Australians who want to get away from it all go to Tasmania, an island state of Australia that lists carrots among its major exports.
But world affairs caught up with Tasmania recently when a local found himself in court over a terrorism scare.
Phillip Lowe, a 60-year-old piano tuner, told a female security guard in a Hobart car park that he had a weapon of mass destruction in his trousers.
"This is a warning story for the whole of Australia, this is," Lowe told Australia's ABC Radio.
"Anybody can point the finger at anybody and cost them an awful lot of money and an awful lot of anguish -- and you're gone, mate, you're gone," he said.
Lowe doesn't deny the incident took place or that he behaved foolishly.
"I said I had a weapon of mass destruction and I rotated my hips, suggestively, I must admit," he said.
Police charged Lowe with making a false threat, but when the case was brought to court, Tasmania's Director of Public Prosecutions decided the matter was too trivial to proceed with.
Lowe's lawyer, Garth Ste-phens, claimed the authorities had overreacted.
"Even if he said what was claimed to have been said, it was probably unnecessary for the police to go as far as charging him, detaining him and searching his house and car," Stephens said.
That view is disputed by Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, who said Lowe was out of order in claiming the government had whipped up public hysteria over the threat of terrorism.
"Is he suggesting that Sept. 11 didn't occur in the United States? Is he suggesting that Australia hasn't been the subject of a very clear threat? Is he suggesting that Australians didn't tragically die in Bali?" Ruddock said.
Terrorism, even weapons of mass destruction, are a threat facing every corner of the globe.
And that includes sleepy Hobart in Tasmania, it seems.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
RSS