Salon.com > Cristian Salazar

Ex-IMF leader tried declaring diplomatic immunity

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:47:00 +0000

Dominique Strauss-Kahn declared he had diplomatic immunity and complained that his handcuffs were too tight after he was taken into custody on allegations he tried to rape a Manhattan hotel maid, court documents filed Thursday show.

The documents filed by prosecutors provide a chronology of statements leading to the arrest of the former leader of the International Monetary Fund, who was taken into custody by Port Authority police at John F. Kennedy International Airport on May 14 as he tried to leave on a Paris-bound flight.

One of his attorneys, Benjamin Brafman, said Thursday he had no comment.

Strauss-Kahn, who is free on $1 million bail under house arrest at a luxury townhouse, maintains he did not attack the maid at Sofitel hotel.

The new court documents describe Strauss-Kahn seemingly confused as he is taken into custody.

"What is this about?" Strauss-Kahn repeatedly asked detectives, according to the documents.

He asked detectives whether he needs an attorney, responded to questions about whether he is hungry (at one point saying he would "like some eggs") and complained about his handcuffs, the documents say.

Spoken-word musician Gil Scott-Heron dies in NYC

Sat, 28 May 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Editor's note: Author Steve Almond interviewed Scott-Heron for Salon last year. You can check out that piece here.

Musician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," died Friday at age 62.

A friend, Doris C. Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died in the afternoon at St. Luke's Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip.

"We're all sort of shattered," she said.

Scott-Heron's influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected.

"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks,' which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, "Now and Then."

President O’Bama? Irish-American relatives identified

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:10:00 +0000

President Barack Obama found out years ago he had an Irish ancestor who fled the potato famine in Ireland in 1850. He can now claim 28 living relatives who also descended from that Irishman, including a Vietnam veteran, a school nurse and a displeased Arizona Republican.

The president's newly identified relatives are revealed in a study released to The Associated Press by Ancestry.com, a family history website whose genealogists also traced descendants of 23 other Irish passengers on the ship that brought Falmouth Kearney to the United States when he was 19.

The survey allowed genealogists to further trace branches in Obama's family tree and others who arrived on the ship, known as the Marmion, on March 20, 1850.

According to the survey, the passengers' descendants live in Canada, Syria and throughout the United States. Among Obama's newly identified relatives is 83-year-old Dorma Lee Reese, of Tucson, Ariz.

"I'm not a Democrat, so I can't say I clapped," said Reese, a retired brain-imaging technologist. "I don't appreciate what he's done by any means, but I do appreciate that he holds that office."

Airplane returns to New York after engine failure

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:59:00 +0000

A Moscow-bound flight carrying more than 200 people returned safely to John F. Kennedy International Airport after one of its two engines failed Sunday night, authorities said. No one was injured.

Delta Flight 30 reported that the left engine of the Boeing 767 had failed shortly after takeoff, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown. The plane departed at about 4:40 p.m. with 193 passengers and 11 crew members, Delta Air Lines said.

The plane dumped fuel and circled the airport before landing back in New York more than an hour after takeoff, authorities said.

Brown said she couldn't confirm reports that the plane struck a bird before the engine failed. She said that probably won't be known until the engine is examined during an FAA investigation.

Passenger Jim Mandel of Moscow told reporters that they heard "a banging sound" soon after takeoff.

Possible tornado hit NYC in storm

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:26:00 +0000

Residents, utility crews and railroad workers were cleaning up debris Friday after a brief but fierce storm barreled through the city, tearing up trees, stripping roofs from homes, disrupting train service and killing at least one person.

The National Weather Service was to dispatch investigators to assess whether a tornado touched down Thursday evening during the storm. Tornado warnings had been issued for Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.

Officials at Long Island Rail Road, the nation's largest commuter rail line, said crews worked through the night to clear tracks of fallen trees, which caused service to be suspended temporarily between Penn Station in Manhattan and Jamaica, Queens. Full service was restored around 5 a.m. Friday. Limited westbound service also was stored Friday morning on the Port Washington branch, but eastbound service remained suspended.

Nearly 26,000 customers remained without power on Friday, Consolidated Edison spokeswoman Elizabeth Clark said. She said hardest hit was Queens, with 24,700 outages. At the height of the storm, a total of 37,000 customers were without power. Crews would be working to restore power throughout the day, she said.

Voices rise in favor of moving proposed New York mosque

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:16:00 +0000

A powerful state politician joined with Gov. David Paterson on Tuesday in suggesting that Islamic leaders should move a proposed Islamic center and mosque farther from ground zero, saying the organizers should be more sensitive to opponents.

The Cordoba Initiative has the right to build the center at a building two blocks from ground zero but should be open to compromise, said New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents the lower Manhattan district.

"In the spirit of living with others, they should be cognizant of the feelings of others and try to find a location that doesn't engender the deep feelings the currently exist about this site," Silver said.

Critics say the building is too close to where Islamic extremists destroyed the World Trade Center on 2001 and killed nearly 2,800 people. Supporters say religious freedom should be protected.

"I think the sponsors should take into very serious consideration the kind of turmoil that's been created and look to compromise," Silver said.

Paterson, who has expressed dismay over the heated arguments on the issue, was meeting Tuesday with New York Roman Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan to try to suggest an alternative. Meanwhile, the developer was expected to attend an annual dinner Tuesday night hosted by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has spoken in support of the project.

N.Y. suspect dubbed femme fatale of Russian spy case

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:15:00 +0000

Anna Chapman has been called the femme fatale of a spy case with Cold War-style intrigue -- a striking redhead and self-styled entrepreneur who dabbled in real estate and mused on her Facebook page, "if you can dream, you can become it."

Chapman's American dream, U.S. authorities say, was a ruse.

The 28-year-old Chapman, they say, was a savvy Russian secret agent who worked with a network of other operatives before an FBI undercover agent lured her into an elaborate trap at a coffee shop in lower Manhattan.

Though the U.S. has branded the operatives as living covertly, at least in Chapman's case, she had taken care to brand herself publicly as a striver of the digital age, passionately embracing online social networking by posting information and images of herself for the world to see.

Prosecutors have charged Chapman and 10 other suspects with following orders by Russian intelligence to become "Americanized" enough to infiltrate "policymaking circles" and feed information back to Moscow.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz has called evidence against Chapman "devastating." She is "someone who has extraordinary training, who is a sophisticated agent of Russia," he said.

Times Square cleared as suspected car bomb found

Sun, 02 May 2010 04:39:00 +0000

Police found an apparent car bomb in a parked sport utility vehicle Saturday evening in New York City's Times Square, then evacuated buildings and cleared streets of thousands of tourists in "the Crossroads of the World."

A mounted police officer noticed smoke coming from the SUV at 6:30 p.m., police said. Bomb investigators found propane tanks, powder and an apparent timing device inside, according to a law enforcement official who wasn't authorized to release the information and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Police evacuated several residential and commercial buildings and cleared the streets of people. Police were deployed around the area with heavy weapons on empty streets in the heart of midtown Manhattan that normally teem with thousands of theatergoers and tourists.

Shelly Carlisle, of Portland, Ore., said police crowded into her Broadway theater after the curtain closed on "Next to Normal," a show on the same block where the SUV was found.

"At the end of the show, the police came in. We were told we had to leave," Carlisle said. "They said there was a bomb scare."