• Paul McCartney and Heather Mills will agree on a divorce settlement at a private court date later this week, according to reports. British tabloids estimate Mills could walk away with between $50 and $100 million, with a source telling The Times, “This case ought to settle. It is absolutely straightforward.”
• Jammie Thomas, the single mom who lost the first downloading case filed by the RIAA last week, has started a Web site to collect money for her legal expenses, as well as a pending appeal.

• Today is the day Yoko Ono will unveil a peace tower in Iceland to commemorate what would have been John Lennon’s sixty-seventh birthday.

• Congressional-hearing-inspiring Don Imus is expected to make his return to radio on December 1st, when he will reportedly take over Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby’s morning slot on WABC.

• In a confidential e-mail that has been leaked, the new owner of EMI Records tells his staff Radiohead’s name-your-own-price scheme for In Rainbows is a “wake-up call” for the company, and said the ailing music industry has “has stuck its head in the sand” when it comes to embracing the “digital music revolution.”

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Paul McCartney — the Beatle famous for never learning how to read music — is offering up his services as a music tutor. McCartney has signed up with NowPlayIt.com, a video training site where rockers ranging from Blur to KT Tunstall provide downloadable half-hour tutorials that cost around ten bucks explaining in detail how to play their songs (curiously, the lessons appear to count toward chart sales). The first McCartney track on the lesson plan? Memory Almost Full’s “Ever Present Past.” “Sir Paul recorded lessons for bass, drums and guitar all inside one hour,” a spokesman for the site said. “He hopes to record further tutorials from his classic back catalog.” While we wait for McCartney to school us, we can enjoy his other video craze, which involves head nodding. Yes, McCartney released a short, amusing video for his Memory song “Nod Your Head,” in which he and a handful of friends bob their noggins in time to the song. In response, people worldwide have posted their own head-nodding videos online because, well, what won’t people post online?

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• $558,255,524. That’s how much The Rolling Stones pulled in from their Guinness-record-breaking A Bigger Bang tour. That Bill Gates-ian figure, comprised of 144 gigs that stretched from 2005 to August 26th of this year, is what makes the trek the top-grossing tour in history, beating out previous record holder U2’s Vertigo jaunt by more than $150 million.

• Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye is still alive, despite being pronounced dead by reputable news sites Wikipedia and MySpace. After the rumors hit fever pitch, the Baltimore Sun called the MacKaye residence, only to be told by the singer “I am still alive.”

• In what probably was a lot funnier than Meet The Fockers, Marilyn Manson met the parents of his underage girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood. So what does Manson and the Woods talk about to break the ice? Evidently, vampires. Manson and Mr. Wood fervently discussed Dracula, the actress told Wonderland magazine, as her dad once played the caped bloodsucker onstage.

• Despite contributing “We don’t need no education” to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall Part 2,” the graduation rate from the Islington Green student choir ended up being surprisingly high. So where are they now?

• The first trial concerning the illegal downloading of music is underway in Duluth, Minnesota. Jammie Thomas is accused by the RIAA of violating the copyright of 1,702 songs that she acquired (illegally) on the file-sharing network Kazaa. The RIAA is seeking $750 to $30,000 per song. Thomas is just one of 26,000 people sued by the record industry group for similar violations.

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Looking for that perfect trash-chic painting to complement your Kiss dolls and beer-can sculpture? Look no further than Just Britney, a collection of Britney Spears-inspired artwork that opened recently at the World of Wonder in Hollywood. The works range from a painting of a bald Britney with a blood-stained mouth to what looks like a lithograph of Brit’s crotch as she exits a limo. “People absolutely adored her and wanted to celebrate her bubblegum, pop princess years. Or, they thought she was an irresponsible mother or wanted to play up the drug side of things,” co-curator Steven Corfe tells Reuters. “The show reflects that whole spectrum.” We calmly await the upcoming Kevin Federline sculpture exhibit, K-Fed: Portraits of a Gigolo.

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Britney Spears has temporarily lost custody of her children, two-year-old Sean Preston and one-year-old Jayden James. At a hearing earlier today in Los Angeles, a judge awarded custody of the two boys to ex-husband Kevin Federline starting this Wednesday until the court orders otherwise. It looks like twelve-plus months of panty-free partying, rehab stints, the VMAs disaster, damaging bodyguard testimony and Spears’ failure to hang on to legal counsel probably didn’t help her case. We could joke about how bad a mother you have to be to lose your children to a dude like K-Fed, but at this point, we just feel really sorry for those kids. Spears must still attend counseling, meet with a parenting coach and submit to random drug testing.

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An Indiana bank sued suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for not repaying loans involving a car rental business. 1st Source Bank of South Bend said in a federal lawsuit it suffered damages of at least $2 million because Vick and Divine Seven LLC of Atlanta had refused to pay for the vehicles.The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. Last week, the Royal Bank of Canada sued Vick in federal court in Virginia for more than $2.3 million that it said he had planned to use for real estate investments.

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