Financial heat off Johnson

Aspen, Colo. — Don Johnson can breathe easy again.

All the creditors listed on bankruptcy petitions involving the former “Miami Vice” and “Nash Bridges” star have been paid off, Denver lawyer Lee Kutner said Tuesday.

Kutner said Johnson’s companies should be emerging from bankruptcy soon.

“He has obtained new financing,” Kutner said.

Los Angeles-based City National Bank sued Johnson in March, seeking to force an auction of his 17-acre ranch near Aspen to recoup $930,000 it claimed he owed. The ranch was put up for sale for $21 million, but Johnson ended up paying the debt in time.

Jackson’s ex seeks visitation

Los Angeles — Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Deborah Rowe is seeking visitation rights with their children, according to court documents.

Jackson lawyer Thomas Hall said in the Superior Court filing Wednesday that he was preparing an appeal of a recent decision by a retired judge regarding the matter. Hall plans to file documents from the case and asks that they be sealed because they contain information about Jackson’s assets and liabilities.

The lawyer says that while the issue is separate from Jackson’s criminal case in Santa Barbara County, that matter has “exponentially increased the press attention on the parties and their lives.”

Judge Robert Schnider continued the case until Feb. 2.

Rowe and Jackson were married in 1996 in Sydney, Australia, after they announced that Rowe, who worked as a nurse for Jackson’s plastic surgeon, was carrying the pop star’s child.

The marriage ended in 1999 after Rowe filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Their two children, Paris, who is 5 or 6, and Prince Michael, who is 8, reportedly live with Jackson.

Royal champagne doesn’t sell

London — The sale of a magnum of champagne from the 1981 wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles fizzled when auction bids failed to reach the reserve price.

Bidding for the bubbly fell flat at $1,736, short of the $1,929 reserve price at an auction in Swindon, west of London, on Wednesday.

The 1961 vintage Dom Perignon — chosen for the year of Diana’s birth — was one of 12 magnums bottled in a limited edition for the royal wedding.

Auction house spokesman Dominic Winter said he was disappointed the bottle hadn’t sold.

“It just failed to perform. I guess people are not as willing as they used to be to spend their money on frivolous things,” Winter said.

‘Croc hunter’ defends dugongs

Sydney, Australia — “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin launched a campaign to save Australia’s endangered dugongs.

The TV entertainer urged boat owners to slow down to avoid hitting the docile sea mammals, which are related to manatees. Dozens of dugongs die each year when they’re caught in boat propellers while feeding on sea grass in shallow waters.

Irwin encouraged children to tell their parents to give way to dugongs, whose gray-brown bodies taper into a dolphin-like tail and which may have been mistaken for mermaids by ancient sailors.

“Kids, if you are going out there with mum and dad fishing and you see a dugong, go, ‘Crikey! Have a look at that! Here’s where the mermaid legend came from and they are right here, right in our bay,”‘ Irwin said Wednesday at the campaign launch in a coastal suburb of the Queensland state capital, Brisbane.

Birthday: Giovanni Ribisi

Actor Giovanni Ribisi is 30. Newspaper columnist William Safire is 75. Comedian-actor Eugene Levy is 58. Actor Bill Pullman is 51. Actor Barry Livingston is 51. Actor Sean Patrick Thomas is 34.