SPEARS DETERMINED TO WIN KIDS BACK

BRITNEY SPEARS is preparing to move for full custody of her two sons with ex-husband KEVIN FEDERLINE - because she's reportedly concerned her boys are picking up bad habits from their dad. The Toxic hitmaker was recently granted an extension on the equal custody agreement she has with Federline to share care of Sean Preston, four, and Jayden James, three, while she's on tour.The former dancer was handed primary custody of the kids last year (08) after Spears suffered a mental breakdown.
But the pop star is reportedly considering filing legal documents to make her the primary guardian when her world Circus tour comes to a stop this November (09), reports the National Enquirer.A source says, "She is ready to fight to get her boys back. Britney feels that leaving Kevin in charge has turned her sons into cursing, ill-mannered little boys who don't behave. Britney wants to be the one who chooses where the boys go to school and where they go to church.
"She wants full custody and for Kevin to have visitation. Britney feels that Kevin is now the one with problems that the judge needs to hear about. She believes he's become a poor role model for Sean and Jayden. The boys are used to Kevin's foul-mouthed, lazy, unemployed dancer friends, who either live at the house or hang out there. Britney doesn't want the boys growing up thinking that kind of lifestyle is acceptable."
Federline, who has piled on the pounds in recent years, was this week accused of failing to keep up with rent payments on his Tarzana, California home.

Field Poll: Brown has big lead in Calif gov's race

A new Field Poll shows California Attorney General Jerry Brown with a strong lead in next year's race for governor, even before he's declared himself a candidate and despite months of campaigning by his Democratic rival and three Republicans vying for their party's nomination.
The poll released Thursday found that Brown, the former governor, or fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, would fare well against any of the three Republicans.
It found that half of Republican voters had yet to make up their minds in the contest between former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, former congressman Tom Campbell and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Among Democrats, Brown has a comfortable 20-point lead over Newsom with a quarter of voters undecided. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein would trounce either if she opted to get into the race, the poll found.
The poll underscores the struggles of Newsom's campaign. He trailed Brown nearly 7-to-1 in fundraising during the first half of the year, even before Brown announced an exploratory committee last week that will allow him to collect larger campaign donations.
Newsom has been campaigning statewide for months as he tries to move beyond his image as the mayor who opened his city to gay marriage. Brown has repeatedly hinted at seeking the office he held from 1975 to 1983, but has so far remained coy.
Newsom is seeking to improve his standing in Southern California, where the poll shows Brown has a commanding 31-point lead. He tried to tap into the Hollywood donor base this week at a Los Angeles fundraiser with former President Bill Clinton.
"The biggest differences in this contest, however, are by age," pollsters Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field wrote. "Among younger voters in the 18-39 age group, Newsom leads Brown 41 percent to 32 percent. However, Brown leads Newsom by 30 points among voters age 40 to 64, and by a huge 45 points among seniors age 65 or older."
Older voters are considered among the most reliable to turn out, especially in a primary election.
Thursday's Field Poll was based on 1,005 interviews with registered voters conducted by phone from Sept. 18 to Oct. 5. It has a sampling error rate of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all voters, and a sampling error rate of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for subsamples of Democrats and Republicans.
The poll found that 49 percent of GOP voters are not ready to favor a particular candidate, unsurprising with the election so far away. The primary is next June.
Among those who do have a preference, Whitman and Campbell were in a virtual tie, at 22 percent and 20 percent respectively. Poizner trailed with just 9 percent support among GOP voters surveyed.
The poll found Whitman with a slim lead among Southern California voters and Campbell with a slim lead in the north. Campbell is more popular with voters aged 18 to 49, while Whitman appeals to those ages 50 to 64. Older Republicans were evenly split, the poll found.
Any of the three would have a tough time against a Democratic opponent in the general election, the poll found.
Despite his lackluster fundraising numbers to date, even Newsom has leads of 5 to 9 percent against any of the GOP candidates in the traditionally Democratic state.
Still, Brown and Newsom don't come closing to having Feinstein's appeal, according to the poll: 40 percent of Democrats said they would back her if she were to jump in, compared with 27 percent for Brown and 16 percent for Newsom.

Pakistan seeks national consensus on U.S. aid bill

ISLAMABAD, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Pakistan is seeking a national consensus on a U.S. aid bill after the powerful military voiced serious concern about conditions in the legislation that critics say amount to a humiliating violation of sovereignty.
The army's unusual public criticism of a diplomatic matter appears to have opened a rift with President Asif Ali Zardari's fragile government, which had earlier rejected opposition complaints that the U.S. bill undermined sovereignty.
Analysts are not predicting any immediate show-down between the military, which has vowed to stay out of politics, and the government but say the army's criticism could embolden the opposition which has whipped up criticism of Zardari.
The U.S. Congress last week approved a bill tripling aid for Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year for the next five years and sent it to President Barack Obama for signing into law.
But in an effort to address U.S. concerns that Pakistan's military may support militant groups, the bill stipulates conditions for security aid, among them that Pakistan must show commitment in fighting terrorism.
In the face of opposition complaints, the government agreed to a debate in the National Assembly which took up the issue on Wednesday and was due to continue deliberations on Thursday.
"Our parliament is supreme to take decisions and submit or recommend their view point to the government," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abul Basit told a weekly briefing.
"We would make sure that our response is based on national consensus," he said.
The possibility of tension between the military and the government unnerved investors in Pakistani stocks and the main index ended nearly 1 percent lower at 9,740.87 points.
"Investors booked profits due to uncertainty about the Kerry-Lugar bill and the implications it is having on the political scenario," said Asad Iqbal, managing director at Ismail Iqbal Securities Ltd.
CONCERN ABOUT TENSION
The outcry over the bill comes as the United States, Pakistan's biggest aid donor, presses the army to expand its operations against Pakistani Taliban fighters to include Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda militants in lawless border enclaves.
Clauses in the bill require the U.S. secretary of state to certify that Pakistan is dismantling militant bases in its northwest, in the southwestern city of Quetta where U.S. administration believes the Afghan Taliban leaders are hiding as well as in Punjab province, where anti-India groups lurk.
The bill also seeks Pakistani cooperation in dismantling nuclear supplier networks by offering "relevant information from or direct access to" Pakistani associated with such networks.
That is a reference to disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan who ran a black market in atomic technology. Pakistan has declined to let foreign investigators question Khan.
The bill, co-authored by Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar, also provides for an assessment of how effective the civilian government's control is over the military, including in the promotion of top military officials.
The "serious concern" raised by the army has raised tension in a country where the latest stint of military rule ended just over a year ago with the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, a former army chief who seized power in 1999.
Analysts say military's criticism could encourage the opposition to intensify its campaign against the government.
"This can affect civilian-military relations as well as government-opposition relations," former general turned analyst Talat Masood said. (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: here)

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At least 12 dead in Kabul blast near Indian embassy

KABUL — A huge suicide car bomb struck near the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 83 in the latest in a wave of deadly attacks on the Afghan capital, officials said.
Windows were blown from dozens of shops and survivors staggered around the bloodied streets in the heavily fortified central diplomatic area, after the fifth suicide strike in Kabul in two months.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the blast bore all the hallmarks of the Taliban, who are battling to topple the Western-backed government.
"As a result of a suicide car bomb attack today, 12 people were martyred and 83 were wounded. Most of the casualties are civilians," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
In a statement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the perpetrators "barbaric" and said: "This is a terrorist attack, and an obvious attack on defenceless Afghan civilians."
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said in New Delhi that his country's fortress-like embassy was "obviously" the intended target. Related article: India says embassy was target
Rao said no Indians were killed in the blast, but three members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police force who were guarding the embassy had received shrapnel injuries.
A similar suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 killed 60 people and was blamed on Taliban militants linked to Pakistan's intelligence agencies, sending tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad soaring.
That attack, which remains the deadliest in Kabul, led to stringent new security measures such as concrete blast barriers at the embassy. Rao said those had limited the impact of Thursday's explosion.
The bomber detonated his explosives-laden car near the corner of the embassy compound on Interior Ministry Road at about 8:30 am (0400 GMT), sending plumes of smoke into the air in a blast that echoed throughout the capital.
An AFP reporter saw a massive crater in the middle of the road. The wreckage of a car appeared to have been blown 20 metres (yards) across the road, while the windows of up to 100 shops were blown out.
The road was littered with debris, burned out vehicles and body parts. Bloodied scraps of clothing, including the pale blue burqas still worn by many Afghan women, were scattered across the site.
Fire engines and ambulances raced to the area. A white armoured Toyota Land Cruiser with the pale blue UN insignia painted on the side lay damaged. Three civilian cars were also damaged.
It is the fifth blast to hit the capital since mid-August, just before presidential elections were held on August 20 amid a campaign of violence and intimidation by resurgent Taliban rebels.
On September 17, six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians were killed in a suicide attack on a military convoy on the road to Kabul's airport, in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
It was one of the worst single attacks on the more than 100,000 NATO and US-led troops serving in Afghanistan, and prompted Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to say that Rome wanted to cut troop numbers in Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama is weighing whether to grant an appeal for up to 40,000 more troops from the overall commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.
Foreign civilian and military installations in Kabul are increasingly being targeted by militants, with the capital home to significant numbers of Western officials, troops and aid workers.
On September 8, a suicide attack in Kabul killed three civilians outside the city's military airport.
Two days before the August 20 elections, a NATO convoy was attacked with the deaths of nine civilians and one foreign soldier.
Three days earlier, on August 15, seven civilians were killed by a suicide bomber who detonated a truck outside the NATO headquarters in Kabul, the most secure area in the country.

US Aid to Pak not a Threat to Zardari Govt: Crowley

Amid "serious concerns" expressed by the Pakistani Army against the USD 7.5 billion American non-military aid, the Obama Administration has said the assistance is 'not a threat' to the Zardari government.
"I don't think it is a threat to to the civilian government in Pakistan," Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs told reporters when asked about the differences that has emerged between the army and the Zardari Government on the Kerry-Lugar Bill.
The Bill which triples non-military aid to Pakistan to USD 7.5 billion in the next five years and imposes conditions for military assistance is being opposed by the Pakistani Army, while the Zardari Government is saying that this shows the long term commitment of the US towards the people of Pakistan.
"Is there concern that this very vocal opposition to what Zardari's government wants to do, which is to accept this aid, could be a real threat to his continued rule there?" Crowley was asked, to which he said he does not believe so.
"The forum expressed serious concern regarding clauses impacting on national security," the Pakistani Army said in a statement yesterday after the meeting of the Corps Commanders in Islamabad.
The Pakistani Army also said it was providing the government, which supports the Kerry-Lugar bill, with "formal input" in what could set the stage for their possible face-off.
"We are working very diligently, very closely with the Pakistani government. That's why the Secretary (of State) and the (Pakistani) Foreign Minister met yesterday. It's why the Secretary and President (Asif Ali) Zardari met in New York," Crowley said.
Asserting that the Obama Administration is committed to help Pakistan, he, however, said the US would not impose its will or dictate things to Islamabad. "We are committed to work closely with Pakistan. We are not going to impose US solutions on Pakistani problems."
Crowley said next week a US-team led by David Goldwyn will be going to Pakistan to discuss with them its energy requirements, how US can perhaps work with Pakistan to extend electricity, for example, to more parts of the country.
"All this is part of the long-term commitment that the United States has to Pakistan, to Afghanistan," he said.
Though the Pakistani Generals did not spell out their concerns yesterday in Islamabad, Dawn newspaper quoting military sources said the Army viewed as "highly intrusive" the condition that US Secretary of State is required to provide certification that armed forces are not subverting Pakistan's political and judicial processes.
The assessment by the Secretary of State to be made every six months also includes to verify whether US aid is being diverted "directly or indirectly" to expand Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.

'Heroes': Lydia inks Noah on her tattoo sleeves

Tonight on "Heroes," Nathan is punished for a death his mom covered up, Sylar reemerges and Lydia the Tattooed Lady says Noah might be interested in their carnival.

Hiro & Ando
Ando and Kimika are getting married and Kimiko wants Hiro to give her away. Ando is dismayed when Hiro agrees because the wedding is a year away and Hiro might be dead by then. Hiro is still obsessed with Quantum Leaping around and putting right what once went wrong. What this means is Hiro spends the entire episode looping around between a roof-jumper who got fired for photocopying his butt. It makes Hiro realize that he can't change the past necessarily but can change the present so he comes clean with Kimiko about his illness. And then vanishes.

Peter, Nathan & Angela
At the hospital, Nathan comes to talk to Peter about what's been happening to him. He's experiencing psychometrics, picking up an object and seeing the history of it. Nathan touched his old baseball cap and got the images of a girl named Kelly dying in a pool instead of running away like they always thought she did. Peter tells him to go talk to Kelly's mom about what happened.

Peter goes to Kelly's house and her mom is played by Swoozie Kurtz. Loved her since "Sisters." Turns out Kelly's mom Millie hasn't heard from Kelly since she ran off. Nathan wanders over to the pool and grasps a statue, which shows him drinking with Kelly by the pool. He then touches the diving board and sees her slip and crack her head on the side of the pool, bleeding into the water.

He goes to Angela about it and she says she "took care of it" and erased his memory via the Haitian. Nice. Nathan goes back to Millie and tells her what really happened. He also calls the police but chickens out on telling them what happened only to be stabbed in the neck, shot three times and dumped in a shallow grave.

Millie meets with Angela to find out the real story. The entire conversation is juxtaposed over Nathan's attacker dumping Nathan's body in the woods. The attacker then calls Millie to confirm that the "package is delivered." When Nathan's hand bursts out of the ground all Buffy Summers, he has morphed back into Sylar.

Tracy
Tracy approaches the New York governor about rejoining politics. She asks for a bigger role in his administration and all he does is put her in the "pretty girl" box and proposition her for sex. She goes to the restroom and starts breaking down into water because she's upset but manages to pull herself together and walks out on the Governor.

Noah & Claire
Claire is worried about her dad because the Company's gone and now he's all divorced and sad and living off take-out and Ramen noodles. Claire is totally cute trying to find her father a job out of the newspaper classifieds and coaching him through interview questions. He's pretty down on himself.

Later, Tracy comes to see him about how something is missing from her life. He says she has to figure out who she wants to be blahblahblah romancecakes. Back at home, Noah pins up pictures on the wall of the magic compass and Edgar the Knife Carnie.

Karn Evil
Lydia shows Noah Bennett to Samuel on her tattooed back, saying that Noah may have changed his mind about being retired and/or interested in the Carnies. Nice tease.

Thoughts & Tidbits

• I definitely want them to get rolling on the carnival plot rather than spend a whole episode with Hiro trying to save a butt-copying office drone. I mean, it was kinda funny but... meh.
  
  
• Are Tracy and Noah going to run off and join the carnival together? Perhaps.
  
  
• Claire's big lesbo scene is next week. Set your TIVOs!
  
  
• Nathan: Because every time there's a secret buried some place I find you with a shovel behind your back.
  Angela: You should write Mother's Day cards.
  
  
• Hiro: Tadashi? You on the roof? I'll be right there.

On that Demi Moore bush pic

Every couple of months the search engines go wild again looking for that Demi Moore Bush pic. It usually coincides with either Demi Moore or her husband, Ashton Kutcher, doing something or other. A couple of months back it was the result of a Comedy Central show, Tosh.0.

The presenter was (at least the presenter claimed to be) upset that Ashton Kutcher had so many Twitter followers and so suggested that people search for the Demi Moore Bush pic so that they would "unfollow" Kutcher.

Quite why such a picture should make people do so is an interesting little piece of social history. The picture itself comes from a shoot that Demi Moore did as a young starlet in Hollywood. It's not unusual for those who wish to break into the movies to have professional pics taken of themselves (well, at least for the women) wearing less than the normal amount of clothing. The pictures themselves vary between what we might call softcore and cheesecake: no underwear, a blue dress that varies in its positioning.

In Moore's photo set there are pictures that show a breast, and in another her dress rises up so that one is presented with rather more of Ms. Moore than would normally be seen in public, even on a French beach. So far, nothing really all that unusual for those trying to make it in the movies.

The interesting thing (apart from their being pictures of a beautiful young woman in the prime of life, something often of interest to most men) is that as was the style then, Demi Moore is untrimmed. In more detail, she has not had a "Brazilian", her pudenda has not been waxed. What is interesting is that those 25 or so years ago, this is what adult women looked like. In fact, without intervention this is what adult women would look like now.

It's over those 25 years that the style, the fashion, has changed markedly. Just as Ms. Moore those years ago shaved her armpits, as most American women did (and most French women might still not), now it is expected that women will shave, wax or somehow or other trim their pubic hair. At least, they will if they are to show it in public in this manner.

That's the change in the social mores: but that interesting question is why? What on earth has happened to make adult women decide that they should look like pre-pubescents? Hair there is, like hair on the chest of a man, a secondary sexual characteristic indicating sexual maturity. Why or how could there have become a social standard that one should not show that one is indeed mature?

This change is not limited to pictures of Hollywood starlets of course: a brief viewing of the history of pornography (something which you humble reporter has undertaken so that you don't have to) shows that exactly the same has happened there. At one point adult women had hair where adult women have hair: a decade later and everyone is clean shaven.

What happened? Surely it can't be just that we remember the 80s as the days of big hair and we've decided not to go back there again? If anyone does know the answer please enlighten the rest of us.

jobs Himself Is Biggest Rollout at Apple Show

Apple showed off new iPods, new music software and an updated iPhone on Wednesday. But little of that seemed to draw as much attention as the man in the black mock turtleneck who took the stage in San Francisco to introduce the offerings.

“I’m vertical,” proclaimed chief executive Steve Jobs as he made his first public appearance since returning to the company from a six-month medical leave. “I’m back at Apple, and I’m loving every day of it.”

Jobs looked every bit as thin as he did in the months leading up to January’s announcement that he would be taking time off to focus on his health. While on medical leave, the executive had a liver transplant. Jobs used the start of his presentation to thank his organ donor, a 20-year-old who died in a car crash.

Over the previous several months, some tech pundits wondered whether Apple would stumble while its charismatic leader was away and the company was led by its chief operating officer, Timothy D. Cook. During Cook’s time at the helm, however, Apple successfully rolled out a new version of the iPhone, and the company’s share prices have grown steadily, from $85.75 at the end of 2008 to more than $171 on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, many found it reassuring to see Jobs back, prowling the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

“Given his condition, he looks as healthy as he could be,” said analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies, a Silicon Valley research firm

Beyond Jobs’s reappearance, Apple saved perhaps its biggest announcement for one of its smallest devices: The tiny Nano music player, priced at $149 and $179, will now come with a built-in video camera, a pedometer and an FM radio tuner. Apple also introduced a new version of the iPod Touch with twice as much storage capacity as its predecessors. The new, 64-gigabyte version will cost $399.

Apple also enhanced its iTunes music software. A popular feature called Genius, designed to help music lovers discover new songs based on what they have in their collections, will now steer users to software applications they might want to load on their machines. The company made the new version of the software available Wednesday as a download from its Web site.

Other Apple executives also appeared in order to talk up the iPhone’s successes, particularly as a mobile video game device. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, cited figures from the research firm ComScore: Sony’s mobile game device, the PlayStation Portable, has 607 titles available, while the Nintendo DS has 3,680. By comparison, Apple’s App Store, which sells downloadable software for the iPhone and iPod Touch, features 21,178 game and entertainment titles, he said.

In the hours leading up to Wednesday’s announcements, the price of the iPod Touch with the largest storage capacity was cut from $399 to $279. On the lower end of the product spectrum, the smaller iPod Nano’s price dropped from $149 to $129.