The Guinean hotel maid who has accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape is suing the New York Post for claiming that she was a prostitute.
“Yes, we have filed suit against the New York Post for stating that the victim is a prostitute,” her lawyer Kenneth Thompson told AFP in an email.
The Post, citing a source close to the defense’s investigation team, has alleged the maid often traded sex for money with male guests at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan.
The 560 apartment units at precinct 11 here to be built under the 1Malaysia Housing Programme (PR1MA) will be sold for RM120,000 a unit, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced today.
He said the price was cheaper than the earlier price set between RM150,000 and RM300,000.
The project, to be developed by Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd, is the first site identified under the first phase of the PRIMA Programme, he said.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak today launched phase one of the 1Malaysia Housing Programme (PR1MA) which involves the construction of 42,000 houses on 20 strategic sites.
He said eight projects were expected to commence this year and in 2012 on the 20 sites which had been identified in the Klang Valley, Rawang and Seremban.
He said PR1MA was specifically for moderate-income Malaysians earning not more than RM6,000 monthly regardless whether they work with the government, the private sector or self-employed.
The captain of a US vessel intercepted after it tried to defy a ban and sail for Gaza from Greece was being held in “shocking conditions” Sunday and had not received consular assistance, a lawyer said.
Captain John Klusmer was arrested when the US boat Audacity of Hope — the flagship in a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists — attempted to leave Greek waters on Friday after Athens banned all Gaza-bound ships from setting sail.
Klusmer was charged with felony and ordered to appear in court on Tuesday. The US Boat to Gaza organisation said he was being held in jail in “shocking conditions” and as far as it was aware, had not yet received consular assistance.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to announce the withdrawal of at least 500 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012 following a similar drawdown by the United States, reports said Sunday.
The move would take the number of British troops in Afghanistan below the key figure of 9,000 and mark a major step towards Cameron’s stated aim of having all British combat forces out of the country by 2015.
Cameron would announce on Wednesday plans to withdraw up to 800 troops by the end of next year, the Sunday Times reported. The Sunday Telegraph put the figure at 500 and said they would leave in mid-2012.
High-speed trains linking China’s two main cities Beijing and Shanghai make their commercial debut Thursday — a step seen as vital to ease pressures on the country’s overloaded transport system.
The $33 billion rail line, which has been operating on a trial basis since mid-May, will halve the journey time to under five hours and could hurt airlines operating on the busy route plagued by delays and cancellations.
In the northern hinterlands that may hold the key to victory in a hard fought Thai election, the ruling party seems as unpopular as ever, despite decades of wooing rural voters.
The establishment-backed Democrats came to power in a parliamentary vote two years ago but it is almost 20 years since they won a popular mandate, and observers say a flatlining campaign is unlikely to reverse their fortunes.
The rural north and northeast are home to more than half of the Thai electorate, and are the heartland of the “Red Shirt” anti-government protest movement.
Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono picked his brother-in-law as the new army chief, his spokesman said on Wednesday, as speculation grows over who Yudhoyono might pick to as a presidential candidate in 2014 elections.
Under Yudhoyono, Indonesia has started to improve infrastructure and trim layers of bureaucracy, problems cited by investors as deterrents to investment.
Australia’s proposed refugee swap with Malaysia looked on shaky ground Thursday with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees suggesting he may not sign off on it.
Antonio Guterres said he did not yet know if the UNHCR would approve the controversial proposal, adding that Australians had bombarded him with emails opposing the deal.
“The only reason why it has not yet been signed is because UNHCR has been intransigent in relation to a certain number of very clear protection principles,” he said in the Sydney Morning Herald.
China has said a series of recent naval drills are “routine” and unrelated to simmering tensions in the South China Sea involving a range of nations with competing territorial claims.
When asked about the six military exercises staged by the Chinese navy in June, including a joint drill with Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun urged the media not to speculate about their purpose.
Controversial Arab-Israeli Islamist leader Sheikh Raed Saleh has been arrested in London while on a speaking tour in Britain, a spokesman for the Islamic Movement told AFP on Wednesday.
“He was arrested on Tuesday night in London and is still in custody. We don’t know yet if he will be deported but we are expecting to hear from his lawyer today,” Sheikh Kamal Khatib told AFP.
Khatib said it was not clear exactly why Saleh had been detained, but he blamed “the Zionist lobby in Britain” for pushing police to hold the leader.
France has begun parachuting arms shipments to Berber rebels fighting Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s forces in the highlands south of Tripoli, the French daily Le Figaro reported on Wednesday.
According to the paper, which said it had seen a secret intelligence memo and talked to well-placed officials, the air drops are designed to help rebel fighters encircle Tripoli and encourage a popular revolt in the city itself.
“If the rebels can get to the outskirts of Tripoli, the capital will take the chance to rise against Kadhafi,” said an official quoted in the report.
South Korea’s military will create a cyber warfare school to help combat growing Internet attacks from North Korea, an official said Wednesday.
The army has teamed up with Korea University to open in 2012 the new cyber-defence school, which will admit 30 students a year for a four-year course.
Courses include how to break malicious Internet codes, ways to psychologically prepare for cyber warfare and other IT technologies to guard against potential attacks, an army spokesman told AFP.
Hollywood star Michelle Yeoh, who plays pro-democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming film, has been deported by army-dominated Myanmar and blacklisted, an official said Tuesday.
“She did not have the chance to enter Myanmar again. She was deported straight away on the first flight after arriving at Yangon International Airport,” a Myanmar official, who did not want to be named, told AFP.
“She’s on the blacklist now,” a second official said, declining to say why.
Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a top Kabul hotel, sparking a five-hour battle with Afghan commandos backed by a NATO helicopter in an assault that left at least 10 people dead Wednesday.
Red tracer bullets arced through the night sky around the hilltop Intercontinental Hotel, whose faded grandeur frequently pays host to Afghan officials and foreigners. Part of the building was in flames.
Colonel Alexander Poteyev was fleeing his homeland, fearing arrest for the biggest betrayal suffered by Russia’s spy service since the Cold War. “Mary, try to take this calmly,” he typed into his mobile telephone. “I am leaving not for a short time but forever.”
Poteyev’s farewell message to his wife was read out on Monday to a Moscow military court that convicted him in absentia for betraying ten agents in the United States. The affair was splashed across world media last June, a colourful reminder the realm of suburban ’sleeper agents’, dead letter drops and secret ink had not died with the end of communism.
Afghanistan’s central bank governor has resigned and fled to the United States, saying his life is in danger over a corruption probe targeting influential figures connected to the government.
President Hamid Karzai’s government on Tuesday dismissed the claims of Abdul Qadir Fitrat, chairman of Da Afghanistan Bank, insisting his life was not under threat and calling him a “runaway governor”.
“I announce my resignation from the position of governor of the central bank of Afghanistan immediately,” Fitrat said in a statement issued as he visited the United States, where he reportedly has permanent residency.
[Click to read Afghan Central bank]
The top US military nuclear research lab was ordered to stay closed Tuesday after flames reached it and the local town began evacuating, though all high-risk materials were safe, officials said Monday.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) said there had been “no off-site releases of contamination” after a one-acre (.40 ha) blaze on the southwestern edge of the research complex northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
An emergency operations unit remains working at the high-security site, founded during World War II when it began developing nuclear weapons technology, and which nowadays employs some 11,800 people.
Israel backtracked on Monday on a threat to bar foreign journalists from entering the country for 10 years if they board a new international aid flotilla that plans to challenge the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an official statement said, instructed authorities to exempt foreign reporters from “the usual policy applied to infiltrators and those who enter illegally”.
In an email to foreign news organisations on Sunday, the Government Press Office (GPO) said journalists’ participation in the flotilla would be “an intentional violation” of Israeli law that could result in a 10-year entry ban to Israel and confiscation of their equipment.
Judges at the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for war crimes and crimes against humanity on Monday, the 100th day of a NATO bombing campaign.
Britain, which has led the UN-mandated international effort to protect civilians from Gaddafi ’s forces, hailed the court’s decision and said members of the Libyan regime should now abandon him.
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