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Melania Trump website redirected

July 29, 2016

The website of US presidential candidate Donald Trump's wife Melania has vanished after questions were raised about her university education. Meanwhile, her husband focused on election rival Hillary Clinton's nomination.

https://p.dw.com/p/1JXdN
USA Melania Trump in New York
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/ZUMA Press/B. Tesfaye

People who attempt to access Melania Trump's melaniatrump.com website are being automatically diverted to the site for her husband's company. The change was made after US media questioned whether the statement in her online biography that she had a degree in architecture from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia was accurate.

Melania Trump posted a brief statement on Twitter saying the website was removed because it did not "accurately reflect" her "current business and professional interests."

The tweet from Melania Trump, the third wife of Donald Trump, was a rare recent update on her account. Before her husband launched his White House bid, she was posting photographs every few days, mostly about style, food and travel.

In previous magazine interviews Melania Trump had indicated she began university studies in design and architecture in Slovenia but dropped out after a year to pursue a career in modeling.

The questions over her CV come the week after a plaigarism controversy surrounding her speech at the Republican National Convention, during which she repeated lines once delivered by current First Lady Michelle Obama during the Democratic convention in 2008. A staff writer for the Trump organization issued a statement in apology, saying that Mrs Trump had given passages from a speech by Mrs Obama as an example of what she wanted to say and that ended up in the final draft.

"I did not check Mrs Obama's speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused," she said.

Trump's Twitter tirade

As his rival Hillary Clinton accepted the Democrats' presidential nomination, Donald Trump sent a flurry of messages on Twitter responding to her speech and attacking her record on foreign policy and ties to Wall Street.

The candidate, who had previously called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, twice criticized Clinton for not saying the words "Radical Islam" in her speech, then pointed to her plan to resettle more Syrian refugees in the US.

Both candidates have low popularity ratings and featured glowing tributes from their families during their party conventions in a bid to emphasize their personal appeal.

se/msh (AFP, dpa)