Nation in brief: Spears gets short visit with sons
Britney Spears was reunited briefly with her sons Saturday, spending about three hours with the two little boys nearly two months after the troubled pop star last saw them.
Spears’ father, James, played a key part in making possible the visit with Jayden James, 1, and Sean Preston, 2, said Elliot Mintz, a spokesman for Spears’ ex-husband Kevin Federline.
Mintz wouldn’t say where the reunion took place or who else was there, but People magazine reported that Spears’ psychiatrist was present.
Spears had not been allowed to see the boys since Jan. 3, when she refused to return the children after a visitation. Police were called to her home, and a scene ensued that ended with Spears being taken to the hospital. She was hospitalized a second time four weeks later.
The visit came a day after Federline’s attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan announced that the couple “agreed to a modification of the court’s order” that had stripped Spears of her visitation rights.
East St. Louis, Ill.
12-year-old saves siblings from fire
As flames consumed her home and prevented her parents from rescuing her and two younger siblings, a quick-thinking 12-year-old girl saved the other children Saturday by kicking out a second-story window and helping them down, firefighters said.
Derrionna Adams then leaped 15 feet to safety, East St. Louis Fire Chief William Fennoy said.
“She kicked the window out and stepped up onto the roof of the first floor and was able to pull her two siblings out,” Fennoy said. “This was a blessed day.”
Velma Dorris, the children’s mother, and her husband, Bernard, were sleeping downstairs with three children when the fire started, authorities said. Smoke and flames kept them from reaching the children upstairs.
Pittsburgh
$3 million eBay bid a fraud
A winning bid of $3 million for a huge record collection offered on eBay was apparently a fraud.
A bidder had claimed he would shell out $3,002,150 for the collection of nearly 3 million vinyl albums, singles and CDs being sold by Paul Mawhinney, 68, of Ross Township.
An agent for the sale, J. Paul Henderson, said an eBay executive notified him Friday night that the bid was not legitimate and that the bidder’s account had been suspended, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Mawhinney said he began collecting the records when he opened his record shop, Record Rama, in 1968. He closed it Thursday, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Mawhinney said Saturday that he had already contacted six other bidders who had pledged more than $3 million on eBay and three others who approached him independently.
“It’s still going to happen,” he told the Associated Press.