US record producer and R&B singer R. Kelly on Monday was convicted of leading a decades-long sex crime ring, with a New York jury finding the superstar singer guilty on all nine charges, including the most serious of racketeering.
After six weeks of disturbing testimony, the jury deliberated just nine hours before finding the incarcerated 54-year-old celebrity guilty of systematically recruiting women and teenagers for sex, before grooming and brutally abusing them.
Wearing a light blue tie, pinstriped navy suit and a white mask, Kelly sat largely motionless, holding his head down and periodically closing his eyes behind black-rimmed glasses.
He faces up to life in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for May 4.
To convict Kelly on the most serious charge of racketeering, jurors had to find him guilty of at least two of 14 “predicate acts” — the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.
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Met Opera reopens with landmark first show by Black composer
After an 18-month shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic and protracted labor disputes with its musicians and crew, the Metropolitan Opera reopens Monday with a history-making debut — the first work by a Black composer.
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The premier US opera company will present Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Terence Blanchard, the top-tier jazz trumpeter and Spike Lee’s go-to film score master for three decades.
When its staging was first announced in 2019, it was unclear when exactly Fire would come to Manhattan.
But the months of Black Lives Matter protests that reverberated nationwide and beyond over the summer of 2020 lent the project new urgency.
The Metropolitan Opera is the largest performing arts institution in the United States, but in its 138 years of existence has never before presented an opera by a Black composer.
Reopening the Met’s doors with Blanchard’s work offered an opportunity to make a statement. AFP, Read full story on manilastandard.net