A federal appeals court judge has ruled to keep Sean “Diddy” Combs locked up while he makes a third bid for bail in his sex trafficking case, which is slated to go to trial in May.

In a decision filed Friday, Circuit Judge William J. Nardini denied the hip-hop mogul’s immediate release from jail while a three-judge panel weighs his bail request.

Combs’ lawyers appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 30 after two judges rejected his release.

Combs, 54, has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest on charges that he used his “power and prestige” as a music star to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “Freak Offs.”

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges alleging he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

At a bail hearing three weeks ago, a judge rejected the defense’s $50 million bail proposal that would’ve allowed the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer to be placed under house arrest at his Florida mansion with GPS monitoring and strict limits on visitors.

Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr., who has since recused himself from the case, said that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that Combs is a danger to the community. He said “no condition or set of conditions” could guard against the risk of Combs obstructing the investigation or threatening or harming witnesses.

In their appeal, Combs’ lawyers argued that the judge had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric” and ordered Combs detained for “purely speculative reasons.”

“Indeed, hardly a risk of flight, he is a 54-year-old father of seven, a U.S. citizen, an extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, and philanthropist, and one of the most recognizable people on earth,” the lawyers wrote.

Combs’ lawyers have not asked the new trial judge, Arun Subramanian, to consider releasing him on bail. At a hearing Thursday, as Combs sat alongside his lawyers in a beige jail jumpsuit, Subramanian suggested he would at least be open to taking up the issue.

After setting a May 5 trial date, Subramanian briefly questioned Combs’ lawyers about his treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which has been plagued by violence and dysfunction for years.

Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail Tuesday to await trial in a federal sex trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and shocking acts of violence.

The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The indictment against him lists allegations that go back to 2008.

He’s accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.

“Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after expressionlessly listening to the allegations with his uncuffed hands folded in his lap.

After U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky declined to grant him bail, Combs took a long swig from a water bottle, then was led out of court, turning toward family members in the audience as he went.

“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said after court. He plans to appeal the bail decision.

The Bad Boy Records founder is accused of sexually abusing and using physical force toward women and getting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all. Prosecutors say he also tried to bribe and intimidate witnesses and victims to keep them quiet.

“Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court.

Agnifilo acknowledged Combs was “not a perfect person,” saying he’d used drugs and had been in “toxic relationships” but was getting treatment and therapy.

“The evidence in this case is extremely problematic,” the attorney told the court.

He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He didn’t name the woman, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.

The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.

“Is it sex trafficking? Not if everybody wants to be there,” Agnifilo said, arguing that authorities were intruding on his client’s private life.

Prosecutors said in court papers that they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses and expect the number to grow. They said they would use financial, travel and billing records, electronic data and communications and videos of the “Freak Offs” to prove their case.

Combs was arrested Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.

A conviction on every charge would require at least 15 years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence.

The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to intimidate and lure women into his orbit, “often under the pretense of a romantic relationship,” according to the indictment.

It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in the “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged and recorded, creating dozens of videos.  He ensured their participation by procuring and providing drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and using intimidation and violence, according to the indictment. It said his employees facilitated “Freak Offs” by taking care of tasks like travel and hotel arrangements and stocking them with such supplies as drugs and baby oil.

The events could last for days, and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover from the exertion and drug use, the indictment said.

During the searches of Combs’ homes earlier this year, law enforcement seized narcotics, videos of the performances and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, according to prosecutors. They said agents also seized firearms and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers in his bedroom closet in Miami.

Combs’ lawyer said his client didn’t own the guns, noting that he employs a security company.

The indictment says Combs choked, shoved, hit and kicked people, causing injuries that often took days or weeks to heal. His employees and associates sometimes kept victims from leaving or tracked down those who tried, the indictment said.

It alleges that Combs used explicit recordings as “collateral” to ensure the women’s continued obedience and silence. He also exerted control over victims by promising career opportunities, providing and threatening to withhold financial support, dictating how they looked, monitoring their health records and controlling where they lived, according to the indictment.

Sean “Diddy” Combs was due in court Tuesday on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges that he hit and abused women for over a decade and presided over an empire of sexual crimes.

The music mogul “engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals,” according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The indictment details allegations dating to 2008 that he abused, threatened and coerced women for years “to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.” He is accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” in the indictment, which refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.

Combs was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex trafficking investigation raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.

Over the past year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning that Combs would plead not guilty and that he would “fight like hell” to try to get his client released from custody.

Of Combs, Agnifilo said, “His spirits are good. He’s confident.”

Combs is accused in the indictment of striking, punching and dragging women on numerous occasions, throwing objects and kicking them — and enlisting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help hide it all.

The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise engaged in or attempting to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

The “Freak Offs” were “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs “arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded,” the indictment said. It said he sometimes arranged to fly the women in and ensured their participation by procuring and providing drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support, and using intimidation and violence.

The events could last days, the indictment says.

During a search of Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles this year, law enforcement seized narcotics and more than a thousand bottles of baby oil and lubricant, according to the indictment.

All of this, prosecutors allege, was happening behind the facade of Combs’ global music, lifestyle and clothing empire.

Combs, 54, was recognized as one of the most influential figures in hip-hop before a flood of allegations that emerged over the past year turned him into an industry pariah.

In November, Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit saying he had beaten and raped her for years. She accused Combs of coercing her, and others, into unwanted sex in drug-fueled settings.

The suit was settled in one day, but months later, CNN aired hotel security footage showing Combs punching and kicking Ventura and throwing her on a floor. After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I was disgusted when I did it.”

The indictment refers to the attack, without naming Ventura, and says Combs tried to bribe a hotel security staffer to stay mum about it.

Combs and his attorneys denied similar allegations made by others in a string of lawsuits.

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ventura, said in a statement Tuesday that “neither Ms. Ventura nor I have any comment.”

“We appreciate your understanding and if that changes, we will certainly let you know,” he added.

A woman said Combs raped her two decades ago when she was 17. A music producer sued, saying Combs forced him to have sex with prostitutes. Another woman, April Lampros, said Combs subjected her to “terrifying sexual encounters,” starting when she was a college student in 1994.

The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura and Lampros did.

Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, has gotten out of legal trouble before.

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a man currently serving a 20-year prison sentence can remain on the November ballot in the state’s U.S. House race.

In a brief order, a split court affirmed a lower court ruling in a case brought by the Alaska Democratic Party; Justice Susan Carney dissented. A full opinion explaining the reasoning will be released later.

Democrats sued state election officials to seek the removal from the ballot of Eric Hafner, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of making threats against police officers, judges and others in New Jersey.

Hafner, who has no apparent ties to Alaska, is running as a Democrat in a closely watched race featuring Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich. Hafner’s declaration of candidacy listed a federal prison in New York as his mailing address.

Under Alaska’s open primary system, voters are asked to pick one candidate per race, with the top four vote-getters advancing to the general election. Hafner finished sixth in the primary but was placed on the general election ballot after Republicans Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury, who placed third and a distant fourth, withdrew.

John Wayne Howe, with the Alaskan Independence Party, also qualified.

Attorneys for Alaska Democrats argued that there was no provision in the law for the sixth-place finisher to advance, while attorneys for the state said that interpretation was too narrow.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolás Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.

The ruling is the latest attempt by Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third, six-year term.

The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.

Its decision, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response to a request by Maduro to review vote totals showing he had won by more than 1 million votes.

The main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.

Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.

“An attempt to judicialize the results doesn’t change the truth: we won overwhelmingly and we have the voting records to prove it,” González, standing before a Venezuelan flag, said in a video posted on social media.

The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility. Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.

The government has claimed — without evidence — that a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia delayed the vote counting on election night and publication of the disaggregated results.

González was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.

The former diplomat and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results.

Numerous foreign governments, including the U.S. as well as several allies of Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.

Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification.

Former President Donald Trump was the target of an apparent assassination attempt Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time. A barrage of gunfire set off panic, and a bloodied Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was surrounded by Secret Service and hurried to his SUV as he pumped his fist in a show of defiance.

Trump’s campaign said the presumptive GOP nominee was doing “fine” after the shooting, which he said pierced the upper part of his right ear.

“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place,” he wrote on his social media site.

The FBI early Sunday identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The agency said the investigation remains active and ongoing.

Secret Service agents fatally shot Crooks, who attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue at a farm show in Butler, Pennsylvania, the agency said.

One attendee was killed and two spectators were critically injured, authorities said. All were identified as men.

The attack was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It drew new attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized U.S. less than four months before the presidential election. And it could alter the tenor and security posture at the Republican National Convention, which will begin Monday in Milwaukee.

Organizers said the convention would proceed as planned.

Trump flew to New Jersey after visiting a local Pennsylvania hospital, landing shortly after midnight at Newark Liberty International Airport. Video posted by an aide showed the former president deplaning his private jet flanked by U.S. Secret Service agents and heavily armed members of the agency’s counter assault team, an unusually visible show of force by his protective detail.

President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, was briefed on the incident and spoke to Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said.

Biden planned to return to Washington early, cutting short a weekend at his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Many Republicans quickly blamed the violence on Biden and his allies, arguing that sustained attacks on Trump as a threat to democracy have created a toxic environment. They pointed in particular to a comment Biden made to donors on July 8, saying “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”

Officials said members of the U.S. Secret Service counterassault team killed the shooter. The heavily armed tactical team travels everywhere with the president and major party nominees and is meant to confront any active threats while other agents focus on safeguarding and evacuating the person at the center of protection.

Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a third person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Ivan F. Boesky, the flamboyant stock trader whose cooperation with the government cracked open one of the largest insider trading scandals in the history of Wall Street, has died at the age of 87.

A representative at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, owned by Ivan Boesky’s daughter, confirmed his death. No other details were given.

The son of a Detroit delicatessen owner, Boesky was once considered one of the richest and most influential risk-takers on Wall Street. He had parlayed $700,000 from his late mother-in-law’s estate into a fortune estimated at more than $200 million, hurtling him into the ranks of Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans.

Once implicated in insider trading, Boesky cooperated with a brash young U.S. attorney named Rudolph Giuliani in a bid for leniency, uncovering a scandal that shattered promising careers, blemished some of the most respected U.S. investment brokerages and injected a certain paranoia into the securities industry.

Working undercover, Boesky secretly taped three conversations with Michael Milken, the so-called “junk bond king” whose work with Drexel Burnham Lambert had revolutionized the credit markets. Milken eventually pleaded guilty to six felonies and served 22 months in prison, while Boesky paid a $100 million fine and spent 20 months in a minimum-security California prison nicknamed “Club Fed,” beginning in March 1988.

After Boesky’s arrest, accounts circulated widely that he had had told business students during a commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley in 1985 or 1986, “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

The line was memorably echoed by Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Gordon Gekko, a high-flying trader, in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street.”

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Douglas tells the shareholders of Teldar Paper. “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

Boesky, however, said he couldn’t remember saying “greed is healthy” and denied another quotation attributed to him in the 1984 Atlantic Monthly, in which he allegedly said that climbing to the height of a huge pile of silver dollars would be “an aphrodisiac experience.”

While he usually worked 18-hour days, the silver-haired and lean Boesky also lived a life of opulence. He wore designer clothes, traveled in limousines, private airplanes and helicopters and revamped his 10,000-square-foot Westchester County mansion with a Jeffersonian dome to resemble Monticello.