With Portugal’s New Government, the Promise of Harsh Cuts

It may have been the politician’s practiced habit of emotional concealment, but in his concession speech last night, the smiling outgoing Portuguese Prime Minister Jos Socrates hardly looked like a man distraught with defeat. Nor, for that matter, did his opponent, Paulo Passos Coelho, seem gleeful with triumph

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Strauss-Kahn’s Womanizing: Why France Was Silent About It

When news of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn broke in France, Emmanuel Pierrat remembered the young woman who came seeking legal advice about half a decade ago. She said she had had an encounter with Strauss-Kahn and, says the lawyer Pierrat, “wanted to know whether I thought what I heard would form the basis for a solid legal case against him.” Pierrat says the news out of New York City last weekend was “something I had heard before” because of what the young woman several years ago had described as “the modus operandi of the attacker, [whom] she said was Strauss-Kahn.” Says Pierrat: [It] “was almost identical to the details [described by] the woman [who said she was] attacked Sunday in New York.” On Monday, Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a onetime likely presidential candidate in France, was arraigned in New York City on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape, including preventing a hotel worker at a Manhattan Sofitel from leaving his expensive quarters, groping her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

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Strauss-Kahn: The Three Wives of the Embattled IMF Chief

When the news broke that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund , had been arrested for sexual assault and attempted rape in New York City, his wife Anne Sinclair wasted no time in declaring her unquestioned belief in his innocence. The heiress to an art-gallery fortune, Sinclair, also 62, is a celebrity in her own right, having been an award-winning radio-and-television journalist in France.

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DSK Sex-Crime Case: Ex-Prosecutor Explains Charges

The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has shocked both sides of the Atlantic and much of the world. The official charges filed against him in a New York City court include: two counts of criminal sexual act in the first degree; one count of attempted rape; and one count each of sexual abuse in the first degree, unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, sexual abuse in the third degree and forcible touching.

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US hardens stance on Chinese currency

The Obama administration said on Thursday that it had “serious concerns” about the value of the renminbi, but stopped short of accusing China of manipulating its currency in a closely watched report to Congress. The Treasury toughened its language on China in its semi-annual report on exchange rate policies

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