Maria Shriver Breaks Silence: Schwarzenegger's Love

Maria Shriver broke her silence Tuesday on her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger's admission that he fathered a child with a longtime household employee 10 years ago.

"This is a painful and heartbreaking time," said Shriver. "As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal. I will have no further comment."

They have four children together: Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher, who range in age from 14 to 21.

Schwarzenegger released a statement Monday: "After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago. I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family."

"There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry," continued the former governor of California.

As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal. I will have no further comment."

Arnold released his own shockwave-sending statement earlier today, admitting that he cheated on his wife with a longtime member of their household staff. He said that he waited until he left the office of the governor in January of this year before telling his wife.

"I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family," he said. "There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused to Maria, my children and my family.

"I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time. While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not.?

Anne Sinclair

Anne Sinclair (born Anne-Élise Schwartz 15 July 1948) is a US-born French television and radio interviewer who hosted one of the most popular political shows for more than thirteen years on TF1, the largest European private TV channel. She also covered the 2008 US presidential campaign for the leading French Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche and the French TV channel Canal+.

Personal life

Anne Sinclair has lived in Washington DC with her second husband, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, since November 2007. She was previously married to Hungarian-French journalist Ivan Levaï with whom she has two sons.

She travels with Strauss-Kahn occasionally as a "G20 spouse", including being invited by Elizabeth II for the G20 reception at Buckingham Palace and by Sarah Brown to 10 Downing Street for the official spouses dinner on 1 April 2009.

Early life and Education

Sinclair was born in New York to Joseph-Robert Schwartz (changed to Sinclair in 1949) and Micheline Nanette Rosenberg, French-Jewish parents who fled from Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II. She is the granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, one of France's biggest art dealers. After completing part of her secondary schooling in the US, she went on to finish in France. She then majored in politics at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and in law at the University of Paris.

Career

Sinclair's first radio hosting job was at Europe 1, one of the leading nationwide radio networks.

Television

Between 1984 and 1997 she hosted 7/7, a weekly Sunday evening news and political show on TF1 that had one of the largest audiences in France. She became one of the most well known French journalists and conducted more than five hundred interviews over the course of the show's thirteen year run. Anne Sinclair's programme has often been compared to Larry King Live or Charlie Rose.

Every Sunday at 7 PM Anne Sinclair hosted a one hour interview with a leading French or international personality. She interviewed French presidents Francois Mitterrand and Nicolas Sarkozy as well as US president Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, Felipe Gonzales, German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, Hillary Clinton, the UN Secretary General in New York during the first gulf war, and Prince Charles.

Although primarily focused on politics, her show also included celebrities such as Madonna, Sharon Stone, Paul McCartney, Woody Allen, and George Soros. She conducted interviews with French cultural figures such as Johnny Hallyday, Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Elie Wiesel.

Sinclair won four Sept d'Or, the French equivalent of the Emmy Awards.

After 7/7

In 1997 she chose to leave the show to avoid conflict of interest when her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn became French finance minister. She then created an Internet subsidiary company for her former employer TF1 and ran it for four years before returning to journalism. In 2003 she launched a cultural radio programme called Libre Cours (Free Rein) on France Inter, the French equivalent of NPR.

She also wrote bestsellers on politics: Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'eux (Grasset, 1997) and Caméra Subjective (Grasset, 2003).

In October 2008 she launched her blog Two or three things from America which comments daily on US and international political news. It has become one of the top twelve political French blogs. She is also working on her latest book about US political life.

Strauss-Kahn wife Anne Sinclair stands by her man

PARIS — As Dominique Strauss-Kahn was left to spend another day behind bars in New York, a pack of would-be successors wasted little time Tuesday maneuvering for his job as managing director of the International Monetary Fund, one of the most powerful positions in global finance.

While Mr. Strauss-Kahn has not yet resigned from his position after being sent on Monday to New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail on accusations of attempted rape, European officials intensified their lobbying for another European to head the fund, citing deepening uncertainties over the continent’s debt crisis.

Since it was formed after World War II, the I.M.F. has traditionally been run by a European, while the World Bank has long been headed by an American. But for the first time, there is a genuine possibility that the I.M.F. position could go to an official from a faster-growing non-Western country, reflecting the shifting global economy.

The prize-winning, blue-eyed television interviewer first met Strauss-Kahn in 1989 at the apex of her career as a political talk-show host on French channel TFI. For years her celebrity largely eclipsed his.

She became his third wife in 1996. He is her second husband.

People who know them say they are an affectionate couple who have an easy relationship and like to vacation together with friends in their holiday home in the Moroccan town of Marrakesh.

Sinclair sacrificed her career to his, giving up her popular prime-time Sunday show -- which featured guests from President Bill Clinton to Madonna and every major French political leader -- when her husband was appointed finance minister in 1997.

Many on the center-left saw her as an ideal "first lady" if, as expected, Strauss-Kahn sought the Socialist nomination for the 2012 presidential election.

Such dreams were dashed when the managing-director of the International Monetary Fund was arrested Saturday on an Air France plane after a maid in a luxury New York hotel accused him of sexual assault. He has denied the charges.

She (Sinclair) seems to live in denial," said one long-time Strauss-Kahn acquaintance, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mi

Born in New York in 1948, Sinclair is the grand-daughter of Paul Rosenberg, one of the most prominent art merchants of the 20th century, and daughter of Robert Schwartz, a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II.

The newspaper Liberation quoted Strauss-Kahn as saying that her fortune "has ensured I will never have to want for the rest of my life.

Advertisement:Valentine's Day Celebrations And Gifts For Your Lovely Personality, Save 70.0% on select products from BALEAF with promo code 70FKOUX3, through 1/31 while supplies last.,  Jewellery and Clothes of First Ladies, 

PSN takes sites down after log-in exploit found again

Just two days after the PlayStation Network was restored after a near month-long outage, the PSN password page has apparently been exploited. According to reports, the exploit allows other users to reset your account password using only your e-mail address and date of birth. This personal data was made available to hackers during the initial PSN attack.

The issue was first reported by Nyleveia, which was contacted by an unnamed source who reportedly performed the hack on a dummy account, prompting an e-mail message confirming that the password had been changed. Similar reports on gaming forum NeoGAF show an identical situation, in which the user provided the necessary information only to receive two subsequent e-mails: one claiming that someone was attempting to change the account's password and requesting the user click on a confirmation link, and another confirming that the password had been changed.

Nyleveia’s unnamed source demoed this breach to the staff to prove that it is a real threat, and Eurogamer has also seen video evidence that corroborates with Nylevia’s claims. Nyleveia has also passed what it discovered to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Since then, a number of sites have become inaccessible for login including:

PlayStation.com

PlayStation forums

all PlayStation game titles

PlayStation Blog

Qriocity.com

Music Unlimited via the web client

site where users are directed to to reset their passwords

In a brief statement confirming that the PSN has been taken offline, Sony said, “Unfortunately this also means that those who are still trying to change their password via Playstation.com or Qriocity.com will be unable to do so for the time being. This is due to essential maintenance and at present it is unclear how long this will take.

The report comes from gaming blog Nyleveia, which posted a warning to PSN users that their passwords might not be safe and contacted Sony about it.

Another blog, Eurogamer, says it confirmed the exploit, which allows someone to reset your password by knowing your e-mail address used for the account and date of birth. That information is known to be among the data belonging to 100 million users of Sony's gaming services that was exposed between April 17 and 19 in the second-largest security breach in U.S. history.

Eurogamer says users that changed the e-mail address connected to the PSN account after PSN was restored this weekend should not be at risk.

Yesterday, speaking to a handful of reporters, Sony CEO Howard Stringer admitted that while the company had rebuilt the security for PSN during the three weeks it was unavailable, no system could be guaranteed "100 percent secure.

Katherine Schwarzenegger Speaks Out::Definitely Not Easy

Maria Shriver is asking for 'compassion' and 'respect' as she and her children cope with the revelation that the ex-Governator has a love child with a former household staffer.

couple surprised many when they announced their separation earlier in May after 25 years together, but initially remained mum on what caused the split. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that they broke up after he admitted to Shriver that the child, born 10 years ago, was his.

Katherine Schwarzenegger, Arnold and Maria’s oldest child, Tweeted a message apparently about her father’s confession that he had a baby more than a decade ago with their former household staffer.

“This is definitely not easy but I appreciate your love and support as i begin to heal and move forward in life,” she reportedly wrote. “I will always love my family.

And Katherine also re-Tweeted saying from The Notebook‘s Twitter that also seems to do with the recent drama her family is involved in.

“Worrying is a waste of time. It doesn’t change anything. It messes with your mind and steals your happiness.

Meanwhile Schwarzenegger is apologizing again for his behavior — this time, to his wife. According to a report in Tuesday's Times, Shriver left her husband earlier this year after finding out he had fathered a child more than a decade ago with another woman — a household staffer who retired from the couple's employ in January. It turns out that even Shriver didn't know everything about her husband. If she had known at the time of the harassment allegations, maybe she would have made the same speech to voters. Who knows?

Monica Lewinsky

Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman with whom then-United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. The affair and its repercussions, especially the impeachment of Bill Clinton, became known as the Lewinsky scandal.

Scandal

Between November 1995 and March 1997, Lewinsky had an intimate relationship with then President Bill Clinton. She later testified that the relationship involved fellatio in the Oval Office and other sexual contact, but that sexual intercourse did not occur.

Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct, most notably in regard to an alleged long-term relationship with singer Gennifer Flowers and an encounter with Arkansas state employee Paula Jones (née Corbin); these events were alleged to have occurred during Clinton's time as Governor of Arkansas. Paula Jones filed a civil lawsuit against Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. Lewinsky's name surfaced during legal proceedings connected to the latter allegation, when Jones' lawyers sought corroborating evidence of Clinton's conduct to substantiate her allegations.

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors relocated her job to The Pentagon because they felt she was spending too much time around Clinton. Lewinsky confided in a co-worker named Linda Tripp about her relationship with the President. Beginning in September 1997, Tripp began secretly recording their telephone conversations regarding the affair with Clinton. In January 1998, after Lewinsky had submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying any physical relationship with Clinton, and attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in the Jones case, Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and these tapes added to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater controversy. Starr broadened his investigation to include investigating Lewinsky, Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Noteworthy for its revelation of Tripp's motivations was her reporting of their conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. Tripp also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their affair, and not to dry clean what would later be known as "the blue dress." While under oath, Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair," "sexual relations," or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky.

Subsequent life

Lewinsky was the host of the reality television dating program Mr. Personality on Fox Television Network in 2003. There she advised young women contestants who were picking men hidden by masks. Some Americans tried to organize a boycott of advertisers on the show, in protest of Lewinsky capitalizing on her notoriety. Nevertheless, the show debuted to very high ratings, and The New York Times said that "after years of trying to cash in on her fame by designing handbags and other self-marketing schemes, Ms. Lewinsky has finally found a fitting niche on television. However, the ratings slid each successive week, and after the show completed its limited run it did not reappear. The same year, she appeared as a guest on the programs V Graham Norton in the UK, High Chaparall in Sweden, and The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the U.S.

After Clinton's autobiography My Life appeared in 2004, Lewinsky said in an interview with the British tabloid Daily Mail:

He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied. I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship.But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded. I did, though, at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character.

By 2005, Lewinsky found that she could not escape the spotlight in the U.S., with both her professional and personal life difficult. She stopped selling her handbag line and moved to London. In December 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a master's degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics where she had been studying since September 2005. Her thesis was titled “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third-person effect and Pre-Trial Publicity”. She has since tried to avoid publicity.

Lewinsky did correspond in 2009 with scholar Ken Gormley, who was writing an in-depth study of the Clinton scandals, maintaining that Clinton had lied under oath about his relationship with her: "There was no leeway there on the veracity of his statements because they asked him detailed and specific questions to which he answered untruthfully.

Lewinsky scandal

Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial.

In 1995, Monica Lewinsky, a graduate of Lewis & Clark College, was hired to work as an intern at the White House during Clinton's first term, and began a personal relationship with him, the details of which she later confided to her friend and Defense department co-worker Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their telephone conversations. When Tripp discovered in January 1998 that Lewinsky had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying a relationship with Clinton, she delivered the tapes to Kenneth Starr, the Independent Counsel who was investigating Clinton on other matters, including the Whitewater scandal, the White House FBI files controversy, and the White House travel office controversy. During the grand jury testimony Clinton's responses were guarded, and he argued, "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is".

The wide reporting of the scandal led to criticism of the press for over-coverage. The scandal is sometimes referred to as "Monicagate" "Lewinskygate", "Tailgate", "Sexgate", and "Zippergate", following the "gate" nickname construction that has been popular since the Watergate scandal.

Denial and subsequent admission

News of the scandal first broke on January 17, 1998, on the Drudge Report website, which reported that Newsweek editors were sitting on a story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff exposing the affair. The story broke in the mainstream press on January 21 in The Washington Post. The story swirled for several days and, despite swift denials from Clinton, the clamor for answers from the White House grew louder. On January 26, President Clinton, standing with his wife, spoke at a White House press conference, and issued a forceful denial, which contained what would later become one of the best-known sound bites of his presidency:

Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And I worked on it until pretty late last night. But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.

Pundits debated whether or not Clinton would address the allegations in his State of the Union Address. Ultimately, he chose not to mention them. Hillary Clinton stood by her husband throughout the scandal. On January 27, in an appearance on NBC's Today she famously said, "The great story here for anybody willing to find it, write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.

Allegations of sexual contact

Lewinsky alleged nine sexual encounters with Bill Clinton:

November 15, 1995, in the private study of the Oval Office

November 17, 1995, while Bill Clinton was on the phone with a member of Congress

December 31, 1995, in a White House study

January 7, 1996, in the Oval Office

January 21, 1996, in the hallway by the private study next to the Oval Office

February 4, 1996, while Clinton was meeting in the Oval Office

March 31, 1996, in the hallway near the study of the Oval Office

February 28, 1997, near the Oval Office, when the blue dress stains were created

March 29, 1997 (Clinton, however, denied that this day's encounter actually happened.)

According to her published schedule, First Lady Hillary Clinton was at the White House for at least some portion of five of these stated days.

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors relocated her job to the Pentagon because they felt that she was spending too much time around Clinton. According to his autobiography, then-United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson was asked by the White House in 1997 to interview Lewinsky for a job on his staff at the UN. Richardson did so, and offered her a position, which she declined. The American Spectator alleged that Richardson knew more about the Lewinsky affair than he declared to the grand jury.

Impeachment

In December 1998, Clinton's political party, the Democratic Party, was in the minority in both chambers of Congress. Some Democratic members of Congress, and most in the opposition Republican Party, believed that Clinton's giving false testimony and allegedly influencing Lewinsky's testimony were crimes of obstruction of justice and perjury and thus impeachable offenses. The House of Representatives voted to issue Articles of Impeachment against him which was followed by a 21-day trial in the Senate.

All of the Democrats in the Senate voted for acquittal on both the perjury and the obstruction of justice charges. Ten Republicans voted for acquittal for perjury: Chafee (Rhode Island), Collins (Maine), Gorton (Washington), Jeffords (Vermont), Shelby (Alabama), Snowe (Maine), Specter (Pennsylvania), Stevens (Alaska), Thompson (Tennessee), and Warner (Virginia). Five Republicans voted for acquittal for obstruction of justice: Chafee, Collins, Jeffords, Snowe, and Specter.

President Clinton was thereby acquitted of all charges and remained in office. There were attempts to censure the President by the House of Representatives, but those attempts failed.

Personal acceptance

Historian Taylor Branch implied that Clinton had requested changes to Branch's 2009 Clinton biography, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, regarding Clinton's revelation that the Lewinsky affair began because "I cracked; I just cracked." Branch writes that Clinton had felt "beleaguered, unappreciated and open to a liaison with Lewinsky" following "the Democrats' loss of Congress in the November 1994 elections, the death of his mother the previous January, and the ongoing Whitewater investigation. Publicly, Clinton had previously blamed the affair on "a terrible moral error" and on anger at Republicans, stating, "if people have unresolved anger, it makes them do non-rational, destructive things.

Advertisement:Valentine's Day Celebrations And Gifts For Your Lovely Personality, Save 70.0% on select products from BALEAF with promo code 70FKOUX3, through 1/31 while supplies last.,  Jewellery and Clothes of First Ladies, 

Housekeeper Mistress Identified:Arnold Schwarzenegger's Other Woman Outed

While it was just yesterday that Arnold Schwarzenegger let the cat cad out of the bag by disclosing his engagement in an extramarital affair with a longtime housekeeper that itself led to an out-of-wedlock child, today the identity of the other woman has been revealed.

Mildred Patricia Baena—who reportedly goes by "Patty"—is the 50-year-old woman at the center of the media storm today, as this morning she was identified by ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and pretty much every major news organization as the woman who gave birth to Arnold's illegitimate son.

The boy, whose name has not been disclosed as he is a minor, is now around 14 years old.

Indeed, the reports proved true: Baena was working for Schwarzenegger and his now obviously estranged wife Maria Shriver in their Brentwood estate for 20 years and had a day-to-day relationship with the family, only retiring this January, around the same time Arnold left the office of the governor and informed Shriver of his betrayal.

Schwarzenegger's admission on Tuesday that he impregnated a member of his household staff 10 years ago, while married to Maria Shriver and before running for California governor, triggered scorn, shock and ridicule in the U.S. media.

The couple's announcement last week that they were splitting after 25 years of marriage and four children followed allegations in 2003 that the bodybuilder turned action hero had made unwanted sexual advances on women in the past.

Shriver at the time defended her husband and helped save his gubernatorial campaign, fueling the outrage on Tuesday over Schwarzenegger's secret offspring.

As for now, while Maria requested privacy for herself and her children in a brief statement yesterday, last night she took a chance on the slings and arrows to turn up in Chicago for a star-studded taping of two of the final episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show. While it's not exactly the first stop someone looking to shun the media or public eye should go, Maria and Oprah have been friends for more than 30 years and—one would guess now more than ever—loyalty is obviously important to the political scion.

As for Baena, is no longer married—she initially told her friends, family and employers that her then-husband, whom she divorced in 2008, was the father of her child—has three other children, with whom she lives outside of Los Angeles. Otherwise, not many other details were immediately available.

Advertisement:Valentine's Day Celebrations And Gifts For Your Lovely Personality, Save 70.0% on select products from BALEAF with promo code 70FKOUX3, through 1/31 while supplies last.,  Jewellery and Clothes of First Ladies, 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Comparison to Monica Lewinsky Scandal

Whitewater Development Corp is dissolved, leaving Bill and Hillary Clinton with a loss of more than $40,000.

January 1994

Attorney General Janet Reno appoints Robert Fiske Jr. as the independent counsel in charge of investigating financial irregularities in the dealings of the Whitewater property company. The Clintons, and their business partners, James and Susan McDougal, are implicated.

August

Fiske is replaced by the more conservative Kenneth Starr as the independent counsel investigating the Whitewater scandal.

July 1995

Monica Lewinsky graduates from Lewis and Clark College, and joins the White House staff as an unpaid intern.

November

Ms Lewinsky accepts a paid job at the White House office of legislative affairs and, two days later, sexual contact between Ms Lewinsky and President Clinton begins. The affair continues, sporadically, for the next 18 months.

April

Ms Lewinsky leaves the White House for public affairs post at the Pentagon.

May

The first Whitewater trial ends with the conviction of the McDougals for fraud. A Senate hearing ends inconclusively a month later.

February 1996

Kenneth Starr, the Independent Counsel investigating the Whitewater scandal, announces he will step down from the investigation. He then changes his mind and continues his investigations.

May

According to the Starr report released in September 1998, President Clinton tells Ms Lewinsky the affair is at an end. Just days later the Supreme Court reject Mr Clinton's claim that as President he should have immunity from civil cases. This ruling allows the Paula Jones harassment case to proceed against him.

August

Linda Tripp is reported in Newsweek magazine as having seen White House staffer Kathleen Willey emerging from the Oval Office looking dishevelled but happy, and with her lipstick smeared. Mr Clinton's attorney, Robert Bennett, claims Ms Tripp is "not to be believed."

September

Ms Tripp begins to tape her telephone conversations with Ms Lewinsky, who remains in touch with the President.

December 17,

Ms Lewinsky is subpoenaed by lawyers for Paula Jones.

December 26,

Ms Lewinsky leaves the Pentagon.

January 5, 1998

President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky have what proves to be their last telephone conversation. January 7, 1998

In a sworn affidavit, Monica Lewinsky denies having an affair with Mr Clinton, in an attempt to avoid testifying in the sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones against President Clinton.

January 12,

Tripp dismisses her lawyers, allegedly because they were "too close to the White House." She then contacts Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office, offering him 20 hours of taped conversations between herself and Lewinsky.

January 13,

Ms Tripp is kitted-out with a hidden microphone by FBI agents for further conversations with Ms Lewinsky.

January 16,

Janet Reno, the US Attorney General, approves the Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's request for an expansion of the inquiry to include the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.

January 17,

President Clinton, testifying under oath to lawyers in the Jones harassment case, denies having had an affair with Ms Lewinsky. He reportedly acknowledges having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers, a charge he previously denied.

January 19,

Monica Lewinsky's name and the rumours linking her with Clinton are published on the Drudge report internet site. Drudge reveals that Newsweek obtained tapes of the Lewinsky-Tripp conversations but pulled their publication after pressure from Starr, who insisted his investigation would be jeopardised.

January 21,

The Washington Post reports Lewinsky's allegations. President Clinton denies the charges in vague terms. There is no improper relationship," he tells a TV interviewer.

January 26,

"I want you to listen to me. I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never," an angry President Clinton declares to an invited media audience at the White House.

January 29,

President Clinton posts his highest ever opinion poll rating. Gallup for CNN find 67 per cent of Americans approve of the President (up five per cent from his previous best); just 28 per cent disapprove. Ms Lewinsky is only believed by 13 per cent of Americans.

March 13,

Paula Jones' lawyers in the sexual harassment suit against Clinton publish much of their evidence, one of the many breaches of the judicial gagging order on this case.

March 15,

Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer and key witness in the Jones harassment case, makes her first public comments about an alleged incident in 1991 when Mr Clinton is said to have fondled her against her will.

April 1,

The Paula Jones harassment case against the President is dismissed by the judge before it goes to trial.

June 2,

The possibility of a new immunity deal being struck between Ms Lewinsky and Prosecutor Starr is raised as Lewinsky's main lawyer, William Ginsburg is replaced by two well-known Washington criminal defence lawyers, Jacob Stein and Plato Cacheris. Both cleared former White House employees of corruption in the 1980s.

June 30,

Ms Tripp begins giving evidence to the Washington grand jury investigating President Clinton's alleged cover-up of the affair. Polls show that only one in 10 Americans view her sympathetically.

July 28,

Ms Lewinsky's lawyers announce that an immunity deal has been struck with independent counsel Starr. For Ms Lewinsky's "full and truthful testimony", she will receive transactional immunity – a legal blanket which means nothing she says can be used against her. She is questioned by the grand jury over the next 15 days.

July 29,

President Clinton decides to testify voluntarily before the prosecutor over the allegations that he committed perjury in covering up a sexual affair with Ms Lewinsky.

August 3,

Clinton is asked for a blood sample for DNA testing.

August 17,

Bill Clinton testifies in the grand jury, acknowledging "inappropriate intimate contact" with Ms Lewinsky. But he insists the evidence he gave to the Jones case in January suit had been accurate.

September 8,

Attorney-general Janet Reno announces a 90-day inquiry into whether Bill Clinton helped to plan a $44 million Democratic Party "issue ad" that breached election campaign spending laws.

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr releases his report to Congress. It has 11 possible grounds for impeachment. The House votes to make the 445-page report public.

September 11,

Congress makes the report public.

September 18,

Republicans vote to release the videotape of Mr Clinton's grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

September 21,

The tape is released and broadcast on American cable channels across the country.

October 2,

More evidence from Mr Starr's investigation is released, including the transcript of taped telephone conversations between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp that triggered the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in January.

October 5,

The House Judiciary Committee votes to launch a congressional impeachment inquiry against President Clinton.

October 6,

Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, confirms he will leave his post at the end of the week. With senior policy advisor Rahm Emmanuel and press secretary Mike McCurry are also leaving. All three insist they have not resigned for political reasons.

October 8,

The House of Representatives vote for impeachment proceedings to begin against Clinton. The House judiciary committee will be given wide powers to draw up detailed charges against Mr Clinton, based on 11 allegations by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair.

October 14,

The House judiciary committee chairman Henry Hyde announces the impeachment inquiry will concentrate its focus on two core charges: that Mr Clinton lied under oath and attempted to obstruct justice.

October 17,

Lawyers for Paula Jones make their final demand – $1 million as part of a $2 million settlement – in the sexual harassment case against President Clinton. Mr Clinton's lawyers have refused to pay more than $700,000.

November 13,

Paula Jones drops her sexual harassment appeal against President Clinton in return for $850,000. The President makes no apology or admission of guilt.

November 19,

Prosecutor Kenneth Starr offers his testimony to the House of Representatives judiciary committee. In a 132-minute address, Mr Starr alleges that President Clinton engaged in "an unlawful effort to thwart the judicial process". Meanwhile, on a trip to Tokyo, Mr Clinton is harangued on Japanese television for his infidelity by a Japanese housewife.

November 31,

Tom Hanks, one of Hollywood's biggest - and wholesome - stars, publicly speaks of his regret at giving financial support to President Clinton's legal defence fund.

December 1,

The House of Representatives judiciary committee widens the scope of its inquiry to include the election campaign fundraising issue. The Republicans use their majority on the committee to subpoena senior law enforcement officers, including the FBI director Louis Freeh, to broadening the impeachment inquiry into a dispute over President Clinton's campaign fundraising.

December 11,

The House Judiciary Committee approves three articles of impeachment on a 21-16 party line vote, passing them to the full House of Representatives. The three articles accuse Clinton of lying to a grand jury, committing perjury by denying he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, and obstructing justice. Clinton declares himself "profoundly sorry" and willing to accept censure.

December 12,

The committee approves a fourth article of impeachment on a party-line vote, accusing Clinton of abusing power in a direct parallel to Watergate-era language.

December 17,

A last-minute stay of execution is offered to President Clinton as the Congress vote is postponed until the latest Gulf crisis is resolved and US military action against Iraq ends.

December 19,

President Clinton is impeached as the Republican controlled House approves two of the four proposed articles of impeachment by narrow partisan majorities: 228-206 and 221-212. Mr Clinton is sent for trial in the Senate.

Mr Clinton resists calls to resign, pledging to fight to remain in the White House until "the last hour of the last day of my term".

Newly-appointed House of Representatives leader Bob Livingston announces he will step down because of Hustler magazine's revelations that he had had extramarital affairs. He also pledges to resign his legislative seat entirely in six months.

December 20,

President Clinton's advisers begin secret consultations with Senate Republicans on possible compromise deals, in which the president would be censured and perhaps fined, thus avoiding a trial which some experts say could last for up to six months.

December 21,

In the wake of his impeachment, President Clinton's approval level with the voters leaps 10 points to a personal all-time high of 73 per cent in a Gallup poll. Sixty-eight per cent believe the Senate should not convict Mr Clinton in the pending impeachment trial, while support for resignation falls to 30 per cent. Other polls confirm the trend.

December 29,

With continuing uncertainty over the length and form of the Senate trial against President Clinton, Republican senators offer Mr Clinton the possibility of a fast-track hearing lasting only a few days if Mr Clinton accepts the evidence against him.

January 6, 1999

In an indication of how divided the Senate remains over the trial of President Clinton, Conservative Republican senators attempt to derail the bipartisan deal to bring a swift end to Mr Clinton's impeachment trial.

January 7,

The Senate formally begins the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton on two charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

There remains complete disagreement on the procedure that will follow. A private senators meeting to debate the unresolved argument about whether witnesses - and if so who and how many - should be called is cancelled.

January 8,

Republican and Democratic senators agree to postpone the issue of whether to call witnesses until later in the month, enabling the Senate trial of President Clinton to commence.

The opening arguments of the prosecution and defence will now take place before any decision about the witness question is taken.

1967: married Hélène Dumas

1984: married Brigitte Guillemette

1991: married Anne Sinclair, star political interviewer of Sept Sur Sept, a programme on top French TV channel TF1. She gave up her post when he became finance minister in 1997.

2007: After he became IMF managing director in 2007, Jean Quatremer, a journalist at Libération, wrote: "The only real problem for Strauss-Kahn, is his relation to women. Too forward, he often brushes with harassment. It is a problem known to the media but that nobody talks about (we are in France)." Frederic Lefebvre, an adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed shortly afterwards in a biography that Mr Strauss-Kahn "wouldn't last a week" if he entered a presidential election, due to the weight of damaging allegations that would emerge.

Mr Lefebvre claimed to have seen photographs showing Mr Strauss-Kahn leaving La Chandelle, a popular Parisian wife-swapping club, and said they would be circulated if Mr Strauss-Kahn entered an election.

Tristane Banon, a writer, claims she had to fend Mr Strauss-Kahn off with kicks and punches when he invited her to a meeting in a room furnished with a double bed and a television. He said he went at her "like a chimpanzee on heat" during the alleged incident in 2002.

Her husband, a Socialist politician, said she spoke to Mr Strauss-Kahn about it and he said: "I don't know what came over me, I lost the plot."

2008: Mr Strauss-Kahn is forced to apologise publicly to IMF employees and his wife for the trouble caused by his affair with Mrs Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian subordinate in the international organisation.

The IMF board called it "a serious error of judgment," but ruled he had not abused his position. Mrs Piroska Nagy later declared: "I believe that man has a problem." Aurélie Filipetti, a Socialist MP, told Le Temps that she had once been the object of a "very heavy-handed flirt" by Mr Strauss-Kahn. "I made sure I was not alone with him in a closed room," she said.

Danielle Evenou, a French actress and wife of a former Socialist minister, said on French radio: "Who hasn't been cornered by Dominique Strauss-Kahn?"

2010: Release of The Secret of a Presidential Contender, written by a woman hidden under the pseudonym Cassandre, who was said to be one of his female aides. It cites "rumours of multiple extramarital liaisons beyond the one he confessed to with an IMF employee in 2008." In her book, the author writes: "Like all great political animals, he has trouble controlling himself." The French press quote President Nicolas Sarkozy as warning Mr Strauss-Kahn before his Washington appointment, saying: "You know, over there they don't joke about this sort of thing. Your life will be passed under a magnifying glass. Avoid taking the lift alone with interns. France cannot permit a scandal."

May 2011: Mr Strauss-Kahn is arrested and charged with sexual assault on a New York hotel maid.