18-year-old Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney (pictured), whose leaked nude photos appeared on several pornography sites, were taken when she was underage, say her attorneys. 'Shout out to my fans for defending me all day long.. even when things got weird u stood by me. and that meant the world, ' Maroney wrote on her Twitter (right) yesterday. Maroney's attorneys have written letters to sites like Porn.com demanding that they remove the nude photos of the teenager, who turned 18 in December, from their website.

The US basketball team were clearly mesmerised to witness the New Zealand haka just before their Basketball World Cup overnight. Nothing could beat the look on James Harden's (top right) face. The performance is supposed to instill fear in their opponents, but the American team riddled with NBA players seemed utterly bewildered by what was happening.

Kevin Adorno was cycling from Maryland to Miami when he made a stop at a McDonald's in Vero Beach, Florida on Monday evening to charge his phone and get something to eat. But Rene Herrera Cruz, a homeless man, saw him talking on his phone and thought he was plotting to kill him - when in fact, he was speaking to his girlfriend, Elyse (pictured together left). She told police she heard the phone drop as Cruz repeatedly stabbed Adorno, leaving him to bleed to death. Before taking off on his journey in mid-August, Adorno had shared this map (right) of his planned route on Facebook.

Garland wanted to tell the world about the ruthless studio system at MGM Studios that she was swept into at the tender age of thirteen and was never able to escape once she hit the big time after her appearance in the Wizard of Oz in 1938 (top right). She wanted to hit back at the toll endless work days took on her, the lack of real schooling, how she was plied with pills to thin and pills to sleep and crush the endlessly perpetuated myths and lies about her life and loves (with Mickey Rooney, bottom right). She never did before her death aged 47 in 1969. But now in Judy Garland On Judy Garland, Interviews and Encounters, Randy L. Schmidt has meticulously researched her most important newspaper, magazine and TV interviews in what the publishers claim is the closest we will ever come to that autobiography.

Dr Kent Brantly was flown to Emory University Hospital last month (seen walking into the hospital, inset) after coming down with Ebola while doing missionary work in Liberia. He was one of the first to receive an experimental new serum called ZMapp, which helped him fight off the disease. He was subsequently released from the hospital on August 21. In an interview which aired Wednesday, Dr Brantly described his battle with the deadly disease.

Michael Sam - the first openly gay player drafted in the NFL - jetted in to Texas on Tuesday night ahead of a physical on Wednesday when he's expected to complete the dream move. Sam will join the Cowboys practice squad just days after being sensationally dropped by the St Louis Rams. His shock departure sparked claims the gay star was dropped due to the unwanted attention surrounding his sexuality. 'None of that matters, I'm excited to be to be joining Dallas, I just want to play football, it's great to be heading back to my home state,' Sam told MailOnline in an exclusive interview.

It's a fiercely clandestine country, but an eye-opening new video offers an insight into the austere and guarded world of North Korea. The footage takes the viewer through the eerily quiet tree-lined streets of capital city Pyongyang, past Soviet-style skyscrapers and symmetrical buildings. The video, shot on a Go-pro camera attached to a car, shows wide roads that are pristine and almost empty of people and traffic.

A bear terrified a Utah family inside their RV on Saturday, when it tried to claw and scratch its way into their mobile home. Sami Graham was inside with her two young children when the bear approached the RV, which was parked in Book Cliffs, Utah. The family tried to shoo the bear away and frighten it by making loud noise. The bear, however, continued to try getting inside two and a half hours and left heavy scratch marks in its wake on the trailer's side and front door. It finally left after her husband arrived and fired a warning shots into the sky.

Ronald Stan, 69, was declared dead after disappearing in a barn fire in Ontario, Canada in 1977 (top left). He left behind a wife and two children. But he was found alive this month, living in Park Hill, Oklahoma, under the name Jeffrey Walton, with a new wife, Debra Proctor (pictured together, main) - who divorced him within days of discovering his 'unimaginable deceit and betrayal'. But why did he do it? Was it to run from marriage woes, a loveless marriage? Or was it because he'd met another woman? MailOnline has learned that within a year of disappearing he was married to another woman, Rose Ann, and had a son the next year. Jeffrey Jr (pictured together, bottom left), who is sticking by his father, said: 'It'd be a damn good book I'll tell you that, just from what I've heard'.

A single bridge on the outskirts of Kirkuk has become a focal point of the resistance to Islamic State forces, with Kurdish peshmerga and jihadis locked in a stalemate as both fortify their respective sides of the river. At one end the peshmerga, using dirt, sandbags, building materials and a makeshift guard tower (main picture), remain poised to defend the bridge should ISIS attempt to advance. While at the opposing end, a single ISIS flag marks the jihadists' territory (inset). It comes as news emerges of another horrific mass killing by ISIS forces, where 800 Iraqi soldiers were killed in five locations in Tikrit.

A woman thought to be Iranian dared to take off her head scarf while dancing in a YouTube video. It has not been confirmed if the women is actually from Iran, where women are required by law to wear head coverings, called hijabs, but if true, her safety may be at risk. Onlookers can be heard commenting and clapping in the background as she takes out her hair and dances on top of a car. She later tosses her hair in the wind and she continues to move her hands and shake her hips. Earlier this summer, Iranians were arrested and later freed after they were taped dancing to 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams.

For the first time in more than a decade, Army veteran Joseph Jones (pictured) was able to recognize bits of his old face in the mirror following a eight-hour procedure in Florida to repair damage to his face sustained by a roadside bomb. Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (left) transplanted about 3,000 follicles to the vet's face, returning the beard and eyebrows he had before the explosion that burned them away while serving in the Iraq war.

Incredible photos show daredevil surfers riding the huge swells off the coast of Nazare, a town north of Lisbon. A 125-mile long underwater canyon - which is up to three miles deep - combines with strong Atlantic currents to create the enormous waves. Among those in the area is American surfer Garrett McNamara, who set the record for the biggest wave ridden while at the seaside town last year.

Columbia University senior Emma Sulkhowitz was raped nearly two years ago, and her attacker remains a student at the New York school. For her senior thesis, Sulkhowitz is carrying her mattress with her everywhere she goes to protest the inaction by school administrators in punishing the student responsible for the attack. She reported the incident in April 2013, and school administrators ruled the man in question 'not responsible'.

Video footage appeared online that showed Peter Howarth-Lees and his Saudi-born wife, Abeer al-Fouti (far left), being set upon by the religious police officers outside a supermarket in the Saudi capital. The couple revealed that they have received an apology for the incident from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the official name for the organisation to which the officers belonged.

EXCLUSIVE: An interactive map (left) from Europe's MeteoGroup lets you watch weather unfold around the world. By selecting different icons weather of varying types can be watched live in different countries. For example users can see the global cloud cover and also where it is raining at the moment. The interactive map even tracks the path of tropical storms (top right) and shows global temperatures (bottom right).

At 14ft-long, these 350st (2250 kg) beasts are performing breaching off the coast of South Africa, one of many killer moves in the Great White's arsenal. No seals were harmed on the expedition as the sharks are biting a decoy seal made out of carpet - this is used to attract sharks to the surface.

Shocking footage shows a Libyan fighter jet plummeting through the sky (top left), plunging into a building in Tobruk (top right) before erupting into a fiery explosion (bottom left and right) that killed three people, and injured a further nine.

A nomadic movie fan has recreated some of the most famous moments on the big screen, by photographing stills shots in their original locations. Christopher Maloney, 37, from Atlanta, spent more than two years travelling the world armed with a backpack full of stills from iconic cinema scenes.

A dramatic video shows Stanislav Aksenov carrying out the stunt and freefalling for two minutes from the 1,300ft-high cliffs surrounding the Lauterbrunnen valley in Bern, Switzerland. The Russian did the jump without a harness, instead attaching the parachute to metal piercings in his back. The dramatic video, which he posted online, shows him freefalling, after pulling the parachute bag sitting on the cliff's edge.

Josh Fairbank, from Hartford, Michigan, films 11-year-old Logan's horrified reaction to being scared while singing in the show. The footage has been viewed more than one million times. The footage has been viewed more than one million times. The young boy is singing loudly in the shower and is completely oblivious to his father's plan to scare him. As Mr Fairbank approaches the shower and tips the glass of water over the top - and his son shouts: 'Dad you've got to be kidding!'

Brandon Hopkins, from the U.S., posted this ultrasound online of his baby giving a 'thumbs up' in the womb, and revealed he is expecting twins with his partner with a due date in January. The child was quickly nicknamed 'Fonzie fetus' after Happy Days character The Fonz and his famous thumbs up gesture.

From butterflies in Ecuador to skates in California, many animals have skin that is up to 90 per cent transparent, enabling them to be almost invisible to predators. These extraordinary images were taken by a host of photographers from around the globe. Fleishmann's glass frog is pictured left, a see-though fish and jellyfish are shown centre, and a big skate, right.

The British 4X4 car firm's new Land Rover Discovery Sport offers two more seats than the vehicle it replaces and more room for growing families. And it aims to take on quite a different final frontier by announcing a competition to put four potential customers into space with Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic space project. The space flight prize was announced in a launch film for the Discovery Sport 4X4 featuring a group of adventurers.

These adorable photos show a polar bear cub emerging from its snowy den in Wapusk National Park in Manitoba, Canada. It can be seen lifting its paw into the air (pictured), before stretching its front legs and pressing its paws together in a 'praying' position. The images were taken by 43-year-old wildlife photographer Greg Harvey, who spends his time capturing anthropomorphic shots.