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Lawyer for Alleged Victim in DSK Case Lashes Out at DA, Says Victim Will Come Forward

Laura Rozen
The Envoy
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
Former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn (C) and his wife Anne Sinclair (L) leave New York State Supreme Court for a hearing July 1, 2011 in New York City. The Manhattan district attorney's office agreed to release Strauss-Kahn without bail after the credibility of the alleged sexual assault victim had come into question. Strauss-Kahn was arrested on May 14 on sexual assault charges stemming from an incident in a New York hotel.
Law & Order could not have produced a script with more dramatic turnarounds. As former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest Friday, the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her in a New York hotel room in May became the main focus of public scrutiny. To counter the wave of allegations now circulating around the 32-year-old immigrant maid from Guinea, her attorney has accused Manhattan prosecutors of sullying her reputation to distance themselves from the damaged case against Strauss-Kahn.

"We believe that the district attorney [Cyrus Vance] is laying the foundation to dismiss this case," charged the accuser's attorney, Kenneth Thompson, in a talk with journalists after Strauss-Kahn's bail hearing in a New York courtroom today. "Anyone can see that."

In a brief nine minute hearing today, Strauss-Kahn was granted release from house arrest without bail. But the court is retaining his passport, and the criminal case against him still stands, at least for now.

Weaknesses in the case were exposed in a stunning New York Times report Thursday night describing prosecutors' doubts about the credibility of the accuser.

Thompson acknowledged that his client had "made mistakes," but insisted that she is telling the truth about the alleged assault. In her account, she was the victim of a sexual assault in Strauss-Kahn's hotel room May 14--and Thompson insisted that prosecutors have physical evidence to support her version of events. He also accused Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance of leaking information to the New York Times to discredit his client in a bid to get the case dismissed.

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Megaphone

US: Glenn Beck signs off from Fox News: 'This show has become a movement; it doesn't belong on TV'

Dylan Stableford
The Cutline
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© GBTV/Mercury Radio Arts
Glenn Beck began his final show on Fox News where he'll be for the foreseeable future: outside the building, and not on TV.

"We've done some amazing things together," Beck, flanked by at least one bodyguard, told viewers as he showed them the view of the set from the street, noting the bulletproof glass windows that were installed "for a myriad of reasons."

Beck then rolled a four-minute highlight reel of his greatest hits spanning his two-and-a-half years on the air: Acorn, the 9/12 Project, the Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C., last summer. The montage also included testimonials from viewers found on the street.

"It's been an amazing ride," he said backstage, surrounded by some of the show's familiar props, including chalk ("We buy by the case," he said). "I've made some amazing friends, namely, you."

Beck spent most of the hour looking back. "We made a lot of enemies on this program," he said, from "the president to the Republicans to George Soros."

"We have not only survived," he said. "We have thrived."

He dismissed his frequent critics, like Jon Stewart, who Beck mocked for having a team of writers to produce a six-minute monologue on "The Daily Show." Beck boasted his two-man writing team helps him craft his 42-minutes a night. "It's easy to speak from the heart," he said.
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Bad Guys

Strauss-Kahn Free From House Arrest; Charges Stand

Jennifer Peltz
Associated Press
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Image

Former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn listens to proceedings
New York- Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn walked out of court without bail Friday, freed from house arrest, after prosecutors acknowledged serious questions about the credibility of the hotel housekeeper who accused him of sexual assault.

The charges, which include attempted rape, were not dropped, but the easing of his bail conditions signaled that prosecutors do not believe the accusations are as ironclad as they once seemed.

"It is a great relief," said Strauss-Kahn's attorney, William Taylor. "It is so important in this country that people, especially the media, refrain from judgment until the facts are all in."

After his arrest, Strauss-Kahn, 62, resigned from his post leading the International Monetary Fund and watched his presidential ambitions in France seemingly crumble. He had been confined for weeks to a luxury New York City loft on $6 million in cash and bond.

The 32-year-old hotel maid accused Strauss-Kahn of chasing her through his luxury suite in May, trying to pull down her pantyhose and forcing her to perform oral sex. Authorities have said they have forensic evidence of a sexual encounter, but defense lawyers have said it wasn't forced.

The stark turn in the case came after the woman admitted to prosecutors she had made up a story of being gang-raped and beaten in her homeland of Guinea to enhance her application for political asylum, prosecutors said in a letter to defense lawyers.
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Bad Guys

Washington Okays Attack on Unarmed US Boat to Gaza

Stephen Zunes
Truthout
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:06 UTC
Image
© twitpic

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists - including a vessel with 50 Americans on board - bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would "provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Clinton did not explain why a country had "the right to defend themselves" against ships which are clearly no threat. Not only have organizers of the flotilla gone to great steps to ensure are there no weapons on board, the only cargo bound for Gaza on the U.S. ship are letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave who have suffered under devastating Israeli bombardments, a crippling blockade, and a right-wing Islamist government. Nor did Clinton explain why the State Department suddenly considers the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the port of Gaza to be "Israeli waters," when the entire international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being well to the northeast of the ships' intended route.
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Dollar

US: Treasury Confirms Deadline for Raising Debt Limit

Christopher S. Rugaber
The Sacramento Bee
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:36 UTC
Image
© J. Scott Applewhite, File/AP Photo
FILE - In this June 28, 2011 file photo, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Congress has one month to raise the United States' borrowing limit or the government will default on its debt, the Treasury Department said Friday. Treasury officials confirmed the Aug. 2 deadline in a monthly update that assesses the nation's borrowing situation. The U.S. reached the $14.3 trillion limit in May. Higher revenue and accounting maneuvers have allowed the government to keep paying its bills in the interim.
Washington -- Congress has one month to raise the nation's borrowing limit or the government will default on its debt, the Treasury Department said Friday.

Treasury officials confirmed the Aug. 2 deadline in a monthly update that assesses the nation's borrowing situation. The United States reached the $14.3 trillion limit in May. Higher revenue and accounting maneuvers have allowed the government to keep paying its bills in the interim.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged Congress to raise the limit and "avoid the catastrophic economic and market consequences of a default crisis."

President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans are engaged in tough negotiations over resolving the issue. Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts as a condition of increasing the limit. But Republicans will not support tax increases, which Democrats say must be part of any deal.
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Dollar

Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

Sean Savett
ThinkProgress
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:49 UTC
wages fat cat monopoly
© Unknown
After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:
"Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. ...The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented."
The New York Times adds,
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available."
So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America's economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives' salaries increased 27 percent, while workers' salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it's been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country's income.
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Stormtrooper

US Rejects Demand to Vacate Shamsi Base


Dawn.com
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
A Reaper drone is steered around the Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan.
The US is rejecting demands from Pakistan that American personnel abandon a military base used by the CIA to stage drone strikes against militants, US officials told Reuters.

US personnel have not left the Shamsi air base and there is no plan for them to do so, said a US official familiar with the matter. "That base is neither vacated nor being vacated," the official said. The information was confirmed by a second US official.

On Wednesday, federal Minister for Defence Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said that US had been asked to stop using the base for drone strikes and vacate it.

Relations between the two uneasy allies deteriorated after the May 2 raid by US SEALs in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. Wednesday's statement by Mr Mukhtar was the latest salvo.

"We have been talking to them (on the issue) for some time, but after May 2, we told them again," he told Reuters on Thursday. "When they (US forces) will not operate from there (Shamsi base), no drone attacks will be carried out."

Earlier, the Financial Times quoted Mr Mukhtar as saying that Pakistan had already stopped US drone flights from the air base. Despite the defence minister's statements, it was unclear what the situation at Shamsi is.
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Rocket

Pakistan Tells US Military to Leave 'Drone' Attack Base


Dawn.com
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters
“We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base,” national news agency APP quoted Pakistani Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office on Wednesday.
Pakistan told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday.

His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 and plunged ties between the anti-terror allies into chaos.

"We have told them (US officials) to leave the air base," national news agency APP quoted Mukhtar as telling a group of journalists in his office.

Images said to be of US Predator drones at Shamsi have been published by Google Earth in the past. The air strip is 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad in Baluchistan province.

A US embassy spokeswoman told AFP there were no US military personnel at the Shamsi base.

American drone attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's northwestern semi-autonomous tribal belt are hugely unpopular among a general public opposed to the government's alliance with Washington.
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Magic Hat

Fake photo fallout: Chinese officials embrace social media to explain mixup

Laura Rozen
Envoy
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:34 UTC
Image
© Huili Country Government
Huili officials hover over a a highway project in China's Sichuan province they are supposed to be inspecting.
One of the worst doctored photographs in Internet history? That's the emerging verdict on a clumsily altered photo of bureacrats in the sleepy county of Huili, in southwest China's Sichuan province. In an ill-fated PR stunt, the trio of area government officials are shown appearing to float over the surface of a road, casting nary a shadow in a bid to promote a local road construction project.

"The saga began on Monday when Huili's website published a picture showing, according to the accompanying story, three local officials inspecting a newly completed road construction project this month," the Guardian's Peter Walker reports.

Calls soon began flooding the county's offices, which quickly issued an apology and removed the image.
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Whistle

UK: Are strikes always bad, Mr Gove? Embarrassing Picture of Tory Minister When HE Joined the Picket Line

Rob Cooper
The Daily Mail
Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:49 UTC
Image

Tory striker: Michael Gove (front, left with the placard) holds a sign saying 'NUJ Official Picket Line Don't Cross' as he joins in a walkout himself at 1989
He has urged people to break today's public sector strikes - but Conservative minister Michael Gove was once on the picket line himself.

The Education Secretary, who has repeatedly called for teachers to call off their industrial action, walked out while working on a regional newspaper in 1989.

He had called for a 'Mum's Army' of strike breakers to keep schools open today.
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