The R&B singer was found guilty of racketeering, sex trafficking and producing child abuse images, with his lawyer lobbying the US president for more than a year

R Kelly has formally appealed to the US president, Donald Trump, for a reduction of his 31-year prison sentence for racketeering, sex trafficking and child abuse images, in a filing to the Department of Justice.

The 59-year-old R&B singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was found guilty in 2021 of leading a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual activity and pornography, for which he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2022 he was found guilty on three counts of child abuse images and three counts of child enticement and sentenced to 20 years in prison, which he is serving nearly entirely concurrently but for one additional year.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

The AI music generation tool Suno scraped millions of songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius, as well as from the stock music libraries Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, the International Music Score Library Project, and podcasts via RSS feeds, according to a hacker who breached the company and shared data about Suno’s training libraries with 404 Media. The hacker was also able to access user information for hundreds of thousands of Suno’s customers, as well as Stripe payment information, they said.

The hacked data is a rare look at exactly how AI models and tools are built. Suno is one of the largest AI music generation tools on the internet, and has been the subject of several major lawsuits from the record industry, which accused the company of training on millions of copyrighted songs. As part of these legal proceedings, Suno previously admitted that it was trained on “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet,” which included a total of “tens of millions of recordings.” Suno has been making the argument that it is allowed to train on copyrighted works as fair use in those cases, one of which has been settled. 

The lawsuits have made clear that Suno did train on huge amounts of copyrighted works, but the hacked data shared with 404 Media sheds more light on how Suno scraped songs from the internet and where it took them from. The Recording Industry Association of America accused Suno of ripping songs directly from YouTube; the hacked data seen by 404 Media confirms this.

The hacked material includes source code that appears to be from 2023 and 2024 that includes scraping instructions and details about the scope of at least some of the scraping. For example, the comments in one file note that they will pull from “genius_hq, youtube_music, freesound, jamendo, imp, deezer, ytm_tagged,” and that “non-music will be filtered out.” A file called “youtube_music” notes that at the time the file was last updated, it had ingested “2,013,545 music clips.” Another file contains comments about different datasets Suno had created, which included “113,879 hours of youtube_music,” “17,615 hours of genius_hq,” “410 hours of free sound,” “19,514 hours of imslp,” “3,726 hours of jamendo,” “62,117 hours of pond5_music,” “12,287 hours of deezer,” “152,162 hours of ytm_tagged,” and “103 hours of musescore_lyrics.” In total, this is at least decades worth of music. 

Rapper paid JM Burkman & Associates $600,000 to push for president’s pardon but firm says no partial refund promised

Louisiana rapper Boosie Badazz is reportedly looking to claw back $300,000 from a firm of Washington DC lobbyists after they failed to secure a Donald Trump pardon that he hired them to pursue over his conviction on charges of possessing a loaded weapon at music video shooting in 2023.

Boosie – whose legal name is Torence Hatch and who hails from his home state’s capital of Baton Rouge – paid JM Burkman & Associates $600,000 in 2025 to advance his push for a pardon from the US president, according to a report on Monday from Notus, which covers the federal government.

As people yearn for connection, these events are popping up around the world - and spreading ‘collective effervescence’

We met in a former synagogue, a vast room with hardwood floors where the sound could echo freely. All were strangers, many former choir nerds, united by a love for group singing. Our goal was to learn and perform, in a single day, a classic of our time: a song from the Hannah Montana movie.

The event, near downtown Los Angeles, was a one-day choir hosted by the Gaia Music Collective – a three-hour gathering where more than 100 people rehearsed a choral arrangement of the song and sang it three times, with ourselves as the only audience.

With marriage rates in decline, the appeal of a big wedding that we can live vicariously is stronger than ever

Finally, after decades, I have something in common with Taylor Swift. It feels great to say that out loud, in public. No, I’m not famous, rich, particularly attractive, or a woman. I really, really can’t sing. Like, not even my karaoke is tolerable for human ears (dogs seem to be fine with it). No, our sole point of connection in the cosmic swirl of life is that we’ve both been married. I can’t compare this achievement to winning a Grammy or selling out Crypto.com Arena 16 times, but it has to be on the list somewhere.

My wedding did not come close to the upwards of $50m floated by People Magazine as the cost of Swift’s. We got the venue for free because my wife’s family owned it, which is its own sort of privilege. Lena Dunham didn’t attend, but I certainly sent enough invites. Still, getting someone to agree to tolerate you “till death do you part” is no small feat. Did we get divorced three years later? Of course. I can’t believe she dealt with me even that long. Will Taylor and Travis Kelce beat our record? Depends on how often he forgets to put the toilet seat down in one of their numerous homes across the country. That guy just seems like the sort to make that mistake regularly. Don’t ask me how I came to this conclusion. I trust my own eyes.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

The couple were married in a star-studded ceremony at Madison Square Garden

• Full report: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce marry at New York City’s Madison Square Garden

The couple invited an array of celebrity guests to the wedding, including Gigi Hadid and Bradley Cooper, while Adam Sandler officiated their nuptials

• In pictures: Fans and A-list stars gather for the wedding
  

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are officially wed. The couple hosted their wedding celebration on Friday in New York City, nearly three years after first meeting.

The ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler, a Swift spokesperson said in a Friday statement confirming the nuptials.

The US superstar golden couple Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are finally tying the knot in a rumoured major event in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The couple – who got engaged 10 months ago, announced via an Instagram post that received 14m likes in its first hour online – held an intimate rehearsal dinner at MSG with a rumoured guest list of 1,000 for today’s ceremony and construction of a custom-made fairytale castle inside.

But with tight security, NDAs and New York streets on lockdown – what do we know? Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian writer Elle Hunt