UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Hunters shoot killer Australian crocodile

DARWIN, Australia, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Police in Australia's Northern Territory said Tuesday they believe they had shot to death a crocodile that had killed a biker, the BBC reported.

The 12 foot saltwater crocodile was found close to where 22-year-old Brett Mann was snatched in the Finniss River Dec. 21.

Two friends with him were rescued after climbing a tree to get away after the animal that chased them up a tree and stayed at the foot of the tree for 22 hours. They had to be rescued by a police helicopter's winch.

Mann and two friends, Ashely McGough and Shaun Blowers, were riding quad bikes in the area when Mann was swept away by the river.

Officials are confident it was the same crocodile because the creatures are strongly territorial.

A police spokesman, John McCourt, said the animals sink after they are shot and then rise to the surface several hours later.

The crocodile may have hidden his body, but the contents of its stomach will also be examined.

M&M's to go black-and-white, for a while

NEW YORK, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- M&M's will run a contest in 2004 offering six prizes and -- for a brief period -- offer the candy in only black and white, a New York City spokesman said.

The official announcement that M&M's is temporarily phasing out color will be made on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" on ABC.

M&M's parent company Mars is privately held and therefore does not release sales figures, but overall chocolate sales have been flat in the last few years. Moran characterized M&M's sales as "stable," but added that the company is trying to gain market share.

The company will re-introduce color between April and June by running a contest in which six bags -- out of the more than 100 million in retail stores -- will contain colored M&M's. Each of the six will contain M&M's of the same color - one each for red, yellow, green, blue, brown and orange.

The purchasers of those bags will receive prizes, after which Mars will resume making colored M&M's.

Castro resembles Hitler in news photo

HAVANA, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Cuba is awash in speculation over a newspaper photograph of Fidel Castro who looks remarkably like Adolph Hitler, the Miami Herald reported Tuesday.

Published Dec. 4 on the front page of the communist daily Granma, the black and white photo was shot from a distance as Castro addressed American students at the Palacio de las Convenciones.

Using magnifying glasses to get a detailed look, Cubans were stunned by what they surmised was a deliberate manipulation of the photo.

"It was all over the street, everybody was talking about it," a foreign diplomat in Havana told the Herald in a telephone interview.

An employee at Granma offered a simple explanation, saying the microphone had created a shadow that looks like a moustache.

As news of the photograph spread, the Dec. 4 edition of Granma quickly became a hot commodity in Havana, selling for as much as $150. In the United States, the price shot up further.

Marathon 'Moby Dick' reading scheduled

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Herman Melville fans won't want to miss a two-day annual marathon reading of his classic seafaring novel, "Moby Dick," in Massachusetts this weekend.

The reading is scheduled to start at noon Saturday at the New Bedford Whaling Museum with a reader costumed as Ishmael standing at the stern of an 80-foot whaling ship model. Other parts of the novel will be read in appropriate settings such as the Seamen's Bethel chapel (called The Whaleman's Chapel in the novel) and in the life-size replica of a whaling crew's living quarters at the museum. The event will continue into Sunday at various venues.

Much of the event will take place under hanging whale skeletons, a major museum exhibit. The port of New Bedford was one of the most important whaling centers in the nation in the first half of the 19th century.

Melville made his first voyage out of New Bedford to the South Seas in 1841 and was made famous by his novels "Typee," "Omoo" and finally "Moby Dick," published in 1851.