NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sean “Diddy” Combs used “violence and fear” to lead a criminal enterprise that helped him subject two of his former girlfriends to sex trafficking, a U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday in her closing argument at the music mogul’s trial. Combs, a former billionaire known for elevating hip-hop in American culture, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and two counts each of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted on all counts, the Bad Boy Records founder faces a minimum 15-year prison term and could be sentenced to life behind bars. Over more than six weeks of testimony in Manhattan federal court, jurors heard two of Combs’ former girlfriends testify that they took part in days-long, drug-fueled sex parties sometimes called “Freak Offs” with male sex workers while Combs watched, masturbated, and sometimes filmed. The jury saw hotel surveillance footage of Combs beating one of the women in a hallway, and heard Combs’ employees describe setting up hotel rooms and buying drugs for the performances. “The defendant used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted,” prosecutor Christy Slavik told jurors in her address. “He thought that his fame, wealth and power put him above the law.” The jury is expected to start deliberations either late on Friday or on Monday. Combs, a rapper and entrepreneur known for turning artists like Notorious B.I.G. and Usher into stars, has been held in federal lockup in Brooklyn since his September 2024 arrest. Both alleged victims – the rhythm and blues singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a woman known in court by the pseudonym Jane – testified Combs also threatened to cut off financial support or leak sex tapes when they complained about their treatment. Combs’ defense lawyers acknowledge that Combs was occasionally violent in domestic relationships, but have argued that his conduct did not amount to sex trafficking because the sex acts described by prosecutors were consensual. They are expected to deliver their closing argument on Friday. Ventura and Jane both testified that they, at times, took part in the performances because they loved Combs and wanted to make him happy, and defense lawyers have argued he had no way of knowing that they were not participating willingly. During her closing argument, Slavik brought jurors’ attention to text messages they had seen in which Jane told Combs she felt obligated to take part in the performances out of concern Combs would stop paying her rent. Slavik told jurors that to convict Combs, they only needed to find that one of the dozens of “Freak Offs” was the result of Combs’ coercion, and that he knew or should have known that Ventura or Jane participated unwillingly. “It doesn’t require them to say no, it doesn’t require them to try to run away,” Slavik said. Combs did not testify. Defendants in U.S. criminal cases are not required to present evidence, and judges instruct juries not to hold a refusal to testify against defendants. To win a guilty verdict, prosecutors must prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt. Legal experts said the jury would need to consider the prosecution’s evidence of Combs’ abuse against the defense’s evidence that the women consented to the performances in at least some instances. The 12-member jury must be unanimous to convict Combs on any of the counts. “The question is which narrative is going to hold more weight,” said Heather Cucolo, a professor at New York Law School. Slavik argued that Combs is guilty of racketeering conspiracy because his employees enabled and concealed his behavior. Combs’ lawyers have argued there was no conspiracy in part because his employees were not aware of anything improper about the sexual performances, and that any drugs they procured for their boss were for his personal use. (Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Michael Perry, Bill Berkrot and Chizu Nomiyama)

North Korea announced Wednesday that it would open a new beach resort on July 1, part of Kim Jong Un’s effort to revive the country’s suffering economy with tourism. The Korean Central News Agency claims the resort spans four kilometers of coastline in the city of Wosan, and can accommodate 20,000 people. Amenities include “sea-bathing service facilities and various sports, amusement, commercial and public catering facilities.” “Kim Jong Un, the great artist of creation and construction and the dear father … is ushering in a new era of prosperity and development,” KCNA said. The state-run news service reports Kim Jong Un took an active role in the construction of the resort, stating that it was “what he most wanted to do for the people,” and that it was “a prelude to a new era of our country’s tourism.” He reportedly expressed his desire that the resort be “without an equal in the world.” Attendees of the inaugural ceremony included top North Korean officials, as well as the Russian ambassador Alexander Matsegora and his staff, BBC reported. It’s unlikely that the resort will actually live up to Pyongyang’s description. The state media consistently praises Kim’s new pet building projects in the highest terms, when in reality, they lack basic functions or are unable to perform basic operations. In April, Kim announced the completion of a 10,000-unit apartment complex in Pyongyang, calling it a “beautiful and modern urban quarter” heralding “a new era of prosperity.” However, CNN noted during a visit that the elevators were inoperable due to electricity shortages. In 2014, a new Pyongyang apartment building collapsed due to structural defects. In May, Kim’s new 5,000-ton naval destroyer, which was supposed to be “North Korea’s most ambitious naval modernization effort in decades,” capsized during its launch. It is unclear whether the resort will be open to Westerners. North Korea shut down its borders in 2020, reopening them to Russians in 2023 and Westerners in February 2025 for a short period before closing them again in March. Currently, the United States prohibits citizens from travelling to North Korea due to the lack of diplomatic relations and “the continuing serious risk of arrest, long-term detention, and the threat of wrongful detention of U.S. nationals.” This tragically played out in 2016 when Otto Warmbier, a student at Virginia University, travelled to North Korea for a Christmas break trip. North Korea alleges he stole a propaganda poster, and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. Though U.S. diplomats tried to get him released, he was returned brain-dead a year and a half into his sentence. The resort is “unlikely to be a major draw for most Western tourists,” says Rowan Beard, co-founder of exotic tour company Young Pioneer Tours. “Key sites like Pyongyang, the DMZ, and other brutalist or communist landmarks will continue to be the main highlights for international visitors once broader tourism resumes.”

Now that a critical mass of voters in our largest city have decided to support a socialist Muslim rapper from Uganda who openly despises every founding principle of this country, you’re hearing a lot of predictions about what New York might look like in a few years. They all aim to answer the question: What happens when you eliminate the police department, nationalize the grocery stores, prevent law-abiding citizens from owning firearms, shield millions of illegal aliens from deportation, force taxpayers to fund sex-changes for children, and prevent landlords from raising rents? Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. You could show this platform to even the most dedicated commissar in the Soviet Union, and he’d tell you to go easy on the Karl Marx and touch some grass. There’s no doubt that New York will be rendered completely uninhabitable if any significant portion of this platform is ever implemented. But all of the discussion about Zohran Mamdani and his platform, as deranged as it is, ultimately misses the point. Everyone knows that implementing communism is going to be a disaster. There’s no need to belabor that fact. What’s a little less obvious is that everything that’s about to happen to New York is the inevitable result of large-scale demographic change caused by legal migration. Yes, legal migration. For all of the time we spend discussing the disastrous consequences of allowing illegal aliens to flood into this country, the fact remains that most foreign nationals don’t need to sneak across the border. Instead, over the past several generations, our government has let them in. That’s not to say that all legal migration always has the same effects everywhere, in every case. More than half of the residents of Miami were born outside this country, for example. Most of them came from Cuba. And no one would confuse Miami for a dysfunctional socialist dystopia. Miami just overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the last election. After years of supporting Democrats like Hillary Clinton as recently as 2016, Miami is now a reliably conservative place. And there’s an obvious reason for that: People fleeing Cuba have no desire to see the same socialist policies implemented in their new country. They see exactly what Democrats are trying to do, and they reject it. But New York City, where nearly half of the residents are now foreign-born, is a very different story. That’s because the vast majority of “lawful” migrants to New York are not coming from Cuba. Instead, they’re coming from places like Guinea, Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti, Senegal, and Colombia. Migration from these countries has been a disaster for the United States. Several of these countries are in Africa, with populations that are around 98% Muslim, which is why the Muslim population in this country has exploded since the 1990s. X/Twitter. @fentasyl You can see the data there. It’s a very sudden and sharp increase in the Muslim population in just a generation or so. And as a result of this increase, as of the latest count a few years ago, New York currently has well over a million Muslims, or roughly 15% of the electorate. And for the most part, these Muslim migrants are fleeing their countries for economic reasons, not ideological ones. They have no desire to assimilate here. They don’t want to suddenly embrace any of our values. They simply want to take advantage of our economy. But we shouldn’t be surprised by what we’re seeing in New York — or what we’re about to see. That’s because this same exact story has played out in several other major cities in the West already. Here’s what London looked like in 1961: Wikimedia Commons. London ethnic demographics from 1961 to 2021. It was more than 97% white. And it stayed that way for a while. By the 1970s, whites still made up more than 90% of the population in London. As of 1991, whites were down to 80%. Then, very rapidly, demographics began to change. By 2001, whites were only 59% of London’s population. The numbers continued to drop through 2021, as you can see here. This is the 2021 pie graph: X/Twitter. @diland07_/@TonyDowson5 Now white people make up well under 40% of London’s population. It’s a staggering decline, and it’s a very close parallel to what’s happened in New York City. In 1950, New York was something like 90% white. Then, from 1970 to 1980, New York’s white population dropped by more than 20%. Now it’s down to around 30%. London’s transformation was a little more gradual, but it’s been just as stark. And keep in mind, as this is happening, white people aren’t flooding into African countries and taking them over. There aren’t millions of British citizens storming into Senegal and winning pivotal elections over there. This is a one-way surge of migration. Most of it’s been lawful. And the effects on London have been catastrophic. Here’s just one of many indicators. In London, they don’t have “housing projects.” Instead, they have “council houses.” That’s the name for government housing for poor people. If you had to guess, what percentage of these “council houses” are occupied by foreign nationals who aren’t paying any taxes whatsoever? As it turns out, according to a recent estimate, the number is 48%. Here’s what that looks like: @juice8882 Yes, one-half of the government housing in London — which British citizens pay for, and which is intended for British citizens in a time of emergency — is currently occupied by foreigners. In the borough of Brent, which is in northwest London, the number is 61%. The government won’t do anything about this because it’s been captured as well.  The vast majority of the parliament wants to see more migration, not less. At the moment only nine of the 75 members of parliament from London are conservatives. London of course also has a Muslim mayor. Within the past few years, a lot of other British towns and cities have followed suit. Oldham, Oxford, Sheffield, Brighton, Rotherham, and Blackburn have all had Muslim mayors in recent years. Here’s what some of them look like: The Mayor of Rotherham for 2025-2026 is Councillor Rukhsana Ismail. Rotherham.gov.uk Safiya Saeed has been inaugurated as the new Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Sheffield at Sheffield City Council’s Annual General Meeting. sheffield.gov.uk Mohammed Asaduzzaman was the first Bangladeshi Muslim mayor of Brighton and Hove, a city in the United Kingdom. 2023 to 2024. Brighton-hove.gov.uk It’s not exactly a very diverse group. But if you question the wisdom of importing so many foreign nationals that your government becomes unrecognizable, then in London, you’ll be thrown in prison. Two years ago, in East London,  a man was arrested for complaining about the number of Palestinian flags in his neighborhood. He said:  “Look at this cr*p here. ..You let them into the country and this the s**** they come up with.” Within hours, the police announced that they had arrested the man for committing a, “racially aggravated Section 5 public order offence.” They’ve also imprisoned several other British citizens for the Orwellian crimes of “publishing written material to stir up racial hatred” and “false communication.” As we discussed recently, one of those citizens was a mother who was just sentenced to several years in prison for a mean tweet about migrant hotels. If you complain about any of this — or demonstrate publicly in favor of these political prisoners — then huge numbers of Muslims will gather in the city center in London in a show of force. That’s what happened recently in London following anti-immigrant demonstrations, as documented by Andy Ngo. Watch: Welcome to Islamic England: Just weeks after hundreds were arrested and prosecuted over riots against mass migration in the UK, large crowds of Muslims gathered in London for an Islamic procession through the city center. Watch my full video: https://t.co/RfqyShQQqD pic.twitter.com/a6muiOpbMp — Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) September 3, 2024 Credit: Andy Ngo You can pretty much pick any major European city, and you’ll see similar footage. It’s getting more and more common, as the foreigners keep coming. Take Paris, for example. More than 40% of the residents of Paris under the age of 20 currently report having at least one parent who wasn’t born in France. And to put it mildly, these foreign nationals aren’t doing great things for Paris’ tourism industry. Foreigners commit something like 70% of all violent robberies in Paris. They commit more than 90% of thefts and 60% of sexual assaults on public transit. And they’re responsible for nearly 80% of solved rape cases in Paris. As Nate Hochmann has pointed out, you’ll find similar statistics in Switzerland. Roughly 30% of Switzerland’s population is foreign born. And yet, they’re responsible for vastly more crime than their demographics would suggest. Foreigners are responsible for 45% of homicides and 47% of rapes. Migrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan are three times more likely to be convicted of a crime, compared to the native population. Africans are more than 5 times more likely. It’s the same story in Austria. Let’s put that data on the screen. This has been compiled from various official sources: Reddit.com. r/dataisbeautiful/briansteel420. Data Sources: https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/, https://bundeskriminalamt.at/, Created with Python As you can see, Afghanistan is very highly represented in the murder category. They really punch above their weight there. Meanwhile the Polish are pretty well behaved. But then you have places like Serbia and Slovenia who are statistically overrepresented in total crimes. All in all, foreigners account for roughly 40% of all crime in Austria. The same is true in Spain, where foreign nationals make up less than 15% of the population, but are responsible for half the armed robberies and 40% of the rapes. And again, many of these so-called “migrants” are perfectly legal. Here’s a story from just the other day, in The Washington Post: “As Trump shuts out migrants, Spain opens its doors and fuels economic growth. … … A landmark bill now being negotiated in the Congress of Deputies could grant legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands [of migrants] — most of them Spanish-speakers from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America. Those newcomers often enjoy visa-free travel to Spain, even as Madrid controversially works with Morocco, Mauritania and other countries to block irregular arrivals from the African coast, though prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also called for tolerance toward migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa.” Yes, they’re calling for “tolerance” towards “irregular arrivals from the African coast,” which has to be one of the better euphemisms for “foreign invader” that you’ll ever hear. But it’s a useful illustration of the broader point, which is that all of this violence and social decay is intentional. It takes different forms in all of these countries. They all have their own version of “Zohran Mamdani.” But the end result is the same, in every case. As native populations are replaced by foreign nationals from Africa and Central America, countries become unrecognizable and ultimately uninhabitable. The process by which these migrants arrive isn’t particularly important. Illegal immigration isn’t the only problem, or even the main problem. Many of the vandals who are destroying Western civilization are walking in through the front door. That’s why, before more American cities start looking like New York and Los Angeles, we need an immediate ban on virtually all foreign migration — including “legal” migration — into this country. Countries like France, Britain, Switzerland and Austria have sent very clear signals that we shouldn’t follow in their path. We can either pay attention to those signals, or one decaying metropolis at a time, we can suffer the same fate.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams took a shot at his self-described democratic socialist opponent on Thursday as Adams launched a fierce reelection bid as an independent. “I’m so proud to be here, to say to the people of the City of New York, I am seeking reelection to be your mayor of the City of New York!” Adams told a cheering crowd from the steps of City Hall on Thursday. Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2021, but he is running as an independent in the wake of low approval ratings and federal corruption and bribery charges that were dropped in February. Zohran Mamdani, 33, is the member of the Democratic Socialists of America who stunned Democrats this week when he declared victory in the party’s mayoral primary for New York City on Tuesday. He is a New York state assemblyman representing Queens. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo had been expected to walk away handily with the Democratic nomination, but now he, too, is considering running as an independent. “This is a city not of socialism,” Adams said Thursday. “I’ve been to socialist countries. This is a city where you can come as a dishwasher, and you can own a chain of restaurants. This is a city where you can be a cab driver and then become a doctor. This is a city where you can go from homelessness to building houses. This is a city where you can be a young person who is dyslexic, a young person who was rejected, and eventually to be elected the mayor of the City of New York,” the mayor told the crowd. “There’s no dignity in someone giving you everything for free. There’s dignity in giving you a job, so you can provide for your family and the opportunities that you deserve. This is not a city of handouts. This is a city of hands up. We’re going to lift up the City of New York,” Adams said. Mamdani has proposed expensive policies including rent freezes, government-run grocery stores, free buses, free city universities, free child care, increasing New York City’s minimum wage to $30 an hour, and investing $65 million in transgender drugs and surgeries. Adams has already directly attacked Mamdani. “He’s a snake-oil salesman,” Adams said of Mamdani on Fox News on Wednesday. “He would say and do anything to get elected.” “I’m not interested in Twitter politics. I’m interested in getting the trash picked up. I’m not interested in slogans. I’m interested in the solutions. I don’t work with special interests. I work for the people,” Adams said. “I wasn’t born into power and privilege. I was born into struggle. Always knew what struggle was, and if you’re going to be a mayor of people who are going through a lot, you must be a human being who has gone through a lot.” Protesters across the park attempted to disrupt Adams’ announcement rally, shouting and calling him a “criminal.” “You can call me all the names you want, but I’m going to answer to only one: Mayor Adams,” Adams said. Adams currently controls New York City’s $115 billion budget and 330,000 city government workers. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, the volunteer group dedicated to crime prevention on New York’s subways and streets, won the Republican nomination for mayor. The general election for mayor will be held on November 4.

Bill Moyers, a key member of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s inner circle and later a guiding force in American journalism during more than 40 years in public television, has died at the age of 91, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. At a time when critics said broadcast news was becoming fluffier and shallower, Moyers pursued a thoughtful, in-depth approach, bringing an intellectual perspective delivered in a soothing Texas twang. He took an activist approach to the job and The Nation magazine called him a “radical presence” in broadcast news, which his critics said was proof that the Public Broadcasting Service network should not get federal funding. Starting in 1971, Moyers had regular shows on public television, including “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” “Now With Bill Moyers,” “Moyers on America” and “Moyers and Company,” as well limited-run series on the U.S. Constitution, faith and mythology. Among the other topics he explored at length on his shows were poverty, racism, money in politics, climate change, income inequality, the shortcomings of the media and what he called the “pirates and predators of Wall Street.” “He used the tools of the documentarian to wield a velvet sledgehammer, bludgeoning corporate polluters and government ne’er-do-wells with precision and grace,” New York Times media columnist David Carr wrote in 2004. Billy Don Moyers was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, and grew up mostly in Marshall, Texas. A dutiful, energetic overachiever, he dedicated himself to school, church and work, including a job at the local newspaper. His early adult life would be a tug of war between the pulpit, the press and politics. He was attending North Texas State College when he first went to Washington in 1954 as a summer intern in the office of then-Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson. When he returned to school, transferring to the University of Texas, he worked on the student newspaper and Johnson made sure he had a job at the Austin television station owned by his wife, “Lady Bird” Johnson. He also pursued the ministry, becoming ordained as a Baptist minister in 1954 and earning a master of divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1959. Johnson’s legendary powers of persuasion eventually prevailed and Moyers became an aide during Johnson’s unsuccessful presidential run against John F. Kennedy in 1960. After the election, Kennedy chose Moyers to be assistant director of his newly established Peace Corps. After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and Johnson became president, Moyers moved to the White House. He was only 30 years old but became one of the most important people in Washington – a duty-bound, deal-making extension of his boss. He served as Johnson’s press secretary, adviser, speech writer and congressional go-between. In 1965, he appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time, which called him “LBJ’s Young Man in Charge of Everything.” Moyers was a driving force in forging Johnson’s Great Society legislation – laws and programs that included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the “war on poverty,” Medicaid and Medicare, conservation and aid to education. “He taught me so much about politics and about what’s possible, about human behavior, about the consequences of decisions,” Moyers said of Johnson in a 1989 Texas Monthly interview. “At the same time, he was a driven man, a man who could consume you.” Critics said Moyers sometimes got his hands dirty on Johnson’s behalf. He was known to leak stories and plant questions with the press corps in advance of news conferences. The Washington Post reported that he ordered the FBI to search for gay people in the administration, and CBS correspondent Morley Safer said in his autobiography that Moyers also had a role in the FBI’s bugging of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Moyers left Johnson’s service in 1967 – partly because he no longer believed in his boss’s war in Vietnam – to become publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York daily. The newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership, but he left in 1970 after the publisher deemed him too liberal. Moyers then went on a bus ride around the country that he chronicled in the book “Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country.” He made his move to PBS in 1971 with “Bill Moyers Journal” and in 1986 he and his wife, Judith, started their own production company to make shows for public television stations. Moyers had stints with the major networks – as a correspondent and commentator with CBS in the 1970s, and NBC and MSNBC in the 1990s – but greatly preferred the freedom and depth that public television offered. Moyers and his wife had three children, William Cope, Alice Suzanne, and John Davidson. (Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Rosalba O’Brien)