(NYPD)

A prisoner escaped from a jail in the Bronx, police said Wednesday.

Cops announced the escape this morning, which they said happened shortly before 4 p.m. Saturday.

Quentin Stroman, 18, was being kept at a White Plains Road detention facility, according to cops, where he had been jailed by court order after a March assault.

Stroman is described as 6-foot-1 and about 160 pounds. He was last seen in a multicolor baseball hat, black sweatshirt and black jeans.

Anyone with information should call 800-577-TIPS.

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An ex-con was arraigned Saturday after being caught sneaking into at least one city jail.

According to news reports, Matthew Matagrano, 36, used a phony gold shield Thursday to gain access to the Manhattan Detention Center. He then reportedly spent over seven hours smoking and conversing with inmates, and also stole a walkie-talkie.

Matagrano, a convicted sex offender, may have similarly entered the jail on Rikers Island.

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Megan Fox can certainly sympathize with Kate Middleton, having had a pretty rough and morning sickness-filled pregnancy herself. “It was so bad for me,” Fox says during a visit to the “Tonight” show with Jay Leno. “I was convinced that I was, like, maybe birthing a vampire baby like the one in ‘Twilight’ — you know, what happened to Bella where she’s in cold sweats all the time? And I felt like that was happening because I had no vitamins and I was just nauseous. Something not human was happening.”

Drew Barrymore has done a lot of growing up, but that doesn’t mean she feels like an adult. “The mistakes, the potholes, the journeys, the bad patterns — all of it is so much clearer to me now, but I still don’t totally feel like a grownup,” the 37-year-old new mom tells Allure magazine. “Maybe I never will.”

Zooey Deschanel‘s marriage to Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard is officially over, with the former couple formalizing their divorce in a Los Angeles court last week, just over a month after separating, according to E! News. And the “New Girl” star appears to already be moving on, having been spotted recently walking hand-in-hand with new screenwriter boyfriend Jamie Linden.

Christopher Chaney, the man responsible for hacking the email accounts of more than 50 celebrities and posting their intimate photos online, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to E! News. Chaney was also ordered to pay restitution fees of $66,179 by the judge, who admonished Chaney for his “callous disregard to his victims” during the hearing. His famous victims included Scarlett Johansson, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Alba and Mila Kunis.

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“Twilight” co-stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart may be back together, but apparently someone forgot to inform Cameron Diaz. The actress reportedly got quite flirty with Pattinson at a recent gala dinner in Los Angeles, according to Us Weekly. “She was pretty obvious,” a source says. “Cam was seated next to Rob at dinner. She was touching his arm, doing her big Cameron laugh at everything he said and trying really hard. He was polite, but not having it.”

It’s never too late to tell the truth, apparently. Kirstie Alley has revealed that she and the late Patrick Swayze began an “intense emotional relationship” while filming the 1985 miniseries “North and South,” according to Entertainment Tonight. “Both of us were married,” Alley explains, adding that she wouldn’t call what happened between them “an affair,” exactly. “But again, I think what we did was worse,” she says. “Because I think when you fall in love with someone when you’re married, you jeopardize your own marriage and their marriage. It’s doubly bad.” Alley says that she’s not sure if Swayze’s widow, Lisa Niemi — with whom she’s still friends — was aware to the relationship before now.

Heidi Klum says she’s “very happy” dating her former bodyguard, Martin Kirsten, in the wake of her split from husband Seal. In fact, the new romance has even influenced her movie-viewing habits, as the “Project Runway” host finally sat down to watch “the Bodyguard,” she tells Ellen DeGeneres in an interview. “I’ve actually watched the movie since then. I had to,” she says. “That’s going to be my Halloween costume next year.”

Jack Nicholson isn’t a fan of his reputation as a Hollywood Lothario. “I am an extreme person. If someone says, ‘Jack, you are a womanizer,’ I don’t deny it. But the life of a gigolo always ends badly,” the 75-year-old Oscar-winner tells the Sun. “That is one of the reasons I feel uncomfortable about all that ‘sex legend’ stuff.” Nicholson also says that reports of his conquests — he’s rumored to have bedded more than 2,000 women — are greatly exaggerated.

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Berlusconi has the right to appeal the ruling two more times before the sentence becomes definitive and will not be jailed unless the final appeal is upheld. Prosecutors had asked for a jail sentence of three years and eight months.

The court also ordered damages provisionally set at 10 million euros ($12.96 million) to be paid by Berlusconi and his co-defendants to tax authorities.

The ruling comes two days after Berlusconi, 76, confirmed he would not run in next year’s elections as the leader of his center-right People of Freedom (PDL) party.

A separate trial over accusations that Berlusconi paid for sex with an underaged prostitute is currently being heard in Milan. He denies all charges against him.

The four-time prime minister and other Mediaset executives stood accused of inflating the price paid for TV rights via offshore companies controlled by Berlusconi, and skimming off part of the money to create illegal slush funds.

The investigation focused on television and cinema rights that Berlusconi’s holding company Fininvest bought via offshore companies from U.S. groups for 470 million euros between 1994 and 1999.

Angelino Alfano, secretary of the PDL, said the ruling proved once again “judicial persecution” of the media-magnate, while political rival Antonio Di Pietro, a former magistrate, hailed the decision, saying “the truth has been exposed.”

The court acquitted Mediaset chairman and long-term Berlusconi friend Fedele Confalonieri, for whom prosecutors had sought a sentence of three years and four months.

Shares in Mediaset, Italy’s biggest private broadcaster, fell as much as 3 percent after the ruling.

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The band’s supporters burst into chants of “Shame” outside the Moscow courthouse and said the case showed Putin’s refusal to tolerate dissent. The U.S. embassy in Moscow said the sentence appeared disproportionate to what the defendants did.

The women have support abroad, where their case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting, but opinion polls show few Russians sympathize with them.

“The girls’ actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church’s rules,” Judge Marina Syrova told the court as she spent three hours reading the verdict while the women stood watching in handcuffs inside a glass courtroom cage.

She declared all three guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral in February to belt out a song deriding Putin.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, giggled as the judge read out the sentences one by one. They have already been in jail for about five months, meaning they will serve another 19.

They say they were protesting against Putin’s close ties with the church when they burst into Moscow’s golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts.

State prosecutors had requested a three-year jail term.

Putin’s opponents portray the trial as part of a wider crackdown by the former KGB spy to crush their protest movement.

“They are in jail because it is Putin’s personal revenge,” Alexei Navalny, one of the organizers of big protests against Putin during the winter, told reporters outside the court. “This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin.”

Putin’s spokesman did not immediately answer calls following the verdict, but the president’s allies said before the trial that the Kremlin would not have any influence on the outcome. The Russian Orthodox Church also did not comment.

FOREIGN SUPPORT

Foreign singers have campaigned for the trio’s release, and Washington says the case is politically motivated. Madonna performed in Moscow with “PUSSY RIOT” painted on her back.

“As in most politically motivated cases, this court is not in line with the law, common sense or mercy,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva said.

But Valentina Ivanova, 60, a retired doctor, said outside the courtroom: “What they did showed disrespect towards everything, and towards believers first of all.”

The judge said they had “committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society.” She rejected their argument that they had no intention of offending Russian Orthodox believers.

The trio’s defense lawyers said they would appeal.

Many in Russia’s mainly Orthodox Christian society backed the authorities’ demands for severe punishment, though some have said the women deserved clemency.

Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term in May after a four-year spell as prime minister, has said the women did “nothing good” but should not be judged too harshly.

Witnesses say at least 24 people were detained by police in scuffles or for unfurling banners or donning ski masks in support of Pussy Riot outside the courtroom. Among those detained were Sergei Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader, and Garry Kasparov, the chess great and vehement Putin critic.

“Shame on (Russian Orthodox Patriarch) Kirill, shame on Putin,” Udaltsov said before he was detained.

“A disgraceful political reprisal is under way on the part of the authorities … If we swallow this injustice, they can come for any one of us tomorrow.”

The crowd of about 2,000 people outside the court was dominated by Pussy Riot supporters but also included some nationalists and religious believers demanding a tough sentence.

“Evil must be punished,” said Maria Butilno, 60, who held an icon and said Pussy Riot had insulted the faithful.

An opinion poll of Russians released by the independent Levada research group on Friday showed only 6 percent had sympathy with the women, 51 percent said they found nothing good about them or felt irritation or hostility, and the rest were unable to say or were indifferent.

RADICAL PROTESTERS

Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich are educated, middle-class Russians who say their protest was not intended to offend believers.

The charges against Pussy Riot raised concern abroad about freedom of speech in Russia two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Today’s sentence in the Pussy Riot case looks disproportionate to the actions,” the U.S. Embassy in Moscow wrote on its Twitter microblog in Russian.

Protests in support of the group were planned in cities from Sydney to Paris, and New York to London. A crowd of several hundred gathered in a New York hotel late on Thursday to hear actress Chloe Sevigny and others read from letters, lyrics and court statements by the detained women.

In the centre of Kiev, a bare-chested feminist activist took a chainsaw to a wooden cross bearing a figure of Christ, while in Bulgaria, sympathizers put Pussy Riot-style masks on statues at a Soviet Army monument.

“Huge damage has been done to the country’s image and attractiveness for investors,” former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin wrote in a message posted on his website.

Protest leaders say Putin will not relax pressure on opponents in his new six-year term. Parliament has already rushed through laws increasing fines for protesters, tightening controls on the Internet, and imposing stricter rules on defamation.

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Simpson, dad and manager to Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, was pulled over by cops in LA around 10 pm on August 4, according to TMZ.

The new grandpa to Jessica’s baby daughter Maxwell Drew, was arrested by the LAPD after officers suspected him of being intoxicated. He spent the rest of the night behind bars.

Simpson, 54, was released the next morning and no charges have yet been filed. This was his first offense, so he will likely get off with a fine.

The former minster is famous for some bizarre comments, including one about his daughter Jessica’s chest.

“Jessica never tries to be sexy. She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she’s sexy in both. She’s got double D’s! You can’t cover those suckers up!” he once told GQ.

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Advocates of a 2003 law to eliminate prison rape see sexual assault in U.S. prisons as rampant and grossly overlooked.

“Sexual assault crimes committed within our correctional facilities can have devastating consequences – for individual victims and for communities far beyond our jails and prisons,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

More than 209,400 people were victims of sexual abuse in prisons, jails and juvenile detention facilities in 2008, the Justice Department said.

Holder on Thursday signed a detailed plan for implementation of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act that directs adult prisons and jails, lockups, community confinement facilities and juvenile facilities to begin screening inmates for risk of being sexually abused or abusive.

It also mandates background checks on prospective employees of these facilities for any history of sexual abuse.

Officials said the rule also applied to confinement centers operated by executive departments and agencies other than the Justice Department, including immigration detention centers.

Other measures include barring juveniles from being housed with adult inmates, a ban on cross-gender pat-down searches, video monitoring and special attention to lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual inmates vulnerable to abuse.

States which do not come into compliance with the rule, checked by audits every three years, would lose five percent of any Department of Justice grants for their prisons. Facilities would have about two months to come into compliance.

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Wearing a brown jacket, jeans and carrying a brown paper bag, Zimmerman walked out of the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County moments after midnight after posting bail and meeting other conditions set for his release at a hearing on Friday.

Zimmerman was met by another man and quickly climbed into a white BMW sports utility vehicle that drove off. He made no comments to a handful of journalists gathered outside the jail.

Under the conditions set by Judge Kenneth Lester Jr., Zimmerman must wear an electronic monitoring device and he may be allowed to leave the state. He also must observe a dusk-to-dawn curfew and is prohibited from consuming illegal drugs or alcohol or possessing a firearm.

Attorney Daryl Parks, who represents Martin’s parents, said the family respected the judicial process that allowed Zimmerman to be released from jail but was “devastated by him being able to walk the streets.”

“It’s with a very, very heavy heart that they’ve seen him walk freely late last night back into the public,” Parks said on CNN.

Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara, appearing in on CBS’s “This Morning” program, said there had been no recent threats against his client but his whereabouts still are expected to remain a closely guarded secret until his next appearance in court.

Zimmerman shot and killed Martin is a gated community in Sanford in central Florida on February 26 in an incident that triggered civil rights protests nationwide and fired a national debate over guns, self-defense laws and race in America.

No date has been set for Zimmerman’s trial.

Zimmerman, who is white and Hispanic, has said he shot the 17-year-old Martin in self-defense following a confrontation that occurred as Martin was returning to his father’s house in the community after buying candy from a convenience store.

Police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman, citing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows people to use deadly force when they believe they are in danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm.

The lack of an arrest led thousands to march in protest rallies in Sanford and across the country. The public outrage forced the Sanford police chief and regularly assigned prosecutor to step aside.

At the Friday hearing, Zimmerman apologized to Martin’s family, stunning a rapt courtroom after he appeared in a suit and tie and with shackles around his waist and wrists.

Governor Rick Scott appointed Angela Corey as special prosecutor. She charged Zimmerman on April 11.

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Moreno, acquitted of raping a woman who called him for help, was hit with a surprise one-year jail term yesterday for misconduct charges stemming from his return to the woman’s apartment while on duty.

He was freed late yesterday afternoon on a $125,000-bail pending an appeal of his sentence.

His high-powered defense attorney Joe Tacopina begged the judge for last-minute leniency.

“Certainly everyone knows the potential dangers that befall a police officer in the criminal justice system,” pleaded Tacopina.

But Judge Gregory Carro would hear none of it.

“You’ve undermined the role of other police officers who have to do a tough job in this city,” said Carro to Moreno.

It’s no secret cops are indeed targeted in jail, former NYPD officer Mike Codella said.

“The minute you’re in the joint everybody knows that there’s a cop in there,” he said. To other prisoners, attacking a police officer is “kind of like a feather in your cap.”

Even though Moreno would be under protective custody in jail — taking his meals and outdoor time at separate times than the other prisoners — he’s still not safe, said Codella.

“You still bump into (other prisoners) and they still see you,” he said.

And because Moreno was accused of rape, jail will be “doubly dangerous,” said  Richard Lichten, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officer and a jail violence expert.

“It’s one thing going to jail as a former police officer,” Lichten said.

“But inmates in jail do not like other inmates who are in there for crimes against women.”

Harsher sentence for cops

Carro deemed that Moreno’s status as a former police officer actually warranted a tougher sentence. “Your attorney said you should be treated like any other defendant, but the law treats police officers differently because of their role. Crimes against police officers are treated more severely than crimes against civilians,” he said. “If you kill a police officer, it’s murder one. If you kill Joe Smith, it’s murder two.”

Guards won’t be watching

Moreno can’t even expect jail guards to watch out for him, warned Codella. “Most people are under the impression these guys are guilty. The corrections officers are not going to treat them especially nice,” he said. “They’re not going to go out of their way to do them any favors.” Moreno was kicked off the force after his conviction.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro.

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And most of them are awaiting trial behind bars because they can’t afford not to be: They’re there because they can’t pay bail.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who is accused of sexual assault, is not among them. He was granted release late last week after posting $1 million in cash.

For Strauss-Kahn, bail was an inconvenience. For low-income defendants, it’s real trouble.

The inability to afford bail means an arrest — even a mistaken one — can have a damaging impact on a person’s life. Work and school are missed, benefits appointments go unattended and child care becomes an issue.

In 2009 (the last year for which the New York City Criminal Justice Agency published data), some 19,000 people arrested never made bail.

Bail is a problematic solution, say some.

“People should not have to endure jail simply because they are too poor to buy their way out,” Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.

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