Britney Spears and fiance end yearlong engagement

Britney Spears announced Friday that she has ended her yearlong engagement, capping a week of changes that included her leaving "The X Factor" and promising fans she was returning her focus to music.

Within hours of confirming her departure from the Fox reality series, Spears also announced that her relationship with talent agent Jason Trawick had ended.

"Jason and I have decided to call off our engagement," Spears said in the statement. "I'll always adore him and we will remain great friends."

Spears' publicist Jeff Raymond said the breakup was a difficult decision made by "two mature adults."

"I love and cherish her and her boys, and we will be close forever," Trawick said in a joint statement that was first reported by People magazine.

Trawick also resigned his role Friday as a Spears' co-conservator, with Superior Court Judge Reva Goetz approving his departure from the case.

Spears and Trawick got engaged in December 2011 and he was added as her co-conservator in April.

Spears, 31, has been under a court-supervised conservatorship since February 2008, with her father and another co-conservator, Andrew Wallet, having control over numerous aspects of her personal life. The case was opened after several incidents of erratic behavior by the pop singer and a pair of hospitalizations, but Spears has recovered and she appeared weekly on "X Factor."

She said in a statement that judging young talent made her miss performing. "I can't wait to get back out there and do what I love most," she said in a statement.

Her father Jamie Spears met with Goetz for about an hour on Friday but left before a hearing where Trawick's resignation was announced.

Trawick has served as Spears' agent and the pair started dating in 2009.

Trawick did not have authority over Spears' finances, which have rebounded since her public meltdown. Goetz recently reviewed and approved of an accounting that showed Spears ended 2010 with more than $27.5 million in assets, including nearly $15 million in cash.

Attorneys handling the case are expected to file updated financial statements in the coming months.

Land ho: New island emerges off German coast

Germany has sprouted an island. The hook-shaped land is 16 miles off the coast of Germany, and it is 34 acres long. Dubbed Norderoogsand, the island, which lies in the German North Sea coast, has already become the home to more than 50 plant species and a variety of sea birds.

Amazingly, 10 years ago, the island didn’t exist. The speed with which it went from sand bar to land mass is surprising scientists.

“The fact that in just a few years a new island is formed is very impressive," local conservationist Detlef Hansen, who works at nearby Wadden Sea National Park, told the Telegraph. He added, "For conservationists, this is anything but ordinary."

The plucky island is bolstered against winds thanks to its 13-foot-high dunes and grasses that help it combat erosion. It was also helped by its location near other islands that buffered it from winter storms and the fact that few storm surges have appeared there in the past decade.

Still, don’t plan a vacation around this untouched paradise just yet: Scientists warn that one superstorm could wipe it off the map.

Healthy Hollywood: Kathie Lee & Hoda Put A Cork In It!

Kathie Lee & Hoda are toasting the New Year with a drop of sobriety. Yup! NBC's chatty twosome are giving up their morning on-air cocktails for a month.

"My first reaction was, 'Are you crazy?' But I'll do it to lose weight. In the past, I've given up cheese, pasta, sweets, bread...why not wine," Kathie Lee suggests in February's Ladies Home Journal.

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Kathie Lee and Hoda have made sipping morning cocktails a tradition on their daily chat-fest.

"I sometimes overindulge. But who's counting? I think it adds to the show. By 10am people at home have already had their fill of the heavy news. This is their time to have fun," Hoda reveals to Ladies Home Journal.

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The wine-inspired fun is not over; the ladies will be back to their happy hour in a month.

Ladies Home Journal calls these two on-air buddies "the craziest women on TV." And, their zany chemistry is not just for the cameras. "When we met, the click was immediate. Now we go to lunch every Wednesday and see a Broadway show," reveals Hoda.

"People aren't stupid if something's authentic, people know it. They can sense when there's tension between people. They can sense when something's forced and the can sense when two people genuinely enjoy each other's company," says Kathie Lee.

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-- Terri MacLeod

Copyright 2013 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mom who shot intruder inspires gun control foes

A Georgia mother who shot an intruder at her home has become a small part of the roaring gun control debate, with some firearms enthusiasts touting her as a textbook example of responsible gun ownership.

Melinda Herman grabbed a handgun and hid in a crawl space with her two children when a man broke in last week and approached the family at their home northeast of Atlanta, police said. Herman called her husband on the phone, and with him reminding her of the lessons she recently learned at a shooting range, Herman opened fire, seriously wounding the burglary suspect.

The National Rifle Association tweeted a link to a news story about the shooting, and support poured in from others online, hailing Herman as a hero. The local sheriff said he was proud of the way she handled the situation.

"This lady decided that she wasn't going to be a victim, and I think everyone else looks at this and hopes they have the courage to do what she done," Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman said Wednesday.

Herman was working from home Friday when she saw a man walk up to the front door. She told police he rang the doorbell twice and then over and over again. He went back to his SUV, got something out and walked back toward the house, a police report said.

Herman took her 9-year-old son and daughter into an upstairs bedroom and locked the door. They went into bathroom and she locked that door, too. She got her handgun from a safe, the report said, and hid with her children. At some point, she called her husband, who kept her on the line and called 911 on another line.

In a 10-minute 911 recording released by the Walton County Sheriff's Office, Donnie Herman calmly explained what was happening to a dispatcher. His part of the conversation with his wife was also recorded.

"Is he in the house, Melinda? Are you sure? How do you know? You can hear him in the house?" Donnie Herman said.

His wife told him the intruder was coming closer.

"He's in the bedroom? Shh, shh, relax. Just remember everything that I showed you, everything that I taught you, all right?" Donnie Herman told his wife, explaining later to the dispatcher that he had recently taken her to a gun range.

It wasn't clear from the recording exactly when they went to range and Donnie Herman told The Associated Press on Wednesday the family didn't want to talk about the shooting.

After Donnie Herman told his wife police were on the way, he started shouting: "She shot him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him."

"OK," the dispatcher responded.

"Shoot him again! Shoot him!" Donnie Herman yelled. He told the dispatcher he heard a lot of screaming, but he seems to get increasingly worried when he doesn't hear anything from his wife.

Melinda Herman told police she started shooting the man when he opened the door to the crawl space. The man pleaded with her to stop, but she kept firing until she had emptied her rounds, she told police. She then fled to a neighbor's house with her children.

The man drove away in his SUV. Police found the SUV on another subdivision street and discovered a man bleeding from his face and body in a nearby wooded area. Police identified the suspect as 32-year-old Paul Slater of Atlanta.

Chapman said the hospital asked him not to comment on Slater's condition, but he said he is not certain Slater will survive. Authorities have a warrant but haven't formally arrested Slater yet. They plan to charge him with burglary, possession of tools for the commission of a crime and aggravated assault, Walton County sheriff's Capt. Greg Hall said.

A phone number for Slater was not listed and it was not clear whether he has an attorney.

Authorities believe Slater targeted a home in another local subdivision but left when confronted by the homeowner, Chapman said.

NYC crane collapses; 7 people hurt, 3 seriously

 A 200-foot crane collapsed onto a building under construction near the East River waterfront Wednesday, injuring seven people, three of them seriously.

A two-story framework for the residential building in the New York City borough of Queens had been erected when the red crane toppled and went sprawling across it around 2:30 p.m. behind a big neon "Pepsi Cola" sign, a local landmark.

The three people who were seriously injured were in stable condition.

One person appeared to have a broken bone. Three people had to be extricated from underneath the crane, Deputy Fire Chief Mark Ferran said.

Preston White, 48, a carpenter from the Bronx, was on his first day on the job at the site in the Long Island City neighborhood.

He had turned to speak to a friend when he heard a popping sound and turned back around.

At that moment, "I saw the cable whipping toward the deck. ... You could just hear it buckling," White said.

The impact shook the scaffolding he was on.

The crane cut down the framework of the building "like a hot knife in butter," White said, because there was no plaster on it yet.

A fellow worker, Russell Roberson, 32, of Brooklyn, said the crane had been up about four days — and went down really fast.

City officials went up in a cherry picker while investigating the accident.

Construction cranes have been a source of safety worries in the city since two giant rigs collapsed within two months of each other in Manhattan in 2008, killing a total of nine people.

Those accidents spurred the resignation of the city's buildings commissioner and fueled new safety measures, including hiring more inspectors and expanding training requirements and inspection checklists.

Another crane fell and killed a worker in April at a construction site for a new subway line. That rig was exempt from most city construction safety rules because it was working for a state-overseen agency that runs the subway system.

During Superstorm Sandy, a construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and danged precariously for several days until it could be tethered.

NYC crane collapses 7 people hurt, 3 seriously

A 200-foot crane collapsed onto a building under construction near the East River waterfront Wednesday, injuring seven people, three of them seriously.

A two-story framework for the residential building in the New York City borough of Queens had been erected when the red crane toppled and went sprawling across it around 2:30 p.m. behind a big neon "Pepsi Cola" sign, a local landmark.

The three people who were seriously injured were in stable condition.

One person appeared to have a broken bone. Three people had to be extricated from underneath the crane, Deputy Fire Chief Mark Ferran said.

Preston White, 48, a carpenter from the Bronx, was on his first day on the job at the site in the Long Island City neighborhood.

He had turned to speak to a friend when he heard a popping sound and turned back around.

At that moment, "I saw the cable whipping toward the deck. ... You could just hear it buckling," White said.

The impact shook the scaffolding he was on.

The crane cut down the framework of the building "like a hot knife in butter," White said, because there was no plaster on it yet.

A fellow worker, Russell Roberson, 32, of Brooklyn, said the crane had been up about four days — and went down really fast.

City officials went up in a cherry picker while investigating the accident.

Construction cranes have been a source of safety worries in the city since two giant rigs collapsed within two months of each other in Manhattan in 2008, killing a total of nine people.

Those accidents spurred the resignation of the city's buildings commissioner and fueled new safety measures, including hiring more inspectors and expanding training requirements and inspection checklists.

Another crane fell and killed a worker in April at a construction site for a new subway line. That rig was exempt from most city construction safety rules because it was working for a state-overseen agency that runs the subway system.

During Superstorm Sandy, a construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and danged precariously for several days until it could be tethered.

Mysterious Giant Squid Finally Caught on Film

The notoriously elusive giant squid has been filmed for possibly the first time in its natural habitat after a Moby Dick-style hunt for the deep-sea beast.

A Japanese-led team filmed the silvery cephalopod last year off the Ogasawara Islands, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tokyo, according to news reports. The footage is to be broadcast in the United States this month.

"It was shining and so beautiful," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, told AFP. "I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data."

Kubodera and his colleagues also captured the first live videos ofthe deep-sea eight-armed squid (Taningia danae) in its natural environment, finding the biolumescent beast to be a fast, aggressive predator. The squid's light flashes may serve to blind prey or even woo mates, the team found. 

In the new achievement, Kubodera, along with a team from Japanese public broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel, used a submersible vessel in their search for the legendary creature. After about 100 descents, the three-man crew finally spotted a 10-foot (3-meter) giant squid(formally called Architeuthis) at a depth of around 2,066 feet (630 meters) and followed it down to 2,950 feet (900 m) as it swam with a bait squid in its arms, according to AFP.

"Researchers around the world have tried to film giant squid in their natural habitats, but all attempts were in vain before," Kubodera told the news agency. "With this footage we hope to discover more about the life of the species."

The giant squid has razor-toothed suckers and basketball-sized eyes and it's believed to be able to grow to more than 32 feet (10 meters) in length. The enormous and elusive creature has been steeped in mystery and legend, possibly inspiring the Norse legend of the sea monster the Kraken and even the Scylla from Greek mythology.

The footage will be revealed on "Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real," which premieres on the Discovery Channel on Jan. 27 at 8:00 p.m. EST/PST as the season finale of the show "Curiosity."