By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs ’ former personal assistant testified at his sex trafficking trial Friday that she threw her phone across the room in terror and ran outside when she saw the hip-hop mogul calling her days after his longtime ex-girlfriend sued him two years ago.

“It was just so triggering to see that,” said the assistant, who was identified in court only by the pseudonym “Mia.” She was the second of three women expected to testify at the federal trial in Manhattan that they were sexually abused by Combs.

Bail was repeatedly denied for Combs following his September arrest after prosecutors argued he and his coconspirators reached out to potential victims or witnesses after the former decade-long girlfriend, R&B singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, sued him in November 2023.

The suit, which alleged years of sexual abuse, was settled within a day for $20 million.

At a September bail hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said Combs had contacted at least one victim in November 2023 and was in constant contact with witnesses, including as late as last July.

Mia said she at first was elated to hear from D-Roc, one of Combs’ former bodyguards, when he reached out to her days after Cassie’s lawsuit — until she realized he was at the Bad Boy Records founder’s home and trying to reconnect her with her former boss.

Then, she said, she felt “terrified, threatened, scared, nervous.” Mia said she “wanted to play dumb” and needed a game plan to protect herself.

“I didn’t want my life to be in danger,” Mia said.

Still, when she soon saw Combs himself trying to call her, “I threw my phone as far as it would go behind the couch, and I ran outside.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs, right, blows kisses to people in the audience during his sex trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan federal court, Monday, May 19, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

Combs’ lawyer Brian Steel launched into his cross-examination by quizzing the woman about several dozen posts she made about Combs, Cassie and other people and events in their orbit.

Among them: a still image she posted on Combs’ birthday in November 2013 from a comedy video featuring Combs as a doctor helping Mia give birth to a baby. “Shout out to my mentor,” she wrote, referring to Combs, “Thank you for always letting me give birth to my dreams.”

“Here, you have posted on your personal account your rapist delivering the baby,” Steel said.

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On Thursday, Mia testified that she was awakened and then raped by Combs as she slept in a bunk bed in his Los Angeles home just months after he’d forcibly kissed her at his 40th birthday party in 2009. She said sexual assault continued sporadically, seemingly infrequent enough that each time she’d think it would never happen again.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges that could result in a prison term of from 15 years to life if he is convicted.

Mia, who worked for Combs from 2009 to 2017, including a stretch as an executive at his film studio, said there were exciting times in the job and the “highs were really high and the lows were really low.”

After she left Bad Boy Entertainment, Mia said, she received $250,000 of a $400,000 settlement to reimburse her for promised bonuses that were never paid and for unpaid overtime. But she said she never told her lawyers about the sexual abuse.

She acknowledged during her testimony that she referenced her co-workers as “family” and used the word “love” in her correspondence with Combs even after he sexually attacked her.

“That’s how we all talked to each other,” Mia said. While working for Combs, she said, she dated his sound engineer, although it wasn’t a typical relationship because they rarely saw one another outside work.

She said she hasn’t been able to work since leaving the job because of post-traumatic stress.

Mia said she’d misinterpret emails asking “where are you?” as scolding. She said someone calling her name from across the room would cause her alarm, even if it was an innocent attempt to get her attention.

Throughout his cross-examination, Steel struck a familiar, incredulous refrain, asking: “Why would you promote the person who has stolen your happiness in life?”

Mia told Steel that the posts were a facade.

“Instagram was a place to show how great your life was, even if it was not true,” she explained, adding that followers of her then-public account included many Combs fans. “Of course you post great times,” she said.

By JONEL ALECCIA, AP Health Writer

Nearly four dozen people in 18 states have been sickened in an expanding outbreak of salmonella food poisoning tied to recalled cucumbers sent to restaurants, hospitals, cruise ships and grocery stores, including Target stores, federal health officials said Friday.

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At least 16 people have been hospitalized after eating cucumbers produced by Florida-based Bedner Growers and distributed by Fresh Start Produce Sales, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The cucumbers were sold from April 29 through May 19.

The outbreak includes reports of illness from people aboard six different cruise ships that departed from U.S. ports between late March and mid-April, the CDC said. The true number of sick people is likely much higher and the outbreak could affect additional states, officials said.

Several companies have issued recalls for whole cucumbers and cucumbers used in a range of sandwiches, salsas and other foods linked to the outbreak. Target recalled dozens of products, including whole cucumbers, salads and vegetable rolls.

The outbreak was detected during a follow-up inspection in April to a 2024 outbreak that sickened 551 people and led to 155 hospitalizations in 34 states and Washington, D.C. In that outbreak, investigators found salmonella bacteria linked to many of the illnesses in untreated canal water used at farms operated by Bedner Growers and Thomas Produce Company.

As part of the new investigation, FDA officials found salmonella in a sample of Bedner Growers cucumbers at a distribution center in Pennsylvania. That sample matched the strain of salmonella that made people sick. In addition, “multiple other strains” of salmonella were detected that match samples in a government database. CDC officials are working to determine whether additional illnesses in people match those strains.

Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting, dehydration and stomach cramps. Most people who get sick recover within a week. Infections can be severe in young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems, who may require hospitalization.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is investigating after elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures in recent weeks received messages from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.

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A White House official confirmed the investigation Friday and said the White House takes cybersecurity of its staff seriously. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that senators, governors, business leaders and others began receiving text messages and phone calls from someone who seemed to have gained access to the contacts in Wiles’ personal cellphone. The messages and calls were not coming from Wiles number, the newspaper reported.

Some of those who received calls heard a voice that sounded like Wiles that may have been generated by artificial intelligence, according to the report. Some received text messages that they initially thought were official White House requests but some people reported the messages did not sound like Wiles.

The FBI warned in a public service announcement this month of a “malicious text and voice messaging campaign” in which unidentified “malicious actors” have been impersonating senior U.S. government officials.

The scheme, according to the FBI, has relied on text messages and AI-generated voice messages that purport to come from a senior U.S. official and that aim to dupe other government officials as well as the victim’s associates and contacts.

“Safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president’s mission is a top priority,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement Friday.

It is unclear how someone gained access to Wiles’ phone, but the intrusion is the latest security breach for Trump staffers. Last year, Iran hacked into Trump’s campaign and sensitive internal documents were stolen and distributed, including a dossier on Vice President JD Vance, created before he was selected as Trump’s running mate.

Wiles, who served as a co-manager of Trump’s campaign before taking on the lynchpin role in his new administration, has amassed a powerful network of contacts.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

By JESSICA DAMIANO

What’s the deal with the Chelsea Chop? Are you gardeners familiar with it?

After hearing about it recently, I did a bit of research. The earliest reference I could find dates back to the early 2000s, so it might appear I’m late to the party, but I’m not — and you might not be, either.

After all, the pruning method, named for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, which is held every May in the U.K., is one I’ve been practicing and advocating for all along, without the garden show tie-in. But things with catchy names tend to take on a life of their own, as the Chelsea Chop has on social media.

And that’s a good thing because it popularizes a useful technique.

What’s involved in the chop

The method involves pruning certain perennials — those with clumping roots, like coneflower (Echinacea), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), goldenrod (Solidago), sneezeweed (Helenium), Salvia and yarrow (Achillea) — by cutting each stem back by one-third to one-half its height in spring. Cuts should be made on the diagonal, just above a leaf node.

The “chop” forces plants to produce bushier growth, resulting in sturdier, tighter and fuller plants that aren’t as likely to grow leggy, require staking or flop over by the end of the season. It also delays blooming, which can benefit the late-summer garden.

You might get creative and prune only alternate stems so that some bloom earlier and others later — or prune only half of your plants — to extend the blooming season.

Do not attempt this with one-time bloomers, single-stemmed plants or those with woody stems; the amputations would be homicidal to the current season’s flowers.

When should you chop?

Gardeners should consider their climate and prune when their plants have grown to half their expected seasonal height, whenever that may be. (The Chelsea Chop is done at different times in different places, depending on plant emergence and growth.)

A variation for late-summer and fall bloomers

To take things a step further, some late-summer and fall bloomers, like Joe Pye weed, chrysanthemum and aster, would benefit from three annual chops.

In my zone 7, suburban New York garden, that means cutting them back by one-third each in the beginning of June, middle of June and middle of July. Customize the schedule for your garden by shifting one or two weeks earlier per warmer zone and later per cooler zone, taking the season’s growth and size of your plants into account. Make the first cuts when plants reach half their expected size, the second two weeks later and the third about a month after that.

I’d like this fall-plant pruning tip to catch on as well as the Chelsea Chop has. Maybe I should call it the Damiano Downsize and see what happens.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.