The federal government is slated to hit the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling today, boosting pressure on the White House to reach a deal with House Republicans to raise that limit. Obama administration official are argue that failing to raise the ceiling will plunge the nation back into recession, reports…
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Imogen Thomas fails to overturn gagging order surrounding unnamed Premier League footballer The Big Brother star who on Monday failed to overturn a high court gagging order brought by a Premier League footballer denied accusations that she attempted to blackmail the player. Imogen Thomas, 28, denies attempting to solicit £100,000, a signed football shirt, and matchday tickets from the high-profile footballer in order not to speak out about their alleged six-month affair. Mr Justice Eady on Monday refused a joint bid by Thomas and the Sun newspaper to overturn the high-profile footballer’s privacy injunction — before setting out his reasons for doing so in an eight-page judgment. Eady said there was “ample reason not to trust” Thomas, and said the evidence before the court on 14 April “appeared strongly to suggest that the claimant [the anonymous footballer] was being blackmailed”. He later records that she denies asking the footballer for money and that he has come to no conclusion on the allegation. The footballer accused Thomas of repeatedly demanding £50,000 from the footballer in March. He agreed to meet her “in a hotel where he was staying” in April. There he gave her “a signed football shirt” but said he was not prepared to give her “the sum of £50,000″. She asked to see him again shortly afterwards to which “he agreed with reluctance” and provided her with some football tickets. Although the position was “by no means clear” Mr Justice Eady said he believed that evidence “appeared to suggest” that the reality TV star arranged two hotel meetings with the player apparently “in collaboration with photographers and/or journalists”. The player claimed that on 13 April, he texted Thomas to say that he might be willing to offer her some money after all. At this point, Thomas is accused of attempting to solicit £100,000 from the player. “The evidence before the court at that point, therefore, appeared strongly to suggest that the claimant was being blackmailed (although that is not how he put it himself),” Eady said on Monday. “I hasten to add, as is obvious, that I cannot come to any final conclusion about it at this stage. I have to make an assessment of the situation on the limited (and untested) evidence as it now stands.” However, Eady added: “I now wish to make it clear that, shortly before this judgment was handed down, Mr Price [David Price QC, Thomas's lawyer] stated on his client’s behalf that she denies either causing the publication in the Sun on 14 April or asking the claimant for money.” Eady ruled the footballer, who brought the privacy injunction last month, is “entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy”, and that there has been “no countervailing argument” to suggest that the rights of Thomas and the Sun to freedom of expression should prevail. He added that there was “no suggestion of any legitimate public interest in publishing” the story. In a ruling likely to have far-reaching consequences for similar so-called “kiss and tell” stories, Eady ruled that “as in so many kiss and tell cases … the answer is not far to seek”. The Sun, he said, had not even argued that the story was in the public interest. Eady added: “The majority of cases over the last few years … would appear to be of the so-called ‘kiss and tell’ variety and they not infrequently involve blackmailing threats. Blackmail is, of course, a crime and in that context the courts have long afforded anonymity to those targeted as a matter of public policy. This has not hitherto been questioned.” Thomas was in court for the ruling on Monday. In a statement on behalf of Thomas by her lawyer, the Big Brother star said she was “stunned” with how she was portrayed in the ruling. In a statement released just after the hearing, she said: “What’s more I can’t even defend myself because I have been gagged. If this is the way privacy injunctions are supposed to work there is something seriously wrong with the law.” • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Media law Privacy & the media The Sun News International National newspapers Newspapers Newspaper formats Superinjunctions Premier League Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Kenyan Olympic marathon gold medalist Sammy Wanjiru leaped to his death from the balcony of his apartment following a heated argument with his wife, authorities said. Wanjiru, 24, had been drinking when his wife found him with another woman in their home in Nyahururu, said police. Efforts to revive him…
Continue reading …A weird Facebook trend of “planking” has been blamed for the death of an Aussie who slipped off a high-rise balcony. The accident occurred as the 20-year-old man was apparently on the ledge to take a photo of himself lying “like a plank.” It’s part of a trend of people…
Continue reading …The maid accusing IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault picked him out of a police lineup yesterday, reports the New York Times . Strauss-Kahn was taken to the Manhattan Special Victims Unit in East Harlem where DNA evidence was collected from his skin and beneath his fingernails, which might be…
Continue reading …In his most dismissive views on an afterlife to date, famed physicist Stephen Hawking has declared the idea of heaven a “fairy story.” There’s nothing for individual’s beyond the brain’s last flicker of life, Hawking tells the Guardian . “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when…
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Former Big Brother contestant and the Sun fail to overturn injunction taken out by Premier League footballer • Read the judgment in full Imogen Thomas, the former Big Brother contestant whose relationship with a married Premier League footballer was made the subject of a court gagging order, has failed in a joint bid with the Sun to overturn the injunction. Thomas said on Monday she was “stunned” following the high court judgment by Mr Justice Eady and claimed there was “something seriously wrong with the law”. “Yet again my name and reputation have been trashed while the man I had a relationship with is able to hide,” said Thomas, speaking outside the high court. “What’s more I can’t even defend myself because I have been gagged. If this is the way privacy injunctions are supposed to work there is something seriously wrong with the law. “I have read the judgment and I am stunned by how I am portrayed.” Thomas was speaking after Eady explained why he made an order banning journalists from reporting the identity of a footballer involved in a relationship with the reality television contestant. He also issued a written account of his reasons for making the order after listening to arguments from lawyers representing the footballer, Thomas and the Sun newspaper at a private hearing.
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Londoners asked to remain vigilant after Met police receive coded warning from dissident republicans Scotland Yard are investigating a “coded” bomb threat made against central London, on the eve of the Queen’s visit to Ireland. Police said on Monday that the warning did not give any details about the time or place of any device. The Guardian understands the warning was telephoned in to police late on Sunday afternoon by a caller claiming to represent the dissident republican cause. The caller used a codeword, although it was not recognised as being associated with any group. Officers are already on high alert over the “severe” terrorist threat from al-Qaida-inspired violence, with the threat from Irish terrorism judged by MI5 to be one level lower at “substantial”. News of the warning was passed to officers going out on patrol and made public by police at lunchtime on Monday. The Metropolitan police said: “A bomb threat warning has been received relating to central London today. The threat is not specific in relation to location or time. “The Metropolitan police service, City of London police and British Transport police are working closely together and all officers have been advised to be a highly vigilant to ensure the safety of London. Policing operations and contingency planning remain under constant review and a wide range of overt and covert tactics will continue to be used in London. “At this time Londoners should continue to go about their business as usual but we encourage the public to remain vigilant and report any information about unusual activity or behaviour which may be terrorist-related to the confidential anti-terrorist hotline on 0800 789 321.” There was a large-scale security alert near Buckingham Palace on Monday morning. Roads around the Admiralty Arch area of the Mall were reopened before noon after a security scare in the early hours. A painstaking search was launched and roads were closed around the ceremonial gateway that leads from the corner of Trafalgar Square after an officer spotted “something suspicious” at 4.20am. There was also understood to have been a controlled explosion of a suitcase in nearby Northumberland Avenue as officers swooped on suspicious packages. The threat level from Irish-related terrorism has not been raised after the codeword warning to police. Coded warnings were often used by Irish terrorists in their campaign of violence against the British mainland. A hallmark of al-Qaida-inspired violence is the lack of any warning. UK security and terrorism Northern Ireland London The Queen Metropolitan police Police Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A Cathay Pacific flight managed a safe emergency landing in Singapore today after one of its engines burst into flames. No one was injured. The Airbus A330-300 took off from Singapore for a flight to Jakarta, but quickly turned around when the problem developed. Firefighters extinguished the flames and normal…
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French writer Tristane Banon claims the IMF chief acted like a ‘rutting chimpanzee’ in an attack on her nine years ago A French writer who claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her nine years ago is to file an official complaint, her lawyer has announced. Tristane Banon previously described the attack, which happened when she was in her early 20s, in a television programme in 2007, when she called Strauss-Kahn, whose name was bleeped out, a “rutting chimpanzee.” She consulted a lawyer at the time, but was persuaded not to take action by her mother, a regional councillor in the Socialist party and friend of the Strauss-Kahn family. Banon is goddaughter to Strauss-Kahn’s second wife. Banon’s lawyer, David Koubbi, said: “We are planning to make a complaint. I am working with her.” Koubbi said Banon, now 31, was “literally blown over” when she heard the claims Strauss-Kahn had attacked a hotel chambermaid in New York. “At the same time, she was certainly not surprised,” he said. Across France, after the shock of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on sex charges in New York, speculation, self-pity and conspiracy theories have blossomed. For some, the story of Strauss-Kahn’s apparently self-inflicted fall from presidential hopeful to prison cell was a combination of sordid tale and Shakespearean tragedy. For others the story was so extraordinary it smacked of a set-up. Only three weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn evoked such a possibility in an interview with French newspaper Libération when he said he thought he was under surveillance and named the three principal difficulties he foresaw if he was to stand for the presidential elections. “Money, women and the fact I am Jewish.” He added: “Yes, I like women … so what?” He said he could see himself becoming the victim of a honey trap: “a woman raped in a car park and who’s been promised 500,000 or a million euros to invent such a story …” But not in his or his Socialist party’s worst nightmares, nor in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wildest dreams, could anyone imagine Strauss-Kahn, nicknamed with almost tacit admiration the Great Seducer, being at the epicentre of what was described as a “political earthquake”. Jean-Marie Le Guen, a Socialist party MP who has known Strauss-Kahn for 25 years, said the story was “not credible” and inconsistent with what he knew of the politician’s character. “Seduction, yes, but no way would he use constraint or violence. A certain number of facts, and certain aspects of the story we are hearing from the press, make this not credible.” He said Strauss-Kahn had not fled the scene of the alleged crime as reported but had lunched in New York before catching a flight booked weeks previously. France-Soir reported that when plain-clothed police officers approached the politician in the first-class section of the Air France plane bound for Paris, he looked up at them and asked: “What’s the matter?” Le Guen said his friend knew he would be the target of mud-slinging but added: “What they are asking us to believe … it’s just hallucinations. I’m a doctor and I know this can happen. We knew there would be hyper-violent attacks on him [Strauss-Kahn]. We could hear the knives being sharpened in preparation.” Libération editor Nicolas Demorand suggested France was having its first sex scandal “à l’anglo saxonne” and was “brutally entering a zone of public debate which, up to now whether because of the cultural exception, the ‘latin’ identity or democratic weakness has been confined to rumours and gossip among a small inner circle”. “Politicians … enjoy a particular tolerance on this subject,” he wrote. “Part of the shock comes also from the unusual scene, until now unthinkable here: police arresting a top-level politician on a matter of morals.” There is sympathy for Strauss-Kahn’s third wife, television journalist Anne Sinclair, who Le Guen said was bearing up with “strength and courage”. In a spasm of self-flagellation, political commentators spoke of the affair as a disgrace and humiliation for France, referring to the country as “the victim” in the affair. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the ecology minister, did at least mention the 32-year-old chambermaid allegedly attacked by Strauss-Kahn. “As well as the presumed victim, the chambermaid, there is a proven victim … France. We should remember the facts are very serious; in France we tend to treat things like this a little bit lightly,” she told news agency AFP. Of the pictures of Strauss-Kahn being led in handcuffs by New York police, criticised by some, including Le Guen as “hyper violent”, Kosciusko-Morizet said the French politician was a suspect like any other. “I have confidence in American justice … it’s so French to see conspiracies everywhere, it’s something I believe that’s in our culture.” The Socialist party was holding an emergency meeting to decide on how to react to the crisis in its ranks. Two months from the closing date for the party’s primary election in October, Strauss-Kahn was the opposition’s main hope of unseating Sarkozy. Dominique Strauss-Kahn France Europe United States IMF Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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