3 teens arrested after Calif. girl's suicide

This undated photo provided by her family via attorney Robert Allard shows Audrey Pott. A Northern California sheriff's office has arrested three 16-year-old boys on accusations that they sexually battered the 15-year-old girl who hanged herself eight days after the attack last fall. Santa Clara County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jose Cardoza says the teens were arrested Thursday, April 11, 2013, two at Saratoga High School and a third at Christopher High School in Gilroy. (AP Photo/Family photo provided by attorney Robert Allard) NO SALES MAGS OUT FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY

This undated photo provided by her family via attorney Robert Allard shows Audrey Pott. A Northern California sheriff's office has arrested three 16-year-old boys on accusations that they sexually battered the 15-year-old girl who hanged herself eight days after the attack last fall. Santa Clara County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jose Cardoza says the teens were arrested Thursday, April 11, 2013, two at Saratoga High School and a third at Christopher High School in Gilroy. (AP Photo/Family photo provided by attorney Robert Allard) NO SALES MAGS OUT FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY

SARATOGA, Calif. (AP) ? Eight days after being sexually assaulted while passed out at a party, and then humiliated by online photos, 15-year-old Audrie Pott posted on Facebook that her life was ruined, "worst day ever," and hanged herself, the family's lawyer said.

For the next eight months, her family struggled to figure out what happened to their soccer loving, artistic, horse crazy daughter, whose gentle smile, long dark hair and shining eyes belied a struggling soul.

And then on Thursday, seven months after the tragedy, a California sheriff's office arrested three 16-year-old boys on suspicion of sexual battery. The arrests "reopened a wound" for family members of Pott, and they have gone into seclusion, family attorney Robert Allard said.

"The family has been trying to understand why their loving daughter would have taken her life at such a young age and to make sure that those responsible would be held accountable," Allard said.

"After an extensive investigation that we have conducted on behalf of the family, there is no doubt in our minds that the victim, then only 15 years old, was savagely assaulted by her fellow high school students while she lay on a bed completely unconscious," he said.

Allard said students used cell phones to share photos of the assaults and the images went viral.

Santa Clara County sheriff's Lt. Jose Cardoza said two of the teens were arrested at Saratoga High School and the third, a former Saratoga High student, at Christopher High School in Gilroy. The names of the suspects were not released because they are minors. Details about the assault were also not released.

Cardoza said the suspects were booked into juvenile hall and face two felonies and one misdemeanor each.

The lieutenant said the arrests were the result of information gathered by his agency's Saratoga High School resource officers. He said the investigation is ongoing, and Los Gatos police also continue looking into the girl's September suicide.

The Associated Press does not routinely identify victims of sexual assault. But in this case, Pott's family wanted her name and case known, Allard said. The family also provided a photo to the AP.

The girl's family members have not commented and have requested privacy until a planned news conference Tuesday. Her father and step-mother, Lawrence and Lisa Pott, along with her mother Sheila Pott, have started the Audrie Pott Foundation to provide music and art scholarships and offer youth counseling and support.

The foundation website alludes to the teen's struggles, but until now neither law enforcement, school officials nor family have discussed the sexual assault.

"She was compassionate about life, her friends, her family, and would never do anything to harm anyone," the site says. "She was in the process of developing the ability to cope with the cruelty of this world but had not quite figured it all out.

"Ultimately, she had not yet acquired the antibiotics to deal with the challenges present for teens in today's society."

Two days after Pott died, fellow students and staff at Saratoga High School wore her favorite color, teal, in her honor.

"Our sympathies go out to all of the families affected by this tragic situation," Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District Superintendent Bob Mistele said in a statement. "Collaborating with our parents, students, staff and community we will continue to work diligently to maintain a positive climate at our high schools based on respect, responsibility, and open communication that discourages cyber bullying and inappropriate conduct."

The Pott family is not alone.

In Canada on Thursday, authorities said they were looking further into the case of a teenage girl who hanged herself Sunday after an alleged rape and months of bullying. A photo said to be of the 2011 assault was shared online.

No charges initially were filed against four teenage boys being investigated. But after an outcry, Nova Scotia's justice minister appointed four government departments to look into the case.

___

On the Web: www.audriepottfoundation.com

Associated Press

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Obama urges North Korea to end belligerence

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Thursday urged North Korea to end its brazen nuclear threats against the U.S. and its allies, warning the unpredictable communist regime that his administration would "take all necessary steps" to protect American citizens.

Obama's stern comments came as new U.S. intelligence was made public showing North Korea probably has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, though the weapon wouldn't be very reliable.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has rattled much of Asia with threats to launch a nuclear strike. The North on Thursday delivered a fresh round of war rhetoric with claims it has "powerful striking means" on standby, the latest in a torrent of warlike threats seen by outsiders as an effort to scare and pressure South Korea and the U.S. into changing their North Korea policies.

Obama, in his first public comments since North Korea escalated its rhetoric, said it was time for the isolated nation "to end the belligerent approach they have taken and to try to lower temperatures."

"Nobody wants to see a conflict on the Korean Peninsula," Obama added, speaking from the Oval Office alongside United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Top U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they believe Kim is using the threats to win concessions on foreign aid rather than trying to start a war.

Obama said he preferred to see the tensions on the peninsula resolved through diplomatic means, but added that, "the United States will take all necessary steps to protect its people."

Secretary of State John Kerry was headed Thursday to East Asia, where he planned talks with officials in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo about North Korea.

The latest U.S. intelligence assessment on North Korea was revealed Thursday at a public hearing on Capitol Hill. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., read from what he said was an unclassified segment of a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, which long has been shrouded in secrecy.

The DIA conclusion was confirmed by a senior congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon had not officially released the contents. The aide said the report was produced in March.

"DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles. However, the reliability will be low," the report said, according Lamborn, who read it aloud.

Notably absent from that unclassified segment of the report was any reference to what the DIA believes is the range of a missile North Korea could arm with a nuclear warhead. Much of its missile arsenal is capable of reaching South Korea and Japan, but Kim has threatened to attack the United States as well.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing in which he revealed the DIA assessment, Lamborn asked Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whether he agreed with it. Dempsey said he had not seen the report.

"You said it's not publicly released, so I choose not to comment on it," Dempsey said.

The DIA assessment is not out of line with comments Dempsey made Wednesday when he was asked at a Pentagon news conference whether North Korea was capable of mating a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile that could reach Japan or beyond.

In response, Dempsey said the extent of North Korean progress on designing a nuclear weapon small enough to operate as a missile warhead was a classified matter. But he did not rule out that the North has achieved the capability revealed in the DIA report.

"They have conducted two nuclear tests," Dempsey told a Pentagon news conference. "They have conducted several successful ballistic missile launches. And in the absence of concrete evidence to the contrary, we have to assume the worst case, and that's why we're postured as we are today." He was referring to recent moves by the U.S. to increase its missile defense capabilities in the Pacific.

At the House hearing where Lamborn revealed the DIA conclusion, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was asked a different version of the same question: Does North Korea have the capability to strike U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon? Hagel said the answer is no.

"Now does that mean that they won't have it or they can't have it or they're not working on it?" Hagel added. "No. That's why this is a very dangerous situation."

At a separate hearing Thursday, U.S. officials offered their assessment of the North Korean leader, who is a grandson of the country's founder, Kim Il Sung.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee that he thinks Kim, who took control after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in 2011, is trying to show the U.S., the world and his own people that he is "firmly in control in North Korea," while attempting to maneuver the international community into concessions in future negotiations.

"I don't think ... he has much of an endgame other than to somehow elicit recognition" and to turn the nuclear threat into "negotiation and to accommodation and presumably for aid," Clapper said.

Clapper said that the intelligence community believes the North would use nuclear weapons only to preserve the Kim regime but that analysts do not know how the regime defines that.

___

AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

___Follow Robert Burns at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP and Julie Pace at http://www.twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-urges-north-korea-end-belligerence-204923866--politics.html

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Chief Product Officer And Early Engineer Jim Patterson To Leave Microsoft-Owned Yammer

Earlier today, we heard that Yammer's Chief Product Officer Jim Patterson, was planning to depart the company. We've confirmed with Yammer that Patterson is indeed leaving Microsoft-owned Yammer.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xxjJ8WF4h6w/

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A country song, assumptions _ and a racial outcry

FILE - This combination of file photos shows Brad Paisley, left, in Hollywood, Calif. on Nov. 1, 2011 and LL Cool J in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 2013. Southern white men don't usually drive racial dialogue. For as long as race has riven America, they have been depicted more often as the problem than the solution. So the country music star must have been unsurprised at the days of widespread criticism of his new song ?Accidental Racist,? which details the challenges facing a ?white man from the southland? and then features LL Cool J rapping a black perspective. (Photos by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - This combination of file photos shows Brad Paisley, left, in Hollywood, Calif. on Nov. 1, 2011 and LL Cool J in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 2013. Southern white men don't usually drive racial dialogue. For as long as race has riven America, they have been depicted more often as the problem than the solution. So the country music star must have been unsurprised at the days of widespread criticism of his new song ?Accidental Racist,? which details the challenges facing a ?white man from the southland? and then features LL Cool J rapping a black perspective. (Photos by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Brad Paisley performs during The Inaugural Ball at the Washignton convention center during the 57th Presidential Inauguration in Washington on Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. Southern white men don't usually drive racial dialogue. For as long as race has riven America, they have been depicted more often as the problem than the solution. So the country music star must have been unsurprised at the days of widespread criticism of his new song "Accidental Racist," which details the challenges facing a "white man from the southland" and then features LL Cool J rapping from a black perspective. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

FILE - A member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy collects Confederate flags after the Confederate Memorial Day ceremony at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, S.C. on Tuesday, May 10, 2011. Southern white men don't usually drive racial dialogue. For as long as race has riven America, they have been depicted more often as the problem than the solution. So the country music star Brad Paisley must have been unsurprised at the days of widespread criticism of his new song ?Accidental Racist,? which details the challenges facing a ?white man from the southland? and then features LL Cool J rapping from a black perspective. (AP Photo/The Post And Courier, Grace Beahm)

Southern white men don't usually drive racial dialogue. For as long as race has riven America, they have been depicted more often as the problem than the solution.

So after country music star Brad Paisley released his new song "Accidental Racist" this week, what happened next was hardly surprising: days of widespread criticism about his attempt to detail the challenges facing a "white man from the Southland" and his recruitment of LL Cool J to rap a black perspective.

The song sparked a predictable blaze this week on TV, talk radio and the Internet. USA Today asked if it was an "epic fail." At The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates titled his analysis, "'Accidental Racist' Is Actually Just Racist." More than a few ridiculed it as "the worst song ever."

Some elements of the outcry, however, raise less predictable questions: Where does naivet? turn into ignorance, and then into racism? What is the basis of modern Southern pride? And, possibly most important, should we grade racial attitudes on a curve?

Paisley begins the song with an anecdote about a black man taking offense to his Confederate flag T-shirt. "The only thing I meant to say is I'm a Skynyrd fan," Paisley sings, referring to the pioneering Southern rock group.

That scene actually happened to Paisley in real life, said Charlie Cook, programming director for West Virginia Radio Corp. and a member of the Country Music Association's board of directors, who heard Paisley discuss the song with a group of industry executives.

"He sat down and thought about it from another person's perspective and said, 'If I offended you, it was accidental,'" Cook said. "I think it's really from his heart."

That doesn't matter, say many of the critical voices. They say it's the result that counts ? a song that, to them, turns some of the most stinging flashpoints of American racial history into aw-shucks anecdotes. They are receiving a message very different from the one Paisley intended: the country-music staple of trying to figure out one's experiences through song.

Ignorance is no excuse for Demetria Irwin, who savaged "Accidental Racist" in a piece on the black news and culture website TheGrio.com.

"I think he had good intentions. I think he genuinely wanted to explore a topic," Irwin, who is black, said in an interview. However, "I don't believe he doesn't know what the Confederate flag symbolizes and what it means. There's nothing accidental about that."

"There's also just a general entitlement that some white people might have, the whole white privilege thing, being totally unaware of black culture in a real sense," she added.

The song's black culture was provided by LL Cool J, whose verses were widely panned as shallow. Coates pointed out that while rap is full of artists who are passionate about racial issues, LL is not one of them.

"The only real reason to call up LL is that he is black and thus must have something insightful to say about the Confederate Flag," wrote Coates, who is black. "The assumption that there is no real difference among black people is exactly what racism is."

Choosing LL, he said, is like "assuming that Paisley must know something about barbecue because he's Southern."

Being Southern comes with its own set of assumptions and stereotypes, some of them negative ones created by the low points of the region's history. Southern pride is largely a defensive reaction to such stigmas, said Eric Weisbard, a music critic and American Studies professor at the University of Mississippi.

So while some might see "Accidental Racist" as a ham-handed attempt to start a dialogue, it's part of a long tradition in which Southern musicians "try to talk about who they are in answer to what others dismissively assume they are," Weisbard wrote on NPR.org.

Much of the friction around the song comes from people who don't understand this history, Weisbard said in an interview: "We're as segregated culturally as we often are socially."

Many people are proud of being from the "heartland," New York City or other American places, Weisbard said. But "the South has been branded a problem for the country as a whole at least since the Civil War."

"In every generation, there's a new way in which white Southerners have marginalized themselves," he said, "and the rest of America has to think about what that means."

Paisley gave America something to think about with the chorus of the song: "I'm just a white man comin' to you from the Southland / Tryin' to understand what it's like not to be / I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done / And it ain't like you and me can re-write history."

At the end of the chorus he sings, "Caught between Southern pride and Southern blame."

That's a gray area for Chris Newman, 25, a white West Virginia University graduate student who grew up in Lexington, Ky. He says Southern pride often is "flirting a fine line between being offensive and supporting historical heritage."

Hospitality, driving your truck through the mud, floating down a river or drinking bourbon in Kentucky are great ways to embrace Southern culture, he says. "But I don't run around wearing Confederate T-shirts. I have Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirts, but they don't have stars and bars on them."

That's a deliberate choice: "If I respect somebody, I'm going to make sure I don't offend them," Newman said.

Newman doesn't believe "accidental racism" exists. But Luke Laird, a Nashville songwriter who has penned many chart-topping hits, has "absolutely" seen it while growing up in a small, mostly white town in western Pennsylvania.

"There were people who said things (that) I know if they actually knew what it meant, they would be horrified," said Laird, who is white.

Back in high school, Laird saw a Hank Williams Jr. shirt with a Confederate flag on it and thought, "that looks cool."

"To be completely honest, and it's probably just ignorance, but growing up I never really thought a lot about that flag and what it meant," Laird said.

"We all want to treat everyone equally, but the reality is we don't always do that," Laird said. "The reality is, it takes more of a conscious effort to try and see where the other people are coming from."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at http://twitter.com/jessewashington

___

AP Writers Vicki Smith in Charleston, W.Va. and Chris Talbott in Nashville contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-11-Accidental%20Racist/id-9386d7bfed914a179b40962bb1c0ad6b

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Kanye West sued over 'Gold Digger' sample

By Natalie Finn, E! Online

Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty Images

Kanye West is being accused of copyright infringement.

Did Kanye West mine another artist's work for "Gold Digger" and forget to tell anybody?

That's what the children of late Thunder & Lightning musician David Pryor claim in a multimillion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit filed this week against West, in which they allege that he wrongfully sampled their dad's "get down" chants from the 1974 tune "Bumpin' Bus Stop."?

"Gold Digger," which most prominently borrowed from Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman," was a single off of West's 2005 album Late Registration--and Pryor's kids admit that the timing of their complaint seems a bit off.?

NEWS: Did Kim Kardashian really send a maternity gift to Kate Middleton??

"The complaint makes clear that 'Gold Digger' was released in 2005 while David Pryor was in a convalescent hospital suffering from a host of severe mental and physical disabilities, including senile dementia, cerebrovascular disease, prostate cancer, epilepsy, and diabetes," attorney Courtney M. Coates said in a statement obtained by E! News.?

"He died in May 2006 from cerebrovascular disease without having any knowledge that his voice was being exploited by other artists for commercial profit. After David Pryor died, [daughter Trena and son Lorenzo] discovered Pryor's song in late 2010, but they could not secure rights to the song until Pryor's estate was probated and a final determination of heirs was made in 2011. In 2012, the family obtained all of the necessary information required to file this substantial lawsuit against Kanye and others."?

View the lawsuit?

Coates states that the family is aware of 50 instances of Pryor's vocals being sampled in recordings and they are "putting all record companies on notice that they will be sued if they continue to steal and exploit David Pryor's vocal performance in 'Bumpin' Bus Stop' without the family's permission."?

The lawsuit, filed in L.A. Superior Court, asked for "millions of dollars" in damages from West, Roc-A-Fella Records, UMG's Island Def Jam and other corporate defendants, as well as an injunction preventing further unauthorized use of David Pryor's work.?

PHOTOS: Sexy expectant parents Kanye &Kim?

Listen to the two tracks:?

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Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/10/17694673-kanye-west-sued-over-gold-digger-sample?lite

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'To Do List' Item One: Watch This Exclusive Clip To Boost Your Sex Life!

Sneak Peek Week prepares you for Sunday's MTV Movie Awards at 9 p.m. ET with interviews from comedy's cast.
By Brett White

Aubrey Plaza in "The To Do List"
Photo: CBS Films

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1705402/to-do-list-movie-clip-pineapple-juice.jhtml

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Red Epic Dragon sensor updates start tomorrow for $8,500, watch the actual process at NAB

Red has announced that Dragon sensor updates will start tomorrow for Epic-M and Epic-X owners for $8,500 and, interestingly, is letting owners (and the public) see the operation for themselves at its NAB booth. The new sensor will bring 6K resolution, 120 fps at 5K and 15+ stops of dynamic range in a slightly larger format, according to Red. Epic owners who wait until Thursday or later will be able to grab the update for $9,500, and filmmakers hoping for a new Epic-M with the Dragon instead of the Mysterium-X sensor will be able to pre-order tomorrow for $29,000 or so. Meanwhile, there's good news for those who ordered the more budget-minded Scarlet -- they'll be able to upgrade to the Epic directly or get a 6k Dragon sensor and ASICs, with pricing details coming tomorrow and pre-orders launching on Thursday. Red may have a tough row to hoe with recent NAB news from the likes of BlackMagic Design and Vision Systems, but how many companies will actually let you watch your camera get operated on? Check the source for more.

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