A transgender man who is six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey that he always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle.

"It's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human desire," a thinly-bearded Thomas Beatie said. "I have a very stable male identity," he added, saying that pregnancy neither defines him nor makes him feel feminine.

Mr Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone treatments and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.

"I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day," he told the talk show host. Mr Beatie's wife Nancy said she inseminated him with a syringe using sperm purchased from a bank.

Drug gangs building churches

Violent drug gangs in Mexico, which kill thousands of people a year, fund the building of churches in impoverished villages to try to win over locals, a senior Catholic bishop said. "They are very generous," Bishop Carlos Aguiar told a press conference, Reforma newspaper reported over the weekend.

Bishop Aguiar, who heads Mexico's Catholic bishops' conference, said drug traffickers pour money into poverty-stricken towns where the government lacks funds to build roads or provide electricity. "The drug smugglers build things that mean a lot for these communities," he said. "Many times they will build a church or a chapel."

Aguiar said the Church does not condone drug trafficking and tries to use its influence to get gangsters to leave the trade. "I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying how it is," he said.

Swiss village called Champagne

The Swiss wine-growing community of Champagne voted on Saturday to fight an attempt to restrict use of the village's name to French wine. In a traditional Swiss open-air vote, villagers said they would push to continue using the name Champagne, limited under international trade rules to the French sparkling wine region, for their own produce.

A mechanical excavator decked with a French flag tore out the sign bearing the name Champagne at the entrance of the village in a symbolic protest at its loss of identity.

In Switzerland's bilateral accords with the European Union, the Swiss government conceded in 1999 that the name Champagne would be reserved for the famous French wine. The Swiss village was given until 2004 to phase out the use of its name.

Villagers point out that the name of their community is documented as far back as 885 and the first records of wine being grown in the village date back to 1657.

Singapore censors ban four films

Singapore's censors have banned four documentary films from a movie festival for portrayals of terrorism, depicting gay Muslims, and excessive scenes of sado-masochism, a newspaper reported over the weekend.

Two movies - Arabs And Terrorism and David The Tolhildan - were "disallowed on account of their sympathetic portrayal of organisations deemed terrorist organisations by many countries," Amy Chua, chairman of the Board of Film Censors, told the pro-government Straits Times.

The four films were among 200 submitted for classification by organisers of the Singapore International Film Festival, which started on Friday and ends April 14.

Life sentence for beheading

A severely mentally-ill man was sentenced to life in prison for beheading a Hollywood screenwriter who wrote scripts for Abbott and Costello comedies.

Keven Lee Graff, 31, a homeless former marine described by his lawyer as "very, very mentally ill", pleaded guilty in Los Angeles Superior Court to the June 2004 murder of Robert Lees, 91. Mr Graff also admitted murdering Lees's elderly neighbour in a crime without motive.

Police said Mr Graff entered the Hollywood home of Mr Lees, attacked him with a cleaver and took the man's head with him as he climbed a fence and entered the house next door, where he also killed the occupant.

Duck gets 'order of protection'

A pet duck named Circles, shot and wounded by a neighbour with a pellet gun, has received an order of protection to keep it safe, the first duck in New York state's Suffolk County to benefit from such an order.

Circles was in its owner's backyard on Long Island - long known as a habitat for wild waterfowl - when it was shot by a neighbour through the neck, said Michelle Auletta, prosecutor at the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.

Circles, a white, yellow-billed duck, was treated by a vet and survived, she said. The neighbour was charged with animal cruelty.