Japan to allow nude photo of pregnant Spears in subway

Tokyo – Tokyo’s subway authority will allow a station advertisement featuring a nude and pregnant Britney Spears, officials said, dropping an earlier plan to censor the photo.

HB Japan Inc., publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper’s Bazaar, plans to rent ad space at the posh Omotesando station next week to promote its October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover.

The ad, in which Spears bares her belly but covers her breasts with her hands, is the same one used on the cover of the August issue of the magazine’s U.S. edition. The 24-year-old pop star is pregnant with her second child.

Tokyo Metro Co.’s obscenity screening team initially had raised objections to the nudity and asked HB Japan to modify the photograph during negotiations last month.

The publisher reluctantly agreed to blacken out the image from the waist down – covering most of the singer’s belly and thighs – but had planned to write in the black space: “in this place we are not allowed to exercise the same level of freedom of expression as the original Harper’s Bazaar.”

But on Thursday, Tokyo Metro said it would allow full presentation of the photo as an exception to its obscenity rule, saying it understood the publisher’s intention was to portray a happy mother – not to be sexually explicit.

The magazine’s deputy chief editor, Kayoko Higashino, welcomed the move. “I’m glad the subway officials understood the meaning of the photo,” she said.

Former POW Jessica Lynch, boyfriend expecting child

Morgantown, W.Va. – Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war whose 2003 rescue in Iraq made her an instant celebrity, is pregnant.

She and boyfriend Wes Robinson are expecting their first child in January, publicist Aly Goodwin Gregg said Thursday.

“I was not sure if this could ever happen for me,” Lynch, 23, said in a statement. “Learning to walk again and coping with the internal injuries that I still deal with pale in comparison to the tremendous joy of carrying this child.”

The former Army supply clerk suffered spinal fractures, nerve damage, and a shattered arm, foot and leg when her Humvee crashed during a fire fight in March 2003 in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

Eleven American soldiers were killed and six were captured, including Lynch.

Survey: Katie Couric better known than her news rivals

New York – Good news for Katie Couric: Lots of people know and like her.

In fact, Couric, who takes the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair Sept. 5, is better known than her soon-to-be rivals, according to a poll released Thursday by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

When asked to give their general impressions of each network news anchor in a single word, 66 percent of respondents were able to express an opinion of Couric. This compares with 49 percent for Charles Gibson, who recently took over ABC’s “World News” and 47 percent for Brian Williams of “NBC Nightly News,” the survey found.

‘Idol’ winner Hicks sues producer over old recordings

Birmingham, Ala. – A federal judge has temporarily barred a producer from selling songs recorded by “American Idol” winner Taylor Hicks when he was still just a gray-haired bar crooner from Alabama.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Emerson Hopkins issued the ruling Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Hicks against William Smith, of Nashville, Tenn., after two songs written and sung by Hicks showed up for sale on the iTunes Web site.

Smith, in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, said the songs were no longer for sale. The judge scheduled a hearing for Wednesday on whether to make her order permanent.

Hicks claimed Smith and his companies, William Smith Productions and Baldwin Entertainment, wrongly tried to make money selling three songs that Hicks wrote and recorded with Smith – “The Fall,” “Son of a Carpenter” and “In Your Time.”

Smith doesn’t have rights to the music, Hicks claimed.

Miss America pageant returning to Las Vegas

Las Vegas – The annual Miss America pageant will return to the Las Vegas Strip for its 2007 contest, organizers said Thursday.

The crowning will air live on Country Music Television from the Aladdin Resort & Casino on Jan. 29, organizers said.

The 85-year-old beauty contest jilted its hometown of Atlantic City, N.J., for Las Vegas last year in search of a younger audience, a fresh look and lower production costs.

“I can’t tell you how happy everyone is to be returning to Las Vegas,” Art McMaster, chief executive officer of the Atlantic City-based Miss America Organization, told The Associated Press.