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Washington, Oct 12: Britney Spears has notched a small victory in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline, by winning the modified visitation rules, that allow her two sons to spend the night with her once a week, as long as they are accompanied by a court-sanctioned monitor.
Spears made her first court appearance on Oct 11, pleading with a Los Angeles judge to be granted more time with her two sons.
Spears` attorney had filed an emergency motion on Oct 10 seeking to expand the singer`s visitation rights. Mark Vincent Kaplan, the lawyer for Kevin Federline, said he "voluntarily agreed" to allow the elongated visit but refused to offer any other specifics.
The ‘Toxic’ singer made an in-person appeal two hours after Los Angeles Court Commissioner Scott Gordon initially refused to change the custody arrangements. Spears spent an hour answering the judge`s questions, following which Gordon apparently had a change of heart, as reported.
Under Gordon`s current order, Spears is required to have a monitor with her at all times when she is in the presence of her sons. If the supervisor determines that any behaviour Spears exhibits endanger her children or be simply inappropriate, her visits may be cut short.
Both Spears and Federline must appear in court together at a further hearing on October 26, Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said. Gordon, who had earlier deemed Spears a "habitual, frequent and continuous user" of alcohol and controlled substances, temporarily stripped her of custody last week after she failed to abide by his terms, including submitting to random drug testing and showing proof of a California driver`s license.
Since then, Spears has passed both drug tests and her driver`s license exam and was counting on that to expand her visitation rights.
Jennifer Lopez has kept her glossy pink lips sealed during recent public appearances, dancing around questions from interviewers wanting to know if she's singing for two.
But her bump speaks loud and clear.
After Lopez made an appearance on MTV's "Total Request Live" on October 8 to promote her new CD, "Brave," cohost Damien Fahey told Us that her condition was obvious.
"I've been around a lot of pregnant women. She walked around like a pregnant woman, sat like a pregnant woman, and stood like a pregnant woman," he says. "If I were a betting man, I'd definitely bet she was pregnant."
Indeed, Us has confirmed from multiple sources that Lopez is about four months pregnant with her first child. Or children -- a source tells Us Lopez's mother, Guadalupe, 61, "is proudly telling people she's having twins."
The 38-year-old singer-actress, who has long expressed her desire to have both career and kids, is ecstatic about the news.
"It's a dream come true," a Lopez source tells Us. "She and Marc are over the moon."
Pregnancy news is especially sweet for Lopez, whom insiders believed was unable to carry a child at all. "[Conceiving] was a struggle for her," says a source.
Seconds another, "This pregnancy is a miracle."
Anthony, 39, who has three children from prior relationships, has been equally eager to expand his brood.
When Anthony was recently asked to imagine his response to his wife being pregnant, he said, "It's going to be me in handcuffs, because I will run down the street, screaming like a madman."
For more details on J.Lo's pregnancy, check out the new issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands this week.
Pamela Anderson has wed Paris Hilton's [Images] sex tape partner Rick Salomon, just days after denying that she was planning to tie the knot again.
Anderson and Salomon, who have been friends for over 15 years, exchanged vows on October 6 at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas [Images] in front of a small gathering that included Tobey Maguire, Lukas Haas and magician Hans Klok.
The wedding took place in between two magic shows and the Baywatch beauty immediately got back to work and broke the news on the show.
'Hello, I just got married... I did, I'm distracted. It's a big day. A big day at the office,' People magazine quoted her, as saying.
Last week, reports of the mum of two planning to walk down the aisle for the third time were rife after Salmon and she applied for a marriage license.
A source revealed that that the actress and Salomon are 'head over heels in love'.
'They are head over heels in love. They are really close. They have a relationship already and they have the license,' the source said.
'Rick is always with her. He's backstage when she does her show all the time,' another source added.
Britney Spears faces bankruptcy, and may even lose the custody of her dogs
Pop diva Britney Spears is in trouble again — this time she’s facing bankruptcy. After spending over one-third of her fortune, the Toxic pop star has very little money left to pay for her own counselling and drug-testing, (ordered by a US court), before she could claim custody of her two children. “People are very worried about Britney because she is running out of money.
Her perfume didn’t do well. She has no cash flow coming in and she’s spending money like water,” one of her friends told the US media.
Moreover, Spears, who lost custody of her sons last week, is also on the verge of losing the custody of her dogs.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has urged her former husband Kevin Federline to take away the animals from her.
For the sake of your children and the animals who are at risk while in Ms Spears’ custody, we hope that you will do the right and best thing for all involved and pursue a custody order for the animals so that your sons can continue to have the company of the animals they’ve grown to adore,” PETA President Ingrid E Newkirk reportedly wrote to Federline.
Lindsay Lohan, the ‘Mean Girls’ star who was undergoing exclusive detoxification since August has reportedly checked out of the Cirque Lodge Treatment Centre in Utah on Friday.
Her father, Michael Lohan, was seen carrying her suitcases as she left the clinic. "I will be there in her life as best I can but from here on she's going to have a lot of decisions to make on her own," he said. "Now that she is going out into the world, I can only hope for the best."
A source revealed that she had extended her stay at least once, and may return for outpatient treatment.
Lindsay's mother, Dina said she was proud of her daughter. "She's moving ahead with her life. Things were getting out of control. She took action. She took responsibility. She really needed to heal."
Rehabilitation of the actress also involved a reunion with her estranged father. Lindsay, who had been at odds with her father, was due to spend five days with him at a remote lodge in the Utah Mountains as part of her recovery.
The Dad-daughter had reportedly met twice while LiLo was at the Utah center, during her third stint of rehab this year. In early September, People’s magazine reported that the actress had recently seen her dad for the first time since he was released from prison in March.
Only two weeks after leaving a rehab centre, the 21-year-old actress was arrested on July 24 this year for drunken driving and suspicion of drug possession following a wild car chase through Santa Monica, Calif.
She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one day in jail; 10 hours of community work and to complete a drug-treatment program. LiLo, on probation for 36 months, is required to complete an 18-month alcohol-education program.
She has also been fined hundreds of dollars in fines and has been ordered to visit a morgue and talk to victims of drunken drivers. She will not have to stand trial.
Resuming work, the actress is to start filming ‘Dare to Love Me’ in Los Angeles on Oct. 15.
"Lindsay will start her life over," said a source. "She's gotten rid of the people around her who were bad influences."
London: For the first time since their break-up this summer, Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton were caught dating in public as the couple enjoyed an alcohol-fuelled night out at their favourite club, Boujis.
A happy-looking Kate and a rather bleary-looking William walked out of the South Kensington club hand in hand at early morning hours on Friday but bumbed straight into awaiting paparazzi.
Cameras flashed and the duo was snapped together for the first time since their split up in April, though romance rekindled between them just six weeks later.
Until now they have gone to great lengths to avoid being seen in public together. But the couple allowed themselves to be snapped by the paparazzi going home in the same car — a move which is bound to fuel speculation about their future.
William, second in line to the crown, and Miss Middleton arrived separately at the club after Kate had dined with some of her friends at Brinkley's restaurant in Fulham. They had arranged to meet at Boujis at around 11 pm in what appeared to be a very boozy night.
Nothing they do is left to chance — if they are feeling relaxed enough to be seen enjoying a night out together, royal observers feel that they may be being more open about their relationship.
The pair, both 25, were keen to keep the relationship under wraps ever since romance between them resurfaced.
In August 2007, after meeting up at a party in Oxfordshire thrown by mutual friends, Kate and William decided to go on holiday together to the isolated island of Desroches — the moments they described as "the best ever".
The couple enjoyed a week of complete privacy on the island in the Seychelles. They booked out almost the whole Indian Ocean Island resort at a cost of £20,000 so as to keep the outing a secret.
AFTER years of being fodder for the celebrity press, Britney Spears’s train wreck of a story hit a news high this past Monday when a judge with less tolerance for her antics than the public took away custody, at least temporarily, of her two young sons. The stern ruling lent her saga a dose of poignancy. For all her recent bizarre, unexplainable behavior, Ms. Spears is now a mother in danger of losing permanent custody of her two toddlers, age 2 and 1.
But the latest installment also showed that the attention paid to this long-running public drama has become a force of its own — one that sells magazines and music, increases Web traffic and gives obscure characters their minutes of fame.
Who won and who lost in the latest twists of the Britney story?
A Gusher for the Web
When it comes to traffic, “Britney is Old Faithful,” said Harvey Levin, the managing editor of TMZ.com, one of the top gossip Web sites, adding that both page views and unique visitors spike when an item on her appears, though he declined to give exact figures. Since the custody ruling Monday, which was followed by an order that allows Ms. Spears monitored visits every other day, the site has run numerous updates, some as brief as a video of Ms. Spears making a left turn onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
The site heaps ridicule upon Ms. Spears — mimicking her “y’all” in most items that track her comings and goings, including when she checked into a Beverly Hills hotel the day she turned over her children, smiling and causing a paparazzi commotion.
Mr. Levin said interest in Ms. Spears outweighed that of any other celebrity among TMZ’s users. “There are people who love her and there are people who think she’s a train wreck,” he said, “and everybody wonders how it’s going to end.”
Yesterday’s News
TMZ.com and other paparazzi sites like X17online.com have owned the story; certainly they were able to move faster than celebrity magazines. Neither Us Weekly nor People, which arrive on newsstands Wednesday and Thursday, gave over its cover this week to the Spears story, citing the saturation of news already available.
But a competitor in the crowded celebrity glossy field, OK!, did play the story big on the cover (with the headline “Goodbye Mommy”), in no small part because of the fond memory of a summer cover, “Britney’s Meltdown,” which was OK!’s best-selling issue ever, at 1.2 million copies (compared with recent average sales of about 930,000), the magazine’s representatives said.
No. 3 With a Bullet
Staying in the public eye, even scandalously, has generated a high amount of interest in Ms. Spears’s artistic comeback. Despite her lethargic performance at the MTV Video Music Awards last month, derided by critics and viewers, her single “Gimme More” is selling strongly. It has been the No. 1 singles download on iTunes and sold more than 179,000 copies in its first week on sale on digital services. Largely as a result of those sales, the song pole-vaulted from No. 68 to No. 3 in the week ending Sunday, Sept. 30, on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, which tracks sales, radio airplay and other types of demand.
Ms. Spears's record company released a video of "Gimme More'' on Friday, which quickly moved into the top five downloads on iTunes.
Is controversy good for sales? Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s director of charts, said the strong sales of “Gimme More” reflected pent-up demand since the single only recently became available after weeks of radio play. He and others in the music industry said it remained to be seen how all the attention Ms. Spears is getting for her personal life will affect sales of the album, which, they noted, must appeal musically if it is to sell well.
But one way her personal troubles are undermining a comeback is the time they take away from her ability to promote her music. “Without a doubt, her personal life has prevented her from keeping the focus on the video, the song and everything that should accompany the release of a worldwide superstar’s record,” Jeff Rabhan said.
Michael Pagnotta, a music manager and publicist who most recently represented the Olsen twins, said Ms. Spears, who has hired and fired numerous publicists, managers and lawyers, risks irreversible damage to her career. “There’s a tipping point and she’s close to it,” he said. “Michael Jackson found this out.”
Sympathy for Ex-Devil
Kevin Federline, Ms. Spears’s former husband, who at one point was one of her backup dancers, was the subject not long ago of much derision for his own questionable behavior.
AFTER years of being fodder for the celebrity press, Britney Spears’s train wreck of a story hit a news high this past Monday when a judge with less tolerance for her antics than the public took away custody, at least temporarily, of her two young sons. The stern ruling lent her saga a dose of poignancy. For all her recent bizarre, unexplainable behavior, Ms. Spears is now a mother in danger of losing permanent custody of her two toddlers, age 2 and 1.
But the latest installment also showed that the attention paid to this long-running public drama has become a force of its own — one that sells magazines and music, increases Web traffic and gives obscure characters their minutes of fame.
Who won and who lost in the latest twists of the Britney story?
A Gusher for the Web
When it comes to traffic, “Britney is Old Faithful,” said Harvey Levin, the managing editor of TMZ.com, one of the top gossip Web sites, adding that both page views and unique visitors spike when an item on her appears, though he declined to give exact figures. Since the custody ruling Monday, which was followed by an order that allows Ms. Spears monitored visits every other day, the site has run numerous updates, some as brief as a video of Ms. Spears making a left turn onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
The site heaps ridicule upon Ms. Spears — mimicking her “y’all” in most items that track her comings and goings, including when she checked into a Beverly Hills hotel the day she turned over her children, smiling and causing a paparazzi commotion.
Mr. Levin said interest in Ms. Spears outweighed that of any other celebrity among TMZ’s users. “There are people who love her and there are people who think she’s a train wreck,” he said, “and everybody wonders how it’s going to end.”
Yesterday’s News
TMZ.com and other paparazzi sites like X17online.com have owned the story; certainly they were able to move faster than celebrity magazines. Neither Us Weekly nor People, which arrive on newsstands Wednesday and Thursday, gave over its cover this week to the Spears story, citing the saturation of news already available.
But a competitor in the crowded celebrity glossy field, OK!, did play the story big on the cover (with the headline “Goodbye Mommy”), in no small part because of the fond memory of a summer cover, “Britney’s Meltdown,” which was OK!’s best-selling issue ever, at 1.2 million copies (compared with recent average sales of about 930,000), the magazine’s representatives said.
No. 3 With a Bullet
Staying in the public eye, even scandalously, has generated a high amount of interest in Ms. Spears’s artistic comeback. Despite her lethargic performance at the MTV Video Music Awards last month, derided by critics and viewers, her single “Gimme More” is selling strongly. It has been the No. 1 singles download on iTunes and sold more than 179,000 copies in its first week on sale on digital services. Largely as a result of those sales, the song pole-vaulted from No. 68 to No. 3 in the week ending Sunday, Sept. 30, on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, which tracks sales, radio airplay and other types of demand.
Ms. Spears's record company released a video of "Gimme More'' on Friday, which quickly moved into the top five downloads on iTunes.
Is controversy good for sales? Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s director of charts, said the strong sales of “Gimme More” reflected pent-up demand since the single only recently became available after weeks of radio play. He and others in the music industry said it remained to be seen how all the attention Ms. Spears is getting for her personal life will affect sales of the album, which, they noted, must appeal musically if it is to sell well.
But one way her personal troubles are undermining a comeback is the time they take away from her ability to promote her music. “Without a doubt, her personal life has prevented her from keeping the focus on the video, the song and everything that should accompany the release of a worldwide superstar’s record,” Jeff Rabhan said.
Michael Pagnotta, a music manager and publicist who most recently represented the Olsen twins, said Ms. Spears, who has hired and fired numerous publicists, managers and lawyers, risks irreversible damage to her career. “There’s a tipping point and she’s close to it,” he said. “Michael Jackson found this out.”
Sympathy for Ex-Devil
Kevin Federline, Ms. Spears’s former husband, who at one point was one of her backup dancers, was the subject not long ago of much derision for his own questionable behavior.
After the judge in the custody case declared Ms. Spears a habitual user of drugs and alcohol and ordered regular testing, Mr. Federline is looking like the responsible parent. Some instant polls on the Web show that many people favor him for full custody.
Right after Ms. Spears’s MTV appearance, Chris Crocker, a fan (above right), made a two-minute video for YouTube in which he rails against Ms. Spears’s detractors while sobbing. The “Leave Britney Alone!” video has become one of the site’s most viewed entries of all time, with more than 10.8 million viewers, and Mr. Crocker is making appearances on national talk shows.
A former bodyguard, Tony Barretto, who worked for Ms. Spears from March to May, hired the media-savvy lawyer Gloria Allred to inject himself into the custody case (and onto television news shows), by reporting that he had seen Ms. Spears snorting cocaine at a nightclub and driving unsafely with the kids, among other transgressions. On Wednesday, Mr. Barretto met with officials from the Department of Children and Family Services for about two hours and asked for an investigation of Ms. Spears’s behavior.
Ms. Allred said her client, the father of two young children, was motivated by concern over the well-being of Ms. Spears’ children, not personal gain.
The New Social Workers?
It appears that the 24/7 coverage of Ms. Spears worked to her disadvantage in recent days. TMZ says lawyers for Mr. Federline subpoenaed one of its videos showing the pop star driving with her children last weekend without a valid license, in direct violation of an order by the judge presiding over the custody case.
Janice Min, editor in chief of US Weekly, said, “I’m not sure that the change in custody would have occurred so quickly had the press not actually been so closely following her role as a mother.”
Mr. Levin of TMZ said Ms. Spears needed “a wake-up call.”
“It’s not a frivolous story anymore,” he said. “This is a woman who loves her kids who doesn’t have her kids. It’s now taken tragic elements.”
