■ Australia
Croc hunter no Jackson
"Crocodile hunter" Steve Irwin angrily rejected any comparisons between himself and disgraced pop star Michael Jackson, after provoking outrage by hand-feeding a crocodile while holding his infant son, a newspaper reported yesterday. Irwin, who has survived tussles with giant pythons, poisonous snakes and crocodiles, is facing an onslaught of bad publicity as television channels worldwide replayed images of him feeding the 4m croc as he cradled his month-old son Robert on Friday. "To hear people say that it was a publicity stunt, that I'm just like Michael Jackson well, it just tears me up. It makes me sick to my stomach to be compared in that way" Irwin told Australia's Sunday Telegraph.
PHOTO: REUTERS
■ Indonesia
Journalist live in fear
An Indonesian journalist held captive by separatist rebels in Aceh province since June said he feared he may share the same fate as a colleague he saw shot dead by soldiers last week during a gunbattle. "I was sad and depressed after the deadly shooting. I could be the one shot by soldiers the next time," Fery Santoro, a cameraman for the Jakarta-based privately owned RCTI TV, said on Saturday. "We are holding on to the hope that people will not forget us," he said from an undisclosed location via a satellite phone.
PHOTO: AP
■ Nepal
Rebels ambush army truck
Nepal's Maoist rebels, fighting to overthrow the constitutional monarchy, ambushed an army truck, killing three soldiers and wounding nine, an army official said yesterday. The attack took place late on Saturday in Chitaun, 120km south west of Kathmandu. "An army vehicle carrying soldiers was ambushed by the Maoists," the official said. One of the injured soldiers was critical, he said. He said a search team had been sent to the ambush site early on Sunday to track down the rebels.
■ North Korea
Shrine visit condemned
North Korea yesterday condemned Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the controversial Yasukuni shrine for war dead on New Year's Day. "This indicates that [Koizumi] is persistently pursuing his invariable reactionary and ultra-right militarist policy," the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary. The Yasukuni shrine is dedicated to lives lost in Japanese military campaigns -- including 14 war criminals convicted after World War II.
■ South Korea
News report rejected
South Korea's foreign ministry yesterday rejected a news report that Seoul, Tokyo and Washington would demand that North Korea scrap all its nuclear plants, even if they are only used to generate power. Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday that the three allies would urge North Korea at a next round of multilateral nuclear crisis talks to stop using all of its nuclear facilities. The three nations have reached a basic agreement to bar North Korea from using nuclear energy even for peaceful purposes, the daily said.
■ United States
Britney Spears ties the knot
Pop star Britney Spears marched down the aisle in Las Vegas, marrying a childhood friend from Louisiana, according to news reports. The 22-year-old diva married Jason Allen Alexander early Saturday at the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Strip, according to People.com, the online arm of the Time Warner publication. He is from Kentwood, Louisiana, it said. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on its Web site that Spears, 22, and Alexander, 22, were granted a marriage license, citing an affidavit of Application for Marriage License filed on Saturday. Calls to Spears' representatives were not immediately returned. The bride wore jeans and baseball cap, according to People.com, and had a hotel bellman walk her down the aisle.
■ Nigeria
Army quells uprising
Nigeria declared on Saturday its army and police had put down an armed uprising by a newly emerged Islamic movement seeking to create a Muslim state in Africa's most populous nation, after gunbattles that left at least eight dead and police stations sacked of weapons. Two police officers and at least six of the militants died in days of clashes in three towns in predominantly Islamic Yobe state, including the capital, Damaturu, said Ibrahim Jirigi, a Yobe state government spokesman. The uprising, by a largely university-based Nigerian student group preaching Islamic revolution, stood as one of the most concerted offensives in three years of Christian-Muslim violence since Yobe and 11 other northern states began instituting Shariah law.
■ United States
Terror fear shuts Capitol
The US Capitol was closed for more than four hours on Saturday after a "potentially hazardous substance" was detected in the basement on the Senate side, a spokeswoman for the Capitol Police said. The building was evacuated while Capitol Police tried to determine whether the substance, an industrial solvent, was hazardous, said the spokeswoman, Jessica Gissubel. Initial field tests on the substance were negative, and the building reopened by late evening, she said. The substance will be taken to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for further analysis. Gissubel said she could not give any details about the incident because "we do not know what caused it."
■ United States
Motor City mayor blasts cars
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick committed something of a cardinal sin in the Motor City on Friday by blaming cars and trucks for Detroiters' bulging waistlines. "It's probably something to do with the culture," Kilpatrick told local journalists, when asked about a report that Detroit had passed Houston to take the title as America's fattest city. "We're not a walking city," Kilpatrick said, adding that this was because Detroit is "the automotive capital of the world." An annual list of the 25 fattest US cities will appear in the February issue of Men's Fitness magazine. Houston held the top spot on the list for the past three years.
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