■ United States
FBI to pursue Hoffa lead
The FBI will investigate a purported deathbed confession by a former Pennsylvania Teamster official that says he helped dispose of the body of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. The confession, said to have been written by Francis Sheeran before he died on Dec. 14 in a nursing home near Philadelphia, says he flew to Pontiac, Michigan, the day Hoffa disappeared in 1975, picked up Hoffa's body from his killers and drove it to a trash incinerator where it was cremated. Sheeran's daughter says the letter is a fake. "It's definitely a forgery. It's not his signature," Dolores Miller, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, told the Detroit Free Press.
■ United States
Britney rejects suicide video
Pop icon Britney Spears, reputed for her racy music videos, has resisted the temptation to simulate drowning in her bathtub for the video to accompany her upcoming new single Everytime, the New York Daily News reported Saturday. In the video draft the young beauty is depicted escaping from paparazzi after a booze-fuelled confrontation with her boyfriend. The star-crossed pair wind up in a hotel room where Spears apparently takes an overdose and slips into a coma, in her bathtub. The video was rejected by Spears, who said in a statement that she did not want a "fictional accidental occurrence to be misinterpreted as suicide."
■ United States
Grandmother held hostage
An unemployed man held his invalid grandmother hostage for nearly seven hours in a New York City apartment on Saturday, firing as many as 100 shots at the police through her apartment door before he was subdued by officers using Taser guns. The police received the first call to the apartment, where the grandmother and other relatives live, at 9:34am, officials said. Police say Adam Perry, 32, was upset at having recently been laid off from his job in the mailroom of the Sony Corp.
■ united nations
Aids plan faces collapse
A UN plan to provide 3 million HIV-infected patients in Africa with anti-retroviral drugs by 2005 is in danger of collapsing due to a lack of funds, UN and World Health Organization officials said. Some countries, particularly the US, are balking at supporting the project, Aids workers say, partly because the plan intends to use fixed-dose combination anti-retroviral drugs whose use is opposed by large pharma-ceutical companies. Only US$2.3 billion has been secured for the US$5.5 billion WHO project, and only the UK, Sweden and Spain have provided money to date, officials said.
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