Aussie MP to China: Sorry I Called You Guys Mongrels

Australian billionaire and alleged politician Clive Palmer has done some serious open-minded thinking and now realizes, a week later, that calling the Chinese "mongrels" was perhaps "an insult to Chinese people everywhere," he writes in a letter to ambassador Ma Zhaoxu, the Australian reports. "I wish to assure them they have my most genuine and sincere apology." But the country's treasurer says Palmer should've said sorry immediately after calling the Chinese "communists … who shoot their own people."

The Chinese embassy has accepted the apology, graciously noting that Palmer wasn't speaking for Australia's people or the government. Getting along, their statement continued, is "in the fundamental interests of the two countries... and cannot be overturned by any individual." Palmer isn't getting off completely scot-free. Aussie PM Tony Abbott tells the BBC "it's very hard to understand why someone who wants to be influential in our nation's life would be so simplistic." (More Clive Palmer stories.)