Wondering aloud what the "motivation of all this is," Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger fought allegations of sexual misconduct and Nazi sympathies on Friday as more women came forward to accuse him of making unwanted sexual advances.
On the second day of a four-day bus tour through California attracting international attention, the outwardly upbeat gubernatorial candidate complained about the timing of the reports on his past and said he was confident he would still be elected governor next Tuesday.
"One wonders what the motivation of all this is, why I'm getting thrown all this stuff three days before" the vote, he said in a pool interview. "Where have they been the last 20 years, 10 years, five years?"
He also said he would have apologized long ago to women he had groped -- had they said something. "No one complained to me," he said. "When someone comes to me and says: `How dare you say this, how dare you do this?' I can apologize right then and there."
Women's groups, joined by former candidate turned recall opponent Arianna Huffington, held protests around the state urging Schwarzenegger to drop out of the race as new allegations of groping surfaced from nationally syndicated radio host Joy Browne.
Schwarzenegger found his campaign on the defensive as he apologized for having "behaved badly at times" after the Los Angeles Times published a story in which six women claimed he groped them during the past three decades and others accused him of sexual harassment.
The Schwarzenegger campaign also released a statement from his close friend, documentary filmmaker George Butler, on the actor's past statements about Adolf Hitler from interviews Butler transcribed in 1975-76.
"I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power," Butler quoted the actor as saying. "And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on. But I didn't admire him for what he did with it."
The campaign appeared to want to accentuate the last sentence, after the New York Times and ABC News reported the gist of the earlier quotes, which were contained in a book proposal he had made some years ago.
Butler had used quotes from transcripts he made from the outtakes of the film Pumping Iron. But in a statement issued by the campaign, Butler said he did not have the actual outtakes.
The actor said he always despised Hitler and the Nazis and said the theme was largely verboten when growing up in Austria. His father had served as a Nazi policeman.
"I was raised without really anyone talking about what happened," he said in the pool interview. "I have never heard my father talk about the war."
One protester held his arm out in a Nazi salute at a rally in Arcadia near Los Angeles, shouting "Heil Arnold." But that was quickly obscured as many in an enthralled crowd threw their hands up into the air to attract Schwarzenegger's attention as he threw campaign T-shirts to the crowd.
"Believe me, he bears no Nazi sympathies," Barbara Outland Baker, Schwarzenegger's girlfriend during the period in question, told Reuters on Friday.
Actress Tia Carrere, who appeared in a supporting role in his film True Lies, appeared at a rally in Arcadia to urge women to continue to support the former Mr. Universe.
"I'm an actress that worked on a film with him and sat on his lap and was in a kissing scene with him and he was always a gentleman," she said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not