stone diamond engagement ring.

Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford

Three years before actor Brandon Routh donned those famous blue tights, he tended bar at Lucky Strike Lanes in Hollywood. During a party there in 2003, actress Courtney Ford repeatedly poured out the drinks he made her as a ruse to chat him up. "I kept asking him for another drink, telling him the one before was too strong," she recalls.

In 2006, Routh purchased the 3-carat diamond ring that had caught Ford's eye during an earlier visit to Neil Lane. But since the two were traveling for the Superman Returns press tour, Routh asked Gilbert Adler, one of the film's producers, to hold the ring until they arrived in England. "Poor man!" says Routh. "He carried it around for two and a half weeks." Finally, while picnicking in Glastonbury, Routh popped the question.

Roselyn Sanchez and Eric Winter

Roselyn Sanchez and Eric Winter became friends after meeting at a party in 2006 and Sanchez immediately pegged him as perfect husband material. She found out for certain that he felt the same way just two days before Christmas 2007, under a full moon at midnight, in a bay off the coast of the Puerto Rican island Vieques.

The two were seated in a double kayak, taking in the bioluminescent organisms shimmering in the water all alone, except for a tour guide in a second kayak. The scene should have been pure bliss, except that Sachez was concerned when their guide speedily paddled away.

"The guy knew to take off so Eric could propose, but imagine how I felt floating in this huge bay in the middle of the night with nobody around," Sanchez explains. "I started calling back, 'Senor, hello! Come back!' until I realized something was going on."

After an "amazing speech," Winter pulled out a 4.3-carat brilliant-cut diamond ring by Michael Barin, Sanchez's favorite jeweler. But her joy was soon laced with anxiety over the fact that such a costly bauble was surrounded by acres of sea. "I said, 'Put it away, please. I don't want it to drop in the water!'"

Anna Chlumsky and Shaun So

Actress Anna Chlumsky, 27, best known for her role in "My Girl," was awaiting her seven-year anniversary with college sweetheart and army reservist Shaun So, 28, and hoping he might pop the question.

While they were having breakfast at a café in her neighborhood a week before their anniversary, Chlumsky described a cocktail ring a friend was selling. So, who had been carrying an engagement ring for two weeks in anticipation of the perfect moment, pulled out the 1-carat, cathedral-mounted, radiant-cut bauble and asked, "Does it look anything like this?"

Guiliana DePandi & Bill Rancic

It started out all business: Giuliana DePandi was interviewing Bill Rancic, first-season winner on "The Apprentice" and co-host of the Chicago, Illinois, TV show "In the Loop with iVillage." But when the cameras stopped rolling in April 2006, a whirlwind -- and adventurous -- romance began.

Eight months later, when Rancic, 36, popped the question during a chopper flight over Chicago, complete with champagne, Giordano's deep-dish pizza (DePandi's favorite) and Michael Bublé tunes piped into the headset.

"Bill told me we were going to look at Christmas lights," says DePandi. "It was dark in the helicopter, so I didn't really get a look at the ring until the next day, when I went into shock for the second time," she says of the 4-carat cushion-cut diamond in a micro pavé setting Rancic helped design.

Jeri Ryan and Chistophe Eme

"He was hot!" Shark star Jeri Ryan, 39, recalls of first glimpsing her future husband, Christophe Emé, 38, at a food-related charity event four years ago. "He looked good in his chef's hat, and he had this ornery little spark in his eye that I really enjoy." After dating for two years, the couple opened Ortolan, their celebrated French restaurant in Los Angeles, California.

The proposal came soon after. "One night, Christophe covered my eyes and took me into our bedroom," recalls Ryan. There the die-hard romantic had placed candles, champagne and a canvas painted with the messages "And you come with me forever" in French and "Grow old along with me" in English. Emé then presented Ryan with a made-to-order cushion-cut solitaire set in pavé diamonds.

Jason Priestley and Naomi Lowde

Fate has looked after Jason Priestley. On Valentine's Day 2000 the actor met Naomi Lowde, a makeup artist from Hertfordshire, England, while walking back from a play rehearsal in London. "I was smitten," says Priestley, now 36.

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum and Lowde, 27, immediately began dating, and in 2002 they moved back to California together. That's when fate took another turn: On August 11, 2002, Priestley was driving his race car on a Kentucky track when he hit a wall at 180 mph. Though he sustained three skull fractures, a broken back and a bleeding artery in his neck, he pulled through.

"It was a tough time, but it was also magical because we kept each other's spirits high," says Lowde. "We pushed two beds together in the hospital and put Swifty, our French bulldog, in the middle. We were together 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for three months."

In May 2004 Priestley arranged another trip to London, England -- to the very street corner where he and Naomi first met, where he presented her with an emerald-cut, three-diamond ring by Steven Pomerantz.

Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell

What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas -- and for Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell, that's not a bad thing. Nearly four years ago the two ran into each other poolside at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. "I was working on a documentary, and Jerry offered to help," recalls Romijn, 35. "He spent a week operating the microphone, but later he told me he would have done anything. I don't think he really cared about the project, if you know what I mean."

For their first date the couple went to see the Blue Man Group with friends, and O'Connell had Romijn in stitches. "It was this whole Jerry show in my ear. That's how it is with Jerry. You get sucked into it!" Evidently: A year and a half later, on September 18, 2005, O'Connell, 33, proposed to Romijn in New York with a diamond ring from Simon G.

"I got down on one knee, asked her to marry me and said, 'You better say yes' a couple of times -- there was a little bit of a pause on her part," says O'Connell.

Up and down the East Coast, residents and naturalists alike have been scratching their heads this autumn over a simple question: Where are all the acorns?

Oak trees have shed their leaves, but the usual carpet of acorns is not crunching underfoot.

In far-flung pockets of northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states, scientists have found no acorns whatsoever.

"I can't think of any other year like this," said Alonso Abugattas, director of the Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington, Virginia.

Louise Garris, who lives in the Oakcrest neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, first noticed the mysterious phenomenon early this fall when doing yardwork beneath a canopy of large oak trees.

"I have lived in the area my entire life and have never not seen any acorns!" she said. Garris checked with some local plant nurseries and they confirmed her observation.

The mystery has found its way to the Internet, where a "No acorns this year" discussion on Topix.com yielded more than 180 comments from people reporting acorn disappearances as far away as Connecticut and North Carolina.

"WHAT IS GOING ON?" posted a resident of Maplewood, New Jersey. "Now we are finding dead squirrels! SHOULD WE ALL BE CONCERNED?"

Not necessarily, naturalists say. Last year Garris reported a bumper crop of acorns, which scientists say may be one clue to this year's scarcity. Virginia extension agent Adam Downing said acorn production runs in cycles, so a lean year is normal after a year with a big crop.

"It fits with the physiology of seed reproduction. The trees are exhausted, energy wise, from last year," Downing said.

But even he is surprised at the complete absence of nuts in parts of Virginia.

"There are plenty of acorns in most of the state, but zero acorns in some pockets," he said.

Downing said recovery from last year's big crop, combined with a much wetter-than-usual spring, probably accounts for the acorn absence. Meteorologists say the Washington-Baltimore area saw about twice as much precipitation last May as normal.

Kate McNamee, who runs a Washington-area, volunteer tree-planting project called "Growing Native," lends specific numbers to the acorn shortage. Her group collects hardwood seeds and plants trees to protect rivers and streams in the Potomac River watershed.

"Last year we collected 25,000 pounds of seeds, most from a bumper crop of acorns," said McNamee. "This year we only collected 10,000 pounds, and 90 percent of that was walnuts."

Even though this acorn shortage has not risen to the level of a crisis, scientists say it is important to watch closely. If the shortage continues for several years, other forces might be at work.
iReport.com: Skillful squirrel raids bird feeder

Garris said her observations got her thinking about other recent environmental issues.

"I had read about the collapse of the bee colonies, and it made me wonder, is something else going on here? Could this be affecting other systems?"

At the Long Branch Nature Center, calls and e-mails have been pouring in from people who want to donate acorns they've gathered in areas where they are plentiful.

It's also hard to think of acorns without thinking about squirrels. What happens to them when their favorite food disappears? Some Eastern Seaboard residents have reported seeing skinny, aggressive squirrels devouring bird feed.

"Especially in the depths of winter, there's not much else for the squirrels to eat. Some may switch their diet, many others probably won't make it," said Abugattas. "Squirrel and deer numbers will almost certainly go down."

But Doug Inkley, senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation, said that wild animals can be resilient when their usual food sources go away.

Inkley cited a blight that destroyed 3.5 billion American chestnuts from 1900-1940, wiping out a common food source for squirrels, deer, mice and wild turkeys. But those animals adapted and survived, he said.

Barbara Prescott, a wildlife rehabilitation expert, agreed that squirrels are not fussy about their diet. She suggested that residents leave whole (not crushed) corn, peanuts and sunflowers in the seed as backyard treats.

John Rohm, wildlife biologist for Prince William, Loudoun, Fairfax, and Arlington counties in northern Virginia, has faith in the furry population.

"Animals are resourceful," he said. "If they're hungry, they're gonna find something to eat."