Police look for DNA in New York hotel carpet

NEW YORK - Investigators cut out a piece of carpet in a painstaking search of a penthouse suite for DNA evidence in former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sex assault case, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday as he made a new bid to get out of jail.

New York detectives and prosecutors believe the carpet in the hotel room may contain Strauss-Kahn's semen, spat out after an episode of forced oral sex, the officials told The Associated Press.

Strauss-Kahn, jailed at Rikers Island since Monday, made a second appeal for bail and proposed to be confined to his daughter's Manhattan home 24 hours a day with electronic monitoring. He was set for another hearing on Thursday afternoon.