■CANADA
MacIntyre wins award
Linden MacIntyre, an investigative journalist who wrote a novel about sexual abuse by Catholic priests, has won the country’s richest and glitziest literary award. MacIntyre won the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for his book The Bishop’s Man on Tuesday night. The novel tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest who is tasked with stamping out sex abuse scandals before they go public. MacIntrye, a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, won US$47,000. In accepting the award he paid tribute to the “the priests and nuns who are struggling to do their jobs in spite of the failures of their leadership.”
■UNITED STATES
Mormons support gay reform
With an historic endorsement from the Mormon church, the Salt Lake City Council unanimously passed a pair of ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. Tuesday’s action was the first time the Utah-based church — which has been steadfast in its opposition to gay marriage — has publicly supported gay rights legislation. The vote bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The measures make it illegal to fire or evict someone because they are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender.
■UNITED STATES
Dropout wins poker jackpot
A 21-year-old college dropout won the World Series of Poker early on Tuesday, completing the biggest comeback in the tournament’s history to earn a US$8.5 million jackpot. Joe Cada, the youngest champion in the 40-year history of the game’s richest and most prestigious event, won with a pair of nines after about 90 hands head-to-head against second-place finisher Darvin Moon. Moon had a queen and jack, and none of the other cards drawn in the Texas Hold Em hand improved it. “I’d like to thank all my fans and my friends,” an emotional Cada told a raucous theater full of supporters in bright-yellow T-shirts bearing his name. Later he told reporters: “It’s really surreal right now.”
■UNITED STATES
Astronaut avoids prison
Former astronaut Lisa Nowak was sentenced on Tuesday to serve one year of probation for a 2007 attack on her former lover’s girlfriend. The 46-year-old navy captain entered pleas of guilty to charges of felony burglary of a vehicle and misdemeanor battery. She had faced more serious allegations, including kidnapping-related charges, in the pepper-spray attack on the woman in a parking lot in Orlando, Florida. Nowak, who flew on a 2006 space shuttle mission to the orbiting International Space Station, had been seeing fellow US astronaut Bill Oefelein.
■UNITED STATES
Senator co-sponsors vet bill
A Hawaiian senator is co-sponsoring legislation that would allow the children of Filipino World War II veterans living in the US to become permanent US residents. The Military Families Act was introduced on Monday by Senator Daniel Inouye and five fellow Democratic senators. The Filipino soldiers were offered US citizenship in exchange for fighting alongside US troops more than 60 years ago. But it took Washington 45 years after the war to offer the veterans a proper chance to obtain citizenship and the Immigration Act of 1990 only allowed each veteran to bring one immediate family member to the US. The shortcomings of that law have left the sons and daughters of the veterans with little choice but to get in line for immigration visas along with everyone else, if they wanted to live in the US. On average, it took 20 years.
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