• Jumping train wreck: Britney Spears' legal team files a motion to quit, citing a "breakdown in communications ... making further representation of her interests impossible." Brit Brit pulled a no-show at a deposition yesterday, surely not helping her legal matters, but greatly upping the amusement factor.
• Body of evidence: The Justice Department launches a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. "Those tapes may have been evidence of a crime, and their destruction may have been a crime in itself," says Sen. Edward Kennedy, a member of the Judiciary Committee—and no stranger to criminal evidence himself.
• Slap happy: Mike Huckabee crosses picket lines, spends the night before the Iowa caucuses jamming the bass on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, the host's first night back since the writers' strike began.
• Affairs of the heart: It's been revealed that Paul McCartney underwent a heart operation last year, as the stress of divorcing lunatic peg-leg Heather Mills took its embarrassing toll.
• Closing ceremonies: Continuing to clean up its act before the Olympics, China expands its use of lethal injection to replace execution by shooting. Cute!
• How very un-french: A drastic smoking ban goes into effect in France, forbidding lighting up in cafés, restaurants, and discotheques. No word yet on a possible ban on berets (fingers crossed!).
• Here kitty-kitty: Police find items in the SF Zoo enclosure of killer tiger Tatiana, suggesting the animal may have been attacked or taunted before it escaped. Police are also alerted to an empty bottle of vodka found in the mauling victims' car.