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Nicolas Cage's long, excruciating nightmare on the International Chihuahua-Thief Blacklist ended today in a British court, where his solicitor acknowledged a settlement between the Oscar-winner and rumor-slinging memoirist Kathleen Turner. The actress wrote of several newly disproven Cage exploits in her recent book Send Yourself Roses, including being "arrested twice for drunk-driving" and renting-to-own a Chihuahua on the set of Peggy Sue Got Married. Cage took his beef to court after the Daily Mail published the offending excerpt. Sadly, we've learned that the resolution will deprive us of some of our favorite apocrypha of contemporary literature:

[Cage's lawyer Simon] Smith said that Turner, Associated Newspapers and Headline Publishing Group now accepted that, owing to a mistake on Turner's part and despite the other defendants' publishing in good faith, the allegations were defamatory and false and ought never to have been published. ...

Mr. Smith said the defendants had also given a contractual undertaking never to republish the allegations and had agreed to publish an apology in the Daily Mail and remove the article from its websites, and insert a correction/apology in the book.

There are lots of other add-ons as well — covering legal costs, forking over money to an elder abuse charity — but nothing can compensate for our personal despair at having to retire "chihuahuanapper Nicolas Cage" from our lexicon. We're thrilled the arrests were retracted, but we'd remit pooch-stealing restitution ourselves if we could just savor the image of Cage as we knew him in 1985: thick hair, intense gaze, and a purloined dog yapping snugly inside his jacket.