• Mr Jerome Powell / Getty images

US President Donald Trump has called for the chair of the Federal Reserve to quit right away, in an escalation of his attacks on Jerome Powell.

“‘Too Late’ should resign immediately!!!”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He also included a link to a news article about a US federal housing regulator calling for Mr Powell to be investigated over his testimony about renovations to the central bank’s Washington headquarters.

Trump nominated Mr Powell to be the Fed chair during his first term.

Since then, he has repeatedly criticised him for not cutting interest rates but it is unclear whether the president has the authority to remove him from the post.

Despite the president’s continued criticism of Mr Powell, he said earlier this year that had “no intention of firing him”.

Trump wants the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates to help boost economic growth.

Mr Powell said on Tuesday that the Fed would have cut rates already had it not been for the impact of Trump’s tariff policies.

(From BBC News)

American convicted singer, Puff-Daddy also known as Sean “Diddy” Combs was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution following a bombshell nine-week sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.

See the charges below:

Combs was charged with five counts: one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking by force or fraud, and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

He was found not guilty of sex-trafficking and racketeering. Prosecutors called 34 witnesses to the stand over a more than six-week period, including three women who accused him of abuse.

Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, Diddy’s ex, told jurors that he coerced her into drug-fueled sexual encounters with male escorts for about a decade.

“I felt pretty horrible about myself,” Cassie told jurors, saying that he lured her into a lurid world under the false pretenses of a romantic relationship — keeping compliant with physical and verbal abuse, as well as the threat of blackmail.

“I felt disgusted,” Cassie said as she testified about these encounters, called “Freak Offs”, “Hotel Nights,” or “King Nights,” which are core to prosecutors’ case.

Diddy allegedly recorded many of these encounters, giving him blackmail material to hold over his victims’ heads, prosecutors said at trial.

The prosecution contends that Diddy’s abuse was part of a sprawling criminal enterprise that relied on other violent acts, such as alleged kidnapping and arson, and included other crimes such as drug distribution and witness tampering, made possible by his devoted employees and inner circle.

A key piece of evidence in prosecutors’ case is a spring 2016 video apparently showing Diddy attacking Cassie in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel during an alleged Freak Off.

Cassie described the alleged horrors in detail during her days on the stand. She was coerced into performing for days even when she had a urinary-tract infection or other injuries stemming from sex acts.

“When we were having frequent Freak Offs,” Cassie alleged, “sometimes they were back to back. I was actually doing the Freak Offs with the infection.” She said the infections were painful and frequent.

“It got to the point where Cipro didn’t work anymore,” Cassie also remarked, referring to the powerful antibiotic.

“Occasionally, I would get sores on my tongue from the Freak Offs, [from] taking drugs, substances, friction in my mouth,” she claimed.

Cassie added that she developed an “ongoing, ooff-and-on addiction with opiates.” Cassie said she would take opiates to come down from the ecstasy.

“Opiates made me feel numb, which is why I relied on them so heavily,” she said. “I didn’t want to feel what was actually going on … it was just an escape for me.”

Cassie also alleged that Diddy raped her after a post-breakup dinner in 2018. “I just remember crying and saying ‘no,’” she said on the stand.“

Jane,” another Diddy accuser who took the stand, entered into what she believed was a romantic relationship with him in early 2021.

He took her on a trip to Turks and Caicos for her birthday and they swiftly developed pet names for each other, Bert and Ernie.

“He was really charming, really nice, and I was just drawn to him,” Jane testified. As they spent more and more time together, which included using molly during their sexual encounters,

Diddy told Jane about his fantasies — involving her having sex with other men. One night, after they had been awake for 12 hours, Jane said Diddy suggested: “I can make this fantasy a reality if you’d like. I can make that happen.”

Since the idea was “turning him on” and Jane cared deeply about him, she agreed. “I felt that that night just opened like a Pandora’s box in our relationship. It just completely set the tone for our relationship going forward,” she said.

As time went on, Jane repeatedly told Diddy that she no longer wanted to participate in these encounters.

She broke into tears while describing how Diddy doled out ecstasy so she could stay awake during those dayslong events that sometimes involved multiple male escorts.

“He would be like: ‘You’re not getting tired on me, are you? Let’s finish strong, hard. Let’s end on a high note,’” Jane said.

Diddy was so demanding about these sexual events that he pressured her into not using condoms, saying “he didn’t want to see a rubber while he was watching.”

If she brought it up, he would “guilt-trip” her. Jane said she went along with Diddy’s desires given how much she’d fallen for him. “I just didn’t want to disappoint my lover.”

Diddy maintained his power over Jane financially, prosecutors claimed. Jane said that in spring 2023, they entered into a “love contract” in which he agreed to pay her rent.

As a result, she felt pressure to make Diddy happy, lest he cut off his support. In the summer of 2024 — when Diddy knew he was being investigated by the Feds — Jane said that Diddy pressured her into an encounter.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to!’” Jane recalled of that evening. Diddy got close to her face and said: “Is this coercion?” and compelled her to take ecstasy. “I had to perform oral sex on Anton. It just felt like forever.”

Diddy allegedly watched. “I felt so sick … I just felt disgusted. I just felt terrible.

”Mia, a former Diddy assistant, said that he attacked her multiple times.

“The highs were really high and the lows were really, really low,” Mia told jurors. The work environment varied wildly depending on Diddy’s ever-changing moods.

“He’s thrown things at me. He’s thrown me against the wall … He’s thrown me into a pool … He’s also, uh, sexually assaulted me,” she said.

Mia said he’d sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions. One night in 2010, when she was staying at Diddy’s Los Angeles home,

Mia woke to “the weight of a person on top of me.” The person was Diddy. Mia remembered Diddy undoing his pants.

“He put himself inside of me … I just froze.” Mia said she felt “terrified and confused and ashamed.”

Another time, when she was leaving a closet area, “He was standing right in front of me.”

Diddy, she said, “had his penis out” and forced her to perform oral sex.

• Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni/ Reuters

KAMPALA, June 29 (Reuters) – Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni has confirmed he intends to contest in next year’s presidential election, potentially extending his rule in the east African country to nearly half a century.

In a post on the X platform late on Saturday Museveni said he had “expressed my interest in running for… the position of presidential flag bearer,” for his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

The 80-year-old has been ruler of Uganda since 1986 when he seized power after leading a five-year guerrilla war.

The ruling party has changed the constitution twice in the past to allow Museveni to extend his rule, and rights activists have accused him of using security forces and patronage to maintain his grip on power.

He denies the accusation.

Museveni said he is seeking reelection to grow the country to a “$500 billion economy in the next five years.”

Uganda’s GDP currently stands at about $66 billion, according to the finance ministry.

The country will hold its presidential election next January, when voters will also elect lawmakers.

Museveni’s closest opponent will be pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine who came second in the last presidential election in 2021 and has already confirmed his intention to run in 2026.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, rejected the 2021 results, saying his victory had been stolen through ballot stuffing, intimidation by security forces and other irregularities.