Elon Musk is finding it difficult to distance himself from questions on which of Sean “Diddy” Combs' powerful friends and business associates could have enabled his alleged “criminal enterprise,” which authorities say involves fulfilling his sexual desires through sex trafficking and sex trafficking Several people were attacked, including a 9-year-old boy.

This week, Musk found himself at the middle of those questions after sharing a screenshot of an article on X, his social media platform. Mediaite reported. The article covered the news that the hip-hop mogul is facing recent allegations in civil court that he sexually abused greater than 100 people, including a young boy who was auditioning for his record label. The headline read: “Diddy accused of abusing nine-year-old boy and spiking drinks with horse tranquilizers as 120 victims make shocking claims.”

In response to the article, Musk wrote on X“How many people in the music and entertainment industry knew about this?”

Social media users quickly responded to Musk by mentioning his own relationship with Combs, Mediaite reported. Some pointed to a brand new book during which Musk reportedly bragged about his friendship with Combs, saying, “We write a lot.” The Hollywood Reporter also reported in August that a fund tied to the entrepreneurial Combs was among the many investors in Musk's $44 billion bid to purchase Twitter in 2023, which he renamed X.

A outstanding respondent to Musk's post was singer Aubrey O'Day. Page Six reports. The outspoken media personality and former mentee of Combs hit back at Musk on Wednesday by suggesting that the Tesla CEO's “friends” knew about Combs' alleged abuses. O'Day, who has criticized Combs for years, reposted Musk's comment and said he should do it “Ask your friends, they’ll tell you.”

It is unclear which of Musk's “friends” O'Day was referring to. Neither she nor Musk responded to Page Six's request for comment.

Earlier this week, Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee announced that he’s representing 120 people – including a 9-year-old child – in civil lawsuits against Combs over allegations spanning the past three a long time. said Page Six in one other report.

Buzbee alleged that the Bad Boy Records founder sexually assaulted the minor while he was amongst a gaggle of boys delivered to New York City to audition for Combs' Bad Boy Records, Page Six reported.

“This individual was allegedly sexually abused by Sean Combs and several other people in the studio with the promise of both his parents and himself of getting a record deal,” Buzbee said at a press conference in Houston. The attorney also alleged that Combs drugged his alleged victims by spiking horse tranquilizers into their drinks.

“Several of the people (I represent) … were drug tested and drugs were found in their bodies,” he said, in response to Page Six.

During the press conference, Buzbee also claimed that a pregnant woman's drink was “laced” with drugs while she attended a dinner with the rapper in Miami. The lawyer said the girl, who said she had tried to avoid alcoholic beverages throughout the night, “blacked out” and “woke up in the same bed – again allegedly – with Mr. Combs at his Miami mansion.” Her vagina and anus were torn and sore.”

After Buzbee's press conference, Combs' legal team told Page Six that the embattled music mogul “strongly and categorically denies as false and defamatory any allegation that he sexually abused anyone, including minors.”

But throughout the press conference, Buzbee warned that the “day will come” when he names additional alleged perpetrators and bystanders connected to Combs' alleged illegal activities, Page Six reported. He said, “There are many names” and “the names will shock you.”

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this behavior behind closed doors,” Buzbee said. “We will investigate this matter regardless of who the evidence implicates.”

Combs, 54, was arrested last month on federal charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering; sex trafficking involving force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to prostitution. Although he pleaded not guilty, he was denied bail and stays in custody on the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors say that Combs “abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct” and that he “created a criminal enterprise whose Members and affiliates… sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.”

According to the indictment, Combs and other members of this “enterprise” allegedly facilitated multiple “freak-off” parties, drug-fueled sex encounters that could last for days.

During his rise in the entertainment and business worlds, Combs socialized with many A-list celebrities and made sure to be seen with them at the lavish “white parties” he hosted at his homes in the Hamptons and Los Angeles . Now some of these celebrities are under pressure to tell authorities what they know about Combs' alleged illegal activities or to take responsibility for Combs' decades-long abuse of power.

Musk is one of these celebrities, even if he doesn't seem to see himself that way. But according to the new book “Character Limit,” Must bragged about his friendship with Combs to Revolt CEO Detavio Samuels after Samuels expressed concerns about racism at X among Musk's owners. Futurism.com reported.

“I don't know when you know this, but Puff is an investor in Twitter,” Musk told Samuels, using a nickname for Combs, in response to authors Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. “You know, he's a good friend of mine. We write a lot.”

In August, it was reported that Combs was involved in Musk's purchase of

Originally published: October 3, 2024 at 2:37 p.m

DUBLIN — A gaggle of masked men allegedly entered the Dublin High School campus on Friday, followed a 14-year-old freshman into the locker room and beat him bloody, causing a broken nose and a concussion, the boy's mother told this news organization on Tuesday.

Students were just getting out of sophistication and the campus was emptying apart from a couple of student-athletes, coaches and administrators. The boy was standing outside the locker room about 3:30 p.m. Friday, picking up his football jersey and preparing for practice, said his mother, Cherie Barfield.

Then he was suddenly confronted by a bunch of masked assailants allegedly led by the mother of a classmate, who called out to discover Barfield's son. The mother was together with her daughter, a freshman at Dublin High, Barfield said.

“When he looked up and looked at them, there were five men coming from both sides wearing ski masks and hoodies,” Barfield said. “The two friends he was with ran away and he immediately jumped up and went to the locker room because he thought he was safe.”

But the masked men followed the 14-year-old into the locker room and started beating him, Barfield said. He was thrown into the locker room, punched around and jumped by first one after which all five men, she said. The girl and her mother reportedly followed the attackers into the locker room and captured the attack on video.

The boy fought back but was eventually overpowered by the group and left bleeding on the bottom, his mother said. The school district's superintendent said a head coach and other students were nearby and stopped the attack. But Barfield claims nobody stepped in to assist her son.

Barfield was unaware of the attack until she heard from one other parent whose child had seen the 14-year-old bleeding within the locker room. Barfield called 9-1-1 and rushed to the varsity to seek out her son.

She says a dispatcher told her that there have been no cops on campus because they’d been called to an incident in one other a part of town, and that no officers were immediately available to ascertain on the 14-year-old.

When she arrived on campus to search for her son, she said, she found him alone on the locker room bench, bleeding and dazed from the attack, with nobody to look after him. She said he had difficulty talking to paramedics after they arrived because his head was pounding from a concussion.

She claimed that nobody from the varsity had contacted her concerning the attack on her son.

“I didn't know if my son was still alive, I didn't know anything at all,” Barfield said. “I didn't know what had happened to him, to what extent.”

In a press release on Tuesday, Dublin Police Chief Nate Schmidt said the suspects had not yet been identified, but all were captured on school video surveillance. The suspects are believed to be between 16 and 19 years old, police said. The age of the parent remains to be unclear, and police haven’t yet made any arrests.

“It is not believed that this was a random incident, and school security continues to interview witnesses and collect video evidence to determine a motive and how the victim, suspect and parents at Dublin High School know each other,” Schmidt wrote within the press release.

The after-school incident outraged the varsity's principal and compelled the district to revise its policies on campus safety and student supervision.

Dublin Unified School District Superintendent Chris Funk said the principal and 4 assistant principals were all on campus on the time of the attack, which police said occurred around 3:30 p.m. According to the varsity's schedule, the last bell on Fridays is at 2:20 p.m. Funk said the varsity's administration is on campus each day until the varsity office closes at 4:30 p.m.

“The people who came to campus had been there before and obviously knew the campus and could go back to the guys' locker room,” Funk said in an interview.

Funk said this incident “requires us to review our policies and procedures and make some adjustments.” He added that the varsity immediately made changes to protocols and now ensures that the varsity's locker rooms remain locked in any respect times, especially after students have finished changing.

He said there was no campus police or student resource officer on campus on the time, as they’re stationed in any respect area schools and move from campus to campus throughout the day. Even if an officer was on duty, he said, they might not typically be stationed outside the locker room at the moment of day, but quite somewhere further forward in the varsity in an area with higher foot traffic.

“I don’t think an SRO could have prevented this,” Funk said.

Funk added that the district is reviewing school supervision hours in addition to locker room security through the school day and after school.

Barfield said her family plans to take legal motion against the varsity and has hired an attorney to handle the fallout from the attack on her son. She said she wants the young girl and mother who allegedly provoked her son and brought the lads to campus to be expelled from the varsity and expelled from the district.

Her son is not going to return to highschool until it’s secure, even when which means missing his first football game as a running back and linebacker for the Gaels, she said.

“There was no one there to do anything about it,” Barfield said. “There are no heroes in this story.”

Originally published: August 27, 2024 at 18:46

Is Crockett Johnson’s Harold from “Harold and the Purple Crayon” a coloured child?

If you will have purchased any of the “Harold” books published within the last 25 years or the brand new film with Zachary Levi As an adult, Harold, your answer might be no.

In 1998, HarperCollins published a brand new edition of the “Harold” books – seven picture books by which the title character stands on a blank page and draws the world and his adventures in it together with his purple crayon.

The printed copies of the brand new editions are larger, and the publisher has modified the covers. For example, he modified the colour of Harold's sweater from white to blue and adjusted Harold's original tanned skin color to a light-weight peach—although Harold continues to be tanned contained in the books.

Her decision probably influenced the makers of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” TV showwhich aired on HBO from 2001 to 2002, used similar colours for Harold's skin tone, likely prompting the makers of the brand new film to solid a white actor within the role of Harold.

In other words, the light-skinned Harold of 1998 has change into the usual portrayal.

Fifty years ago, once I was a bit of white boy, I read Harold as white too. When I saw the brand new covers in 1998, I didn't think that they had modified Harold's race. Now, nonetheless, I'm not so sure.

As Johnson’s biographer and a scholar of kids's literatureI began fascinated with Harold's race once I was researching: “How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Making of a Children's Book Classic”, which will probably be released in November 2024.

I discovered that not everyone saw Harold as white—perhaps not even Johnson himself. When cartoonist Chris Ware, who can also be white, was a young boy, he read Harold as black. When picture book creator Bryan Collier, who’s black, was a boy, he read Harold each as Black and “imagined he was Harold.”

They are usually not the one ones.

So is Harold black? And what wouldn’t it mean if he was?

Printing inks within the Nineteen Fifties

Unlike other picture books of the Nineteen Fifties, which usually used three or 4 colours, Harold and the Purple Crayon used only two colours: brown and purple.

The Offset color lithography printing process The colours used for picture books on the time required that every color be added in a separate phase: within the case of “Harold,” a purple and a brown phase.

Johnson made two versions of every double-page spread. On one, he traced the trail of the purple crayon and wrote “PURPLE” to point that the black lines ought to be printed in purple.

On the opposite sheet of paper, he wrote “BROWN” for the outline of Harold’s body and the text he had glued to every sheet.

Finally, he painted Harold's face and hands with a blue watercolor. And he wrote “10% BROWN ON BLUE” to point that a light-weight brown could be printed over the blue areas via a filter that will filter out 90% of the brown.

If the printer applied each of those colours in two separate steps—one for purple, one for brown—the ultimate page would show a boy with brown skin and brown outlines drawing with a purple crayon.

Harold is a brown-skinned child within the truest sense of the word. But skin color isn’t race. And it's possible that Johnson limited himself to 2 colours to maintain costs down.

But as a cartoonist and comic historian Mark Newgarden told me that it was unusual to make use of 10% brown to create “Caucasian 'flesh.'” Back then, white skin would have been created using a magenta screen. Within Johnson's two-color printing plan, Newgarden continued, “paper white and 10% of that violet (close to pink) is more visually consistent with the typical depiction of Caucasian 'flesh'” in children's books of the Nineteen Fifties.

The alternative subsequently deliberately fell on brown.

The rarity of using 10% brown suggests that by making a toddler of color the important character of his Harold books, Crockett Johnson could have been on the forefront of mainstream American children's literature. He created a black protagonist nine years before Ezra Jack Keats' book “The snowy day”, the primary title with a black protagonist to win the Caldecott Medal, the annual award for the “most outstanding” children’s picture book published within the United States

Subtle messages of racial equality

There are other reasons to consider that Harold's skin color was intentional.

Johnson fought for civil rights for the reason that Forties. In a cartoon from 1940made Johnson satirized the racist propaganda of Gone with the Wind – just six weeks before the film won eight Oscars. In 1944, Johnson allowed the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax to make use of a three-strip sequence of his comic stripBarnaby” which takes aim on the racist tax. And in 1945 Johnson had joined the Committee to End Jim Crow in Baseball.

In 1943, Ursula Nordstrom – Johnson’s editor at Harper’s – rejected an anti-racist children’s book written by Johnson’s wife. Ruth KraussIt was an anthropological take a look at prejudice that, she hoped, would educate children concerning the dangers of fascism and anti-Semitism.

Krauss and Maurice Sendak nevertheless managed to smuggle a message of racial equality into their 1956 book:I need to color my bathroom blue“In one scene, Sendak draws the child's friends in a rainbow of colors, which, as Krauss later said, was “a transparent statement on racial integration.””

Since Sendak and Krauss were working on “I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue” while Johnson was working on “Harold,” it’s quite possible that their efforts inspired him to make a relatively subtle political statement by coloring Harold brown.

But contemporary reviewers did not notice the tan of Harold's skin. Perhaps excessive subtlety is in charge. Or perhaps the reviewers are usually not a representative sample of the book's enthusiastic readers. Within a month of its publication, Harold and the Purple Crayon sold the primary edition of 10,000 copiesand the publisher ordered a brand new edition of seven,500 more copies. Surely a few of those 1000’s of readers saw Harold as black.

A color that gives political protection

Ambiguity may also be politically useful.

Johnson wrote the story while under investigation by the FBI. In the early Nineteen Fifties, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover thought Johnson was a “hidden communist”, but in 1954 he thought he is perhaps a loyal enough citizen to change into an informant. Hoover assigned two FBI agents to approach Johnson. For a couple of months they sat in a automotive outside his Connecticut home and watched him; he refused to return out and confer with them, and eventually they gave up, 4 months before the discharge of “Harold and the Purple Crayon.”

Since advocates of racial equality within the Nineteen Fifties risked being branded “communists,” the subtlety of 10% Brown could have given Johnson and his publisher political backing. Given what Johnson was going through on the time, a subtle political statement would have been a sensible alternative.

It can also be a powerfully inclusive alternative. Racial ambiguity makes it easier for readers of any race to discover with Harold. I don't know if the longer term musical genius Prince or the longer term U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove read Harold as a coloured child, but each said that “Harold and the Purple Crayon” was their favorite childhood book. Harold was the rationale Prince adopted Lila as its characteristic color.

Because Harold's race is ambiguous, adults or children of various backgrounds may discover with Harold and examine him as a member of their racial or ethnic group.

Harold's crayon is the embodiment of imaginative possibilities. And Harold is whoever you would like him to be.

VALLEJO – An Amber Alert was issued Saturday morning for a 14-day-old boy and his mother, who authorities said abducted him Thursday.

Both the boy, Brandon Manning, and his mother, Valerie Manning, 28, were still missing as of Saturday afternoon. They were last seen around 3 a.m. Thursday in Vallejo, police said.

Authorities said Solano County Child Protective Services officials consider the kid is at risk. No further details were released.

Valerie Manning is believed to be driving a black 1991 Isuzu Amigo with the California license plate 2ZRD090.

According to the California Highway Patrol Amber Alert, Brandon Manning is 22 inches tall, weighs 7 kilos, and has brown hair and eyes. His mother is 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 175 kilos, and likewise has brown hair and eyes.

The ad also includes pictures of the kid, his mother and the vehicle.

Anyone who sees the 2 or the vehicle is asked to call 911 or the Vallejo Police Department at 707-552-3295.

A Costa Mesa woman whose boyfriend shot and killed a 6-year-old Aiden Leos He pleaded guilty to accessory after the very fact during a 2021 traffic altercation on a busy Orange County highway on Friday, April 26, but won’t serve any additional time in custody on account of credit for time already served .

Wynne Lee, 26, was sentenced to 4 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting, a felony, and misdemeanor carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle. However, she received greater than 4 years credit for her time served leading as much as trial and her good behavior.

Lee was released on bail under GPS monitoring since shortly after her arrest. Under state law, defendants in court-ordered home confinement receive the identical credit for time served and good behavior as those that remain in local custody pending trial.

It was not a plea deal negotiated with the prosecution, but moderately a plea that Lee made on to the court. Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard M. King clarified that Lee had not been given any assurances in regards to the amount of her sentence before her plea. The four-year prison sentence imposed by the judge was the utmost sentence permitted by law.

Lee confirmed to the judge in a soft voice that she understood what she was admitting and the rights she was giving up. She made no formal statement before her sentencing. Both Lee and her attorney declined to comment after the hearing.

Because Lee didn’t spend any additional time in custody, house arrest or on probation or parole, Lee's electronic monitoring was officially ended by the judge at the tip of Friday's hearing.

As a part of her plea, Lee admitted to helping Marcus Erizher live-in boyfriend escapes arrest, regardless that she knew Eriz was chargeable for Aiden's death. She also admitted that a firearm – belonging to Eriz – was hidden in a vehicle she was in charge of.

Judge King found that Aiden's death was against the law of great violence, involving a very vulnerable victim and deeply affecting the boy's mother. However, he also acknowledged that Lee had no previous criminal record.

Aiden's mother was not present on the trial or the sentencing. No one spoke to the court on behalf of Aiden or Lee.

Lee's driving during a strenuous morning commute on the 55 Freeway sparked the confrontation that led to Aiden's violent death.

Lee and Eriz were in Lee's Volkswagen Golf sports automobile on the way in which from their home in Costa Mesa to the Highland auto repair shop where they worked. Aiden's mother, Joanna Cloonan, took her son from their home in Costa Mesa to Calvary Chapel Pre-School in Yorba Linda.

Lee accelerated behind Cloonan's Chevrolet Sonic within the carpool lane, abruptly drove past Cloonan's automobile, after which immediately jumped back into the carpool lane, cutting Cloonan off and checking the brakes.

A “peace sign” Lee threw at Cloonan did little to calm the mother's anger, and as Cloonan began to drive away from the sports automobile to exit the highway, Cloonan gave her middle finger.

Cloonan later testified that he saw Eriz, who was sitting within the passenger seat next to Lee, smiling. Moments later, the mother heard a loud noise and Aiden, who was sitting in a automobile seat behind her, shouted “Ow!” When the mother looked back, she saw Aiden's head hanging down.

A single shot fired by Eriz had penetrated the trunk of Cloonan's automobile, entered Aiden's back, traveled through his liver and lungs, pierced his heart, after which exited his right abdomen. The mother screamed, “Aiden, Aiden, Aiden!” as he lay dying in her arms on the side of the road.

The Mass manhunt to seek out Aiden's killer and the vehicle from which the fatal shot was fired, spanned greater than two weeks.

As commuters passed under overpasses every day, banners read “Who Shot Aiden?” California Highway Patrol investigators and other law enforcement officers swarmed door-to-door to businesses along the 55 Freeway, trying to find footage from surveillance cameras trained on the roadway were. Meanwhile, the reward for locating those chargeable for Aiden's death rose to $500,000.

Lee and Eriz continued to commute every day from Costa Mesa to Highland in the course of the manhunt, although they later used Eriz's red pickup truck as a substitute of the sports automobile.

By the trim and tires of a suspect vehicle captured on surveillance footage and comparing them to DMV records, investigators narrowed their search to several dozen specific cars, including the one driven by Lee and owned by her parents. A tipster also contacted authorities and told them that Lee and Eriz were driving a vehicle matching the outline.

Eriz told police that he only learned he was chargeable for Aiden's death per week after the shooting and said he decided not to show himself in because he didn't consider Lee had done anything fallacious and didn't need to that she discovered in trouble.

Unlike Eriz's police interview, which was played during his trial, the complete details of Lee's conversations with police were never presented in open court. But an official had previously testified that after the shooting, Lee apparently denied the crime and told Eriz before his arrest, “You don't know for sure it was you.” The officer said that when Lee was asked why she hadn't come forward sooner, she replied, that she was “afraid of incriminating herself…or that she wasn’t sure if they were.”

There is not any evidence that Eriz knew the boy was within the automobile or that he intended to kill the mother.

During Eriz's trial, prosecutors argued that he felt disrespected by Cloonan and was waiting for a probability to make use of a weapon he had been carrying for months “in the hope that someone would step out of line.” The defense countered that Cloonan provoked Eriz and caused him to act rashly in the warmth of passion.

A jury in January convicted Eriz of second-degree murder. He was Sentenced earlier this month to 40 years to life in prison.

After Lee's sentencing, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said it was a disgrace to see Lee receive recognition for his time served and good behavior “while sitting at home instead of in a jail cell.”

“The day Aiden was laid to rest in his tiny casket, Wynne and Marcus kayaked and enjoyed a beautiful California summer day, knowing Aiden would never play in the sun again,” Spitzer said in an announcement. “A six-year-old little boy is dead, and as a substitute of coming forward while the remainder of Southern California desperately looked for his killer, she helped the killer hide vital evidence after which went on together with her life as if nothing had ever happened…

“Their behavior is despicable and I, along with our entire Orange County community, am outraged that the state legislature continues to water down our laws to give criminals charged with egregious crimes one break after another,” the added Prosecutor added.