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The former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remained in jail on Friday after defence lawyers cited problems meeting bail conditions.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who denies charges of attempting to rape a hotel maid, posted bail of $1m.
He agreed to be confined to a flat rented by his wife, with an electronic monitor and kept under guard.
But residents of the Manhattan building refused to accept him, forcing lawyers to find other housing, reports said.
Mr Strauss-Kahn is charged with seven counts including four felony charges – two of criminal sexual acts, one of attempted rape and one of sexual abuse – plus three misdemeanour offences, including unlawful imprisonment.
His accuser is a 32-year-old widow originally from Guinea in west Africa who reportedly told authorities Mr Strauss-Kahn accosted her after she entered his hotel room to clean it.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, denies the allegations and on 6 June is set to enter a formal plea.
He has spent four nights at the notorious Rikers Island jail in New York City since his arrest on Saturday over the alleged incident at the Sofitel hotel.
After 25 years, it’s splitsville for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. The couple has four children. It was Maria who moved out. Schwarzenegger just left his post as the governor of California, and he wants his wife back. Shriver has wanted out of the marriage for a while, but she had to deal with a number of personal crises, including the death of her parents. Shriver has complained to friends that she felt underappreciated in the marriage and that Schwarzenegger has been ignoring her for years. She long dealt with rumored cheating and his out of control ego. The emotional toll with his erratic behavior became too much and she opted to leave.
At a meeting in Helsinki yesterday, “most groups stated they want to have a kind of clear responsibility for investors in Portugal’s sovereign bonds,” said Kimmo Sasi, who heads the Finnish parliament’s working group on bailout talks, in a phone interview. The Social Democrats, which emerged as the second- biggest party after April 17 elections, will provide the “most important proposal,” he said.
Portugal this month became the third euro member to obtain aid as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis spreads beyond Greece and Ireland. Voters in Finland last month rewarded parties critical of bailouts, with the euro-skeptic True Finns winning record backing to become parliament’s third-biggest group. Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen, whose pro-Europe National Coalition is Finland’s largest party, will present his country’s stance on crisis-handling measures at a May 16 meeting of European finance ministers.
While Katainen would be able to get majority lawmaker support for a Portuguese bailout without the True Finns, he can’t do so without the backing of the Social Democrats. The party yesterday said it wants burden sharing to be incorporated into bailouts and demands a bank tax be introduced to help fund future financial rescues. The party also wants the option of restructuring to be available if sovereign debt burdens become unsustainable, while demanding that aid donors be first to get their loans repaid.
The new season of Celebrity Apprentice is off the hook, and Donald Trump is making sure no lawsuits come out of it. Last week, Actress Lisa Rinna was fired, and she didn’t take it well. Rinna felt she was being attacked by Star Jones and Dionne Warwick. She accused the ladies of having attitudes and conspiring to get rid of her. After she was fired from the show, she took to her twitter account mocking Jones and comparing her to Halloween monsters. She also reportedly sent Jones nasty emails. Jones then contacted the NBC legal department, who had to make Rinna stop. Singer Dionne Warwick is showing a different side of herself on the show. Warwick surprised a lot of people with her forceful demeanor. A lot of her fans expressed outrage at her behavior. Dionne is no joke, and you don’t want to mess with her! But, she is going to have to be careful. She is known as a legendary entertainer, and her behavior on the show could cost her longtime fans.
In other Apprentice news, what’s going to happen to Richard Hatch? The former Survivor winner is part of the Apprentice cast and he is back in jail for failing to pay taxes. Will he be at the season finale?
You knew the list was gonna leak today, sooner or later.
ABC is set to reveal the cast for its forthcoming “Dancing With the Stars” tonight at the end of “The Bachelor.” TMZ, however, is not waiting around.
The website says it has confirmed 6 of the 11 celebrities who will appear on the show – among them Wendy Williams, who had been rumored to be part of the cast; and rapper Lil’ Romeo, who was booked for the show several years ago but injured his leg and was replaced by his father, Master P.
Below is the list of confirmed celebs and their partners, according to TMZ:
Wendy Williams & Tony Dovolani
Lil’ Romeo & Chelsie Hightower
Chris Jericho & Cheryl Burke
Kendra Wilkinson & Louis van Amstel
Kirstie Alley & Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Disney star Chelsea Kane & Mark Ballas
Some people are so committed to their passions they will do anything to spread the….word. The owner of a sex toy store she’s willing to let people put their differences aside, dip into her merchandise and get a little freaky.
The Pleasures sex toy store in Huntsville, Ala., was put on the map when they opened the first sex toy store drive-thru. Now the owner, Sherri Williams, is serious about making love not war. She’s willing to exchange her merchandise, up to the value of the gun, with folks who want to get rid of the guns and make a treaty with their neigbhbor.
Her program starts today and she’s going to dedicate some of the funds to other charities.
The ancient Chinese New Year tradition of decorating your doorway with Door Guardians and Spring Couplets to ward off evil spirits, has just received new inspiration from a prominent artist dissident. And while it’s struck a sensitive nerve in the Chinese regime, Chinese netizens are delighted with it.
With the Chinese New Year approaching, people in China have been turning to the Internet to purchase traditional Door Guardians and Spring Couplet scrolls, or to get ideas for making their own.
This tradition of hanging Door Guardians and Spring Couplet scrolls on their front doors to keep evil spirits away dates back thousands of years. This year, Door Guardians designed by outspoken dissident and artist, Ai Weiwei, have become a very popular New Year charm for scaring the evil. Chinese Internet censors quickly removed Ai’s blog. But despite their fast action, Ai’s Door Guardians are well on their way to doors all over China.
Old Tradition
The earliest mentioning of Door Guardians can be found in the 2,200 year-old Chinese mythological text “Classic of Mountains and Seas” or “Shan Hai Jing,” in Chinese. The Door Guardians were two ghost hunters who lived in an enormous peach tree on a mountain in the East Sea. They were very adapt in catching evil ghosts and feeding them to tigers.
The legends of the ghost hunters quickly spread, and people started hanging peach wood with the ghost hunters’ names written on it over their front doors, to protect their homes and families from evil spirits. Thus the ghost hunters became the Door Guardians. Later, the peach wood was replaced by paper scrolls with pictures of the Door Guardians and a pair of rhyming New Year blessings, called couplets.
New Meaning
The Door Guardians and couplets designed by artist Ai Weiwei give this old tradition a modern twist that has made them an instant hit with many Chinese netizens.
One of his couplets says: “Eliminate Cruelty and Evil, We Want Fairness–Diminish Ghosts and Demons, We Want Righteousness.”
Another one, freely translated, says: “Kill the Ghosts and Demons, Let Peace be Our Measures–Escape Police and Special-Forces, Here Come National Treasures.”
“National Treasures” refers to new slang terms invented by Internet users aimed at tricking the regime’s censorship software and breaking through the Internet blockade.
The “river crab,” or “He Xie,” is another phrase, and it’s pronunciation is the same as the Chinese word for “harmonious,” which the regime frequently uses such as in “harmonious society” to justify cracking down on any kind of human rights demonstrations.
When designing his Spring Couplets, along with depictions of the Door Guardians, Ai blends illustrations of the grass mud horse and river crab. There may also be a brick hidden somewhere in Ai’s New Year blessings to denote a “fierce battle of words” among Internet users and bloggers, and even an @ sign. All these strange looking characters have a special symbolic significance. They all express an extreme dissatisfaction with the regime’s despotic rule.
Many netizens are delighted with Ai’s Door Guardians and regard them as the perfect vehicle to vent their discontent during the New Year’s festivities. Others are concerned about the consequences if they posted these Guardians on their doors.
One blogger said, “Perhaps the legend is true, the Door Guardians can really make evil shiver.”
Another said, “How to put these couplets up is a problem. You have to worry about how your neighbors will look at you and about the possibility that those women working for the Neighborhood Committee might want to have a talk with you.”
Here are some things you are not supposed to love. Practice loving them:
Sex
Money
Yourself
Power
Glory
Fame
Success
Winning
The Adulation of Others
Being Better
Having More
Knowing How
Knowing Why
Knowing God
“THE THINGS YOU WANT MOST”
Yet I tell you this: love, love, love the things you desire – for your love of them draws them to you.
These things are the stuff of life. When you love them, you love life! When you declare that you desire them, you announce that you choose all the good that life has to offer!
So choose sex – all the sex you can get! And choose power – all the power you can muster! And choose fame – all the fame you can attain! And choose success – all the success you can achieve! And choose winning – all the winning you can experience!
Yet do not choose sex instead of love, but as a celebration of it. And do not choose power over, but power with. And do not choose fame as end in itself, but as a means to a larger end. And do not choose success as the expense of others, but as a tool with which to assist others. And do not choose winning at any cost, but winning that costs others nothing, and even brings them gain as well.
Go ahead and choose the adulation of others – but see all others as being upon which you can shower adulation, and do it!
Go ahead and choose being better – but not better than others; rather, better than you were before..
Go ahead and choose having more, but only so that you have more to give.
And yes, choose “knowing how” and “knowing why” – so that you can share all knowledge with others.
And by all means choose to KNOW GOD, in fact, CHOOSE THIS FIRST, and all else will follow.
All of your life you have been taught that it is better to give than to receive. Yet you cannot give what you do not have.