Whatever it is, the Virginia horse-country characters, who caused a scandal with their uninvited appearance at a 2009 White House state dinner, seized our attention once again Wednesday when Tareq Salahi reported that his willowy blonde wife had been abducted.

In fact, Michaele Salahi had run away, it seems — into the open arms of a grizzled rock star.

Tareq, the polo-playing scion of the feuding Oasis Winery family, lit up the Internet early Wednesday when he told TMZ his wife of eight years had gone missing — and that he believed she’d been “kidnapped.”

Hours later, though, came a calmer statement from the Warren County (Va.) Sheriff’s department:

They had talked to Michaele Salahi. She seemed fine. She had left home willingly. And she told them she didn’t want her husband to know where she was. Sad. Or was it? The spotlight had dimmed for the couple since Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of D.C.” — which turned their state dinner scandal into a juicy reality-TV plot point last year — failed to get renewed for a second season. Still, there’s been a mild buzz of activity in Salahiworld: They’ve continued to float oddball stories about themselves (i.e., a recent report that they’re trying to have a baby) to the online gossip rags. They’ve recently tried to hype a gala reopening at Oasis — though it remains mired in an ownership dispute, and its assets are scheduled to be sold at a bankruptcy auction Saturday. (Investigations of alleged charity and business fraud by the couple are said to still be in play.) Meanwhile, talk-show star Montel Williams has issued cease-and-desist notices against the duo for falsely linking his name to their gala, which the couple has claimed will be the subject of a future TV show.

But now she’s gone.

Despite Michaele’s assurances to police, Tareq (who did not return The Post’s phone calls) gave tearful interviews maintaining she must have been coerced; Warren County authorities dutifully announced they were working with the FBI “to assure her well- being.”

Oh, she’s fine. Late in the day, a publicist for Journey — yes, the ’80s arena rockers — confirmed to us (following another TMZ report) that Michaele, 45, is shacking up with guitarist Neal Schon, 57, and is currently with him at a concert tour stop in Memphis. (Journey, before their recent career resurgence, had played at Salahi-run polo matches. Read more about the Salahi-Journey connection.)

“She’s not been kidnapped,” the rep told us. “Nobody kidnapped her.”

Sigh. And hmmm. Schon’s not looking to get into reality TV, is he? “Absolutely not,” she said.

It looks like ‘The Biggest Loser’ might have found another new trainer. According to reports, tennis star Anna Kournikova will join the NBC fitness show next season.

Kournikova will join new trainers Cara Castronuova and Brett Hoebel as the show undergoes major changes in the wake of Jillian Michaels’ departure from the hit show, X17 Online reports. Michaels announced her decision to leave last year in order to focus on starting a family.

An official announcement regarding Kournikova’s role on ‘Biggest Loser’ is expected after the show’s season finale on Tuesday.

Kournikova, who recently put her $9.4 million Miami mansion on the market, is certainly no stranger in the fitness world. A tennis player all her life, she debuted at the U.S. Open when she was just 15 years old and was named ESPN’s Hottest Female Athlete in 2002.

The tennis star has been dating singer Enrique Igelsias since late 2001.

LOS ANGELES — Elisha Cuthbert is looking for love.

“A lot of people loved to hate my character on 24,” says the actress, who played Jack Bauer’s rebellious, accident-prone daughter Kim on the long-running series. “I want to be the character people love to love.”

So she signed on to star in the new ABC comedy series Happy Endings (tonight, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT).

It might take a few episodes for audiences to fall for her. When they first see her character, Alex, she’s walking down the aisle in a wedding dress. A few minutes later she has a change of heart.

The wedding disaster is just a vivid way to introduce all the characters. “It shows who we are and where we’re at,” Cuthbert says. “I have some redeeming to do after leaving my fiancé at the altar. I have to win back the audience, but we don’t dwell on that for too long.”

Cuthbert herself has never exited so dramatically from a romance. “I’ve had pretty standard relationships that weren’t too long-term,” she says. “My relationship now (with Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Dion Phaneuf) is the longest I’ve ever been in. I think that’s good because it’s keeping on track with my age (28). I’m getting older and wiser.”

Cuthbert lives part-time in Los Angeles and part-time in Toronto. “I do believe that when you know better, you do better,” she says. “You know what was wrong about the last relationship, and hopefully you will do better the next time.”

Since becoming famous through 24, Cuthbert has tried with limited success to build a film career. She co-starred in Old School, Love Actually, The Girl Next Door and House of Wax, along with a few little-seen independent films. She also appeared in six episodes of Christian Slater’s recent crime series The Forgotten.

Cuthbert decided to seek out TV comedy because, she says, “I want people to see a different side of me. I spent a lot of years trying to figure out plotlines and do the whole dramatic thing. It’s been an awakening to not have to think too hard about anything and just have a good time. I’m trying to let go of any feelings of embarrassment.”

Cuthbert says she’s more like her character Alex than any other character she has played.

“Maybe it’s because I was always afraid to be myself. I always thought the hard part about acting was creating another character, being someone you’re not,” she says.

After 17 years in the business, Cuthbert was ready to show people “a little bit more of me.”

She says, “Alex is the heart of me. I’m a regular Canadian girl. I enjoy staying home. In the summer I’ve got a garden. I’m very much a homebody, a normal, family-oriented girl. But I do have this other incredible side of my life that involves acting and traveling.”

If Happy Endings has any of the success of Friends, a show that it resembles, Cuthbert will completely lose her anonymity.

“We’ve been getting a lot of comparisons to Friends,” she admits. “Of course we have some correlations. There’s a part of Friends in every half-hour comedy.” In fact, the first episode of Friends featured Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) arriving at a coffee shop to meet her pals after leaving her fiancé at the altar.

“Our show is about love,” Cuthbert says, “love between a group of friends, love that doesn’t necessarily always work out, the search for love.”

Although there is still talk of a 24 movie, Cuthbert is skeptical of it happening any time soon.

“Kiefer (Sutherland) is in New York doing a play (That Championship Season),” she says. “I’ve heard the script is there, and then I’ve heard it’s not there. I don’t think that Kiefer would do anything not up to par.”

Would she return as Kim? She was a regular cast member for three years and then popped up occasionally during the next five seasons. “My character is very particular, and her appearance needs to make sense in the plot,” she says. “But if they wanted me, of course.”

It took some persuading to get Toni Braxton to agree to do a reality show.

“My sisters asked me to do this show in 2008 and I said yes, but then I reneged and said ‘No, I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it,” Braxton said during a recent press event.

The singer best known for hits like “Breathe Again” and “Un-Break My Heart” eventually relented, and the result is her new reality series “Braxton Family Values,” which debuts tonight on WEtv.

The show features Braxton in her role as the eldest sister to siblings Trina, Tamar, Traci and Towanda, and as a single mother of two sons. There is plenty of drama among the sisters (there’s also a brother who declined to star in the show but will make an appearance), who at one time all performed as a group.

One sister in particular, Tamar, is very vocal about her desire to no longer be a backup singer and to become a star apart from her famous sister Toni. The tension leads to a few dramatic moments within the family.

“I’ve always been an open and outspoken person but I didn’t know that through all of that I was actually hurting people’s feelings,” Tamar said. “For me it was a big lesson.”

But the dramatics don’t stop there: One sister deals with an open marriage, another with a drinking problem and yet another with her feelings about being left out of show business. And of course there’s Toni, who opens up about her health issues and two bankruptcies. Residing over all of the action is the matriarch of the family, Evelyn Braxton.

The show premieres on WEtv Tuesday at 9 p.m.

Oprah Winfrey Lost A Baby At 14, Oprah Winfrey has stunned fans by revealing she lost a child when she was a young teenager.

The media mogul and talk show host tells all in the new issue of her namesake magazine, Oprah, admitting she was almost a mum at 14, after years of sexual abuse and “resulting promiscuity.”

Best pal and Oprah editor Gayle King says, “She didn’t really know who the father was of this child, and hid the pregnancy for a very long time.”

Oprah reveals the baby, which was born prematurely, died shortly after birth.

King adds, “It was a secret that she carried for many years because she was very ashamed.”

The media mogul felt she had to reveal all about her secret when an unnamed family member sold the story of Oprah’s lost child to US tabloid the National Enquirer.

King reveals her friend was so upset about the family betrayal, she spent a weekend sobbing in bed.

Oprah Winfrey says in the February issue of her magazine that she cried for three days when a relative told the National Enquirer that Winfrey became pregnant at 14 and lost the baby after birth.

Winfrey already had confirmed the Enquirer’s 1990 report that she got pregnant as a teenager, telling Parade magazine later that year that the baby was born prematurely and died shortly after birth. Her half-sister, Patricia Lloyd, sold the story to the tabloid, according to news reports at the time.

Winfrey, who did not name Lloyd in her column, wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine that the relative “sat in a room, told them the story of my hidden shame and left their offices $19,000 richer.”

“I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me?” she wrote.

Winfrey now says she learned something from what she calls “that first betrayal.” Having the secret out was “liberating” and it allowed her to begin to heal from the sexual abuse she said she experienced as a girl.

She says she hasn’t let more recent betrayals in her life bother her as much, although they still feel like “a kick in the gut.”

Oprah has her excuses for her behavior, and would like sympathy and empathy for what she claims she went through, but does she deserve to be excused? I don’t think so.

Now Oprah Kicks Shawn Hornbeck in the gut. Oprah Winfrey just had Shawn Hornbeck, 15, the boy who was kidnapped at 11 years old, on her show in a nationally televised interview with his parents. Oprah asked Hornbeck’s parents, “Do you think he was sexually abused?” When I heard that his parents had Hornbeck on Oprah with no time to even psychologically deal with his trauma my impression was “that’s child abuse.” When I heard Oprah already started asking about sexual abuse with Shawn Hornbeck sitting right there in front of Oprah I WAS SHOCKED.

I find it VERY hard to believe that Oprah could have been sexually abused, especially when she doesn’t have enough sympathy or empathy for Shawn Hornbeck to not do the interview, and further, not ask if he was sexually abused. Doesn’t Oprah realize that Hornbeck, like she claims of herself, is a sexual abuse victim and it is demeaning and humiliating for the world to know about it? If Oprah cared, was responsible, and if she truly were a sexual abuse victim, she would never have put Hornbeck through that interview. This is even worse than what Hornbeck went through the last four years. If Oprah didn’t want to talk about losing a baby at 14, what makes her think Hornbeck would want to talk about being sexually abused for 4 years just days after he was rescued? Oprah is cold and cruel.

Some might say the public has a right to know. The only thing anyone has the right to know is if the creep who committed the crime will be punished or not. Victims of sex crimes are supposed to be have their identity protected to prevent emotional harm caused by embarrassment. Oprah knew this, but obviously she just didn’t care about the white straight male named Shawn Hornbeck.

From what I can see, Oprah got pregnant because she was sleeping around at 14 years old, and her excuse is to claim sexual abuse to get sympathy from anyone hearing the story, and avoid criticism for being a slut. That’s my opinion. Oprah is no saint.

Oprah should apologize publicly for being so irresponsible by interviewing and embarrassing Hornbeck nationally, and should donate any money she received for the interview to Shawn Hornbeck, not his parents.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Shawn commits suicide in a few years because he can’t take the persistent embarrassment and inability to live a normal life thanks to the criminal who kidnapped him, and the other criminal (Oprah) who exposed the crime against him on national television.

NBC’s The Sing Off premieres tonight, so watch it while you can because it won’t be around for long.

The Sing Off, which is hosted by Nick Lachey, is a four-night singing competition featuring eight a capella groups from around the country. There are no backing bands used on The Sing Off. So it’s all about the voices as the groups compete for a $100,000 prize. Vote for your favorite here.

The Sing Off is judged by Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger, musician Ben Folds, and Boyz II Men star Shawn Stockman. But the viewers, not the judges, will decide who wins the cash prize in the end.

• SoCal VoCals -A Los Angeles group from the University of Southern California.
• The Voices of Lee/The Angels – A co-ed religious group from Tennessee.
• Beelzebubs — A Medford, Massachusetts group originally formed at Tufts University.
• Maxx Factor — A group from Baltimore, Maryland featuring four “supermoms.”
• Solo — An Omaha, Nebraska group comprised of three women and four men.
• BYU Noteworthy — A Utah-based female group of nine singers.
• Nota — An all-male sextet from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• Face — An all-male sextet from Boulder, Colorado.

“I like [all of the groups],” Nick Lachey told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. “They’re like all my children. We’ve got barbershop quartets, we’ve got more Latin-flavored groups, glee club-type groups, all female groups. They’re all very different, but at the same time the talent is very consistent so I know that no matter who wins, it’s going to be a very deserving group.”

Each episode of The Sing Off will run for two hours on December 14 -16 on NBC. The finale will air on December 21.

What do you think of the show so far? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or cast your vote in the poll.

What is Bocuse d’Or? Top Chef’s challenge tonight is based upon … Beaucop D’or, or Bocuse Dor, or Beaucopus D’or? The correct word is Bocuse d’Or!

Bocuse d’Or is the Olympics of culinary arts and tonight the final five get a challenge based upon the famed competition.

The Bocuse d’Or competition is described as follows:

“Chef Paul Bocuse created the Bocuse d’Or World Cuisine Contest in 1987, in order to broaden the public’s understanding of the extraordinary dedication, hard work, practice and precision required to execute the very finest cuisine.

“The Bocuse d’Or World Cuisine Contest is the most rigorous international culinary competition, held every two years in Lyon, France. Twenty-four countries are selected to compete, and each country’s team is comprised of one chef and one commis assistant.

“Each team is provided five and a half hours to create two elaborate platter presentations, one centered around seafood and one on meat, each accompanied by three original garnishes. The platters are presented before twenty four judges, each of whom is among the most esteemed chefs in his/her own country. The judges evaluate the overall harmony of flavors in the dish, the presentation of the platter, the techniques employed and the efficiency in which the teams work.

“The intensity of the spectator’s enthusiasm is unique. Thousands of fans attend the event and are seated in sections in front of their competitors’ booth, waving flags, singing national chants, and providing general encouragement. The noise level of the arena elevates as the candidates race to complete their presentations to the judges. Hundreds of international photo and film journalists canvas the location, broadcasting thecompetition live around the world.

“The day following the competition, Chef Bocuse hosts a breakfast at his Michelin 3-star restaurant in Collonges which includes a ceremony to honor the top three teams by installing a plaque engraved with their names and countries on the front walkway into the restaurant.

In the USA, the selection process is as follows:

“During the course of one day, sixteen, two member teams will present one protein dish to a panel of chef judges for evaluation of overall promise as a Bocuse d’Or team. The team will have approximately 2 hours for completion ofthe dish. The strongest eight teams will advance to a Finalist competition during the following two days. Based on competition performance, the top candidate and his or her commis will be selected to go on to Lyon in 2011 as the US representatives.

“The Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation will select 16 chef/commis teams from amongst all the applicants to enter the domestic Semi-final and Final competitions at the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park on February 4-6, 2010. Notification will be provided on December 7th, 2009. The Bocuse d’Or USA competitions will be hosted in a live public setting at the CIA before an audience of hundreds of spectators & press. “

Check it out online HERE

Wedding Daze is 2006 light hearted romantic comedy featuring Jason Biggs. Watching Wedding Daze, the film can be summed in one word – spontaneity. Anderson (Jason Biggs) is the main character of the film. Anderson’s proposes his true sweet heart publicly but the poor Vanessa could not take the shock and dies at the spot. The death of his girl friend sends Anderson deep into the depression. Anderson’s best friend Ted is trying his best to pull Anderson out of the bereavement and to persuade him to start living again. Ted meets Anderson in a bar and convinces him that he should consider a relationship with some other girl. The moment Anderson is convinced, Katie an employee at the bar comes over. Anderson proposes Katie there and then.

Katie agrees but Anderson’s difficulties are far from over. There is many a hitch between the cup and the lip. Anderson meets Katie’s parents and Katie meets Anderson’s parents and both parties are somewhat agreed at the relationship. Katie’s biological father is in jail and as he hears that his daughter is going to be married, he breaks the jail to attend the ceremony. As he meets Katie’s mother their forgotten love for each other ignites again. As Katie and Anderson are going to Atlanta in a stolen car, they are chased by the police and are caught. Meanwhile Katie’s parents are also caught for trying to rob a store. Both the couples are in same police station. They are joined by the Andersons parents. Everybody is present and situation is perfect for a marriage.

SEE THE PHOTOS BELOW

Nash who turned 56 Tuesday revealed “the remnants of her missing eyes, nose and lips,” as ABC News described it.

Nash told Oprah that she feels no pain but that she tries not to touch her face so as to avoid knowing the full extent of her injuries.

“I don’t ask a whole lot about my injuries… I know that I have my forehead,” she said. She now drinks her meals “with a straw through a small hole where her mouth used to be,” ABC added.

Nash lost both her hands in the attack, as well as her nose, an eyelid, and lips. Doctors removed her eyes due to an infection, and only recently did she learn she’ll no longer be able to see.

Nash now walks around her Cleveland hospital — from which she might be released soon — in a veil.

She says she wears the veil “so I don’t scare people. And sometimes other people might insult you.”

PHOTO:

NASH UNDER THE VEIL:

NASH BEFORE:

WATCH: