HOLY COW! THIS STRAUSS-KAHN CHARACTER'S PAST AIN'T SO GREAT, EH?

NEW YORK — A judge ordered Dominique Strauss-Kahn in custody on sexual assault charges Monday after prosecutors said they are investigating whether the IMF chief may have engaged in similar conduct once before.

More allegations involving Strauss-Kahn surfaced in Paris, where a lawyer said a woman writer was considering filing a legal complaint against the IMF chief over an alleged sexual incident dating back to 2002.


The IMF faces questions of its own, because Strauss-Kahn's character had been questioned before. In 2008, he apologized for "an error of judgment" after an affair with a female IMF economist who was his subordinate.

The Fund's board warned him against improper conduct, but cleared him of harassment and abuse of power and kept him in his job. It will now face new scrutiny over whether that response was too weak, especially as there have been persistent rumours about Strauss-Kahn making sexual advances to women.

The left-leaning French daily Liberation published comments it said he had made at a private lunch with reporters last month in which he said the three most difficult hurdles for his presidential bid would be "money, women and my Jewishness."