R. Kelly sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking and racketeering

Months after he was convicted in September on nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering crimes, R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly handed the sentence down in Brooklyn after several women spoke out in the courtroom against the singer (real name Robert Sylvester Kelly) and recounted their experiences. While delivering the sentence, Judge Donnelly addressed Kelly and said, “You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.”

After the sentencing, prosecuting U.S. attorney Breon S. Peace gave the following statement: “With the aid of his fame, his money, and most importantly, his inner circle, R. Kelly preyed upon children and young women for his own sexual gratification for decades.” Peace then proceeded to list the psychological tactics Kelly used to “force victims including minors to engage in sexual activity with him and others, and to become unwilling participants in the pornographic films he wrote, produced, and directed.”

Jennifer Bonjean, R. Kelly’s lawyer, argued in court that Kelly had suffered sexual abuse as a child, and had originally sought a 10-year sentence for her client. After Kelly’s sentence was delivered, Bonjean told reporters outside the courthouse that she plans to appeal it.

FCC commissioner calls for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores

A member of the Federal Communications Commission has urged the CEOs of Apple and Alphabet (parent company of Google) to remove TikTok from their app stores.

Brendan Carr, the FCC commissioner, wrote an official letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai claiming that video-sharing app TikTok–owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance–“poses a national security threat” based on the data it collects from its users.

Along with graphics of the letter he sent to the two CEOs, Carr posted a tweet in which he wrote: “TikTok is not just another video app. That's the sheep's clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.”

TikTok has faced scrutiny for its collection of users’ data, and in 2021, was ordered to pay a $92 million fine to settle class-action lawsuits alleging that the app had harvested and shared personal data from its users, including facial and biometric identification.

While the FCC has the authority to grant communications licenses to companies, the commission doesn’t have jurisdiction over the content of app stores like those on iOS and Android devices. In his letter, Carr asked both companies to either remove TikTok from their app stores by July 8th or provide him with an explanation why they aren’t planning to do so.