- Sabalenka relishes 'much-needed' tennis rivalry with Swiatek
- Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson set for six weeks out
- Taylor Swift got police escort to London gigs after Austria terror plot
- Cook tips Root to break Tendulkar's all-time runs record
- British skull auction sparks Indian demand for return
- Joe Root: England's elegant Test record-breaker
- Braving war: Lebanon's 'badass' airline defies odds
- Klopp to return as head of Red Bull football operations
- Hezbollah strikes Israel, says it foiled Israeli incursions
- Jurgen Klopp to return as head of Red Bull football operations
- Sinner to face Medvedev in Shanghai Masters quarter-finals
- US weighs Google breakup in landmark trial
- Record-breaking Root guides England to 232-2 in reply to Pakistan's 556
- Japan PM dissolves parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- Chinese stocks tumble on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- 7-Eleven owner confirms new takeover offer from Couche-Tard
- Goodbye Tito? Tomb at risk as Serbs argue over Yugoslav legacy
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- Sinner avoids Shanghai deja vu with assured Shelton win
- Pyongyang to 'permanently' shut border with South Korea
- Trumpet star Marsalis says jazz creates 'balance' in divided world
- No children left on Greece's famed but emptying island
- Nepali becomes youngest to climb world's 8,000m peaks
- Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study
- A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene's devastation firsthand
- Padres edge Dodgers, Mets on the brink
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- With EU funding, Tunisian farmer revives parched village
- Sega ninja game 'Shinobi' gets movie treatment
- Boeing suspends negotiations with striking workers
- 7-Eleven owner's shares spike on report of new buyout offer
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- Three million UK children living below poverty line: study
- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
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NY judge threatens Trump with jail for gag order violations
The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's historic criminal trial again found the former US president in contempt of a gag order Monday and threatened to jail him if there are further violations.
Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying business records to reimburse his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just days ahead of the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton.
Judge Juan Merchan held Trump in contempt of court and fined him $1,000 for a violation of the gag order prohibiting him from publicly attacking witnesses, jurors or court staff and their relatives.
But Merchan said the fines -- Trump was also fined a total of $9,000 last week -- were not serving as a "deterrent" and he would have to consider jail time for further violations.
"As much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction..., I want you to understand I will," Merchan told Trump, adding that he understood the "magnitude of such a decision."
"At the end if the day I have a job to do and part of that job is to maintain the dignity of the justice system," the judge said, calling Trump's defiance a "direct attack on the rule of law."
Merchan's ruling came at the start of the third week of testimony in the trial of the Republican presidential candidate for covering up hush money payments to Daniels in a scheme to avoid potentially disastrous publicity just before election day.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and Cohen, Trump's ex-lawyer who has become a bitter foe of his former boss, are both expected to testify at some point during the trial.
- 'Crisis' -
Hope Hicks, a former close advisor to Trump, testified on Friday about the "crisis" that engulfed his 2016 presidential campaign after a tape emerged of him bragging about groping women.
Hicks said she was a "little stunned" by the now infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women's genitalia.
"There was consensus among us all that the tape was damaging, this was a crisis," she added.
Hicks was a key player in the final stages of Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign when the hush money payments to Daniels were allegedly made.
According to prosecutors, panic over the tape triggered a Trump campaign effort to silence Daniels over her claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with the married Trump. Trump denies ever having sex with Daniels.
The trial has gripped the legal and political establishment as Trump seeks to re-take the White House from President Joe Biden in November's election.
In addition to the New York case, Trump has been indicted in Washington and Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden.
He also faces charges of illegally storing huge quantities of top-secret documents taken from the White House after his presidency to his home in Florida.
F.Bennett--AMWN