■AUSTRALIA
MP in hot water
A political leader broke down at a news conference on Tuesday as he admitted that he had sniffed the chair of a female colleague, local media reported. The confession came from the leader of the conservative Liberal Party in Western Australia, Troy Buswell, who has previously owned up to snapping the bra strap of an opposition party staffer. Buswell told reporters at the televised news conference in Mandurah, south of Perth, that he would not resign his post, which puts him in line to become state premier if his party wins elections next year. But tears welled in his eyes and he choked up when asked how his family had reacted to the wide publicity given to the incident since the story became public at the weekend, the national AAP news agency said.
■AUSTRALIA
BASE jumpers arrested
A BASE jumper landed in trouble yesterday when he parachuted from a downtown Sydney high-rise office building into the path of a police car. Two officers on a patrol spotted the man floating to earth before he landed in front of their car at about 3am, state police said in a statement. A second jumper landed around the same time on the same street, it said. Both men, aged 27, were arrested “after a short foot chase,” the statement said. They were charged with risking public safety by abseiling, jumping or parachuting from a building or other structure. The potential maximum penalty was not immediately clear. The two Sydney residents, who were not publicly identified, were released on bail and will appear in a Sydney court on May 22 to enter a plea, police said.
■AUSTRALIA
Gay activists hail bill
Gay rights activists yesterday welcomed a government promise to bring in legislation giving same-sex couples the same rights as opposite-sex couples. Discrimination would be removed in laws covering taxation, pensions, healthcare and veterans’ entitlements. “The recognition of same-sex de facto couples is long overdue and will bring Australian national law into line with all Australia’s states and territories and many other Western nations,” Coalition for Equality spokesman Rodney Croome said. He said that draft legislation should also cover provisions for same-sex marriages. “It’s deeply disappointing that the government is not prepared to accept equality in marriage,” he said. Both major political parties have declared that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
■■UNITED STATES
Photoshoot stirs up ruckus
A recent Vanity Fair photoshoot of 15-year-old TV and pop wonder Miley Cyrus, who plays in Disney TV’s Hannah Montana, has stirred up a ruckus with Disney fans. Photographer Annie Leibovitz draped her in a satin sheet, back exposed, in a pose that gives the impression she is topless. When news of the shoot broke over the weekend, it caused a hostile reaction from bloggers such as Lin Burress, a morality crusader who called on parents to burn Hannah Montana accessories. After Disney accused Vanity Fair of trying “to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines,” a spokesperson said her parents were at the shoot, calling it “a relaxed family event.”
■UNITED STATES
CBS star in drug scandal
Actor Gary Dourdan, who co-stars on the CBS TV hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, has been arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine, heroin and other drugs, police said on Tuesday. Dourdan, 41, was detained in Palm Springs, California, after he was found asleep in the driver’s seat of a parked car before dawn on Monday, a police press release said. The car had been parked on the wrong side of the street with the interior light left on. The officer found substances believed to be cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and various prescription drugs, as well as drug paraphernalia, police said. Dourdan was arrested, booked for possession of drugs and jailed for about five hours before he was released on US$5,000 bail, police said.
■UNITED STATES
‘Flasher’ mystery solved?
A middle-of-the-night mystery that rattled and baffled residents for months may finally have been solved with police making a real-world arrest. Deafening blasts accompanied by blinding split-second flashes of light have been rattling residents of a neighborhood in Pikesville, Maryland, for months. Police said they set up cameras and recorded the phenomena last week, but didn’t detect anyone in the area. Based on shadows, police believe the light source was in the air about 9m above the ground. A spokesman said on Tuesday someone had been arrested in connection with the mystery, but did not provide details.
■UNITED STATES
When pigs fly
It’s huge, inflatable and it has lost its way in the California desert. Organizers for the Coachella music festival announced on Monday that the gigantic blowup swine, released into the night sky during Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters’ headlining set on Sunday, was still out there — and they want it back. The festival is offering a US$10,000 reward plus four Coachella tickets for life for the safe return of the pig, a spokeswoman said. As tall as a two-story house and as wide as two school buses, the pig broke free from lines on as Waters played Pigs from the 1977 album Animals.
■BOSNIA
Court convicts war criminals
The country’s top war crimes court convicted two Bosnian Serbs and a Bosnian Croat of war crimes committed during the country’s 1992 to 1995 war. A court statement says former Bosnian Serb soldiers Mirko Todorovic, 54, and Milos Radic, 49, took part in the capture of 14 Muslim Bosniaks in 1992, of whom they killed eight. They were sentenced on Tuesday to 17 years ain prison each. In another trial, 43-year-old Pasko Ljubicic was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to commanding a battalion of military police accused of attacking the Bosniak Muslim village of Ahmici in 1993, leaving more than 100 people dead.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
‘MAGA CIVIL WAR’: Former Trump strategist Bannon said the H1-B program created ‘indentured servants,’ but Musk said that he was willing ‘to go to war on this issue’ US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech barons such as Elon Musk, saying that he backs a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country. “I’ve always liked the [H1-B] visas, I have always been in favor of the visas, that’s why we have them” at Trump-owned facilities, he told the New York Post in his first public comments on the matter since it flared up this week. An angry back-and-forth, largely between Silicon Valley’s Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump backers, has erupted in fiery fashion, with Musk
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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