I was never an escort – Melania

– Melania Trump, the wife of US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, sued the Maryland-based publisher of the Daily Mail Online and a blogger on Thursday over stories about her past she believes were “tremendously damaging”, her attorney said in a statement.

Late on Thursday, the Daily Mail retracted a story in a posting on its website.

“To the extent that anything in the Daily Mail’s article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business’ ... is hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any such misinterpretation.”

A Daily Mail story last month cited a Slovenian magazine’s report that a modelling agency that Trump worked with in New York in the ’90s also served as an escort business, linking wealthy clients with women for sexual services.

Trump had notified the British newspaper and other news organisations on August 22 that she would take legal action, Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, said in an e-mail at the time, calling the reports “outright lying.”

“These defendants made several statements about Mrs Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation,” he said in a statement on Thursday. The lawsuit was filed in state circuit court in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The lawsuit alleges that the Maryland blogger, Webster Griffin Tarpley, published “false and defamatory statements” about Trump, including that the former model had suffered from “a fullblown nervous breakdown.”

“Defendants’ actions are so egregious, malicious and harmful to Mrs Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million (R2.1 billion),” her lawyer’s statement said. Tarpley said the lawsuit was “without merit.”

“We are confident that Mrs Trump will not be able to meet her high burden of proving the statements published about her on my website were defamatory in any way,” he said.

Trump, who now has her own jewellery line, was born in Slovenia and moved to the United States in the ’90s. She married Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee for the November 8 election, in 2005. – Reuters

Washington

Mexico City

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has rejected criticism of his controversial meeting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“I did it for Mexico and the Mexicans,” Pena Nieta said at a meeting with young people on Thursday.

Given Trump’s repeated attacks,