The arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges has plunged France's Socialists into turmoil and thrown wide open the race for the presidency. France was mesmerised on Monday by TV images of a handcuffed Strauss-Kahn, a centre-leftist viewed until now as the frontrunner for the 2012 election, being led away by police
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Sleep deprivation makes the day drag and appears to put a drag on metabolism too, causing the body to use less energy, according to a European study. The results, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, add to evidence that sleep loss can promote weight gain — not just by boosting hunger but also
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Taiwanese hairdresser Tsai Shiou-ying has won many prizes for her cutting and decorative hair extensions in a four-decade career. Now she has gone one step further, making decorations including shoes, brooches, fruit and animals from hair left on the salon floor after the cutting is done. Tsai, who started working with hair in her teens
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* Euro Group to meet on peripheral debt * Equities weaker The arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges added to existing uncertainty about the euro zone debt crisis on Monday, initially knocking the euro to seven-month lows and pressuring stocks. While there was little indication that the International Monetary Fund's overall
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IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged on Sunday with sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid, in a scandal that appeared to wreck his hopes of running for president of France. The charges threatened to create a leadership vacuum at the IMF, overseer of the global economic system, and threw wide open the
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Greece has to make further savings to meet conditions for the distribution of the next tranche of its EU/IMF bailout plan, a senior policymaker of the European Central Bank was quoted on Sunday as saying. "It is … evident that the country has to intensify its savings efforts to meet the conditions for the payment
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Chelsea missed the chance to effectively seal the Premier League runners-up spot after a late Steven Taylor header secured Newcastle United a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Taylor nodded home in stoppage time after Brazilian defender Alex looked to have secured the Londoners the three points when he put his side 2-1 up
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Azerbaijan won the annual Eurovision Song Contest with the romantic ballad "Running Scared" on Saturday, watched by a television audience of more than 100 million people. The song about a love-struck couple was performed by 21-year-old student Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal, 30, a Turkish Cypriot mother-of-two who lives in London. The duo, known as
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* Banks face heightened risk from Greece * Will assess government's willingness to help if needed Moody's Investors Service placed three Cypriot banks on review for a possible downgrade on Friday, citing heightened risks to the banks from their exposure to Greek debt. The banks under review are Bank of Cyprus, Marfin Popular Bank and
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Gold prices climbed and silver rose as much as 5 percent in Europe on Friday, recovering some of this week's heavy losses, as a drop in the dollar encouraged a rebound in the beleaguered commodities complex. Oil prices rose more than $1 a barrel and base metals like copper also recovered, after commodities were hit
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