Facebook sex scandal with girl, 16, topples German conservative politician

Christian von Boetticher, Schleswig-Holstein's Christian Democratic Union leader and top candidate for regional state elections in 2012, wipes tears as he gives a statement to the media after a board meeting in Kiel, Germany. Photo: Reuters

BERLIN — German voters may be willing to tolerate a politician's having an affair with a teenager, but not when that politician — a leading conservative, no less — met her on Facebook, where he also flaunted immodest details of his life.
Christian von Boetticher, 40, the successful state legislator at the top of the Christian Democratic Union's ticket in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, resigned as head of the party there during a tearful news conference on Sunday. He admitted to the affair, which was legal under German law, and to making a misjudgement, but insisted that he had nothing to be ashamed of because it was "a very unusual love".
It is also an unusual scandal — not only because of the girl's age, which was at the border of permissible and punishable, but also because of the role played by the social-networking site.

In some ways, the fact of her youth was less strange to conservative voters and colleagues "than that a grown man with more important things to do would spend so much time playing around on this network with nothing better to do than trade messages with a young girl," said Rudolf Koetter, director of the Centre for Advanced Ethics and Science Communications at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

Space vacation: orbiting hotel ready for guests by 2016

Commercial space station.

This post was originally published on Mashable.com
The age of space tourism might be closer than you think. In fact, if you have an extra $US1 million ($964,041) lying around, five years from now you could be one of the first off-world adventurers to stay for five days in this orbiting hotel built by Russian company Orbital Technologies.
You’ll get there via a Russian Soyuz rocket, taking you about a day to reach the Commercial Space Station 217 miles above the earth. Once you catch up to the orbiting abode, you’ll settle in with your comrades — up to six other space tourists (or researchers) — for an unparalleled adventure, residing in four cabins aboard the space station.

Delhi caves in to dictate of 'new Gandhi'

Supporters of Gandhian activist Anna Hazare, 74, gather in front of Delhi's Tihar Jail where he is being held. Photo: Kate Geraghty

DELHI: The might of India's government has been brought to its knees by an old man in a white hat who refuses to eat.
Indian authorities capitulated yesterday in the face of massive protests in support of the anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare, who had pledged to undertake a public fast over government graft.
Mr Hazare was arrested on Tuesday, before he began his public fast, for an unauthorised public protest. That brought tens of thousands of Indians to the streets in protest in cities all over the country.

The main protests were in the capital, Delhi, where Mr Hazare's protest was planned and where the 74-year-old Gandhian activist was being held in Tihar jail.

Candles are a girl's new best friend

EDINBURGH: Candle flames contain millions of tiny diamond particles, a British university professor has discovered.
Research by Wuzong Zhou, a professor of chemistry at the University of St Andrews in Fife, revealed that around 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles are created in a candle flame every second it is burning.
Dr Zhou used a new sampling technique to remove particles from the centre of the flame, which is believed to have never been done before, and found that it contained all four known forms of carbon.

''This was a surprise because each form is usually created under different conditions,'' he said.
The diamond particles were burnt away in the process, he said, but the discovery could lead to future research into how diamonds could be created more cheaply, and in a more environmentally friendly way.
''This will change the way we view a candle flame forever,'' he said.
He uncovered the secret after a challenge from a fellow scientist in combustion, he said. ''A colleague at another university said to me: 'Of course no one knows what a candle flame is actually made of.'
''I told him I believed science could explain everything eventually, so I decided to find out.''

Romania makes tourist trail of Ceausescu horror spots

A young Romanian holds a portrait of late Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, as he collects scrap to be sold from a house to be demolished in Bucharest. Photo: AFP

BUCHAREST: A young man holds a portrait of the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, collected among scrap from a house being demolished in Romania's capital.
The Minister for Tourism, Elena Udrea, has said tourists will soon be able to follow Ceausescu's trail.
''We are working on a 'red circuit' that would follow the traces of communism and the dictatorship,'' Ms Udrea said in an interview with the Romanian B1TV channel.

The circuit will include Ceausescu's native village of Scornicesti and the Doftana prison where he served two years for ''subversive activities'' between 1936 and 1938.

Are humans to blame for shark attacks?

Marine biologists say there is little research into the causes of shark attacks but point to several possibilities, all linked to humans themselves. Photo: AFP

An apparent increase in shark attacks may well have a human cause, with low-cost air travel but also over-fishing and possibly global warming among the hidden suspects, say experts.
Headlines this week were grabbed by a decision to close beaches in the Seychelles after a shark savaged a British honeymooner before the horrified gaze of his spouse, in the second fatal attack there in 15 days.
In Russia's Pacific coastal region of Primorye, a shark mauled a 16-year-old boy a day after a man lost his forearms defending his wife.

In the Caribbean, a woman holidaying in Puerto Rico received a 30-centimetre shark bite as she swam in a tourist haunt, the bay of Vieques.

Bad bet: defective, unused Vegas tower faces implosion

Casino company MGM Resorts International has asked for permission to demolish the defective Harmon hotel tower in Las Vegas. Photo: MCT

The Harmon was envisioned as a 49-story gateway to CityCenter, a warren of luxury hotels and boutiques dreamed up during the Las Vegas Strip's go-go years. Instead, the Norman Foster building was lopped in half because of construction defects and a recession that snuffed demand for condos and hotel rooms.
Now the company in charge of the Harmon may scrap it altogether. MGM Resorts International asked county officials Monday to allow it to implode the tower.
Though visitors, room rates and gambling revenue are up from last year, slow national economic growth could threaten the Strip's recovery.

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Building on the Harmon was stopped after inspectors found problems with steel reinforcing bars in 2008.

Qantas's in-flight 'orgasm' movie

The in-flight entertainment on some planes run by Qantas currently contains a somewhat unusual offering -- a movie that purports to elucidate the mysteries of female sexual pleasure.
The 50-minute French film The Female Orgasm Explained, which includes naked scenes, is carried on long-haul "Video on Demand" aircraft in the airline's The Edge channel -- complete with a warning that it is for mature audiences only.
"In general programs are selected according to quality of content, box office/ratings, topicality and Qantas customer demographics," Qantas said in a statement, adding that programs were screened by their program team before licensing.

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"With The Edge, we source programs that are out of the ordinary across all genres."
Airline crews are able to block content to the seats of minors and at the requests of their parents, it added.
The film will be run until November.

Island escape is Vietnam's best-kept secret

Sleepy ... bars on Phu Quoc's Long Beach. Photo: Craig Tansley

It may be on the doorstep of a heaving metropolis, but this island remains an undeveloped paradise, writes Craig Tansley.
In the milliseconds it takes to fall from a motor scooter at 50km/h onto a dusty, dirt road, time slows down – like you're in The Matrix - until it clicks back into real time with a thud and a whimper as you hit the ground.
And while I did see this coming, that hardly dulls the shock. The road that runs alongside the entire length of Phu Quoc's aptly named Long Beach is a never-ending, never-bending slippery slide of loose clay, deep ruts and falling coconuts. And scooters aren't renowned for rough roading - probably why you don't see them at motor cross events.

World on edge of crisis, ANZ says

The world economy is on the edge of another economic crisis, ANZ chief executive Mike Smith says.
Mr Smith said the fragile economic situation in the US and Europe in particular, was "delicately poised" and this was likely to cause global markets to remain volatile for some time to come.
He labelled Europe "a mess" and warned that failure by political leaders to tackle the economic problems could lead to a much wider global crisis.

Even so, Mr Smith said he was not going to overreact to the volatile markets, insisting ANZ - which is attempting to expand in Asia - had the right strategy in place.