Melbourne, July 22 : Dr Jayant Patel, who acquired the sobriquet “Dr Death” for botching up several surgeries, today appealed for privacy after being released on bail after spending five months in custody.

Dr Patel, 58, was behind bars last night after arriving in Brisbane from Los Angeles yesterday to face Brisbane Magistrates Court following his voluntary extradition from the US.

His release from the Brisbane watchhouse at 5p. m. (AEST) today after posting 20,000 dollars bail was the first time since March 11 he has been out of custody.

Melbourne, July 22 : Bosnian Muslims are celebrating in the streets of Sarajevo following news of the arrest of war criminal Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs.

Bosnian Muslims can be seen beeping their car horns in the city and crowds are singing and chanting.

Karadzic, one of the most wanted men in the world, was arrested on Monday after a 13-year manhunt.

Karadzic is accused of planning massive civilian massacres, described by the United Nations war crimes tribunal as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

Karadzic and his former military commander, Ratko Mladic, had been on the run from the International Criminal Tribunal.

Melbourne, July 22 : Australian taxpayers will have to foot the bill for Indian born surgeon Jayant Patel’s living costs while he is on bail, Queensland Liberal Leader Mark McArdle has said.

McArdle said he believed a trial could be two or three years away.

“This would never had happened if the Beattie-Bligh Government had not put him on a plane business class to fly to the United States,” he said.

“I think people are going to be incensed, very upset and very angry and they can again lay the blame right at the foot of this Government for doing the wrong thing from day one,” McArdle added.

Sydney - A daredevil Australian couple will leap from a hot-air balloon at 12,000 metres in the hope of gliding safely back to earth using what skydivers call wingsuits, news reports said Monday.

Sydney  - Pope Benedict XVI is expected to meet sexual abuse victims Monday before leaving Australia at the close of a week-long youth festival that drew 350,000 to its closing mass.

The 81-year-old pontiff thanked 8,000 World Youth Day volunteers at a Sydney harbourside send off amid speculation that he has also met privately with people sexually abused by members of the clergy.

Sydney - Rice, cotton, daffodils and corn: if it's green and grows to the sky, it's lunch for the cotton bollworm, the world's worst plant pest and a destroyer of billions of dollars of crops. 

Scientists working round the globe to catalogue its 14,000 genes reckon they are not far off finding a weak spot. 

"We'll then be able to intelligently take on this No 1 pest of agriculture and go on the front foot, attacking it from the inside," Melbourne University geneticist Philip Batterham said. 

He told The Sydney Morning Herald that sequencing the genes would allow scientists to create an insecticide within the moth itself.