A bad week for ...

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

The former IMF chief was detained by French authorities for questioning over allegations he took part in orgies in Paris and Washington paid for by a pair of businessmen, on suspicion of complicity in pimping and the misuse of company funds. Investigators are trying to establish whether he was aware that the naked women who entertained him at parties in restaurants, hotels and swingers' clubs were paid prostitutes.

Tang Ho-hing

The matriarch of a family who lived in a Fanling village for more than 30 years abandoned their legal challenge against eviction by Henderson Land Development. 'The heavy legal costs are not worth the burden,' said Cho Kai-kai, a fellow villager. 'We are told that it is impossible to play a legal game with a property developer.' Tang's home sits on land that used to belong to her relatives until they sold it to Henderson in 2006.

David Gilichinsky

The Russian botanist died just after reporting that he and a colleague had succeeded in growing a flower from the fruit of a plant that died during the Ice Age 32,000 years ago. Biologists say the claims in the report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences need to be verified, but a colleague of Gilichinsky's said that he had a fatal heart attack in the same week the leading journal reported the breakthrough in reviving the narrow-leafed campion.