AMBASSADOR'S DAUGHTER FALLS OUT OF 25 STORY APARTMENT WINDOW

The 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Thailand slipped off her shoes and climbed out onto a window ledge Friday at a Manhattan apartment before plummeting more than 20 stories to her death, police said.

Nicole John fell at about 4:15 a.m. from the top floor of the 25-story Herald Towers, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Her body landed on a third-floor ledge, a camera nearby. It's not clear whether she had been trying to take a photo when she died, and her death is believed to be accidental.

The girl's father, Eric John, was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand in 2007.

John, an incoming freshman at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, was thought to have been drinking. Ilan Nassimi, 25, who rents the apartment, was arrested later Friday on charges of giving alcohol to a minor, police said. He was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan court and it wasn't clear if he had a lawyer.

Police say John had been out with partying with friends at Tenjune, a club in the trendy Meatpacking District, before the group headed back to Nassimi's apartment at West 34th Street near the Empire State Building at around 2 a.m. Friday.

Police believe the apartment might have been cleaned up by the time investigators arrived, but they think about a dozen people were there and had been drinking.

The medical examiner was scheduled to perform an autopsy and toxicology tests Saturday.

John had graduated from the International School in Bangkok and had a fake Brazilian ID that gave her age as 23 or 24.

Pages from a blog believed to be hers portray a smart, artistic young girl with a wild streak, eager to begin college. "Reading. Partying. Lucid dreaming. Night terrors. Deep eyes. Good food" she wrote as a description of herself on a Tumblr site, a hodgepodge of quotes, photos and journal entries.

CHINA IS URGING BOYCOTT OF AUSTRALIA'S, AND BRAZIL 'S IRON ORE

A Chinese industrial group has urged domestic steel companies to stop buying iron ore from the world's top three miners in protest of an alleged price monopoly, state media said Monday.

The China Iron and Steel Association has asked domestic steel firms and traders not to import iron ore from Australia's Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton and Brazil's Vale for two months, the China Net, a government news website said.

China has 75 million tons of iron ore reserves and production of the resource by Chinese mines was up by 18 percent year-on-year during the first two months of 2010, the report said.