U.S. student Amanda Knox was acquitted of murder and sexual assault by an Italian court on Monday after breaking down in court and pleading for mercy in a dramatic end to her four-year legal battle.

She is expected to be released within hours form her prison in Perugia.

There were cries of "Shame! Shame!" and "Murderer!" from an angry crowd outside the courtroom immediately after the verdict.

The verdict overturns the 24-year-old's convictions for the grisly killing of her British housemate Meredith Kercher on November 1, 2007 in the university town of Perugia in central Italy where both young women were studying.

Her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, who was appealing with Knox, was also acquitted of the charges, leaving only one person convicted - local drifter Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied murder.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 in the original trial. Guede is serving out a 16-year sentence after exhausting his appeals.

At least eight people have been injured following an explosion and major fire at an industrial estate in Surrey, emergency services said.

The first alerts came in shortly before 11.30am about an explosion at Hobbs industrial estate, off Eastbourne Road, Newchapel, near East Grinstead, Surrey police said in a statement.

It added: "Surrey police, Surrey fire and rescue service, South East Coast ambulance service and Surrey air ambulance are all in attendance at the scene."

The ambulance service said eight people were being treated for injuries, although she had no information yet as to how serious these were. Two helicopter ambulances and six ambulances were sent to the scene.

A massive fire was burning Monday morning at a chemical plant in Waxahachie, located about 30 miles south of Dallas.


Firefighters were on the scene at the 1600 block of state Highway 287 at the Magnablend chemical company, which manufactures custom chemicals for a variety of industries, including oil fields, agriculture, pet food and feed supplements, water treatment, construction and industrial cleaning.

Tales of foreclosed families and unemployed college students moving back in with mom and dad aren't just anecdotal: A new report finds that more than 51 million Americans now live under one roof with multiple generations of family

That number, up from 46.5 million in 2007, represents the largest increase in multigenerational households in modern U.S. history. Unemployment is the biggest driver of the trend, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

About 6.9 million of America's multigenerational homes consist of two adult generations, such as an adult child returning home to his or her parents. Another 4.2 million households contain three generations or more, while about 857,000 consist of grandparents caring for a grandchild.

Lawlessness, injustice, and contempt for democratic values define his administration. He delivered change all right - for the worst, and nothing ahead looks promising.

Obama-style "rules of engagement" include bullets, bombs, slit throats, knives in the back, or drone attacks justice.

Targeted victims are declared guilty by accusation. Due process and judicial fairness are discarded artifacts. US citizens are as vulnerable as global enemies.

No one is safe anywhere in a world ruled by rogue leaders, taking the law into their own hands with impunity.

As a result, freedom and security were jettisoned to memory hole oblivion. Let's count the ways.

Muslims are targeted for their faith, ethnicity, and at times prominence and charity.

Torture remains official US policy.

America's domestic and overseas gulags match the worst anywhere. Out of sight and mind, inmates are dehumanized and brutalized.

America's business is war and grand theft globally. Countries are raped and pillaged on the pretext of humanitarian intervention.

Everyone except corporate favorites and complicit elites suffer.

Ten Muslim Southern California students were convicted for exercising their First Amendment rights. Others are hunted down and prosecuted ruthlessly for political advantage.

Thousands of political prisoners suffer unjustly, including undocumented Latinos here because destructive trade pacts destroyed their livelihoods.

State-sponsored murder is official policy. Innocent victims include Troy Anthony Davis. Others wait their turn on death row. Federal, state and local authorities call it justice. Human rights activists call it crimes against humanity.

A 71-year-old Washington man accused in the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois girl has been charged in a separate case with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl from the same small town.

Illinois State Police announced the grand jury indictment of Jack McCullough on Friday but didn't say when the sexual assault happened. He was indicted this summer on felony murder, kidnapping and abduction charges in the death of Maria Ridulph of Sycamore.

McCullough was arrested in Seattle in July in one of the oldest cold-case murders in the nation to be reopened. He has been held on $3 million bail in a jail about 65 miles west of Chicago.

The 14-year-old girl told investigators McCullough raped her when she was 14 in Sycamore, prosecutors and state police said. He's now also charged with one count of child sexual assault and four counts of indecent liberties with a child.

"Sadly, we have another victim, and for the families of all victims, the pain never goes away," Illinois State Police director Hiram Grau said in a news release.

A tearful and emotional Amanda Knox told an Italian court that she had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher as a jury went out to decide whether to acquit her or uphold her 26-year prison sentence.
Her voice trembling and struggling to maintain her composure, Knox stood up in the frescoed, medieval courtroom in Perugia and declared: "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not there."

The U.N. condemned Bahrain's brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters Friday. Human rights groups say that since March, 34 people have been killed and more than 1,400 arrested. And now, Bahrain has put doctors on trial -- just for treating injured protesters. CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips spoke with one doctor who faces a long prison term.

The wave of the Arab Spring peoples' revolutions that had rolled across Tunisia and Egypt, crashed when it hit the tiny Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

The government quashed the demonstrators. And the people who had failed in their challenge to the authorities are still paying the price.

Dr. Nadu Dhaif was one of many health workers who treated the injured in makeshift clinics and supported their cause. Now, as she explained in a Skype interview, a Bahraini court has handed down its judgment.

"I was sentenced for 15 years in prison," she said. "It was a complete total shock."

New York, New York: The protesters who have been camping out in Manhattan's Financial District for more than two weeks eat donated food and keep their laptops running with a portable gas-powered generator. They have a newspaper - the Occupied Wall Street Journal - and a makeshift hospital.

They lack a clear objective, though they speak against corporate greed, social inequality, global climate change and other concerns. But they're growing in numbers, getting more organized and showing no sign of quitting.

An English expatriate in Viareggio (northern Italy) has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital after ripping out his own eyes with his naked hands during a church service.

The 46-year-old, a long-term resident in the Tuscan municipality, began screaming and banging his head against the floor during mass, explains his elderly mother, who was with him at the time.

He claimed he heard voices telling him to tear his eyes out.

The man was rushed to nearby Versilia hospital for an emergency operation, but surgeons were unable to save his sight, meaning he will now be blind for life.

Doctor Gino Barbacci, who treated him, said the man did not complain or show any signal of physical pain, and answered correctly when asked his name.