Takafumi Horie (the Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Sergey Brin of Japan) pleaded not guilty to fraud charges today. The founder of Japanese ISP and portal Livedoor is charged with securities fraud for allegedly falsifying earnings and spreading misinformation to boost his company's stock price.

A Brazilian judge gave Google 15 days (as of yesterday) to deliver the data of Orkut users accused of illegal activity. Google's social site, a failure in the U.S., took off in Brazil, apparently attracting the child pornographers and hate-speech writers that the governement is now chasing down.

Lee Jae-woong has a gambling problem. The Daum chief is suspected in a scandal that's rattling the highest levels of South Korea's government and businesses. He's one of fifty suspects ordered to stay in the country pending an investigation of companies that allegedly bribed government officials to allow illegal vouchers to be issued for video gambling games.

• Say what you will about the Post, they still give great headline. [NYP]
• They also can't help but tweak rival Mort Zuckerman. [NYP]
• Nor can they resist a dig at the Times. [NYP]
• But at the end of the day, it's nice to know that they'll still bring you the news that really matters. [NYP]

If his criminal charges are all dropped, Frank Quattrone could collect $100 million in back pay from his former employer. As long as the major investment banker (who blew up the dot-com bubble with IPO funding) stays clean for a year, he's golden. Great, story over, next criminal.

So Charles Kushner, the disgraced real estate mogul and father of new Observer owner Jared Kushner, will be released from his halfway house this Saturday, where he's spent the past 100 days of his two-year prison sentence. Make no mistake, Kushner's still been serving hard time:

Imette St. Guillen. Jennifer Moore. Probably some minority women you've never heard of.

We asked about the pending prison release of Charles Kushner, father of New York Observer owner Jared Kushner. A reader pointed us to the charming Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator, which tracked down Kushner p re with ease. Charles has a projected release date of Saturday, August 26. The reader explains:

• Sony bought video site Grouper (pictured) for $65 million; analysts say it's for the technology, not for the traffic. [NYT]

You might recall that developer and Democratic bagman Charles Kushner, father of new New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, was sentenced to two years' incarceration for "18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign donations," not to mention hiring a hooker to seduce his brother-in-law, thus punishing Kushner's sister for cooperating with investigators. However, our crowded penal system can only hold so many billionaires, so Kushner the elder has been living at a Newark halfway house, with an expected release in "late August." If Charles Kushner does indeed walk early (we're assuming he's getting parole, time served, etc. — heard anything?), we hope he gets a column at the Observer. He could tell us about life on the inside, and all the twisted schemes he had to create just for survival's sake. Just like in Prison Break, only with work release and movie night.

As the Post noted on Friday, the scraped-clean Upper East Side townhouse lot formerly belonging to suicidally deceased explosionologist Dr. Nicholas Bartha is now on the market. "Seize this opportunity to build your dream house!" coos the Brown Harris Stevens listing; a broker confides there has been "a lot, a lot, a lot of interest." Three lots! See also, "quiet, lovely tree lined street," long as you don't mind the blast marks. The $8 million price tag roughly doubles the supposed value of the townhouse formerly occupying the spot; copycat suicide developers are expected to swarm the Brooklyn waterfront.

Oh, the move the New York Times is alluding to is a stock options backdating scandal, whereby ex-Comverse head Jacob Alexander allegedly manipulated his stock options illegally in America, netting himself tens of millions of dollars.

Did you head out to the Hamptons this weekend? Hope you had a great time! Here are a few things you may have missed in the news: In New Jersey, a handyman was arrested for having sexually abused at least eleven children, the youngest being 23 months old. Also in New Jersey, state investigators "discovered" that a day care center had been built on the site of a former mercury thermometer factory, and at least twenty of the kids who spent time there are now showing abnormally high levels of the element in their systems. Over on Long Island, a 31-year-old bedding salesman who lived with his parents murdered and dismembered a 57-year-old neighbor, putting her head in his trunk. And here in town, a filmmaker catcalled a woman outside of the IFC; she and six of her friends (and, allegedly, random passersby) began to assault him; he was eventually stabbed in the stomach with a steak knife.

JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in Colorado. Her confessed killer was arrested in Thailand. Her father made his statement from Michigan, where he resides. It's the perfect time to run another piece on a city judge who went missing seventy-five years ago. Take it away, Newsday!

This morning's New York Post finally crossed the line, sharing an agonizing moment at the end of a woman's life with the whole world. We're in utter sympathy with her loved ones, who not only have to see her in this condition, but know that everyone else has seen it, too.

He may have escaped our roving videographer, but Boy George nevertheless suffered the indignities of numerous Associated Press photographers on his foray into punitive sanitation work. Who knows what's going on under those wraparound shades? After the jump, an official Story in Pictures thing. Barring further misadventure, even we agree it's appropriate to let the fellow repay the remainder of his debt to society in peace.

Today's the day! George O'Dowd, nee Boy George, begins his weeklong community service festival today by working for the Department of Sanitation. He'll be picking up trash off the streets of Manhattan, for which purpose he was issued "a shovel, broom, plastic bags and gloves." B-George reported for duty to the Lower East Side sanitation depot at 7 a.m. this morning "wearing dark capri pants, shoes without socks, a sweatshirt, and without the wild makeup that made him so recognizable." As his community service punishment for reporting a false break-in and non-false cocaine possession, Boy George "initially envisioned a service project more in line with his status as an '80s icon," but instead he's on garbage duty. Of course, we really want photos of this seminal moment. If you spot Boy George cleaning up the streets, drop us a line at tips@gawker.com and we'll dispatch our hordes of howling paparazzi. Or send us a scouting photo yourself. Be sure to provide complete location info, and any further physical details that will help us ID the target.

• Because this world has the endless capacity for incredible cruelty, a woman tried to mug Dustin Diamond — n Samuel "Screech" Powers — in his Omaha hotel room yesterday. While we believe anything Screech tells us, we've got to wonder how the woman got into his hotel room. Did she look like Lisa Turtle? [TMZ]
• Send Lohan to Iraq! Please! [AP]
• This is the second time today we've mentioned Esquire's "I've Got Two Hoo-Hoos" article, but if you've not yet read it, you MUST. We can't stress it enough. A sample: "I lost my virginity twice. The first time was when I was eighteen. Then I lost the other side two weeks later. To the same guy." [Esquire]
• David Duchovny massages Bart Freundlich's supple breast. [Getty]
• The shitstorm surrounding Diana Bianchi/Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook is doing wonders for the career of down-and-out singer Samantha Cole, who's finally reaping the rewards from sleeping with Cook a decade ago. [NYP]
• Floyd Landis is but a pawn in the war between Good Morning America and the Today show. [TV Squad]
• Page Six sets a good example, recycles. [One Park Avenue Realty]
• The HuffPo gets $5 million and what do they do? Publish a Woman's Studies major from Wellesley who lives in Brooklyn and writes about Sleater Kinney. Ungrateful sonuvabitches. [HuffPo]
• Britons beat off for charity, whereas Americans do it for themselves. [Reuters]
• Cindy Adams finally gets the star treatment. [NYT]

The Palm Beach Post reports today that billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, who has been accused of receiving "sex-tinged" massages and facilitating lesbian sex for underage girls, has assembled a team to fight the media with a defense that pretty much consists of "the girls are liars." Really? Is that the best you could come up with? What sort of retainer does one have to pay for that sort of originality?