With the stroke of a single attempted rape charge, IMF chief and French political bigwig Dominique Strauss-Kahn has successfully pushed Osama bin Laden out of the top spot in the world's news holes, after more than a week. Here's the very latest morning updates on Strauss-Kahn, a.k.a. "the great seducer."

  • He was positively ID'd in a police lineup. Whoops.
  • Strauss-Kahn, who's pleading innocent, "willingly consented to a scientific forensic examination" last night, according to his lawyer. That could presumably turn up any physical evidence of the crime on his body.
  • Though Strauss-Kahn is undeniably a smart man, he doesn't come off as a master criminal. The WSJ says that police caught him after he called his hotel to ask if he'd left his cell phone there—and hotel security, lying, said yes, and asked him where he was so they could return it. They sent the police instead.
  • France is full of shock and disbelief and outrage and every other emotion. There are already theories circulating that Strauss-Kahn was set up. It's also brought back earlier allegations against him, like the female journalist in France who said in 2002 that he "had tried to rape her in an empty apartment in Paris after she had contacted him for a book she was writing." (She didn't file a complaint, saying she didn't want the stigma. She's now reconsidering.)
  • The New York Post, predictably, seizes the anti-French angle, portraying Strauss-Kahn as a prima donna who expected VIP treatment in police custody, and quoting a cop calling him "the French idiot."

Let's all keep in mind that he is presumed innocent. And that, you know, it is *within the realm of possibility* that a man like Strauss-Kahn could be the victim of a setup. Not that we have any reason to believe that he was. [Photo: AP]