NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Monday looked set to drop sexual assault charges against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a stunning reversal in the case against a man who many had seen as the next French president.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office will recommend to a judge that the case be dismissed after they lost faith in the accuser, a 32-year-old hotel maid from Guinea, due to lies she told about her past, New York news media reported.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Monday appeared set to drop sexual assault charges against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a stunning reversal in the case against a man who many had seen as the next president of France.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office will recommend to a judge that the case be dismissed after they lost faith in the accuser, a 32-year-old hotel maid from Guinea, due to lies she told about her past, New York news media reported.

NEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters) – America is on the fritz.

From Times Square to St. Petersburg, Florida, and Portland,
Oregon, people are trying to understand how the loss of
America’s AAA credit rating caused a stock market crash and
torpedoed their economic prospects so badly again.

Out of work, unable to sell their homes and with bills
piling up, many wonder how they will make ends meet.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The hotel maid who accused ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her made an emotional public appeal on Thursday for people to believe her story as her lawyer threatened a civil lawsuit.

In a highly unusual news conference, Nafissatou Diallo told reporters she cannot stop crying and that she wants no other woman to suffer like her — first at the hands of a powerful attacker and then through media muckraking.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – With a scorpion-like swipe at a protester, Wendi Deng became an unlikely hero on Tuesday in defense of her octogenarian husband Rupert Murdoch.

The 42-year-old third Mrs Murdoch, who came from middle-class China to marry one of the world’s most powerful media moguls, gave a dramatic stand-by-your-man display.

NEW YORK, July 12 (Reuters) – Irish author John Banville
has been lauded as one of the greatest literary stylists of his
generation but his recent kick as a crime writer, churning out
a murder mystery every year, has him giddy with excitement.

“I am in my 60s with a new lease on life. It’s fun,”
Banville said in an interview to promote “A Death in Summer,”
written under Banville’s pen name Benjamin Black and published
in the United States on Tuesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday after prosecutors said the hotel maid who accuses him of attempted rape lied to a grand jury and made other false statements.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, still faces charges that he sexually assaulted the woman in New York but questions about her credibility appear to be shifting the case in his favor in a twist that could upend French politics.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has delivered important political victories for gays but is unlikely to push his support for gay rights much further before the 2012 election in case he alienates independent voters.

Gay leaders will likely give Obama high marks at a fundraiser in New York on Thursday for pushing through issues like winning gays the right to serve openly in the military.

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) – Republican Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to China, entered his party’s 2012 presidential race on Tuesday pledging to make “hard decisions” to prevent America sinking into a debt disaster.

Huntsman upset the White House in April by quitting his job in Beijing to take on his former boss, U.S. President Barack Obama who appointed him in 2009.

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) – Republican Jon Huntsman, President Barack Obama’s former ambassador to China, entered his party’s 2012 presidential race on Tuesday pledging to make the “hard decisions” to deal with America’s debt.

“I’m a candidate for the office of President of the United States of America,” Huntsman told supporters at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The site is where former President Ronald Reagan launched his bid for the White House in 1980.