Whether it is dodging the issue of weapons of mass destruction or evading the imbroglio over the recount in Florida, the two most prominent scions of the Bush dynasty have a knack for braving doubts about their credibility.
But while US president George Bush and his brother Jeb, the Florida governor, have made it through some tough questioning, the president's younger brother, Neil, may not be so lucky.
In a court deposition, taken in March and released this week, Neil claims that attractive women came to his hotel door looking for sex while he was on business trips in Hong Kong and Thailand. And as a big-hearted Texan, Neil, the third of five Bush children, merely did as he was asked.
"You have to admit it's pretty remarkable for a man to go to a hotel room door and open it and have sex with her," said his ex-wife's lawyer, Marshall Davis Brown.
"It was very unusual," Bush replied. He insists he didn't know them, did not see them afterwards and didn't pay them.
"Were they prostitutes?" he was asked.
"I don't know," he said.
Bush, 48, divorced his wife, Sharon, in April after 23 years of marriage. The split came after a bitter dispute with another couple, Maria and Robert Andrews, whom they met several years earlier.
Sharon, who is the subject of a US$850,000 defamation suit after she alleged that Bush was the father of the Andrews' two-year-old son, has called on Neil Bush and Andrews to take paternity tests. Bush and Maria Andrews are now a couple.
On Friday last week a Texas judge ordered Sharon Bush to allow one of their daughters, Ashley, 14, to accompany Neil and Maria to France for Thanksgiving.
"They don't even celebrate Thanksgiving in France," said a friend of Sharon's.
The deposition also shed light on Bush's business dealings and ability to land fat contracts with little expertise.
The hotel trysts took place while Bush was working as a consultant for Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, which is backed by the son of former Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, for which he was paid US$2 million in stock options over five years.
It is not the first time that he has been involved in corporate controversy. In the late 1980s he was director of Denver-based Silverado Savings & Loan, which collapsed at a cost to taxpayers of US$1 billion. At the time he denied any wrongdoing but was sanctioned by the federal government for his part in the failure.
During the deposition Brown asked: "Now, you have absolutely no education background in semiconductors, do you Mr Bush?"
"That's correct," Bush said.
Brown also questioned him about work for Crest Investment Corp, where he was paid US$5,000 a month for work that totalled no more than four hours a week. Bush said he provided Crest with "miscellaneous consulting services."
"Such as?" asked Brown.
"Answering phone calls when the other co-chairman called and asked for advice," Bush said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS