LA County sheriff investigating new sex battery claim against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Monday it’s investigating a new sexual battery allegation against hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence on prostitution-related convictions.

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A male music producer and publicist said he was asked to come to a photo shoot in 2020 at a Los Angeles warehouse, where Combs exposed himself while masturbating and told the accuser to assist, according to NBC News, citing a police report. Combs then tossed a dirty shirt at the man, the producer said.

The accuser, whose name is redacted in the police report, said he did not tell anyone for several years because he felt embarrassed. He came forward to police in Largo, Florida, this September, shortly after Combs was convicted on other charges.

Combs’ lawyer did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the latest allegations.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it received an official copy of the report from the Florida department on Friday, and will be investigating the allegations.

The report also details an incident from March 2021 in which the accuser claims two men covered his head before Combs came into the room and called him a snitch, according to NBC.

Combs was convicted in July of flying his girlfriends and male sex workers around the country to engage in drug-fueled sexual encounters in multiple places over many years. However, he was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life.

He is set to be released in May 2028, though he can earn reductions in his time behind bars through his participation in substance abuse treatment and other prison programs.

Group of South Carolina lawmakers look at the most restrictive abortion bill in the US

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By JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bill that would allow judges to sentence women who get abortions to decades in prison and could restrict the use of IUDs and in vitro fertilization goes before a small group of South Carolina senators Tuesday.

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This would be the first of at least a half-dozen legislative steps for the proposal that includes the strictest abortion prohibitions and punishments in the nation.

The subcommittee of the state Senate’s Medical Affairs Committee can change it Tuesday afternoon and even if it’s approved, its prospects are doubtful at best.

But even at this stage, the bill has gone further than any other such proposal across the U.S. since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, opening the door for states to implement abortion bans.

The proposal would ban all abortions unless the woman’s life is threatened. Current state law bans abortions after cardiac activity is detected, which is typically six week into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Current law also allows abortions for rape and incest victims up to 12 weeks.

The proposal would also do things that aren’t being done in any other state. Women who get an abortion and anyone who helps them could face up to 30 years in prison. It appears to ban any contraception that prevents a fertilized egg from implanting, which would ban intrauterine devices and could limit in vitro fertilization.

Providing information about abortions would be illegal, leaving doctors worried they couldn’t suggest places where the procedure is legal.

Republican Sen. Richard Cash, who sponsors the bill and is one of the Senate’s most strident voices against abortion, will run Tuesday’s subcommittee. He acknowledged problems last month with potentially banning contraception and restricting the advice doctors can give to patients. But he has given no indication what changes he or the rest of the subcommittee might support. Six of the nine members are Republicans.

Abortion remains an unsettled issue in conservative states and how much more to restrict it is fracturing anti-abortion groups.

South Carolina Citizens for Life, one of the state’s largest and oldest opponents of abortion, issued a statement last month saying it can’t support Cash’s bill because women who get abortions are victims too and shouldn’t be punished.

On the other side, at least for this bill, are groups like Equal Protection South Carolina. “Abortion is murder and should be treated as such,” founder Mark Corral said.

Cloudflare outage disrupts ChatGPT, X, other internet services

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By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, Associated Press Business Writer

Internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare says it is deploying a fix for an issue that caused global outages for ChatGPT, social media platform X, transit infrastructure and other prominent internet services.

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Cloudflare said on its status page earlier Tuesday that it identified an issue that was impacting multiple customers. There were reports of widespread 500 errors as well as Cloudflare Dashboard and API failing.

In the process of remediating the issue, Cloudflare said it had to temporarily disable certain services for United Kingdom users.

“We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates. We have re-enabled WARP access in London,” the company wrote on its status page. “We are continuing to work toward restoring other services.”

Others that are experiencing issues include Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, online game League of Legends, Moody’s and NJ Transit. Moody’s website displayed an Error Code 500 and instructed individuals to visit Cloudflare’s website for more information.

The San Francisco-based Cloudflare provides internet infrastructure that protects websites from online threats.

Last month Microsoft had to deploy a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services. The tech company wrote on its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage.

And Amazon experienced a massive outage of its cloud computing service in October. The company resolved the issue, but the outage took down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.

Judge to explain why he’s approving Purdue Pharma settlement plan, which calls for $7B from Sacklers

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By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge is set to give his reasoning Tuesday for approving OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids.

The deal calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over time.

Judge Sean Lane said last week that he would accept the plan, which ranks among the largest opioid settlements ever and would do something other major ones don’t: Pay some victims of the crisis.

Money will go to governments and some individuals

Sackler family members agreed to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years, providing most of the cash involved in the settlement.

The funds distributed to state, local and Native Americans is to be used mostly to address the opioid crisis, as has been the case with other opioid settlements.

FILE – Fake pill bottles with messages about OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma are displayed during a protest outside the courthouse where the bankruptcy of the company is taking place in White Plains, N.Y., on Aug. 9, 2021. (AP foto/Seth Wenig, File)

About $850 million of that is to go to individual victims, including children born with opioid withdrawal.

People with addiction and survivors of those who died must prove they were prescribed OxyContin to participate. Those who do could receive payments of around $8,000 or around $16,000, depending on how long they received the drug and how many other people qualify. The money for individual victims is to be distributed next year.

Not only money is at stake

Members of the Sackler family are agreeing to give up ownership of Purdue.

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For them, that won’t be a major change since no family member has served on Purdue’ board or received money from the company since 2018. The plan calls for Purdue to be replaced with a new company, Knoa Pharma, to be controlled by a board appointed by states and with a mission of benefiting the public.

Sackler family members are also agreeing not to have their name put on institutions in exchange for contributions — something they’ve done often in the past, though many institutions have cut ties with them.

The company has also agreed to make public a trove of internal documents that could shed additional light into how the company promoted and monitored opioids.

One feature that won’t be repeated under this new deal that was in a previous one: forcing members of the Sackler family to hear directly from people harmed by OxyContin.

A long legal saga could be wrapping up

Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 when it was facing thousands of opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments and others.

A judge approved a settlement two years later. But the U.S. Supreme Court later rejected that plan because it gave members of the Sackler family protection from lawsuits over opioids even though they were not personally declaring bankruptcy.

The latest plan allows lawsuits against Sackler family members by those who don’t opt into the deal.

This time through, few parties objected to the settlement, though some people who represented themselves and who were addicted to opioids — or had loved ones who were — raised concerns during the three-day confirmation hearing last week.