Singer swipe

London, Dec. 14 (Reuters): Singer George Michael has issued a stinging reply to uncomplimentary remarks made by Elton John, which he said were garnered from gossip on the ?gay grapevine?.

a very public spat between two of Britain?s best known and successful gay artists, Michael published a letter in a celebrity magazine on John?s criticism of his private life.

an interview with Heat magazine last month, 57-year-old John said Michael appeared to be in a ?strange place?, wasting his talent by staying at home and shunning the limelight. He also described as ?a bit disappointing? Michael?s album Patience, which topped the British charts this year.

?Elton John knows very little about George Michael, and that?s a fact,? Michael retorted in the letter. ?He knows that I don?t like to tour, that I smoke too much pot and that my albums still have a habit of going to Number One. In other words, he knows as much as most of my fans do.?

Clean cash

Berlin (Reuters): An 81-year-old German dropped his trousers and lost his wallet when two young women asked him to join them in a nude photo shoot but they fled with his belongings as he stripped, police said Monday. ?After the pensioner had removed his trousers in eager anticipation, the women left in a hurry,? taking the man?s wallet with about 250 euros in cash, police in the western city of Wiesbaden said.

Donkey job

Rome (Reuters): An Italian town is setting donkeys to work mowing the grass on the side of its highways in an effort to save money and reduce pollution. Fed up with paying some 100,000 euros ($132,800) a year to cut the grass on its out-of-town roads with tractor-mowers, the local government of Treviso, near Venice, said on Tuesday that it had bought six donkeys to do the work.

?This purchase will allow us to save cash as well as launch an experimental ecological project,? said local government chief Luca Zaia, who paid just over 2,000 euros for the six animals.

Motorists need not fear running down the donkeys ? they will only be allowed to munch the grass in roadside areas that are fenced off from traffic.

Drunk pest

Shanghai (AP): How do you remove a stray cockroach jammed in the ear? Get it drunk. A doctor in the southeastern Chinese port city of Xiamen plucked a 1.5 cm roach from a 12-year-old boy?s ear with tweezers four minutes after dousing it with alcohol, the official China Daily newspaper reported. The doctor at the city?s Zhongshan hospital who wasn?t identified, sees up to two patients each month with similar insect problems, the paper said. The report didn?t say how the roach got into the ear of the boy.