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Bloomy blasts French 'cuff' whine

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted back at French critics who whined that Dominique Strauss-Kahn shouldn't have been subjected to a "perp walk."

"I think it is humiliating, but if you don't want to do the perp walk, don't do the crime," Hizzoner said.

"I don't have a lot of sympathy for that."

The day before, former French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou decried the pictures of a handcuffed Strauss-Kahn being led out of an East Harlem station house.

Bloomberg, who was in Albany to lobby the Legislature to pass a gay-marriage law, defended the American judicial system, where "the public can see the alleged perpetrators."

He also backed the judge's decision ship off the head of the International Monetary Fund and leading French presidential candidate to a cell at Rikers Island.

"He would be the kind of person who has a good chance of fleeing and France does not have an extradition treaty with the United States," Bloomberg said.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last night said Strauss-Kahn should be replaced at the helm of the global finance agency.

"Of course I can't comment on the case, but he's obviously not in the position to run the IMF, and I think it's important that the board of the IMF formally put in place for a period somebody to act as managing director," Geithner said at the Harvard Club in New York.

Geithner's call for Strauss-Kahn to step aside or be removed by the IMF board was echoed by finance officials around the world.

"Considering the situation, that bail was denied, he has to figure out for himself that he is hurting the institution," said Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter as she arrived for a meeting of top finance officials in Brussels.

Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, said: "Support will erode fairly quickly. I see this as a matter of days."

The scandal following the accusation that Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape a hotel maid in Manhattan is causing turmoil in international finance and French politics, where Strauss-Kahn had been set to take on President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's elections.

Developing nations are rising in influence at the IMF and using Strauss-Kahn's arrest as a chance to push for someone other than a European to sit at its helm.

White House press secretary Jay Carney wouldn't call on Strauss-Kahn to quit, saying only that the Obama administration had "full confidence" in the IMF's ability to function.

Mystery deaths plague Thai hotel - Hot Topics - timesunion.com ...

Did a three-star Thai hotel inadvertently kill six of its guests while trying to poison bed bugs?

Between January and March, six people suffering from virtually the same medical symptoms died after staying at the Downtown Inn in Chiang Mai or using its facilities.

Authorities maintain the deaths are just a coincidence.

But an investigation by New Zealand’s “60 Minutes” news program discovered high levels of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical used to kill bed bugs, in the hotel room where New Zealand backpacker Sarah Carter, 23, died in February. Reporters pretending to be guests took samples from the room.

The UK Daily Mail reported that Thai police recently raided the company in charge of eradicating insects at the hotel.

“I think (Carter) has been killed by an overzealous sprayer who has been acting on the instructions of the hotel owner to deal with the bed bugs,” United Nations chemical expert Dr. Ron McDowall told the Daily Mail.

McDowall said the symptoms experienced by Carter were consistent with chlorpyrifos poisoning, which causes headache, nausea, dizziness, muscle twitching, weakness, increased sweating and salivation, unconsciousness and convulsions.

He explained that it’s difficult to confirm poisoning from blood samples because chlorpyrifos is quickly absorbed by the body – “it only has a half-life of a day or so.”

The symptoms shown by all six victims – severe chest pain, vomiting and fainting – are often associated with food or water poisoning. Indeed, police initially dismissed the deaths as food poisoning from eating toxic seaweed.

Shortly after Carter’s death, a retired British couple, George Everitt, 78, and his wife, Eileen, 73, were found dead in their room. They had eaten seaweed at a street food booth, but another guest had a different meal there and also got sick. She recovered.

The death of Bill Mah of Edmonton – found in his hotel room in January – was attributed to “suspected natural causes.”

A young Frenchwoman and a Thai visitor also died at the hotel between January and March.

A report that a Berkeley woman died after staying at the hotel was incorrect. Mariam Soraya Vorster, 33, did suffer the same symptoms before she died while visiting Chiang Mai in January, but she was staying at a guesthouse in the city. Her husband blames the food she ate – sushi and seaweed.

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