Spears to open VMAs

Britney Spears will be the opening act at this year's MTV Video Music Awards. The 25-year-old singer will perform "Gimme More," the first single from her upcoming album, at Sunday's event in Las Vegas, MTV announced yesterday. Spears (inset), whose late-night partying and erratic behavior have made her a tabloid fixture, is a veteran of the VMAs. She performed "I'm A Slave 4 U" with a 7-foot albino python around her neck in 2001. Two years later, she and Madonna stoked controversy and delighted viewers with an open-mouth kiss in the opening act. (AP)

Prosecutors in the murder trial against Phil Spector presented only "speculation instead of certainty" as to who pulled the trigger when actress Lana Clarkson died, the music producer's attorney told jurors yesterday in closing arguments. Spector's attorney, Linda Kenney-Baden, counterattacked the prosecutor's hours-long closing argument the previous day, contending that Spector was too far away to have fired the gun inside Clarkson's mouth and instead that Clarkson killed herself. "Finally after four years of investigation, five months of trial, and approximately 70 witnesses, we now have a variety of the government's speculations as to how this could have happened," Kenney-Baden said. (AP)

Charlotte Gainsbourg (inset) was doing well after undergoing an operation yesterday for an injury she sustained while jet skiing. Her agent, Dominique Segall, said the surgery was aimed at treating a hematoma but did not specify where she was injured. French media reported it was a head injury. Speaking on RTL radio, Gainsbourg's partner, Yvan Attal, said he had spoken with the French actress after her surgery and expected her to leave the hospital in the coming days. (AP)

Ian McEwan faced a challenge from little-known New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones yesterday, as judges announced the finalists for the Man Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious award for fiction. McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" is the best seller on the six-novel shortlist and has been the bookies' favorite, but bookmakers said they had taken a flurry of bets on Jones's "Mister Pip." The other finalists are "Darkmans" by English writer Nicola Barker, "The Gathering" by Ireland's Anne Enright, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Pakistan's Mohsin Hamid, and "Animal's People" by India's Indra Sinha. The winner of the $100,000 award will be announced Oct. 16. (AP)