Paid $130,000 To Porn Star, Linked To Donald Trump, Says His Lawyer: Report

Agencies
February 14, 2018

Washington: Feb 14: President Donald Trump's personal lawyer told the New York Times Tuesday he paid $130,000 of his own money to a porn star who once said she had an affair with Trump.

The long-time Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, said he was not reimbursed for the payment to the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and who goes by the stage name of Stormy Daniels, the Times reported.

Cohen told the newspaper the payment was legal but declined to give details such as why he made it or if Trump was aware of the payment at the time.

"Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," Cohen said, according to the Times.

"The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone."

US media reports have said the payment was made one month before the November 2016 election to keep the liaison quiet.

Trump was a private citizen when the 2006 sexual encounter with Clifford allegedly took place.

He was married at the time and his wife Melania had given birth to their son less than four months earlier.

The payment was first reported last month by the Wall Street Journal. Cohen's statement to the Times marked the first time he acknowledged a role in what he termed a "private transaction."

Trump, through his lawyers, and Clifford, 38, have both denied anything ever went on between them.

But last month the celebrity magazine In Touch published a 2011 interview with Clifford in which she expounds at length and in detail on their relationship and what she described as their "textbook generic" sex.

In that interview, Clifford said she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 and had a sexual encounter with him then.

She said she spoke with Trump on the phone or saw him in person for about a year.

The In Touch interview, which had not been published before, was conducted before Clifford's alleged signing of a secrecy agreement in October 2016.

Clifford has been taking advantage of her new-found notoriety.

She appeared at the Trophy Club strip club in South Carolina last month as part of a "Make America Horny Again" tour that will also reportedly take her to several other states over the next few months.

In a recent appearance on the late night TV talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" -- right after Trump delivered his State of the Union address -- Clifford repeatedly deflected questions about the alleged affair and whether she had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

"You can't say whether you have a non-disclosure agreement. But if you didn't have a non-disclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, 'I don't have a non-disclosure agreement'. Yes?" Kimmel asked.

"You're so smart, Jimmy," Clifford answered.

Later in the interview, Kimmel asked her, "Have you ever made love to someone whose name rhymes with Lonald Lump?"

"I'll call you whatever you want me to call you, baby," Clifford responded.

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News Network
June 29,2020

Karachi, Jun 29: Four heavily-armed militants attacked the busy Pakistan Stock Exchange on Monday morning, killing four security guards and a police sub-inspector before being shot dead in an exchange of fire, media reports said.

The unidentified militants opened indiscriminate fire and lobbed hand grenades at the main gate of the building as they tried to storm it, Geo News reported.

Police said that all the terrorists have been killed while five persons injured in the attack.

Four security guards and a police sub-inspector were also killed in the attack.

"An unfortunate incident took place at the Pakistan Stock Exchange. They made their way from our parking area and opened fire on everyone," said Abid Ali Habib, Director of Pakistan Stock Exchange.

The firing by militants caused panic among the people in the building.

Sindh province Governor Imran Ismail condemned the incident.

"Strongly condemn the attack on PSX aimed at tarnishing our relentless war on terror. Have instructed the IG & security agencies to ensure that the perpetrators are caught alive & their handlers are accorded exemplary punishments. We shall protect Sindh at all costs," he said on Twitter.

Police and rangers have arrived on the spot and surrounded the area.

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News Network
March 2,2020

Paris, Mar 2: A global agency says the spreading new virus could make the world economy shrink this quarter, for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says Monday in a special report on the impact of the virus that the world economy is still expected to grow overall this year and rebound next year.

But it lowered its forecasts for global growth in 2020 by half a percentage point, to 2.4 per cent, and said the figure could go as low as 1.5 per cent if the virus lasts long and spreads widely.

The last time world GDP shrank on a quarter-on-quarter basis was at the end of 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis. On a full-year basis, it last shrank in 2009.

The OECD said China's reduced production is hitting Asia particularly hard but also companies around the world that depend on its goods.

It urged governments to act fast to prevent contagion and restore consumer confidence.

The Paris-based OECD, which advises developed economies on policy, said the impact of this virus is much higher than past outbreaks because "the global economy has become substantially more interconnected, and China plays a far greater role in global output, trade, tourism and commodity markets."

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News Network
April 16,2020

Brussels/Amsterdam, Apr 16: As the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in the western world since its outbreak in Wuhan last December, researchers believe that the Chinese leadership is trying to absolve President Xi Jinping by using a section of the western media to influence public opinion globally.

"There are clear indications that China is conducting activities in a persistent and systematic manner to influence public opinion-making, academia, think tanks and political decision-making among the member states of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in general and western capital cities in particular," Siegfried O Wolf, Director of Research at Brussels-based think tank South Asia Democratic Front, said.

Some western media say some Chinese officials were secretly aware that they were facing a pandemic from the new coronavirus but allowed Wuhan to host a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people and millions began their annual trip home for the Lunar New Year celebrations.

The pandemic has since then affected 210 countries and territories around the world. Over 2 million people have been declared positive in which over 134,000 lost their lives.

"The frequency and extra-ordinary large scale of Chinese sponsored events in European political hubs, like in Brussels, and the subsequent media coverage can be seen as evidence for Beijing's public diplomacy efforts. However, the rising skepticism within the EU regarding Xi Jinping's development projects and the emerging questioning of Chinese sources funding Free Universities, like the one in Berlin, shows that this strategy produced mixed results so far," Wolf said.

He added, "However, one must also state that these efforts helped China to gain certain leverage among many non-Chinese media, western as well as non-western ones. Today, we can observe that China's political leadership tries to instrumentalise this influence for a major image campaign to distract from the fact that it carries the initial responsibility for the dramatic spread of COVID-19 by holding back key information."

Wolf also said that the current internal dynamics in China, like the shirking of responsibilities by the local authorities, are most-likely part of a twofold strategy. Firstly, there is the strategic component - namely, to reaffirm to the general public that the Communist Party of China is still in full control of the situation. The second strategic pillar is one of 'whitewashing'.

"Concretely, Beijing's obvious aim is to distract the domestic and international attention from the real, but hidden causes of the Coronavirus outbreak and its potential reputational and political consequences for Xi Jinping and his BRI," he stated.

Yoana Barakova, a Research Analyst at European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), an Amsterdam-based think-tank, said, "The death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of the very few medical professionals who tried to warn the world in December 2019 about the looming threat, sparked widespread condemnation around the international community in early February. Yet, little did he know that his legacy would continue much later after his demise, with the emboldened Chinese government trying to cover up its missteps through hardcore censorship after being exposed for undermining and underestimating the initial danger."

The researchers believe that the deterioration in press freedom under Jinping's regime has become more evident in recent days, with local authorities trying to control the state narrative by cosmetically placing media's focus on government's superficial attempts to tackle the crisis.

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