Who knows the truth of this?  Word on the street is that he is sexually overt.  The quips about bankers and rape are to easy to be put forth here.  As of 10 PM he has not been charged. 

A law enforcement official said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, was taken into police custody after being removed from an airplane at Kennedy Airport.

According to the official, Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly forced a cleaning woman onto his bed and sexually assaulted her at around 1 p.m. Saturday inside his room at the Sofitel Hotel near Times Square.

Dominique Strauss-Khan, head of the International Monetary Fund, is questioned in the U.S. over an alleged sexual assault on a hotel maid. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly allowed the woman to leave and then departed for the airport, the official said.

By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, May 14, 2011

North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential United Nations report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

The report said that the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighboring third country." That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The report was submitted to the U.N. Security Council by a U.N. Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009....

By C.J. Chivers, New York Times, May 13/14, 2011

MISURATA, Libya — The army and militias of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who for more than two months have fought rebels seeking to overthrow the Libyan leader, are undermined by self-serving officers, strained logistics and units hastily reinforced with untrained cadets, according to captured soldiers from their ranks.

In interviews this week in a rebel-run detention center where more than 100 prisoners from the Libyan military are housed, the prisoners consistently described hardships in the field and officers who deceived or failed them. They spoke bitterly of their lot.

While some showed signs of mistreatment or of making statements to ingratiate themselves with their captors, the accounts of their logistical and tactical problems portrayed a Libyan force suffering from growing problems...

A good discussion between Dylan Ratigan and Umair Haque about the difference between productive capitalism and rent-seeking, and the impact of the latter on our economy and the world.

What’s the difference between productive wealth and destructive wealth?  What if Gross Domestic Product made a fundamental distinction between the two — between making money by producing real value for others, versus just making money by exploiting others?  What if GDP quantified the growth of productive capitalism, and separated that from the type of “wealth” created through extraction, manipulation and exploitation?

We find ourselves at a point in the world where the main tool to measure economic success and progress — Gross Domestic Product, or GDP –  is outdated.  Do we need a new set of rules for our economy to effectively begin to measure real, productive growth?  Umair Haque, author of “The New Capitalist Manifesto” and director of the Havas Media Lab, believes it’s critical to the future of our country and our global economy. 

...even though it's clear it won't affect prices at the pump.  He'll open the strategic oil reserve in Alaska, extend leases in the Gulf for a year, fast-track studies, etc.

Some articles about it hasten to point out that it's far short of what House Republicans have voted for already...  It's election season.

The U.S. housing market is going through an adjustment of historic proportions. Before 2006, when the housing slump commenced, American home builders regularly built as many as 2 million new houses annually, rarely less than a million. This amount was needed to keep up with new household formation, immigration, homeowners moving up, and replacement due to obsolescence. Since then the number of new houses built has dropped drastically—the seasonally adjusted annual figure announced by the federal government in February 2011 was about 400,000! What's going on?

The recession, obviously. High unemployment and unease about the economy have made potential first-time homebuyers leery of entering the market, and many have decided to wait on the side lines. Although house prices have fallen, few are convinced that they have bottomed, and no one wants to buy a house and see its price decline. The large number of foreclosed (or about to be foreclosed) houses on the market, which account for no less than four out of 10 sales of existing homes, likewise dampens demand for new houses. And those willing to take the plunge discover that, despite low interest rates, lenders who were burned by the subprime mess now require large down payments. The other chief cause for weak demand is a slowdown in household formation—the U.S. Census reports that the rate of household formation is currently lower than at any time since 1947, as people put off getting married and starting a family. According to my colleague, real estate economistPeter Linneman, the marginal household size, which has historically hovered around two or three, shot up to more than six in 2009 and 2010, the result of doubling-up and moving in with relatives.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they eschewed most modern technology, including television and music players.

But in the latest sign of the hardline movement's rapprochement with at least some areas of the modern world, the Taliban have embraced microblogging.

Their Twitter feed, @alemarahweb, pumps out several messages a day, keeping 993 followers up to date with often highly exaggerated reports of strikes against the "infidel forces" and the "Karzai puppet regime". Most messages are in Pashtu, with links to news stories on the elaborate and multilingual website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban's shadow government likes to style itself.

The military isn’t about to deploy its pain ray to the battlefield. But someone in the commercial sector is about to one. We don’t know who. The sale is mentioned in a presentation by Raytheon, who built the microwave weapon for the Defense Department.

The so-called “Active Denial System” works by heating the outer surface of the target’s skin using millimeter waves — short wavelength microwaves. The effect is painful, but generally harmless, and forces the target to get out of the beam. Recently, it’s been proposed as a possible defense against pirates; last month, Raytheon gave a presentation on Active Denial at a NATO workshop on anti-pirate equipment and technologies.

This presentation mentions an “Impending Direct Commercial Sale” of a commercial version of the Active Denial system known as Silent Guardian (pictured). This is Active Denial in a box, a 10,000-pound containerized system that can be mounted on a ship, a truck, or a fixed installation. It’s got an effective range of about 250 meters. The beam has a power of around 30 kilowatts.
The anti-pirate presentation shows how a set-up with two antennas could achieve almost 360-degree coverage for a small container ship.

By Jane Perlez, New York Times,  May 13, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — More than 70 paramilitary soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up Friday morning at a military training center in northwest Pakistan, a local police chief said.

The suicide bomber attacked members of the Frontier Constabulary at Shabqadar Fort in the town of Charsadda as they were preparing for their graduation ceremony, said Liaqat Khan, the police chief in nearby Peshawar.

The death toll was almost certain to rise and could end up to be the highest number of law enforcement officials to be killed in a terrorist attack in recent years, Mr. Khan said. At least 80 people were injured....

By Adrian Chen, Gawker.com, May 12, 2011

....The Wikileaks' absurdly harsh "confidentiality agreement," (PDF) reads like something image-obsessed Oprah would make her underlings sign. It asserts that all material leaked to Wikileaks is "solely the property of Wikileaks" and prevents signatories from discussing "all newsworthy information relating to the workings of Wikileaks"—even the existence of the confidentiality agreement itself must be kept confidential. The agreement imposes a $20 million (£12 million) penalty if the contract is breached.

The document was leaked to the New Statesman by former Wikileaks volunteer James Ball. Writing in the Guardian, Ball describes a January meeting of a handful of young Wikileaks volunteers in England, during which Assange tried to make them all sign the document....

On February 21, 2011, The Straddler met with Peter Temin at his office at MIT to seek his perspective on recent events and, more generally, the field of economics.

Temin is perhaps best known for his work on the Great Depression, but his work as an economic historian spans many eras and areas of inquiry. His recent books and papers have examined aspects of the ancient Roman economy; the decline of the bargaining power of American workers; the American health care system; and the problematic (as he sees it) rise to prominence of the general equilibrium theory of economics (a theory that, in layperson’s terms, amounts to an abiding commitment to the belief that, when left alone, the price is just about always right).

Temin, February 21, 2011
In my opinion, macroeconomics has lost its way. The kind of models that many people use—general equilibrium models—start from assumptions of perfect competition, omniscient consumers, and various like things which give rise to an efficient economy. As far as I know, there has never been an economy that actually looked like that—it’s an intellectual construct. But many people claim that the outcomes of that economy are natural outcomes. When you say “natural,” you already have an emotionally laden term. Deviations from the “natural”—say, like, minimum wage laws, or unions, or governments that give food stamps, or earned income tax credits—are interferences with the natural order and are therefore “unnatural."

[h/t Baseline Scenario]

I guess there is no reason to buttress your life insurance values because everybody will be dead anyway.

And I see no reason to water your plants or reup on your cable.

Of course the guy predicting all this is an octogenarian anyway so he has nothing to lose!