After weeks of dodging questions about the alleged tryst, Trump offered a flat “no” when asked if he knew about the payment made in the final weeks of the 2016 election.

The actress, Stephanie Clifford — who goes by the screen name Stormy Daniels — claims she received the money to cover up a sexual encounter with Trump more than a decade ago.

The president’s long-time lawyer Michael Cohen has admitted to making the payment, and has accused Daniels of breaching a non-disclosure agreement she signed in return.

Last month Daniels told 21 million TV watchers that she had unprotected sex with Trump after meeting at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006 — shortly after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to their son.

That alleged affair and the suspected cover up presents a legal and political minefield for Trump.

Support among America’s evangelical Christians — who make up 25 percent of the population — was pivotal to his election victory.

While the alleged sexual encounter was said to be consensual, the payment to Daniels could constitute a undeclared campaign contribution.

Trump insisted he did not know why Cohen made the payment. “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”

Asked if he knew where the money came from, Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “No, I don’t know.”

That claim was immediately challenged by Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti.

“We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump’s feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment,” he tweeted.

“As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath.”

Trump had never spoken publicly about the allegations and has repeatedly ignored questions from reporters about the issue, which has dogged the White House for months.

Daniels is challenging the validity of the non-disclosure agreement in court, saying Trump never countersigned it — a claim that Trump’s comments on Thursday would appear to support.

Such contracts, while legal, have frequently been used by powerful men to hush up affairs, workplace harassment or even alleged sexual abuse.

Daniels is also suing Cohen for defamation and has sought to force the president to testify under oath.

So far the First Lady has not responded, but her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham urged respect.

“While I know the media is enjoying speculation & salacious gossip, I’d like to remind people there’s a minor child who’s name should be kept out of news stories when at all possible,” she said in a tweet.

Leonard Doyle, director of media and communication at the UN International Organization for Migration, said that Facebook and WhatsApp have become the media of choice for people smugglers in the Middle East and Africa to advertise their services and make arrangements with migrants.

But many of those groups abuse migrants, taking travelers hostage and beating them to demand ransoms from their families, he said.

As it now blocks violent jihadist groups like Islamic State from promoting itself on Facebook pages, Facebook should police people smugglers doing the same thing, Doyle said in an online discussion hosted by Refugees Deeply, a migration-focused media group.

“They have turbocharged the access to smugglers,” he said.

“Big tech companies have a huge responsibility that they are not living up to.”

Smugglers use all kinds of social media and messaging applications to communicate, but Facebook’s pages, private groups and the Facebook Live video app, as well as WhatsApp, are by far the most popular, according to experts.

Leonard noted that people searching for child pornography on social media can get warnings that what they are doing is illegal.

Facebook and others need to do the same to help stem migration abuses, Doyle said.

Facebook especially needs to help crack down on the extortion taking place, with West Africans the leading targets. Smugglers kidnap migrants, torture them and use social media to send pictures and video to families to demand money.

“We cannot continue to allow people to be tortured, Doyle said.

He said that Facebook has largely ignored his overtures, putting him in contact with low-level officials who do little to help.

“They say its hard, but they don’t really try,” he said.

“The motivation of the big tech companies is to get customers…. There’s a kind of race for market domination in the developing world.”

The agreement concluded the third Mekong River Commission summit yesterday.

Construction of dams on the mainstream of the Mekong – including those in Pak Beng, Xayaburi and Don Sahong in Laos – are strongly opposed by local residents and downstream countries due to their environmental and social impacts. Studies have also indicated that the dams pose a threat to food security in the region.

The MRC took the projects through its “prior consultation process” under the 1995 Mekong Agreement as it sought the opinions of all stakeholders. The procedure was deemed a success for the MRC by some observers, as many hydropower projects were modified to be more environmentally friendly, though failing to satisfy many local residents.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyan Xuan Phuc attended the summit yesterday in Siem Reap. The Siem Reap Declaration issued after the meeting said “the learnt experiences of the prior consultation process for the three proposed mainstream hydropower projects are vital for the management of the Mekong River basin”.

Hun Sen, whose country hosted the summit, said: “I would like to reaffirm our solidarity and our highest political commitment and support to the effective implementation of the 1995 Mekong Agreement.”

Prayut said Thailand, whose private companies are involved in construction of dams in the river, is ready to cooperate with the MRC and other members to manage the Mekong for sustainable use. Thailand gives importance to disaster management and readiness to deal with climate change, he said. Proposed projects need to balance their benefits and environmental implications, Prayut said.

However, the declaration said there remain significant challenges for the health of the Mekong ecosystem and community needs. The long list included rapid economic and population growth; increased demand for water, food and energy; urbanisation; industrialisation; the loss of environmental assets; preserving wetlands and natural fisheries; deforestation; floods and droughts; and the risks to biodiversity and people’s livelihoods and assets.

These issues are further compounded by the effects of climate change on top of past and future development projects along the river and its tributaries.

The surge in development along the river highlights the increasing need for a focus on sustainability and ensuring the coordinated operational management of tributary and mainstream water-resource development projects, noted the declaration.

Prayut and Hun Sen met on the sidelines of the summit to discuss bilateral ties, including boosting trade, opening more border checkpoints and connecting rail lines.

The United States has urged all stakeholders, including the Asean bloc, to take the proper steps to provide protection and adequate humanitarian assistance to Rohingya –those remaining in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and those in squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, the Rohingya community in Thailand has called on the nation to participate in solving the crisis.

The Rohingya crisis was discussed during the 31st US-Asean dialogue in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, said US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy.

“The collective body of participants agreed on the need for steps to improve the delivery of humanitarian assistance, create a secure environment, particularly for very vulnerable Rohingya,” he said in a phone conference with journalists in the region.

“We also discussed the need to assist Myanmar with its transition to democracy. There was certainly an acknowledgement of the complex environment there,” he said.

Some 700,000 refugees have fled from Rakhine state since August last year when a militant group attacked Myanmar security outposts in the western state, prompting a heavy handed response under the cover of a “clearance operation” by the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) that killed thousands of people. Rohingya have been victims of atrocities including arson, torture, murder, gang rape and massacre within their Rakhine villages and as they travelled to the Bangladesh border over the past months.

Murphy (left) is in the 31st US-Asean Diloague in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday

“We are very concerned for the plight of the Rohingya, both the populations that have fled into Bangladesh, and those that remain,” Murphy said. “This has been a massive human population movement, and it’s the result of insecurity, in some cases atrocities and abuses. And it’s been very, very troubling.”

While de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be strongly criticised over what some see as complicity in what the UN has labelled as “elements of genocide”, the international community is reluctant to undermine Myanmar’s nascent democratic government.

Murphy said the international community wants to support the government and see it come to terms with the crisis.

“Of course it’s a complex problem and it’s longstanding, and the elected government in Nay Pyi Daw has inherited this problem and they are struggling with it,” Murphy said.

The US and Asean nations want to help encourage actions that bring about protection for vulnerable populations, ensure adequate delivery of humanitarian assistance, and pave the way for repatriation so that the Rohingya can return to their homes in a safe, dignified, voluntary manner, he said.

“We also want to pursue accountability for those who have committed abuses and atrocities in order to bolster the rule of law and ensure that such events do not repeat themselves,” Murphy said.

Asked if the international community could address the Rakhine crisis at its root cause, rather than just providing humanitarian assistance, Murphy said there’s some reason to be encouraged, because the government itself had established the Kofi Annan Commission and embraced last August’s recommendations that came from that process.

The 88 “very solid” recommendations of the Commission address short, medium and long-term challenges, and if implemented, could go a long way to addressing the root causes of underdevelopment, discrimination, the lack of rights in citizenship, he said.

Suu Kyi picked Thai former foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai to lead an advisory board to implement the Annan recommendations.

Surakiart led a board meet with Aung San Suu Kyi last month and with Singapore foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan this week as they seek ways to help end the crisis with broadened Asean roles.

However Siyeed Alam, chairman of Rohingya Association in Thailand, said yesterday that Asean should allow the Rohingya communities in the region to participate in the problem-solving process.

“Asean and the Surakiart board are acting as if they are white-washing the Myanmar government,” he told The Nation. “They said they are doing it for the Rohingya but never listen to our voices.”

Khan, son of celebrated screen writer Salim Khan, has been jailed for five years for shooting endangered wildlife nearly 20 years ago.

Accused of everything from killing a homeless man in a hit-and-run to assaulting a former Miss World, prison for poaching rare black bucks is a scenario that few could have imagined for Khan.

But like the earlier brushes with scandal, it is unlikely to wound his reputation.

The Indian superstar’s latest blockbuster “Tiger Zinda Hai” (Tiger Is Alive) has made $85 million worldwide, underpinning his popularity.

According to Forbes, Salman Khan made $37 million in 2017, coming in at number nine on its list of the world’s highest paid actors, one position below fellow Bollwood star Shah Rukh Khan.

His 2016 movie “Sultan”, in which Khan played an ageing wrestler, notched up one of the highest-grossing opening weekends in Hindi cinema history, proving that for his legions of fans the body-building actor known as “Bhai”, Hindi for “brother”, can do no wrong.

The actor has a cult-like status in star-obsessed India. Most of his devotees are young men who envy his glamorous lifestyle.

They are largely from the urban masses around India who eke out a living in Mumbai and other cities but dream of more.

They emulate his Bollywood big hair and wear pirated T-shirts emblazoned with Khan’s charity “Being Human”. At weekends they gather outside his home where Khan waves from his balcony.

Indian Bollywood actor Salman Khan arrives at a court to hear the verdict in the long-running wildlife poaching case against him in Jodhpur on April 5, 2018. Salman Khan was found guilty April 5 of killing endangered Indian wildlife nearly two decades ago, a prosecutor said, a charge that could see the Bollywood superstar jailed for six years. // AFP PHOTO 

Khan has never married, which has only augmented his offscreen aura.

Bollywood film industry analyst Komal Nahta said the conviction and any jail term would only delay movies but not seriously harm his career.

“He is a superstar whose films guarantee huge box office numbers,” Nahta told AFP. “A jail term might affect a few films that are in the pipeline.”

“These films can wait as they have not yet begun production and at present it would only mean a loss of time rather than money investment.”

“He has always been the poster boy of a large section of the youth population,” filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, who directed Khan in the 2007 romantic drama “Salaam E Ishq”, told AFP.

– Hit-and-run case –

Khan has starred in more than 100 films and television shows since his first hit “Maine Pyar Kiya” (I Fell in Love) in 1989. He has been named best actor at the Bollywood Filmfare awards 11 times since 1990.

He breaks records nearly every year, defying the controversy that has dogged his personal life.

Khan was sentenced to five years’ jail in 2002 for killing a homeless man in a late-night hit-and-run crash. That was overturned in 2015 but the acquittal is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Khan spent a week in prison in 1998 when first accused of using unlicensed arms to shoot the black buck.

His image also took a hit when he was accused of assaulting former Miss World and Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai during a relationship which ended more than a decade ago. Khan has denied ever hitting any women.

Director Kabir Khan, who worked with Khan on “Bajrangi Bhaijaan”, one of his most acclaimed movies, believes his misdemeanours hint at a “vulnerability” that audiences relate to.

“He makes politically incorrect statements but that seems to endear him to audiences who see him the way he is,” he told AFP.

“He’s immensely popular because he wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s a bad boy and a brat, but then he does all this good work with Being Human.

“His fans stand by him and overlook many of his indiscretions by saying his heart is in the right place.”

Khan describes himself as a “humanitarian” on his Twitter profile and filmmaker Advani believes his “image makeover” has helped him persuade fans “to feel that he was always misunderstood and somewhat scapegoated”.

Khan’s following has been enhanced by his hosting of the Indian version of reality TV show “Big Brother”. He has also won praise for taking on difficult roles, such as “Sultan”, where his weight fluctuates wildly.

“He isn’t just playing safe and holding on to the success, unlike some of his peers,” said Kabir Khan.

“What I meant was that it wasn’t cooked. It simply wasn’t cooked,” he said in an appearance on television programme Good Morning Britain (GMB) alongside fellow judge John Torode on Wednesday.

On Monday, in a MasterChef UK episode, Malaysian contestant Zaleha Kadir Olpin had prepared a traditional rendition of nasi lemak with chicken rendang.

According to reports online, GMB’s Kate Garraway asked Wallace to explain what happened, and the judge explained that Zaleha was sent home because “the other cooks were better”.

Garraway reminded him: “But you said crispy” and Wallace hit back: “Rest assured, the best cooks will always go through.”

Fellow judge Torode defended their decision and said he “did a whole series on Malaysia”, calling the nation’s food “fantastic”.

Upon hearing Garraway’s comment that he “should know then”, Torode replied in the affirmative: “Well, I do. I said to her, it wasn’t cooked enough.”

Wallace went on to clarify that Zaleha did not go out because her rendang skin was not crispy.

“She went out because the other cooks were better,” he added.

Earlier, he had noted Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak’s comment on the elimination decision with the following remark: “Oh for crying out loud … the Malaysian Prime Minister has got involved as well.”

Nadine Lustre’s stunning photos featured the iconic Phi Phi Islands, which the couple reached by boat.

Image: Instagram/@nadine

Image: Instagram/@nadine

The 24-year-old actress dove into the island group’s crystal-clear waters where she swam among the fishes.

Image: Instagram/@nadine

She and Reid, also 24, posed for a picture on the boat, both baring their toned beach bodies.

Image: Instagram/@nadine

Image: Instagram/@nadine

“Best travel buddy I could ever ask for,” she said of her onscreen and offscreen beau.

They even shared a romantic photo of them holding hands with matching woven bracelets.

Image: Instagram/@nadine

Aside from the pristine beaches, the trip also had a touch of culture as Lustre posed in front of Phuket’s largest temple, the Wat Chalong.

Image: Instagram/@nadine

The vacation comes after Reid and Lustre have been promoting their latest movie, “Never Not Love You,” directed by Tonette Jadaone, which faced some hiccups during production such as delayed shooting days. Reid chalked up the rumored tension between the love team and the director to a “misunderstanding” on a talk show. The movie has since racked up P20 million in its first two screening days.

The shooting – which followed a similar incident that sparked protests in Sacramento and which came on the 50th anniversary of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination – is the latest in a string of killings by police that have sparked a nationwide debate on violence by law enforcement.

The shooting occurred soon before 5pm Wednesday in Crown Heights, a predominantly black neighbourhood in the heart of Brooklyn.

Officers responded after receiving three 911 emergency calls saying a man was pointing an “object that appears to be a gun” at people on the street, said Terence Monahan, Chief of Department for the New York police.

Four officers fired 10 shots at the man, who was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The object the man was holding was not a gun, but rather “a pipe with some sort of knob on the end of it,” Monahan said.

Soon after the shooting, dozens of people gathered at the scene, with many shouting and denouncing the conduct of the police, according to footage broadcast live on Facebook.

According to media reports, the victim of the shooting was known in the neighbourhood and was mentally ill but not violent.

Andre Wilson, 38, told the New York Daily News that he had known the victim for 20 years, describing him as a quirky neighbourhood character.

“All he did was just walk around the neighbourhood,” he said.

“He speaks to himself, usually he has an orange Bible or a rosary in his hand. He never had a problem with anyone.”

The shooting came less than three weeks after police in the city of Sacramento fired 20 rounds at 22-year-old Stephon Clark, fearing he was carrying a weapon.

Clark, who was killed, was actually holding an iPhone.

Anger over the March 18 shooting erupted into days of protest in the streets of downtown Sacramento, with marchers blocking traffic and clashing with police in riot gear.//AFP

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry confirmed that Myanmar’s social welfare, relief and resettlement minister Win Myat Aye would visit the congested camps, which are home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees in total.

“His programme has not been fixed yet,” Tareque Muhammad, a director-general at the foreign ministry, told AFP. The visit is slated for April 11 or 12.

US and UN officials say the military crackdown which began last August in the mainly Buddhist nation, purportedly to flush out guerrillas, amounted to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.

Another Bangladeshi official told AFP it would be the first visit by a Myanmar minister to the camps, which have sheltered Rohingya refugees since the early 1990s, for more than a decade.

Win Myat Aye is the deputy head of a task force led by Aung San Suu Kyi on the crisis in Rakhine state, and a top official overseeing a stalled agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate some 750,000 refugees.

Myanmar has approved several hundred Rohingya from a list of thousands to return to their homeland but not a single one has yet crossed back.

Meanwhile Myanmar authorities are accused of bulldozing Rohingya villages in Rakhine and seeking to erase evidence at sites where their troops are accused of atrocities.

Myanmar has denied the charge but blocked investigators from visiting an area where thousands of Rohingya, long persecuted in the country, are believed to have been killed.

Even before the latest influx began last August, the camps in southeast Bangladesh were home to roughly 300,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled previous waves of violence.

Rohingya community leaders in the camps said they would welcome the opportunity to raise their concerns about returning to Rakhine with the visiting Myanmar official.

“We would like to meet face-to face with the minister,” Mohibullah told AFP.

Many of the displaced Muslims have rejected the prospect of returning, fearing a repeat of the persecution that has forced them off their lands for generations.

Refugees demand recognition as a minority, access to health and education and an assurance they can return to their ancestral villages rather than being shunted into resettlement camps in Rakhine.//AFP

The 34-year-old is alive, his village is intact and he is able to make a living — albeit a meagre one — in his homeland as a farmer.

Abdullah’s Rohingya Muslim minority are disappearing fast from Myanmar.

Some one million of them — around two-thirds of their entire stateless community — have been forced over the border to refugee camps in Bangladesh by successive waves of persecution.

The latest has expelled some 700,000 Rohingya since August, when the army launched a campaign of violence that the UN says amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.

Abdullah’s village of Shan Taung is near the temple-studded town of Mrauk U, not far from the epicentre of the most recent crackdown in northern Rakhine but partly sheltered from its worst excesses by a range of forested mountains.

He is among the 500,000 Rohingya that the UN estimates remain in Myanmar, some confined to camps after previous rounds of violence while others are spared by wealth, luck or — like the villages in Abdullah’s area — simply by isolation from the latest military campaign.

Yet their lives are still shaped by tension and fear in a mainly-Buddhist country that has methodically stripped the Muslim minority of legal rights and security.

The status of the Rohingya in Rakhine hangs by a thread in the wake of the army crackdown, which has seen Myanmar troops and ethnic Rakhine mobs accused of burning Rohingya villages, and of raping and murdering their residents.

Shan Taung, with its 4,500-strong Rohingya population, appears peaceful.

Fishermen dry their catch in the sun, farmers bring in the rice paddy and children play at the side of the road.

But fear has sharply segregated the Rohingya Muslims and the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists living nearby.

The Rohingya say they risk a beating — or worse — if they stray into territory the Rakhine regard as their own, while few trust the police to protect them.

It wasn’t always this way, says Abdullah, explaining he once had Rakhine friends and stayed with a Rakhine family while studying at university in the state capital, Sittwe.

“They no longer treat me like they used to,” he tells AFP. “They don’t say good things.”

Communal relations have disintegrated in recent months around Mrauk U town, where several people died recently after police opened fire on an ethnic Rakhine nationalist protest.

“We do not trust each other anymore,” a Rakhine youth told AFP, asking not to be named.

“Rakhines are also watching each other to make sure no one from the town is friends with Muslims.”

Yearning for citizenship

Around 150,000 Rohingya are thought to still be living in northern Rakhine, spread among disparate villages spared in the violent crackdown.

But rights groups say many of those communities are hungry and scared, unable to work freely and hemmed in by hostile neighbours, as the army beefs up its bases around them.

Ye Htut, the administrator of Maungdaw, the most populous district in the north, played down strife between the communities that remained.

“Muslims still living here don’t say they are afraid,” he told reporters. “Many houses are still left.”

Further south, another 130,000 Rohingya fester in internment camps, a grim legacy from rounds of inter-communal violence since 2012.

Another 200,000 fare only marginally better, living in their own villages but under restrictions on movement that UN spokesman Pierre Peron says “severely compromise” basic rights and access to health and education.

With tensions sky-high, Rohingya are still leaving.

On Sunday, a boatload of Rohingya who departed from Sittwe were spotted in Thai waters and “helped on” by the navy towards Malaysia.

Rohingya still arrive on foot in Bangladesh seeking sanctuary after fleeing threats and hunger.

Others with enough money for bribes can also try to make their way to Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, joining tens of thousands of Rohingya who already live discreetly in the country’s major urban centres.

Yet even there, existence feels parlous.

“People are afraid every step they take,” says Yangon-based Kyaw Soe Aung, Secretary General of the Rohingya-focused Democracy and Human Rights Party.

“There is no security and rule of law for Rohingya and Muslims.”

Officially the “Rohingya” do not exist in Myanmar and as a result are denied citizenship.

Instead they are branded “Bengalis”, reinforcing the narrative that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Corruption and intimidation

Rohingya seeking citizenship must agree to be classified as “Bengali” in a notorious verification process which denies them constitutional rights as a separate ethnic minority and leaves them vulnerable to expulsion.

Critics say the National Verification Card (NVC) they are pressed to sign up for is less a pathway to citizenship than a means of control.

From 2010 until the end of 2017, government statistics show only around 7,600 Rohingya signed up and only a couple of hundred have obtained citizenship.

Ko Ko, not his real name, is one of the few Rohingya to hold a valid ID card — sporting the term “Bengali”.

The 20-year-old says, however, that means he must regularly grease pockets and wait longer when dealing with anybody in any position of authority because he is automatically put at the bottom of the pile.

He and a friend collect data about alleged atrocities in Rakhine and also try to counter anti-Rohingya “fake news” with a website that has some 10,000 hits a week.

His father worries about his activist work and wants him to seek asylum overseas but Ko Ko refuses.

“We have to get back our citizenship,” he says.

“I will work for change. I’m doing the right thing.”