Endeavour space shuttle launches; Gabrielle Giffords calls launch ‘good stuff’

Space shuttle Endeavour vaulted elegantly into the sky Monday, a spectacle
of fire and power lent a grace note by the wounded congresswoman watching
from below.

The appearance here of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) added a new chapter
to a remarkable saga of survival and recovery, five months after she was
shot in the head in an attack in Tucson that left six others dead.

Endeavour, which was originally scheduled to launch in November, blasted off
1 ½ weeks after its highly anticipated April 29 launch was scrubbed because
of problems with the ship's hydraulic system.

The scrub — just moments before astronauts were to board the shuttle — came
as Giffords looked on. President Obama, with his wife and daughters, had
also flown in for the launch. This time, the president is headed to
Tennessee to survey flood damage and speak at a high school graduation.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was on hand to observe her husband Mark
Kelly, Endeavour's commander as he and his crew departed. As AP explained:

• Sitting in a wheelchair atop NASA's launch control center with other
astronaut families, wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords watched her
husband launch into space Monday aboard space shuttle Endeavour. And she
smiled.

Inside Endeavour somewhere is a handwritten personal note she wrote the
shuttle commander, her husband Mark Kelly.

The handful of shuttle watchers, including Giffords' nurse, were mostly
quiet as Endeavour took flight. It's hard to hear amid the roar of the
spacecraft.

Then Giffords said, "Good stuff, good stuff," according to the
congresswoman's aide.

Kelly took her wedding ring into space, which he has done on past flights.
But this time she wanted something back: his ring to stay on Earth. She had
it around her neck on a silver chain from a funky Arizona jewelry store that
included a heart and an Arizona map.

"Relief was her biggest feeling," chief of staff Pia Carusone said in a
post-launch press conference. "She was very proud. She's always proud of
Mark.

Endeavour's launch did not receive the large crowds its first attempted
launch date had drawn, the most notable absence being that of President
Obama and his daughters. As APreported:

• Manny Kariotakis got goosebumps watching the last launch of Endeavour,
even though the space shuttle disappeared Monday behind clouds seconds after
blasting off from the pad 10 miles away.

Hundreds of thousands of spectators joined Kariotakis in that history,
witnessing Endeavour's last launch and the second-to-last mission before
the space shuttle program ends. But it was a smaller turnout than the crowds
that viewed the last shuttle launch in February and Endeavor's failed
launch attempt in April.

Blame the early morning hours.

Endeavour blasted off at 8:56 a.m. February's launch and last month's
attempt were in the afternoon.

"With the launch being so early, it's going to deter people from coming
here," said Tom Summers, 48, who hawked shuttle T-shirts, caps, mugs and
medals in front of a trailer in the dark, early hours of Monday.

Projections had put Monday's crowd at 500,000, more than the number that
saw shuttle Discovery's final hurrah in February. Titusville Assistant
Police Chief John Lau guessed the crowd at between 350,000 and 400,000.

Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour reveals narcissism run amok

When a sex scandal three years ago threatened to derail his career,
Dominique Strauss-Kahn publicly referred to his actions involving an
underling as a "miscalculation."

This is probably not the word used by a New York maid who alleges the chief
of the International Monetary Fund forcibly confined and sexually assaulted
her Sunday, giving rise to a charge of attempted rape.

Nor would French novelist Tristane Banon be apt to use that word in
connection with her own allegations that, in 2002, Strauss-Kahn sexually
assaulted her during what was supposed to be an interview with a rising star
of French politics.

But Strauss-Kahn's earlier use of the word "miscalculation" is telling.
It comes freighted with meaning about how the powerful so often view their
own sexual indiscretions, and what they think of our collective right to sit
in judgment.

It's not just that the word has a kind of scientific precision, as if
everything had been coolly and rationally calibrated, a calculation made.

Describing what many would see in moral or ethical terms as a mere
"miscalculation" is a way of trivializing both the situation and the other
person involved.

Strauss-Kahn is scarcely the first politician to go down this road after
engaging in high-risk behaviour, though he's among the few whose sexual
exploits involved criminal charges, to which Strauss-Kahn pleaded innocent
Monday.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton derisively referred to Monica Lewinsky as
"that woman" when he at first tried to deny having an affair with the
White House intern.

Ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer saw his political career unravel under
similar scrutiny, and John Edwards squandered his when, during the 2008 U.S.
presidential primaries, he had an affair with a woman involved in his
campaign. Edwards later blamed the public fawning that came with his
meteoric rise.

What seems to connect these and other cases is a kind of narcissism run
amok, with power and the adulation of others creating a sense of personal
invincibility. And the only way to truly test that invincibility is almost
defiant risk-taking, of which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may
well be the planet's best-known practitioner.

The 74-year-old is now facing four, concurrent trials involving corruption,
tax fraud and, most spectacularly, charges that he had sex with an underage
prostitute and then used his political office in an attempted cover-up.

Like Berlusconi, Strauss-Kahn now faces a cascade of embarrassing
revelations about other past behaviour.

The French novelist, Banon, has described Strauss-Kahn as acting like a
"rutting chimpanzee" during a 2002 struggle in which he allegedly unhooked
her bra and tried to open her jeans.

At the time, Banon's mother — who is both a Socialist Party councillor and
a friend of Strauss-Kahn — told her then 22-year-old daughter not to file a
complaint, a decision she now regrets. "My error at the time was to think
that it was a moment when he went off the rails," she told French
television Sunday.

Under French law, attempted rape charges can be brought up to 10 years after
an alleged attack.

The IMF board also investigated Strauss-Kahn in 2008 over an improper
relationship with a female employee. The board, while noting the
relationship was consensual, called Strauss-Kahn's actions "regrettable."

Now 62 and married to his fourth wife, Strauss-Kahn has long been nicknamed
"The Great Seducer" by the French media. That might not have been
problematic in France, which famously tolerates the sexual dalliances of its
leading politicians. But the criminal assault charges laid in New York have
left his political promise as the leading centre-left challenger to French
President Nicholas Sarkozy in tatters.

Strauss-Kahn is charged with attempted rape, sexual abuse, a criminal sex
act, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching. He was denied bail Monday,
and New York police said they were also investigating a similar allegation
against Strauss-Kahn at the same hotel.

He and those similarly disgraced simply failed to remember that, despite
their success, they were still human, said Robert Weiss, founder and
director of the Sexual Recovery Institute, which specializes in sexual
addictions.

"If their narcissism or egotism isn't matched by a healthy dose of
humility of what it means to be human … and they run on their intellect and
don't attend to their emotions on any level … then they are bound for
trouble."

International court prosecutor seeks arrest of Gaddafi

The UN war crimes court's chief prosecutor applied on Monday for a warrant
for Muammer Gaddafi's arrest for crimes against humanity, a day after his
regime offered truce in return for a halt in Nato air strikes.

Nato, meanwhile, conducted fresh air raids on an outlying suburb of Tripoli,
destroying a radar base, the state news agency JANA and residents said.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, said
warrants were also sought against three Gaddafi sons, his intelligence
chiefAbdullah Senussi and other officials.

"Today, the office of the prosecutor requested the ICC arrest warrants,"
Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference in The Hague, where the court is
based. The Argentine prosecutor said there was evidence "that Muammer
Gaddafi personally ordered attacks on innocent Libyan civilians".

Moreno-Ocampo said on Sunday that his office was "almost ready for trial"
and had "collected good and solid evidence to identify (those) who bear the
greatest responsibility." A panel of ICC judges will now decide whether to
accept or reject the prosecutor's application.

Protests against Gaddafi's four-decade rule began on February 15 with
Moreno-Ocampo saying thousands of people have been killed in the violence
and around 750,000 people forced to flee.

British foreign secretary William Hague called on the international
community to "fully support" the UN war crimes court.