A second former assistant to Sean “Diddy” Combs testified Thursday in the music mogul’s federal trial, alledging he committed acts of violence against her and others, including sexual assault.Appearing under the pseudonym Mia to protect her identity, the assistant addressed jurors on the stand in the federal trial of the once-famed rapper, producer and entrepreneur who faces racketeering and sex trafficking charges that could put him in prison for life.Combs’s case revolves around his relationship with his former girlfriend, singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who earlier in the trial detailed years of alleged abuse and coercive, drug-fueled sex marathons known as “freak-offs.”- ‘He’s going to kill me’ -Mia said she was close to the “Diddy-Cassie” couple and recalled several episodes of violence.She sounded breathless at times as she told the court about seeing Ventura with “busted lips,” “bruises” and “a black eye.”Combs would tell Mia to “go take care of her,” referring to Ventura, adding that “we were not allowed” to go out until her injuries healed enough to conceal.The prosecutors asked Mia about an incident during a holiday trip she took with the couple in 2012.One night, she said she was woken up by Ventura running into her room, “screaming for help.”She recalled Ventura had said: “He’s gonna kill me,” referring to Combs.”We started pushing furniture in front of the door,” Mia said, describing how Combs was “screaming and banging” on the other side.The former assistant, like previous witnesses, said hotel rooms would be prepared for the “freak-offs” and she would be responsible for the clean-up.Working for the hip-hop mogul could be exciting, she said, but was often degrading.”He treated me sometimes like his best friend, a working partner, sometimes I was a worthless piece of crap,” Mia said.- ‘I just froze’ -She also accused Combs of violent acts against her.”He has thrown things at me. He has thrown me against the wall. He has thrown me into a pool. He has thrown an ice bucket on my head. He has slammed my arm into a door,” she said.”He has also sexually assaulted me.” She said Combs subjected her to “sporadic” instances of sexual violence, including at the artist’s 40th birthday party at the Plaza Hotel in New York and his private residence in Los Angeles.”I just froze, I didn’t react, terrified and confused,” Mia said about one of the assaults.”He was the boss or the king, very powerful person,” she said.”This is years and years before social media, Me Too, or any sort of example where someone had stood up successfully to someone in power such as him,” she added.Mia said the rapper held sway over the police, describing how she herself was pulled over one day in LA for speeding.But when she called Combs and handed the phone to the female officer, “she started laughing and saying like ‘oh my God, Puff Daddy, I love you,’… and then she let me go.”Mia’s testimony is scheduled to continue on Friday.

From a delicate 13th-century clay figure to self-portraits by photographer Samuel Fosso, New York’s Metropolitan Museum reopens its African art collection on Saturday, exploring the “complexity” of the past and looking to the present. After a four-year renovation with a $70 million price tag, the reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing comes amid heated debate over the representation of cultural diversity in Western museums and the return of works to their countries of origin.The reopening should be “an opportunity to recognize that the achievements of artists in this part of the world (sub-Saharan Africa) are equal to those of other major world traditions,” Alisa LaGamma, the Met’s curator for African art, told AFP.In a spacious gallery bathed in light, visitors are greeted by a monumental Dogon sculpture — “a heroic figure, likely a priest,” LaGamma explained.Next to it sits a clay sculpture of a curled body from the ancient city of Djenne-Djenno, in present-day Mali, which is believed to be one of the oldest pieces in the collection, dating back to the 13th century.- ‘Complex history’ -The exhibit does not present the works of sub-Saharan Africa as a single unit, but in chapters to better distinguish between the various cultures.”We don’t want people to oversimplify their understanding of an incredibly complex history,” LaGamma said.”There are over 170 different cultures represented among the 500 works of African art on display,” she pointed out.”That gives you a sense of how many different stories there are to tell in this presentation.”The museum wing, which also displays arts of Oceania and the “ancient Americas” — prior to European colonization — opened in 1982 after former Republican vice president and philanthropist Nelson Rockefeller donated his monumental collection. It is named for his son.”This is a collection that was formed essentially following independence in a lot of what were new nations across sub-Saharan Africa,” LaGamma said.”It doesn’t have necessarily the heavy weight of a collection that was formed under colonialism,” she said, hinting at the pressure faced by many museums to respond to questions about the origins of works on display. – ‘African Spirits’ -A third of the works shown here were newly acquired. The museum was thus able to benefit from a donation of thousands of photographs from the renowned Arthur Walther collection.Among the vast trove of pieces donated is a 2008 series of self-portraits entitled “African Spirits” by Fosso, a Cameroonian-Nigerian photographer.Among Africa’s leading photographers, Fosso poses as major figures in African independence and civil rights struggles, from Congolese independence leader and first prime minister Patrice Lumumba, to Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X.Through around a dozen films directed by Ethiopian-American artist Sosena Solomon, visitors can also explore iconic cultural sites across the continent, like Tsodilo rock paintings in Botswana, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela and Tigray in Ethiopia, and the tombs of Buganda kings at Kasubi in Uganda.”In an art museum like this, it is important that rock paintings should be reflected,” said Phillip Segadika, chief curator for archeology and monuments at Botswana’s national museum, in residence at the Met to participate in the project.”It tells us that what we are seeing today, whether it’s in European art, medieval art, whatever — it has a history, it also has an antiquity.”

President Donald Trump made no pretense at hiding his irritation this week when he was asked by a reporter about “TACO” — an acronym that has been gaining traction among Wall Street traders who believe that “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The so-called “TACO Theory” was coined by Robert Armstrong, a Financial Times writer seeking to underline the US president’s tendency to backtrack on policies when they start to roil the markets. Investors have come to realize that the US administration “does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,” the journalist concluded.”This is the TACO Theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.”Armstrong was writing earlier this month, after stocks had just rebounded sharply on Trump’s announcement of a pause in massive tariffs imposed on the rest of the world by the Republican leader. Worsening the whiplash, Trump announced last week that tariffs of 50 percent on imports from the European Union would come into force on June 1 — but two days later declared a pause until July 9. – ‘It’s called negotiation’ -At the heart of Trump’s flip-flops is an acute sensitivity for the ups and downs of market trading that he honed as a brash New York property developer and business magnate in the 1980s. During his first term in office, a sharp reaction on Wall Street could sometimes be the only way to change the billionaire’s mind. Beyond the columns of the Financial Times, the “TACO Theory” is having a viral moment, and has entered the lexicon of investors who see it as more than just a snarky in-joke, according to analysts. “TACO trading strategy gets attention again,” blared the headline on a podcast released Monday by John Hardy, head of macroeconomic strategy at Danish investment bank Saxo.  The phrase eventually found its way back to the 78-year-old president, who furiously denied on Wednesday that he was backing down in the face of stock market turmoil. “I chicken out? I’ve never heard that… don’t ever say what you said, that’s a nasty question,” the mercurial tycoon thundered, rounding in the journalist who had asked for his take on the expression. Far from caving, Trump said he was merely engaging in the high-stakes cut and thrust of international dealmaking, he snarled — adding, with a sardonic edge: “It’s called negotiation.”For Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers, the TACO Theory is a “nonpolitical way of the markets calling the administration’s bluff.”- Reaction -Sam Burns, an analyst at Mill Street Research, told AFP he has noticed a new equanimity in Wall Street’s reaction to each new tariff announcement, with traders’ responses initially “much larger and more direct.”Where they once convulsed markets, Trump’s tariff talk now tends to be viewed as “easily reversible or not reliable,” said Burns, and investors are accordingly more willing to ignore the instinct to act rashly.This new calm was evident among traders at the New York Stock Exchange who held steady in the face of Trump’s EU tariff threats, and again when they did not overreact to successive court rulings blocking and then temporarily reinstating most of the tariffs. But Hardy, the Saxo analyst, warns that the vagaries of Trump’s day-to-day announcements should not distract from the protectionist bent of his broader political outlook. “Trump might ‘chicken out’ at times,” Hardy wrote in a recent commentary on Saxo’s website.”But the underlying policy moves are for real, and a deadly serious shift in US economic statecraft and industrial policy that is a response to massive instabilities that have been growing for years.”

Elon Musk stormed into US politics as President Donald Trump’s chainsaw-brandishing sidekick. Four turbulent months later it’s the tech tycoon himself on the chopping block.Trump hailed Musk as “terrific” as he announced that they would hold a joint press conference on Friday as the South African-born magnate leaves the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump said on his Truth Social network on Thursday.But the warm words could not hide the open frustrations that Musk, the world’s richest man, had expressed in recent weeks about his controversial cost-cutting role for the world’s most powerful man.Once a fixture at the Republican president’s side, dressed in t-shirts and MAGA baseball caps, Musk had shown growing disillusionment with the obstacles faced by DOGE even as it cut a brutal swath through the US bureaucracy.He leaves far short of his original goal of saving $2 trillion dollars, with The Atlantic magazine calculating he saved just one thousandth of that, despite tens of thousands of people losing their jobs.Instead he will focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses, as well as his goal of colonizing Mars.- Rocket-like rise -It was all very different at first, as the 53-year-old Musk rose through Trump’s orbit as rapidly as one of his rockets — though they have been known to blow up now and again. Musk was the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign and the pair bonded over right-wing politics and a desire to root out what they believed was a wasteful “deep state.”DOGE was jokingly named after a “memecoin,” but it was no joke. Young tech wizards who slept in the White House complex shuttered whole government departments. Foreign countries found their aid cut off.A shades-wearing Musk brandished a chainsaw at a conservative event, boasting of how easy it was to save money, and separately made what appeared to be a Nazi salute. Soon the man critics dubbed the “co-president” was constantly at Trump’s side.The tycoon appeared with his young son X on his shoulders during his first press conference in the Oval Office. He attended cabinet meetings. He and Trump rode on Air Force One and Marine One together. They watched cage fights together.Many wondered how long two such big egos could coexist.But Trump himself remained publicly loyal to the man he called a “genius.”One day, the president even turned the White House into a pop-up Tesla dealership after protesters targeted Musk’s electric car business.- ‘Got into fights’ -Yet the socially awkward tech magnate also struggled to get a grip on the realities of US politics.The beginning of the end “started (in) mid-March when there were several meetings in the Oval Office and in the cabinet room where basically Elon Musk got into fights,” Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution told AFP.One shouting match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could reportedly be heard throughout the West Wing. Musk publicly called Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Nor did Musk’s autocratic style and Silicon Valley creed of “move fast and break things” work well in Washington.The impact on Musk’s businesses also began to hit home. A series of Space X launches ended in fiery failures, while Tesla shareholders fumed.Musk started musing about stepping back, saying that “DOGE is a way of life, like Buddhism” that would carry on without him.Finally, Musk showed the first signs of distance from Trump himself, saying he was “disappointed” in Trump’s recent mega spending bill. Musk also said he would pull back from spending time on politics.The end came, appropriately, in a post by Musk on Wednesday on the X network, which he bought and then turned into a megaphone for his right-wing politics.But Musk’s departure might not be the end of the story, said Kamarck.”I think they genuinely like each other and I think Musk has a lot of money that he can contribute to campaigns if he is so moved. I think there will be a continued relation,” she said.