UK daily to pay Melania damages

US first lady Melania Trump has accepted an apology and damages from the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper for reporting rumours about her time as a model, the two parties in the lawsuit said on Wednesday.

In a joint statement, the parties said the Mail retracted its false statements that Trump “provided services beyond simply modelling” and agreed to pay damages and costs.

The total settlement for the US and UK lawsuits was about $2.9 million, according to a person familiar with the settlement who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the information, which was not released in court.

Trump sued the Daily Mail in Britain and Mail Online in the United States over an August 2016 article, which ran under the headline “Racy photos and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump.”

The first lady’s attorneys argued that the report damaged her ability to build businesses based on her status as a wellknown figure and “successful businesswoman.”

As part of the settlement, the Mail published an apology, saying “we accept that these allegations about Mrs. Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them.” AP