and Kevin Federline's two-year marriage had gone through ups and downs – but in the last few days before Spears filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences," it appeared to rip at the seams.
"She tried to support him as much as she could, but at the end of the day she realized it wasn't best for her and her children (to stay)," someone close to Spears tells PEOPLE in its upcoming cover story. "She's standing up for herself and making positive changes in her life." (The couple have two sons: Sean Preston, 1, and Jayden James who was born on Sept. 12.)
Rumors of a Brit split were rampant: The couple hadn't been photographed together in weeks, and Spears skipped several recent events to promote Federline's album Playing with Fire. Still, the timing took many by surprise.
"As far as I knew they were perfectly fine," says Michael Prescott, a family friend from Kentwood, La., Britney's hometown. "I talked to Miss Lynne (Britney's mother) just the other day and she said Britney and Kevin were going to take a vacation trip together to Hawaii, just get away from everything for a few days."
The announcement "came as a total surprise," says a Federline pal. "We're all in shock. (We're hoping) it might just be that she's feeling a lot of postpartum emotions and this is something that will blow over."
Yet sources who spent time with Federline in New York City the weekend before Spears filed for divorce say it was obvious something was seriously wrong. Both Spears and Federline were in Manhattan, ostensibly for a concert and party for his album, "but they didn't spend any time together," says one source. "Britney stayed at the Regency Hotel, he stayed at the Doubletree. And she didn't come to his record release party at (the nightclub) Stereo."
Britney Spears goes ice skating in NYC with the biggest kool-aid smile.
What's even worse for K-Fed is he didn't even know it was coming. This video shows him talking positive about his wife the day she sent him a text message detailing the surprise divorce filing.
Teri Horton bought the paint-splattered canvas at a California junk shop for a joke. But the joke may be on the art world instead.
The retired lorry driver paid $5 for the drip painting in 1991, bartering the price down from $7. Now a fingerprint on the painting has raised the possibility that it is in fact a masterpiece by Jackson Pollock, the world’s priciest artist.
If it is accepted as authentic, the picture would be worth $40 million to $50 million (up to £26.2 million). Last month Pollock, who died in a car crash in 1956 aged 44, was reported to have set a world record price of $140 million for No 5, 1948.
Meet salvia divinorum. It's an herb, but some call it the world's most potent natural hallucinogen.
But salvia is still legal in most states, including Utah.
Many wonder what could really be wrong with a natural herb that is actually a cousin of the sage plant. But some who smoke it say it can cause extreme visualization and hallucination, even intense laughter and meditational epiphanies.
A clerk in one Salt Lake City store that sells salvia said, "Salvia is based all on your threshold, so if you smoke too much of it, you have a bad trip. You either get a weird feeling or you get giggly and bubbly kinda like you would off of pot."
And here's how easy it is for anybody to get salvia right here in Utah. We sent an undercover buyer into the Wizards and Dreams store in Sugarhouse. The store clerk said, "I got some new salvia."
We found Purple Sticky Salvia, sold for $84.99. It's cleverly marketed as aromatic incense, even though the seller told us all about how to smoke it. He suggests having someone watch you when you do, that it's not safe to do alone. "Just make sure you have one person sober. Some people say the first time, oh, it didn't work so I took a second pull and it f---ed me up. So I've just been told to say it's a spiritual journey."
Borat attempts to convince Conan O'Brien to let him snip some of his red pubes off. In Part 2 he sings a song just for Pamela Anderson. (NBC asked YouTube to remove the Conan Borat clips - so he's Borat's Guide to Dating.
Neil Patrick Harris is gay – and wants to quell recent reports that he had denied it.
"The public eye has always been kind to me, and until recently I have been able to live a pretty normal life. Now it seems there is speculation and interest in my private life and relationships. "So, rather than ignore those who choose to publish their opinions without actually talking to me, I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love."
Harris, 33, currently stars in the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother. He shot to fame in 1989 at age 16 when he played a teen-prodigy doctor on the hit Doogie Howser, M.D. "It was a very fast but wonderful education," he told PEOPLE in 1998.
After the show went off the air in 1993, he shook off his teen image with roles in the musicals Rent and Assassins and a wild turn as an unhinged version himself in the 2004 movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.
"I'm enjoying my 30s." "I feel like I know where I'm going. And I like where I'm going."
