Jury selection is set to begin Monday in New York in the blockbuster trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who dramatically fell from grace following his incarceration on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.Combs, 55, has been awaiting his day in court since last year on accusations of leading a crime ring that prosecutors say coerced victims into drug-fueled sex parties using threats and violence.Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, insisting that any sex acts were consensual. At a recent hearing, his attorney Marc Agnifilo offered a preview of his team’s defense by describing the artist’s free-wheeling “swinger” lifestyle.The prosecution said in court it had offered Combs a plea deal — the specifics were not disclosed — but that he had rejected it.If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in ushering hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison.Over the decades, the artist — who has gone by various stage names including Puff Daddy and P Diddy — amassed vast wealth for his work in music but also his ventures in the liquor industry.The jury selection start date is notably the first Monday in May — which annually marks New York’s Met Gala, a glittering celebrity charity bash where Combs was once a red carpet mainstay.Just two years ago, he posed for the cameras at that event uptown — but on Monday, he will be in downtown in federal court, as the panel of citizens tasked with determining his fate face a barrage of questions from lawyers on both sides.Jury selection is expected to wrap up in about a week, with opening statements tentatively scheduled for May 12.Combs was arrested by federal agents in New York in September 2024 and denied bail multiple times. He is being held at Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, a facility plagued by complaints of vermin and decay as well as violence.High-profile inmates there have included disgraced R&B star R. Kelly, Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur convicted of fraud.During pre-trial hearings, Combs has appeared in court looking remarkably aged, his once jet-black, styled coif now overgrown and gray.- ‘Freak-offs’ -Central to the case is Combs’s relationship with his former girlfriend, the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who is expected to be a key trial witness.A disturbing surveillance video from 2016, which was aired by CNN last year, shows Combs physically assaulting Ventura at a hotel.Prosecutors say the encounter occurred following one of the “freak-offs” they argue were a feature of his pattern of abuse.The so-called “freak-offs” were coercive, drug-fueled sexual marathons including sex workers that were sometimes filmed, according to the indictment.It’s unclear how much of the CNN video will be shown to jurors as evidence in court — the footage’s quality has been a sticking point between the opposing legal teams — but Judge Arun Subramanian has ruled that at least some of it will be admissible.Combs has no major convictions but has long been trailed by allegations of physical assault, dating back well into the 1990s.The floodgates against the Grammy winner opened after Ventura filed a civil suit alleging Combs subjected her to more than a decade of coercion by physical force and drugs as well as a 2018 rape.That 2023 suit was quickly settled out of court, but a string of similarly lurid sexual assault claims from both women and men followed — and the federal criminal indictment dropped after a raid of his luxury properties in Miami and Los Angeles.The indictment includes a charge of racketeering conspiracy, the federal statute known by its acronym RICO that was once seen as primarily targeting the mafia but in recent years has also been wielded frequently in cases of sexual abuse.It allows government attorneys to project a long view of criminal activity rather than prosecuting isolated sex crimes, and requires proving “predicate acts” — the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.In 2021, it was successfully used to convict R. Kelly, the fallen R&B hitmaker who was sentenced to more than 30 years of prison including for child sex crimes.Industry watchers are also monitoring Combs’s case as a potential inflection point in the music world which, beyond the case of Kelly, has largely evaded the #MeToo reckoning that has rocked Hollywood.

Apple on Thursday reported first-quarter profit above expectations but warned that US tariffs could cost the company and were disrupting its supply chain.Apple expects US tariffs to cost $900 million in the current quarter, even though their impact was “limited” at the start of this year, chief executive Tim Cook said on an earnings call.Cook said he expected “a majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin,” adding that Apple’s products were exempt from Trump’s most severe reciprocal tariffs for now.”We are not able to precisely estimate the impact of tariffs, as we are uncertain of potential future actions prior to the end of the quarter,” Cook said. “Assuming the current global tariff rates, policies and applications do not change for the balance of the quarter and no new tariffs are added, we estimate the impact to add $900 million to our costs.”Tit-for-tat exchanges have seen hefty US levies imposed on China, with Beijing setting retaliatory barriers on US imports.High-end tech goods such as smartphones, semiconductors and computers received a temporary reprieve from US tariffs.Although completed smartphones are exempted from Trump’s tariffs for now, not all components that go into Apple devices are spared, said independent tech analyst Rob Enderle.”The more components are crossing borders, the most cost flows through to the device,” Enderle explained.”In the end, this all adds up to an expensive mess,” he said of the tariff situation.Canalys research manager Le Xuan Chiew said Apple built up inventory ahead of the tariffs going into effect.”With ongoing fluctuations in reciprocal tariff policies, Apple is likely to further shift US-bound production to India to reduce exposure to future risks,” he said.While iPhones produced in mainland China still account for the majority of US shipments, production in India ramped up toward the end of the quarter, according to Canalys.Cook said Vietnam would be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPod products sold in the US.China will continue to be where most Apple products are made for sale outside the US, he insisted.”What we learned some time ago was that having everything in one location had too much risk with it and so we have, over time with certain parts of the supply chain, opened up new sources of supply,” Cook told analysts.”You could see that kind of thing continuing in the future.”- Sales slip in China -Apple’s revenue of $95.4 billion in the recently ended quarter was driven by iPhone sales, with the company reporting $24.8 billion profit for the quarter.”Apple saw strong growth in the Americas and Japan,” said CFRA Research equity analyst Angelo Zino, noting part of the reason could have been ramped up orders to get ahead of US tariffs.”China revenue declined 3 percent, but the hope was for growth as subsidies were put in place to help stimulate demand in the region.”Apple shares were down more than three percent in after-market trading.”The real story is in Tim Cook’s plans to navigate these unprecedented trade challenges,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.Apple’s plan to shift manufacturing to India “raises pressing questions about execution timeline, capacity limitations, and potentially unavoidable cost increases that will shrink margins, be passed to consumers, or have a mix of consequences,” Bourne added.

Demonstrators across the United States gathered Thursday for May Day rallies against Donald Trump, protesting his administration’s policies and attempts to push the limits of presidential power.The protests were organized by a loose network of left-leaning activist groups, which said the rallies were taking place in more than 1,000 locations.Hundreds to thousands of protesters gathered in many of the nation’s largest cities from New York to Chicago and Los Angeles, while a number of smaller towns also had demonstrators turn out in their streets.”We believe that the ultra wealthy are trying to take over the country and suppress the working class and the middle class,” Shane Riddle told AFP outside the White House in Washington.The 54-year-old, who works for an education union in the eastern state of Virginia, fears the United States “could turn into an authoritarian type of government if our citizens don’t stand up to this president and its billionaires allies.”Various rallies held across the capital brought together hundreds of people, with similar turnout in New York, while several thousand demonstrators congregated in Los Angeles, AFP photographers on the scene observed.In Houston, Texas activist Bernard Sampson denounced the administration’s rapid deportation of undocumented immigrants, defending the migrants as the people who “work in your restaurants or the people that build your homes.”- Americans ‘are angry’ -The protests come as Democratic elected officials have struggled to find an effective strategy against Trump’s far-reaching shake-up, and with fairly minimal mass mobilization by opposition protesters.”I feel like I haven’t heard anything from the party at all,” Izabela Cabrera, a 22-year-old student told AFP in Washington.”Clearly the American people are angry, and clearly we’re trying to fight for change,” she said, “but I don’t think the Democratic Party is really grasping at that right now.”The chief organizer of Thursday’s protests was the group 50501. Its name is meant to represent 50 protests in 50 states and one movement and it has been behind previous calls to demonstrate.A rally in Philadelphia organized by the AFL-CIO, America’s largest union federation, was headlined by leftist Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been touring the country for weeks to mobilize opposition.The demonstration, titled “For the Workers, Not the Billionaires,” alludes in part to the exceedingly wealthy individuals in Trump’s administration, including Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, who heads the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” cost-cutting effort.”Today in America, one man, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 52 percent of American households,” Sanders said.At May Day rallies across the globe, from France to the Philippines, anti-Trump themes were also visible.May Day, which is celebrated in many countries as International Workers’ Day, is not a public holiday in the United States, which marks Labor Day in September.