Review: Danny Bhoy – Dear Epson

Danny Bhoy – Dear Epson Opera House, Wellington, 30 April Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy has been a regular to the International NZ Comedy Festival for many years now and has never disappointed; but his latest show Dear Epson may well be his best work yet. The premise of the evening is set with the tale of his discovery that the ink of a newly bought printer costs more than the printer itself.

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Strauss-Kahn’s Womanizing: Why France Was Silent About It

When news of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn broke in France, Emmanuel Pierrat remembered the young woman who came seeking legal advice about half a decade ago. She said she had had an encounter with Strauss-Kahn and, says the lawyer Pierrat, “wanted to know whether I thought what I heard would form the basis for a solid legal case against him.” Pierrat says the news out of New York City last weekend was “something I had heard before” because of what the young woman several years ago had described as “the modus operandi of the attacker, [whom] she said was Strauss-Kahn.” Says Pierrat: [It] “was almost identical to the details [described by] the woman [who said she was] attacked Sunday in New York.” On Monday, Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a onetime likely presidential candidate in France, was arraigned in New York City on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape, including preventing a hotel worker at a Manhattan Sofitel from leaving his expensive quarters, groping her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

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Trader faces trial over alleged $7B fraud

The French trader accused of a multi-billion-dollar fraud at banking giant Societe Generale will go on trial next year, a lawyer for the bank said Tuesday. Jerome Kerviel will face charges including forgery, breach of trust, and introducing fraudulent data into the bank’s data system, Societe Generale lawyer Jean Veil told CNN. He faces a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to €375,000 euros ($538,000), Veil said

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Judge on trial after refusing to accept death row appeal

The presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals went on trial Monday, facing misconduct allegations over her refusal to accept a last-minute filing to delay an execution. The State Judicial Commission has charged Judge Sharon Keller with failing to follow the court’s execution-day procedures in the case of death-row inmate Michael Wayne Richard, and denying Richard access to open courts and the right to be heard. Asked whether she would allow the court clerk’s office to stay open past 5 p.m., as Richard’s attorneys were having computer problems and might be late filing emergency paperwork, Keller refused to do so, according to the complaint filed against her by the judicial commission.

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Evangelist guilty of taking minors across state lines for sex

A jury in Arkansas convicted evangelist Tony Alamo on Friday of 10 federal counts of taking minors across state lines for sex, according to the court in the Western District in Arkansas. Authorities in September charged Alamo, the 74-year-old founder and leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, and raided his 15-acre compound near Texarkana, Arkansas. Jurors reached the verdict after more than eight hours of deliberations.

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Michael Jackson’s legal woes likely to live on

Michael Jackson was a one-man cottage industry for the legal profession. Two child-molestation investigations (no convictions), two divorces, myriad civil lawsuits over concerts, special performances and soured business deals, near-bankruptcy and the threatened foreclosure of his Neverland ranch kept teams of lawyers busy. Jackson’s legal stable included the elite of Los Angeles, California, litigators — Thomas Mesereau Jr., Mark Geragos and the late Johnnie L.

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