Here’s a role for which Sandra Bullock probably never prepared: wrestling with her husband’s porn.

Here’s a role for which Sandra Bullock probably never prepared: wrestling with her husband’s porn star ex-wife, Janine Lindemulder, over custody of their 5-year-old daughter.

Bullock, the perpetual “girl next door” actress famous for films including “The Proposal” and “Miss Congeniality” has been helping her husband, Jesse James, raise his daughter since January of this year while Lindemulder was in prison for tax evasion. Now free from jail, Lindenmulder faces a fierce custody battle against James, the tattooed biker and star of cable TV’s “Monster Garage” and his megawatt Hollywood actress wife who has said she is now relishing her role as a stepmother.

In a letter to the judge at Lindemulder’s sentencing, Bullock denies the assertion that her desire to gain custody of the girl is rooted in her own inability to have children. “We realized that due to the instability in [the girl's] life, bringing another child into the world at this time would not be in [the girl's] best interest,” she wrote.

Bullock further alleges concerns for the girl’s safety, stating that the child was left alone during the day while Lindemulder was “asleep from drug use.”

“I am aware that Janine has claimed many times that my desire to have [the girl], was because I could not have children of my own,” Bullock says, adding, “that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

“I myself have stopped working like I used to in order to be here with Jesse and the kids because we are on constant high alert,” she writes, “never knowing what condition Janine will be in, and even more concerning, the condition [the girl] will be in.”

PHOENIX —  A young Iraqi woman whose father allegedly hit her with his car because she had become too Westernized died from her injuries Monday after laying in a coma for nearly two weeks.

Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, underwent spinal surgery and had been in a hospital since Oct. 20, when police say her father ran down her and her boyfriend’s mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a parking lot in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria.

The other woman, Amal Khalaf, is expected to survive.

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack but was arrested Thursday when he arrived at Atlanta’s airport, where he was sent from the United Kingdom after authorities denied him entrance.

Peoria police interviewed him and brought him back to Arizona over the weekend, but have declined to release what Almaleki said to them.

At a court hearing over the weekend in Phoenix, county prosecutor Stephanie Low told a judge that Almaleki admitted to committing the crime.

“By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family,” Low said. “This was an attempt at an honor killing.”

DICKINSON, N.D.  —  The father of one of three missing college softball players said Tuesday the women often went star gazing near a lake in southwestern North Dakota and police do not suspect foul play in their disappearances.

Lenny Gemar told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in a telephone interview that the Dickinson State University students would hang out by Patterson Lake near the city and “just look up at the stars and, you know, chat about the things that teenagers will chat about.”

Police have refused to speculate on what might have happened to Kyrstin Gemar, 22, of Grossmont, Calif.; Afton Williamson, 20, of Lake Elsinore, Calif.; and Ashley Neufeld, 21, of Brandon, Manitoba in Canada. The women were believed to be in a white 1997 Jeep Cherokee with California plates when they were last heard from late Sunday night, authorities said.

Dickinson Police Lt. Dave Wallace has said a friend of the women received two telephone calls from them, about one minute apart, before the line cut out on Sunday. The exact words used in the calls and exactly which of the women they came from were not immediately released.

Wallace said water was mentioned in the conversation but the context was not clear. The friend who received the calls called 911 to report that the women needed help.

Authorities searched a 30-mile radius of the cell phone tower north of Dickinson where the calls came through on Monday using three airplanes and officers on the ground. The search included Patterson Lake just southwest of Dickinson, a city of 16,000 people about 100 miles west of Bismarck and 60 miles east of the Montana state line.

The air search was called off after dark. Police Officer Thomas Grosz said the search was likely to resume early Tuesday. He did not immediately know how many people it might involve.

Lenny Gemar said he and his wife arrived in North Dakota late Monday night to try to help find his daughter, Kyrstin, and her teammates. He said they were met at the airport by a university official and updated on the case and investigators’ efforts.

“They haven’t found anything that I’m aware of,” he said. “No tire tracks, no clothing … nothing at all to give us any indication where the girls ended up.”

Gemar said he had not spoken with the friend who said she received the distress calls, but it didn’t seem like the girls were being attacked.

“There was nothing to indicate that there was an assailant or anything like that going on,” he said. “It just comes across as sounding more like an accident of some kind.”

Authorities in North Dakota have made little progress in their search for three missing Dickinson State University students; their only lead is two cell phone calls that included “hysterical noises” the night the students vanished.

Kyrstin Gemar, Ashley Neufeld and Afton Williamson, members of the Dickinson softball team, were last seen Sunday. The three friends were believed to have been stargazing in a rural farming area before they disappeared.

But police said one of the women placed two phone calls to a friend shortly before midnight, asking for help.

Realizing that they will need all the help that they can get this recession plagued year, many big retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears and Saks are starting their Black Friday sales early.

Black Friday, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, used to be considered the beginning of the holiday shopping season, the time of year when many retailers see their red ink turn to black, as yearend sales push them into profitability.

“Larger retailers who do typically offer large Black Friday savings will try to do their best to win the shoppers out there,” said Kathy Grannis, media relations manager of the National Retail Federation.

But winning shoppers’ dollars will be tougher this year.

A National Retail Federation survey shows that consumers are expected to spend less during the 2009 holiday season. According to the survey, U.S. consumers plan to spend an average of $682.74 on holiday-related shopping, which is a 3.2 percent drop from last year’s $705.01.

That’s why some retailers are rolling out their black Friday sales early, but it’s unclear how widespread the practice will become, said Grannis.