Sean “Diddy” Combs’s former partner Casandra Ventura returned to the stand Wednesday, testifying about a pattern of violence at the music mogul’s hands ahead of what is expected to be an aggressive cross-examination by his lawyers.Singer and model Ventura, better known as Cassie, is also likely to face questions about allegations that Combs raped her in 2018, as well as her graphic accounts of elaborate sex parties organized by the 55-year-old hip-hop icon.Combs, charged with five counts including racketeering and sex trafficking, would “push me down, hit me in the side of the head, kick me” during the parties, Ventura testified Wednesday.She said that in 2011 Combs looked through her phone and discovered she was seeing rapper Kid Cudi, which sent him into a rage that saw him lunge at her with a corkscrew.”I knew his capabilities, his access to guns,” Ventura later testified.Combs subsequently threatened to release videos of her participating in his sex parties as retaliation, she said.During an emotional first day of testimony, Ventura — who is heavily pregnant with her third child with husband Alex Fine — detailed extensive, sustained abuse at the hands of Combs.She painted him as controlling and willing to wield his wealth and influence to get his way. Ventura gave vivid accounts that will underpin much of the prosecution’s case against the music industry figure who is alleged to have used violence and blackmail to manipulate women over many years.Ventura recounted so-called “freak-off” sex parties saying she participated because she was “just in love and wanted to make (Combs) happy — to a point I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.”Ventura, who is 17 years younger than Combs and first met him when she was 19, described how the mogul would sometimes urinate on her, or he would instruct one of the numerous sex workers he engaged to do so. – ‘It was disgusting’ -The escorts, almost always men, were paid thousands of dollars in cash after encounters.”It was disgusting. It was too much. It was overwhelming,” she said, adding that the hotel rooms used for the marathon sex sessions were often trashed, with establishments charging sizable cleaning and repair bills including for sheets stained with blood and urine.Combs’s defense team indicated that during cross-examination, which is expected as early as Wednesday afternoon, they would seek to emphasize that Ventura took drugs of her own free will, and behaved erratically.Ventura said that during the encounters she took drugs including ecstasy, ketamine and cocaine, and that the “drugs honestly helped” her meet Combs’s demands to stay awake for days on end.The drugs also had a “dissociative and numbing” effect, she said, “a way to not feel it for what it really was.”Ventura revealed that she would take opiates often to cope with the parties.It “made me feel numb which is why I relied on them so heavily,” she testified. “It was an escape.”Ventura told the court she grappled with frequent urinary tract infections (UTIs) and that she would sometimes participate in the freak-off before they had cleared up which she described as “painful.”In a hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday and again Tuesday, Combs is seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura down a hallway.The prosecution played portions of the footage while Ventura was on the stand.When asked why she didn’t fight back or get up, Ventura answered simply that curled up on the ground “felt like the safest place to be.” “I don’t remember exactly his words,” she said Wednesday, describing Combs losing control. “I’m sure he was calling me something other than my name.”Following the alleged hotel assault, Ventura was forced to attend the premiere of her movie “The Perfect Match” covered in bruises to her body and face, the jury heard as they were shown photographs of the actress at the event.Ventura said she was forced to wear sunglasses to conceal a black eye.The images contrasted with red carpet shots of the pair seemingly enjoying each other’s company and projecting harmony.Combs’s defense team insists while some of his behavior was questionable it did not constitute racketeering and sex trafficking. He denies all counts and proceedings are expected to last eight to 10 weeks.

A two-year-old Venezuelan girl, whose parents were deported from the United States without her, was flown home on Wednesday to Caracas, earning President Donald Trump rare praise from Venezuela’s government.”Welcome, Maikelys,” First Lady Cilia Flores said as she took the toddler into her arms on her arrival on a deportation flight carrying 226 Venezuelan migrants, state TV showed.The separation of Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal from her parents had caused an outcry in the South American nation.Several demonstrations were held in Caracas to denounce her “abduction” by US authorities.Her mother, Yorelys Bernal, was not at the airport to greet her daughter but was reunited with her later at the presidential palace, where President Nicolas Maduro profusely thanked Trump for the girl’s return.Striking an unusually conciliatory tone, he said that “there have been, and will be differences” with the Trump administration but called the return of the toddler a “profoundly humane act of justice.”Maikelys is one of several children caught up in Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration.Campaigners have also highlighted the case of a four-year-old cancer patient, who was deported with her mother to Honduras last month without medication, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Maikelys’ mother said she and her husband were separated from their daughter when they handed themselves over to US authorities after arriving in the country illegally in May 2024. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the girl was placed in foster care to protect her from her parents, who it claimed were members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua criminal gang.Venezuela says her father was among a group of Venezuelans transferred by the United States to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison for gangsters.The transfers of the migrants to the brutal prison constituted one of Trump’s most controversial moves since his return to power in January.Washington said that the Venezuelans it sent to El Salvador were all members of Tren de Aragua, but has provided scant evidence to back that claim. The US Supreme Court and several lower courts have since temporarily halted transfers to CECOT, citing a lack of due process.- Tattoos -The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Maikelys’ father, Maiker Espinoza-Escalona, was a Tren de Aragua “lieutenant” who oversaw “homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house.”It said the girl’s mother oversaw the recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution.The mother, Bernal, 20, claimed they were detained because they had tattoos, which US authorities have linked to gang activity.Since February, more than 4,000 migrants have been sent home to Venezuela, some deported from the United States and others from Mexico, where they had gathered in the hope of crossing into the United States.

Warner’s streaming service, the home of hits including “The Last of Us” and “Hacks,” is changing its name again — back to HBO, the company announced Wednesday.The pioneering HBO launched as a streaming service in 2020 and carved out a niche for itself with offerings that many viewers saw as a cut above the fare on other platforms.Some fans and industry watchers were baffled two years ago when bosses decided to ditch a name long associated with quality television like “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones” and “The Wire” in favor of the anodyne “Max.”The move left some wondering about the direction of a platform that was competing in an increasingly crowded streaming space against giants like Netflix and Disney’s Hulu.But on Wednesday, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery said they were reversing course and putting the HBO back into the name, rebranding the offering HBO Max this summer.”The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming,” David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said.”Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”The company says it has momentum and has added 22 million subscribers over the last two years, envisaging more than 150 million paying customers by the end of 2026.