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NEW YORK (AP) Word of a settlement agreement between former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a hotel maid who accused him of trying to rape her could bring an end to a saga that has tarnished Strauss-Kahn's reputation, ended his hopes for the French presidency and renewed a debate about the credibility of sexual assault accusers.

But it might not mean the end of legal troubles for Strauss-Kahn. He is awaiting a ruling on whether he is linked to "pimping" in connection with a French prostitution ring.

A person familiar with the New York case said Thursday that lawyers for Strauss-Kahn and the housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, made the as-yet-unsigned agreement within recent days, with Bronx Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon facilitating that and a separate agreement to end another lawsuit Diallo filed against the New York Post. A court date is expected next week, though the day wasn't set, the person said.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private agreement.

If the deal, which comes after prosecutors dropped related criminal charges last year, is veiled by a confidentiality agreement, Strauss-Kahn and Diallo may not speak publicly about a May 2011 encounter that she called a brutally sudden attack and he termed a consensual "moral failing."

Strauss-Kahn lawyer William W. Taylor III declined to comment. Lawyers for the housekeeper didn't immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages.

Strauss-Kahn will pay $6 million to Diallo, according to the French newspaper Le Monde, which cited people close to the French politician. They said he would take out a bank loan for half the amount and borrow the other half from his wife, Anne Sinclair. The two have separated, but Sinclair paid his bail in New York as well as the cost of renting a house in lower Manhattan for $50,000 a month.

According to Le Monde, Strauss-Kahn and Diallo will meet Dec. 7 in the McKeon's chambers to sign the settlement.

Diallo, 33, and Strauss-Kahn, 63, crossed paths when she arrived to clean his luxury Manhattan hotel suite. She told police he chased her down, tried to yank down her pantyhose and forced her to perform oral sex.

The allegation seemed to let loose a spiral of accusations about the sexual conduct of Strauss-Kahn, a married diplomat and economist who had long been dubbed the "great seducer."

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AP source: Strauss-Kahn, NY hotel maid to settle

It was an image of everyday innocence. Two boys were playing football, one on one, in Cassiobury Park, Watford. They made the clich complete by using jumpers as goalposts. One was my nephew, Jamie. The other was a friend, Raheem.

They were 14, and being watched by Tom Walley, a venerable youth coach who was a formative influence on such England internationals as Ashley Cole and David James. Instinct told him he had found "a bit of purple, a bit of quality".

He organised pick-up games for the boys on a pitch marked out in the back garden of the home of Tim Sherwood, Tottenham's technical co-ordinator. Walley was old-school and devised the Dustbin Run, a rudimentary stamina test, in a field behind his house, close to the M25.

When Raheem faltered on shuttle runs between refuse and recycling bins set 150 metres apart, Walley marched him inside to tell him his fortune. Character makes a career. Lack of character will leave your life in limbo.

This was when Raheem Sterling was a rumour, before the kid became a commodity. He played with a sense of joy beyond the comprehension of men who insist he is worth the ultimate 18th birthday present, a weekly wage of 50,000. Raheem was a boy with dreams rather than a meal ticket for those with a vested interest in the fog of football's dirty war. Depending on whom you believe, he is consumed by greed and disrespectful to the traditions of Liverpool FC, or a victim being driven into the arms of Manchester City, Tottenham or Arsenal.

The closer we get to the deadline of his birthday, next Saturday, the more frenzied the speculation will become. Briefings, on or off the record, will intensify. Sterling gives the impression of having effectively surrendered control of his destiny.

When he attempted to speak for himself, to his 250,000 followers on Twitter, his message was swiftly deleted. His official account, @Sterling31, was suddenly unavailable yesterday morning. The dispute between his advisers and Liverpool is increasingly poisonous.

Handled poorly, his career could quite easily implode. He is already the subject of grubby gossip about how many children he has fathered. The consensus is two. The caution of Liverpool's manager, Brendan Rodgers, about the toxicity of celebrity is understandable.

No name has been spoken at Anfield with such expectation since the scions of the Shankly era were quietly eulogising a prodigy named Michael Owen.

He was a recognisable product of a football family with middle-class pretensions. Growing up, Sterling was sustained by the protective instincts of a single mother, Nadine, who brought up four children in the most forbidding circumstances.

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The Last Word: Sterling's road from kid to commodity

HARRY Potter creator J K Rowling has accused British Prime Minister David Cameron of betraying victims of press intrusion after he opposed calls by a major inquiry for laws to regulate newspapers.

Rowling, who told the Leveson Inquiry last year that journalists had repeatedly invaded her children's privacy, said that Cameron had let down people like her who had decided to testify about press misconduct.

"I am alarmed and dismayed that the prime minister appears to be backing away from assurances he made at the outset of the Leveson inquiry," the author said in a statement on the website of Hacked Off, a group for victims of press intrusion.

"Having taken David Cameron's assurances in good faith at the outset of the inquiry he set up, I am merely one among many who feel duped and angry in its wake."

Senior judge Brian Leveson said in his long-awaited 2000-page report released on Thursday that there should be a new independent self-regulatory body for the British press that is underpinned by new legislation.

Cameron, a Conservative, immediately warned that new laws could threaten press freedom - setting up a clash with the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister of his coalition government, Nick Clegg, and with the opposition Labour party.

"Mr Cameron said that he would implement sensible recommendations: it is time for him to honour that commitment and join the other political leaders by supporting the Leveson recommendations in their entirety," Rowling said.

The author, whose adult novel The Casual Vacancy received lukewarm reviews when it was released in September, was one of the most outspoken critics of the British press when she testified to the inquiry in November 2011.

She said one journalist slipped a letter into her daughter's schoolbag while another contacted a headmaster over untrue claims that her daughter upset friends by telling them that boy wizard Harry Potter died in the last book in the series.

Cameron set up the inquiry over allegations of phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World tabloid, and it heard from nearly 500 witnesses including celebrities, crime victims, media figures and politicians.

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Rowling 'dismayed' by British PM on press

Lisa Stansfield wins British Female presented by Mike Edwards (Jesus Jones) | BRIT Awards 1992
Mike Edwards (Jesus Jones) presented the BRIT Award for Best British Female to Lisa Stansfield at The BRIT Awards 1992From:thebritawardsViews:0 0ratingsTime:02:50More inMusic

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Lisa Stansfield wins British Female presented by Mike Edwards (Jesus Jones) | BRIT Awards 1992 - Video

The story of this label is the story of a scene weve never fully appreciated our position before but hearing these tracks together is so evocative of a time when everything changed, says Acid Jazz boss Eddie Piller.

The club and radio DJ (6Music, The Modcast), and Essex-born geezer, is gruffly mulling over the previous nights party a private bash for his labels silver anniversary and the 25 years before that. Its a ripe old age to have reached in the fickle music industry. Piller and label cohort (and savvy compiler) Dean Rudland have sealed Acid Jazzs flavours into a rich multi-disc box set spanning its classic funk and soul roots, its crossover hits from dapper signings such as The Brand New Heavies, The James Taylor Quartet, A Man Called Adam and Jamiroquai, its party shakers and remixes. Its not a conventional history lesson, more a snapshot of a pivotal point when British club culture morphed, embraced new forms and had far-reaching effects.

Acid jazz was also an offshoot of the rave scene around 1986/1987, as seasoned mod and jazz fan Piller, label co-founder Gilles Peterson and their fellow DJs began to discover Ibizas acid house sound.

Within six months of acid hysteria in London, I was getting bored with the music, admits Piller. We loved the clubs atmosphere but wanted to bring things back to the spark of the black music we loved.

This was a youth culture based accidentally on eclecticism, where youd hear a jazz track next to a Public Enemy record or a funky Led Zeppelin track. Gilles said, for a laugh: Why dont we call it acid jazz? It allowed us to start from year zero.

Acid jazz had a breadth of tastes, agrees Dean Rudland, who joined the labels team in the early 1990s (Peterson left to launch influential friendly rival label Talkin Loud in 1990). It was just a decade after punk but we went from soul and psych-rock to reggae and dance of all styles.

Around the turn of the 1990s, acid jazz really became a mainstream contender; Piller recalls DJing at intimate Sunday jazz dances (you couldnt even get a beer after 2pm but the atmosphere was stunning), while Rudland describes his shock at looking over The Brand New Heavies sold-out Brixton Academy show in 1992. The label nodded to transatlantic sounds and established fanbases across Europe and the Far East, yet it remained distinctly British in tone.

Thats what the British are best at: were cultural magpies, mixing other music and making it better for us, says Piller. Acid jazz was the latest conduit of that international outlook. It was a music thing that evolved into a fashion thing. It was also self-fulfilling; we started off listening to black music, young white kids such as Jamiroquai played their takes on it with a modern twist and that impacted around the world.

That youth culture also came with a hippyish ethos; Acid Jazz signings from Galliano and Mother Earth to Jamiroquai served dance grooves with a right-on stance. There was a big belief in 1970s right-on political theories, says Rudland. The scene had grown out of a left-wing clubbing movement. People would leave Sohos Wag Club on a Sunday night then join the protests outside the South African Embassy on the way to their night bus.

Admittedly, becoming an established trend posed its own challenges, as Piller points out. When some of our bands blew up internationally, suddenly everything was called acid jazz, he says.

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Acid jazz turns 25: The story of a scene