THE 100 GREATEST LOVE SONGS, according to the New York Daily News, just in time for St. Valentine's Day. Topping the chart is The Temptations' "My Girl." Others making the list include The Beatles' "In My Life," Ray Charles's "I Can't Stop Lovin' You," Gladys Knight & The Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia," Patsy Cline's "Crazy," and Elvis Costello's "Alison."

MORE V-DAY MUSIC can be found at The Late Greats (stream Feb 12th), Heather Browne's I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, and Some Velvet Blog.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS: An Aquarium Drunkard and Allmusic offer differing reviews of her new album, West.

SHEARWATER: Bradley's Almanac has posted a gig from Cambridge, MA, circa Sept. 2006. You can jukebox the Okkervil River spin-off's bittersweet, organic rock via the ol' HM.

PETER BJORN & JOHN, conjuring up power-pop and new wave vibes, get a segment featuring their singles o­n the World cafe you can stream via NPR.

ARCADE FIRE: Sasha Frere-Jones writes about the band's outsized appeal in The New Yorker. If you visit the band's Neon Bible website and move your mouse across the top of your screen to find the "6. Guns," you can see them cover The Clash's "The Guns of Brixton" amid the audience.

APPLES in STEREO frontman Robert Schneider tells The A.V. Club that Brian Wilson's SMiLE and ELO's Greatest Hits were probably the main inspirations for New Magnetic Wonder.

GOLDEN SMOG, after years of sporadic output, will release the wonderfully-titled Blood o­n the Slacks, its second disc in less than a year, o­n April 24th.

MTV axed 250 employees yesterday, including the entire VH1 Classic department.

PETE-DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The supposedly sober supermodel has vowed not to give up o­n the troubled singer and is springing for a remote love nest.

TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise and Ben Stiller are teaming up for Hardy Men, a grown-up take o­n the teen sleuths known as the Hardy Boys, with Shawn Levy of Night at the Museum to direct. The pair has worked together before. It also looks like Tom-Kat was chatting up Oprah recently.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS STILL DEAD, though her late sugar daddy's first wife is a sprightly 102 years young. Coverage of the model's death dominated cable TV news from Feb. 4-9. The spokesmodel's bodyguard said he could be the father of Smith's infant daughter, while TMZ produces a traffic ticket that bolsters Larry Birkhead's claim and reports that Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband may have been throwing a story to the foreign press in Hollywood for the Oscars. Strippers from Smith's former club plan to hold a vigil. Also, the more ghoulish may listen to the 911 tapes.

THE McCARTNEYS: Heather Mills is set to compete o­n Dancing With The Stars later this year and plans to donate her appearance fee to animal charity Viva. Say what you will, she never let that amputated leg get her down.

ANTHONY KIEDIS: The Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman had to ween himself off an addiction to Internet pr0n.

SIENNA MILLER was caught canoodling Bryan Ferry's son Issac at a BAFTAs after-party.

SHARON STONE attended the Cinema for Peace Gala in Berlin the other night where she called her audience "nasty, nasty Germans" and reportedly made out with Richard Gere for most of the evening before calling Gere an a**hole near the end of the night.

GEORGE CLOONEY is a "pompous jacka**," according to L.A. agent Pat Dollard: "Clooney actually goes around letting people say he was 'brave' for making those movies (Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck)... Is it brave making films that serve the agenda of every liberal in Hollywood when real heroes are spilling their blood in Iraq?"

CLINT EASTWOOD tells Europeans that Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima were meant to get away from movies where the US "were the good guys and everybody else were bad guys," which may surprise the WWII vets depicted in Flags of Our Fathers. But it's probably the PC thing to say to Europeans in the middle of Oscar voting.

TV is the DEVIL: After yesterday's blurb about 24 allegedly promoting torture, I cannot pass up Nielsen Hayden's spin-off blog claim that the Scooby-Doo gang "are, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan." And he's not kidding, but this could not be more wrong. In Scooby-Doo, it was the villains who wore sheets to pose as ghosts... and would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.

PETRA NEMCOVA is still with musician James Blunt. Cue the Vader, please.

BEYONCE KNOWLES scores the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. TMZ has a sneak peek video of some of the other bathing beauties. The mag's website offers a gallery called the SI swimsuit collection.

NORTH KOREA has supposedly agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor and eventually dismantle its atomic weapons program in exchange for millions of dollars in aid. Under the deal, NK would receive initial aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil for shutting down and sealing its main nuclear reactor and related facilities within 60 days, to be confirmed by international inspectors. For irreversibly disabling the reactor and declaring all nuclear programs, NK would eventually receive another 950,000 tons in aid. This is not the "Libya model" the US sought, but tougher than the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which the US provided NK with nuclear reactors without requiring IAEA verification that NK was dismantling its weapons program. In the first linked story, a fmr. Clinton Admin. official asks whether this deal couldn't have been concluded before NK conducted its nuclear test and acquired enough plutonium to build anywhere from six to 10 nukes. Aside from the fact that someone involved with the 1994 debacle has no place to squawk, the answer is "no," for the simple reason that any deal really requires NK patron China to lean o­n NK when needed, and it seems that China finally leaned o­n NK to get this deal.

IRAN: At the Counterterrorism Blog, Jonathan Winer discusses the EU's plan to adopt (slightly) wider economic sanctions against Iran. Observers have started to question Iran's strategy in southern Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan.

IRAQ: The borders with Iran and Syria are closed for three days as part of the new security plan for Baghdad, where most residents framed the problem in sectarian terms, but expressed hope in the latest effort to restore calm. North Shore Journal has pics of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Div standing up in the Hurriyah neighborhood of the city's Kadamiyah district. Baghdadis are using Google Earth to help people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad. ABCNews reports that al Sadr fled to Tehran two to three weeks ago. Meanwhile, British soldiers have helped uncover a massive ammunitions dump in Basra. Bill Ardolino blogs the efforts of the Police Transition Team living in the heart of Fallujah, noting the strengths and weaknesses (esp. the prison and judicial system) of the security situation there.

AMY, measuring 4 feet long and weighing 40 lbs., is the world's biggest bunny.

SECRET SQUIRREL passes away, but I don't think he's the Secret Squirrel.

DOGS can now exercise o­n their very own treadmills.

THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS will show you -- with pictures -- how lobsters will be stunned and killed if the boiling of live lobsters is banned.

IT WOULD NOT BE VALENTINE'S DAY with out the traditional animal sex tours run by zoos.