Britney loses ruling

A court commissioner in Los Angeles decided yesterday to keep in effect an order suspending Britney Spears' right to visit her two sons and keeping them in the custody of ex-husband Kevin Federline. The ruling by Superior Court Commissioner Scott Gordon came after a full day of testimony on a bizarre situation this month in which police had Spears taken to a hospital after a standoff in her home when she refused to return the children to Federline. Gordon scheduled another hearing for Feb. 1. Spears made a brief appearance yesterday at the courthouse but never made it inside. She arrived hours late and was mobbed by photographers as she stepped from a sport-utility vehicle. The troubled pop star climbed quickly back in the car and drove off. Federline was on hand for the hearing but neither he nor Spears were under order to appear. The hearing was closed to the press and public. (AP/REUTERS)

A majority of the Supreme Court's justices appeared to side against a daytime television judge yesterday in a contract dispute. Alex Ferrer, better known as TV's "Judge Alex,"refused to pay an artists' manager, Arnold Preston, 12 percent of his earnings from the show in 2005, as allegedly called for in a contract the two signed in 2002. At issue is whether the case should be resolved in arbitration, as Preston says the contract stipulates, or whether a California state agency can pass judgment on the legality of the contract, as Ferrer wants. "I used to teach contract law," Justice Antonin Scalia said. "And I am sure that when you say you'll arbitrate, it means you won't litigate." (AP)

A Baltimore librarian's classroom project is now part of publishing history. "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village," first conceived a decade ago by Laura Amy Schlitz, is this year's winner of the John Newbery Medal for best children's book. The Randolph Caldecott award for top picture book went to Brian Selznick's "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," a hybrid of a graphic novel and traditional illustration. Science fiction author Orson Scott Card won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for "lifetime achievement in writing for young adults." Mo Willems's "There Is a Bird in Your Head!" received the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for "the most distinguished book for beginning readers." (AP)

Gary Collins checked into a California jail yesterday to serve a four-day sentence in his drunken driving case. The TV personality and actor, 69, chose to pay an $85 daily fee to stay in the Glendale City Jail instead of the overcrowded county jail. Collins pleaded no contest Dec. 6 to one misdemeanor count each of driving under the influence and driving with a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent or more in a crash in Sherman Oaks. (AP)

'If you didn't love me before, back it on up . . . don't come at me when I get a little slimmer.' Queen Latifah, telling "Extra" she plans to drop 5 to 10 percent of her body weight.