News Digest

Doggone: Johnny Depp’s wife is charged with smuggling pet terriers

Johnny Depp’s wife, Amber Heard, has been charged with illegally bringing the couple’s dogs to Australia — an incident which captured global attention after the nation’s agriculture minister angrily ordered the pooches to get out of the country or face death. Heard was charged this week with two counts of illegally importing Pistol and Boo into Australia and one count of producing a false document, the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions said. The importation charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of $75,000. Heard, 29, was issued a summons to appear in a Queensland court on September 7 and if she’s in the country it’s likely she’ll need to appear in person.

“The law is the same for everybody. There is no preferential treatment here. You come into our nation, you have to abide biosecurity protocols.

Barnaby Joyce

The doggie debacle began in May, when agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce accused Depp, 52, of smuggling the couple’s Yorkshire terriers aboard his private jet when he returned to Australia to resume filming of the fifth movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Australia has strict quarantine regulations to prevent diseases such as rabies from spreading to its shores. "If we start letting movie stars — even though they’ve been the sexiest man alive twice — to come into our nation (with pets), then why don’t we just break the laws for everybody?” Joyce said at the time. “It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States.” Officials gave Depp and Heard 72 hours to send Pistol and Boo back to the U.S., warning that if they weren’t, the dogs would be euthanized. A Department of Agriculture officer later escorted the tiny terriers from the couple’s mansion on Queensland’s Gold Coast to the airport, where the dogs boarded a flight to the U.S. just hours before the deadline.

I guess everyone tries to go for their 15 minutes, including some government officials

Amber Heard