A man who stripped naked at Portland International Airport as a protest against airport security screeners said he was being "nude but not lewd," and characterised his act of defiance as protected political speech.

John E. Brennan, 49, of Portland was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure after taking off far more than this belt and shoes during the screening process before a Tuesday evening flight to San Jose, California.

The incident report from the Port of Portland, which operates the airport, said some passengers covered their eyes and the eyes of their children.

Others laughed and took photos.

Brennan, in an interview at his home, said he did not arrive at the airport with the intention of getting naked. He said the Transportation Security Administration crosses the line between privacy and security. He decided to protest after he was pulled aside after going through the metal detector and a pat down, he said.

US: A grandmother used a toy horse to fend off a robber in her Washington, DC home Tuesday.

In a move that has already spawned hundreds of uses of the phrase "going to the dogs," cable channel DogTV plans to go national in the next several months. In case the name wasn't self-explanatory, DogTV is TV designed for dogs.

According to an AP story reported yesterday, DogTV comes in eight-hour blocks specifically designed to keep dogs relaxed and entertained. Filmmakers got down on their knees to shoot from a dog's perspective and producers muted colors, changed the sound (for example, high frequency noises, which irritate dogs, have been removed) and added music written for man's best friend.

The channel already has a million subscribers in the San Diego area, and its owners expect it to do well nationally. The service will run for about $5 a month.

As far as products for dogs go, that's pretty cheap. Marvel Comics-themed dog clothes sell for between $10 and $20 apiece on PetSmart. This doggy tuxedo retails in the same range. For big spenders there's the much touted "Collection de Bijoux" line of dog collars, whose pieces run for between $150,000 and $3.2 million.

A South Dakota prison inmate is suing the hospital where he was circumcised as a newborn, saying he only recently became aware that he'd undergone the procedure and that it robbed him of his sexual prowess.

Dean Cochrun, 28, is asking for $1,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. He also asks in the lawsuit that his foreskin be restored "in the hopes I could feel whole again," though he acknowledged that he didn't expect such a restoration to be anything more than aesthetic.

Cochrun, who is imprisoned in Sioux Falls on a kidnapping conviction, filed the federal lawsuit Friday against Sanford Hospital. Cochrun claims that an "unknown doctor" at the then-named Sioux Valley Hospital misled his mother to believe that the procedure was medically necessary. Cochrun argues that the procedure was unnecessary, unethical and without medical benefit.

Authorities are searching for a 23-year-old Army soldier who was last seen early Saturday morning leaving a bar in North Carolina.

PFC Kelli Bordeaux didn't turn up to her post at Fort Bragg on Monday, prompting Army officials to report her missing, NBC News reported.

Bordeaux was last spotted leaving a bar, Froggy Bottoms, in nearby Fayetteville about 1:30 am on Saturday. A bar employee gave her a ride home, but he is not considered a suspect, a military official told NBC.

Bordeaux, a health services specialist originally from St. Cloud in Central Florida, has been married for two years but is estranged from her husband, Mike, the official said.

"Supposedly when the guy that was giving her a ride home, was taking her to her apartment, he got to her apartment and something spooked her so ... she said, 'No, no, no just let me out here,' instead of taking her like around the corner to her apartment," her mother, Johnna Henson, told wptv.com. "I don't understand that."

An Army investigator told wptv.com that, at some point, two text messages were sent from Bordeaux's phone, including one that said she got home safely.

"Being a soldier to Kelli is something she wouldn't jeopardize for anything. Missing work is something that is not in character for Kelli," her sister, Olivia Cox, told reporters. Asked how Mike Bordeaux was doing, she said:"Mike is holding up the best he can with his wife missing."

Norwegian anti-Islamic fanatic Anders Behring Breivik complained on Wednesday he was being subjected to personal ridicule in court and demanded his killing of 77 people last summer be judged as a battle against immigration.

"I hope you will focus on the issue, not the person," the 33-year-old Breivik told the court, visibly irritated and swiveling a pen in his hand.

Breivik, who killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo on July 22 and then shot 69 at a Labour Party summer camp, went on trial on Monday.

Asked how he had changed from a teenage vandal on Oslo's prosperous west side to a methodical killer, he said he helped found a militant group called the "Knights Templar" in 2001 and chafed at prosecution suggestions that it was largely imaginary.

"Your intention is to sow doubt whether this network existed," he said at one point, after repeatedly objecting to the way prosecutors phrased their queries.

The original Knights Templar were a medieval brotherhood of knights that prosecuted and financed anti-Islamic crusades.

Breivik has pleaded not guilty to terrorism and murder charges on grounds of "necessity". He called his victims "traitors" with immigrant-friendly ideas.

Johannesburg - South Africans woke up on Wednesday morning to the claim that a group of Soweto youths had filmed themselves raping a 17-year-old girl believed to be mentally ill.

The cellphone video is said to have gone viral among school kids in the township south of Johannesburg, and the term #rapevideo was trending on Twitter in South Africa on Wednesday.

The Daily Sun, a local tabloid, reports that it alerted the police after a concerned mother whose daughter was watching the video handed it over to the paper on Tuesday.

"The mother of a teenage girl saw the horrifying pictures and confiscated her daughter's phone. A work colleague of the woman said they recognized some of the boys and advised her to take the video to Daily Sun," the newspaper reported.

The suspects, aged between 14 and 20, were arrested Tuesday morning and charged with kidnapping and rape, police spokesperson Warrant Officer Kay Makhubela said.

"The video is very bad. The men can be clearly identified as they take turns raping and filming her," she told CNN.

The girl's mother reported her missing on March 21, Makhubela said.

Media reports suggest the police initially failed to open a missing persons case but that they have since done so.

Atlanta - A 6-year-old who threw a tantrum at her U.S. school was taken away in handcuffs, firing up a debate over whether teachers and police are overreacting with disruptive students.

Salecia Johnson's family lashed out Tuesday over her treatment and said she was badly shaken, while the school system and the police defended their handling of the incident.

Civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say frustrated teachers and principals across the country are calling in the police to deal with even relatively minor disruptions.

Some juvenile authorities say they believe it is happening more often, driven in part by an increased police presence at schools over the past two decades because of tragedies like the Columbine school massacre. But numbers are hard to come by.

"Kids are being arrested for being kids," said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who is suing the Albuquerque, New Mexico, school district, where hundreds of kids have been arrested in the past few years for minor offences. Those include having cellphones in class, burping, refusing to switch seats and destroying a history book. In 2010, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for inflating a condom in class.

Salecia was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing books and toys in an outburst Friday at her school in Georgia. Police said she also threw a small shelf that struck the principal in the leg, jumped on a paper shredder and tried to break a glass frame.

Police refused to say what set off the tantrum. The school called police, and when an officer tried to calm the child in the principal's office, she resisted, authorities said. She was handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car.

Washington - The U.S. Secret Service is investigating faded '70s rock star Ted Nugent for his recent insistence he'll be "dead or in jail" in a year's time if President Barack Obama is re-elected in November.

At a convention of the National Rifle Association over the weekend, the longtime gun advocate compared Obama and the Democrats to a coyote who should be shot.

"It isn't the enemy that ruined America," he said as he reaffirmed his endorsement of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.

"It's good people who bent over and let the enemy in. If the coyote's in your living room pissing on your couch, it's not the coyote's fault. It's your fault for not shooting him."

He accused the Obama administration of being "evil" and "America-hating."

"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year," he said angrily. "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November."

He then told his audience of proud gun-owners that if they failed to "clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don't even know what you're made out of."

The Secret Service says it's aware of the weekend remarks and is looking into them. It's illegal in the United States to threaten the commander-in-chief.

Oslo - In a scene unimaginable in many countries, Norway's worst mass killer got the chance to explain his fanatical views to the court and the world, unrepentant and dressed in a business suit. Prosecutors and lawyers for the families of his 77 victims even shook his hand.

Two days into Anders Behring Breivik's terror trial, the way Norway's legal system deals with a confessed killer who rejects its authority is baffling - even to some Norwegians.

The 33-year-old far-right militant gave a rambling hour-long address to the court on Tuesday, reading from a statement that essentially summarized the 1,500-page anti-Islamic manifesto he posted online before his bomb-and-shooting rampage nine months ago.

"The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defence on behalf of my people, my city, my country," Breivik declared, demanding to be found innocent of terror and murder charges. "I would have done it again."

Breivik has five days to explain why he detonated a bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people, then drove to a nearby resort island, where he massacred 69 others, mostly teens, at a summer youth camp run by the governing Labor Party.

Breivik, who has admitted carrying out the grisly acts, boasted they were the most "spectacular" by a nationalist militant since World War II.

His victims were part of a conspiracy to "deconstruct" Norway's cultural identity, he said. Comparing the Labor Party youth wing to the Hitler Youth, he called their annual summer gathering an "indoctrination" camp.