Mom: Family Cooperated In Mo. Rape Investigation

MARYVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A woman who says her family was forced to move from a northwest Missouri town after her 14-year-old daughter was plied with alcohol and sexually assaulted nearly two years ago disputed authorities' claims that she and her daughter stopped cooperating with investigators.

Melinda Coleman said Tuesday that justice was denied when Nodaway County's prosecutor dropped felony charges against two 17-year-old Maryville High School students in March 2012, two months after she found her daughter passed out on the family's front porch in below-freezing temperatures.

Nodaway County prosecutor Robert Rice issued a statement saying there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the charges because the accusers had stopped cooperating and asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. In an interview, Sheriff Darren White backed up Rice's statement.

The case has drawn new attention since The Kansas City Star published the results Sunday of a seven-month investigation into the allegations. The Star's story described a town where many appeared to be closing ranks around the accused and suggesting the girls were somehow responsible for the incident. In April, after the family had moved, the family's home in Maryville was damaged in a fire, though a cause has not been determined.

Robert Sundell, an attorney who represented the teen accused of assaulting Daisy Coleman, said in a written statement that while many may find his former client's behavior "reprehensible," the legal issue is whether a crime occurred. He said the investigation raised questions about whether the 14-year-old was "incapacitated during the encounter." He also said the charges were dropped after the accusers' stories changed during depositions.

Sundell said his former client would not talk to the media.

Coleman says her 14-year-old daughter was given alcohol in January 2012 and raped by a 17-year-old acquaintance. The girl's 13-year-old friend says she was forced to have sex with a 15-year-old at the same house, while another 17-year-old allegedly recorded the incident on a cellphone.

The daughter acknowledged she and the friend left her house to meet the boys but said they gave her alcohol and she doesn't remember much of what happened next. The boys said the sex was consensual.

The two 17-year-old boys were charged as adults, but Rice dropped felony counts against them several months later. A misdemeanor count against the teen accused of assaulting Daisy was dropped subsequently. The prosecutor cited a lack of evidence and the Colemans' refusal to cooperate. The 15-year-old was charged in juvenile court.

The Associated Press does not generally name victims of sexual assault but is naming Coleman because she and her mother have been granting public interviews about the case. The AP is not naming the boys because there is no longer an active criminal case against them.

Coleman, a veterinarian who moved her family back to Albany, about 40 miles east of Maryville, because of backlash from the community over the girls' accusations, said suggestions that she and her daughter were uncooperative are lies.

"How do you think we didn't want to cooperate?" Coleman asked. "We went to get a rape kit done. I wrote a statement, and my daughter gave a statement to the police."

Coleman said that no depositions were conducted before the felony charges were dropped. She said she was asked but refused to invoke the Fifth Amendment before a planned May 31, 2012, deposition.

Sundell said his former client's accusers did invoke the Fifth Amendment right at the May hearing.

Rice has declined to discuss the case beyond a news release sent by his office Tuesday that noted that in Missouri, dismissed cases are sealed and he was not at liberty to discuss them.

White, the sheriff, said he never understood the Colemans' reasoning and that authorities weren't considering charges against the 14-year-old girl.

"They stonewalled the case all by themselves," he said.

Now that the family is saying they will cooperate, he wasn't sure whether that would make a difference.

"They wouldn't cooperate and then they said they would cooperate. And then they wouldn't cooperate. And then they went back and forth," White said. "I'm guessing, and this is just speculation, but I'm guessing that the prosecutor would be a little gun shy to believe that they would be willing to cooperate at this time."

He said authorities have had dealings with the suspects before and prosecuted them. Online court records show that the teen accused of assaulting Daisy had been on probation for a DWI.

"It's not that he's afraid of these boys and their families or anything like that. It's just that he was left with no alternatives," White said.

The case has drawn comparisons to one in Steubenville, Ohio, where two 17-year-old high school football players were convicted of raping a West Virginia girl after an alcohol-fueled party in 2012. The case was furiously debated online and led to allegations of a cover-up to protect the city's celebrated football team.

Missouri expanded its rape, sodomy and sexual abuse laws, effective Aug. 28, to cover cases of sexual contact when a person is incapacitated or incapable of giving consent. Those crimes previously had required "forcible compulsion." State Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, who had supported that change, said Tuesday that it was prompted at least partly by the Steubenville case.

Prominent Missouri Republicans have called on Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, to intervene. However, a spokeswoman for Koster's office said Tuesday that it had no authority under state law to reopen the investigation on its own.

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called on Koster to ask that a grand jury be convened, and House Speaker Tim Jones said the attorney general should consider intervening. Jones disagreed with suggestions that Koster was prohibited from doing so.

___

Reporter Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=234885886&ft=1&f=
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Twitter TV Ratings Are Here, But No One Knows What They Really Mean

Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Nielsen recently released its first Twitter TV Ratings top 10 list, a new metric that measures not how many people watch a given television show — the basis for traditional TV ratings — but how rather how much activity they generate on Twitter. Just how different are the two metrics? Take look at the Breaking Bad finale: While it came in No. 1 on the list as the most tweeted about show in America, its traditional TV ratings didn’t even crack the top 10.

Nor did many of the most-watched shows make the same sort of splash on Twitter. The most-watched shows during the the week Breaking Bad topped the Twitter Ratings chart were Sunday Night Football, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Crazy Ones, two other NFL programs and The Voice. How many of them showed up on the Twitter TV top 10? Only The Voice.

It turns out the shows most seen on Twitter aren’t always the shows most seen on TV, and the discrepancy illustrates just how much more there is to learn about what a tweet about a TV show means. It also offers networks and advertisers a way to gauge the relationship between viewership and Twitter traffic, but knowing the volume of tweets is just the beginning, and there’s a lot of data in those tweets that’s still silent.

For example, were people tweeting so much about Breaking Bad simply because it was the finale? Do shows like Glee and Jimmy Kimmel Live do well because they have younger audiences that are more tuned-in to Twitter? Are people tweeting that they love The Voice or that they’re angry at who’s winning? That information is out there, but it doesn’t come out in numbers on the reach of a given tweet (Nielsen tracks the number of tweets, people tweeting about a show, and also how many people see those tweets)

“Social provides a lot of opportunity, but it’s difficult to relate what’s being said online – especially on Twitter – to what’s being done in the real world. People say one thing and they do another,” Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst who researches social analytics tools, told WIRED. “How do you help these businesses figure out what the differences are?”

In other words, we may know that a lot of people are tweeting about a show, but are they watching it? And, if so, are they enjoying it? Who these tweeters are and how they feel about, say, an episode of Scandal isn’t something you can determine from knowing that there are nearly 713,000 tweets about it.

One thing that has potential to change this, Blau noted, is Twitter’s new deal with Comcast, which was announced last Wednesday. The two companies are pairing up on a new feature called “See It,” which will essentially turn Twitter into a remote control. Launching in November, “See It” will create a Twitter card for any show mentioned in a tweet that will allow users to click to watch, On Demand stream, or DVR the show mentioned. That feature, Blau said, will give much more effective data on how often a tweet leads to someone tuning in. And that seems to be what Comcast, which has 24 million U.S. subscribers, is looking for. As the company’s chief business development officer Sam Schwartz told All Things D, “we want to make the conversation on Twitter lead to consumption.”

Nielsen has determined there is a two-way relationship between Twitter and ratings, even if no one is quite sure exactly how it works. Back in August, the media measurement company released a study that looked at 221 primetime episodes and found that the live ratings for a given episode had a “statistically significant” impact on tweets related to the show for nearly half of the episodes sampled and – conversely – the volume of tweets caused a significant change to the live ratings of 29 percent of the episodes. Translation: For nearly a third of the episodes sampled, the more tweets, the higher the ratings. Interesting, but even Nielsen is still a little unsure what it means.

“This round of causation research was only looking to see if there’s a ‘there there’ with respect to tweets influencing ratings,” a Nielsen rep told Variety when the report was released. “Now that we’ve seen statistically significant evidence of this, the next wave of research will be around understanding how/why.”

Granted, most of this information is generated in order to give networks and advertisers a better idea of the kind of traction TV shows are getting on social networks, but the metrics are likely going to be interesting to fans as well as ad buyers. Think about it. Joss Whedon’s cult favorite space cowboy show Firefly never got great Nielsen numbers, but if there had been Twitter TV Ratings back when it was on the air, fans could’ve pointed to the show’s presumably significant level of social engagement as a sign of its niche popularity.

So what’s next in terms of looking at engagement beyond the numbers? Nielsen’s SocialGuide, which the company acquired last year to work on its social TV measurements, is working to broaden its Twitter metrics to include demographic data like age and gender in 2014, according to a Nielsen spokesperson. There’s also a plan to include tweets in Spanish.

What Nielsen probably won’t track, simply because it doesn’t lend itself to straight-forward numbers, is the idea of sentiment — how people actually feel about the things they are discussing. Is someone tweeting about the Breaking Bad finale because they loved it or hated it? There no distinction in the current Twitter TV Ratings. And while several analytics firms – including Bluefin Labs, which Twitter acquired earlier this year – do monitor sentiment, it’s a notoriously difficult thing to measure. There’s no foolproof way for text-analyzing machines to understand sarcasm and slang, for example.

“The vendors that are experts at this claim 90 percent of the conversation that they measure, they have an accurate measure of sentiment or an accurate measure of the subject of the conversation,” Blau said. “Skeptics tell me that that’s very high – 90 percent is at the upper bound – but the realistic numbers are much lower, in the 50 to 70 percent [range]. Will it ever be 100 percent? The answer is no.”

Of course, the bigger question is: Does it matter? Some say “any press is good press,” and perhaps all tweets are good tweets. Even if everyone’s talking about how terrible or WTF a show is, if the volume is high enough it might cause people to tune in just to see what all the fuss is about. It’ll be especially interesting to see how this plays out in the new arrangement between Twitter and Comcast. Based on the screenshot examples released by the cable provider, it appears the Twitter cards will at least initially be attached to tweets from the official show Twitter feeds, but if/when the cards are attached to random users tweets, you might see an update that reads “Tonight’s #GreysAnatomy was the worst ever!” followed by a card asking if you’d like to watch it now.

In a blog post announcing the gambit, Comcast Cable’s head of business development Sam Schwartz used the example of seeing friends tweeting about Sharknado, which got a lot of tweets even if many of them were mocking (or at least ironic). “If I had only seen an ad about a sharks-meet-a-natural-disaster movie, frankly, there would be little chance that I would tune in,” Schwartz said. “However, all these tweets pique my curiosity, I click on the See It button in one of the tweets, and then use it to set a reminder to watch the movie later that night.” So maybe love it or hate it or love-hate it — it really doesn’t matter just so long as there are eyeballs.

Metrics like age, gender and sentiment are still only the beginning. There’s still a lot of other data — and combination of data — embedded in the world of Twitter for networks and advertisers to mine, even if analyzing it may prove the bigger challenge. “It’s complicated,” said Clark Fredricksen, vice president of research firm eMarketer told WIRED. “On the one hand, you have the internet, which is the most accountable, measurable media channel in history, compared to TV, which is arguably the most difficult channel to measure.” In other words, social media provides an embarrassment of riches that viewership numbers don’t. We just need to figure out how to read it.

“It’s probably fair to say we’re past version 1.0 of social analytics tools. Version 1.0 is giving people basic high-level statistics – counts, followers, and maybe the first order of statistics saying what does some of this data mean?” Blau added. “[Now] we’re into version 2.0 of social analytics, where they’ve realized how to get access to the data, they’ve had their first level, they’ve realized what their customers want now in terms of information and all those smart data scientists in the world are hopefully coming up with algorithms to give them that.”

Source: http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661370/s/327b5726/sc/15/l/0L0Swired0N0Cunderwire0C20A130C10A0Ctwitter0Etv0Eratings0C/story01.htm
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AP Interview: Islamist leader says Libya PM failed

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The leader of Libya's Muslim Brotherhood political party said Saturday that the country's prime minister — who was briefly abducted by militia members earlier this week — has failed and needs to be replaced.

Mohammed Sawan, leader of Justice and Construction party, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Saturday from Benghazi that the Libyan parliament is "seriously searching for an alternative" to Ali Zidan. Sawan said mismanagement by Zidan's government might have led to "irresponsible actions" by individuals, referring to Zidan's kidnapping.

Simmering tensions in Libya were enflamed by an Oct. 5 raid by U.S. special forces that snatched a Libyan al-Qaida suspect known as Abu Anas al-Libi off the streets of Tripoli and whisked him off to custody in a U.S. warship.

"This was a blatant violation to the national sovereignty," Sawan said. He added: "It has caused big problems and grave repercussions."

Zidan for months has been facing mounting pressures from parliament, first by Islamist blocs including the Muslim Brotherhood and another group of ultraconservative Salafis. Independents later joined the criticism of Zidan over allegations of corruption and wasting public fund, as well as the country's deteriorating security.

On Thursday, Zidan himself became victim of the insecurity plaguing the country since the 2011 civil war that toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Militias kidnapped the prime minister and held him for several hours. Such armed groups, many including Islamic extremists, carry out daily violence nationwide and have defied attempts by the weak central authorities to control them. Many of them are connected to political groups that have representatives in the parliament.

On Friday, Zidan described his abduction as an attempted coup by his Islamist political rivals, using militias that he said are trying to "terrorize" the government and turn the country into another Afghanistan or Somalia.

Zidan, however, didn't name those specifically behind his kidnapping, only referring to the Libyan Revolutionaries Operation Room, the militia umbrella group loosely affiliated to Interior Ministry.

"I wish he named the political party he thinks is behind the operation," Sawan said, adding that Zidan told his lawmakers that he didn't mean Muslim Brotherhood. "We are against any action that violates legitimacy."

In addition to Zidan's abduction, militias have besieged key ministries in the capital and stormed ministers' offices this summer to force the parliament to pass a divisive law aimed at purging officials who served under Gadhafi from new government. The parliament passed the law virtually at gunpoint, highlighting the challenges facing Libya as it tries to transition to democracy.

The Muslim Brotherhood came second in the country's first parliamentary elections last year after a non-Islamist bloc led by the wartime prime minister. It has five ministers in Zidan's government.

A day before Zidan's abduction, parliament agreed to form a committee to discuss either an alternative to Zidan or to summon him for questioning.

"The government represented by the prime minister has had no success," Sawan said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-interview-islamist-leader-says-libya-pm-failed-133100587.html
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Yandex Buys KinoPoisk, ‘Russia's IMDb', To Move Into Film Search And Recommendation

Yandex, the search company often referred to as the Google of Russia, is today announcing its latest acquisition: KinoPoisk, an online film database known as "the IMDb of Russia" (after the Amazon-owned company that KinoPoisk recreated in Russia) with some 18.6 million visitors per month.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0WrJVCw347I/
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Reps. Nolan, Ellison join local fight for $9.50 minimum wage (Star Tribune)

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Netflix Is Trying To Make Partnership Deals With Cable Providers

According to The Wall Street Journal, Netflix is trying to initiate negotiations with cable companies like Comcast and Suddenlink Communications to integrate a streaming app in their set-top cable boxes. It will be interesting to see how this plays out given that cable companies have been worried for years about streaming services stealing viewers.

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Source: http://gizmodo.com/netflix-is-trying-to-make-partnership-deals-with-cable-1444659890
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Elizabeth Smart: My Faith And 'My Story'

Elizabeth Smart at NPR headquarters in Washington DC.

Amy Ta/NPR

Elizabeth Smart at NPR headquarters in Washington DC.

Amy Ta/NPR

Elizabeth Smart dominated headlines back in 2002. She was just 14 years old when she was kidnapped at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee. Smart was held captive for nine months. Mitchell forced her to act as his second wife, raped her nearly every day, and told her that the ordeal was ordained by God.

Smart's Mormon faith played a key part in her survival and spiritual health today. She says there were moments when she felt there was no one to turn to – except God. She writes about all of this in her new memoir My Story.

"When I was kidnapped and he was telling me all of these things, I remember what my parents said: 'You'll know a person by their actions.' And so even though he was sitting there telling me that he was a prophet, that I should be thankful for what was happening to me, I was really a lucky girl – I realized that he wasn't a good person. He was hurting me. He made me feel terrible," Smart tells NPR's Michel Martin. "And growing up believing that I have a kind and loving heavenly father, I couldn't believe that God had called him to do what he was doing to me."

Smart says that — even when she feared for her life — she never lost faith. "You don't just take what's given to you and say, 'Okay this is what we're supposed to do.' But that you pray about it, you think about it, and you find your own answer. That's what true faith is."

A central question for people of faith is why God allows bad things to happen. Smart says that her experience gives her a unique perspective on that issue. "Although I never asked to be kidnapped or for something like that to happen to me, I can find that goodness can still come out of it, and that I can be grateful for the opportunities that it's opened up to me that otherwise wouldn't have been."

As for Smart's captors, they have been sentenced to long prison terms without parole. Smart says she's not focused on what happens to them anymore, but that she forgives them. "I have let go of the past. I have let go of what they have done to me. And I've let go of them. They no longer have a part in my life, and I have no desire to see them. I have just moved on."

Smart says that one lesson she wants people to take from her story is the importance of treating sexual assault victims with compassion. "After being raped, I felt completely worthless. I didn't even feel like I was human anymore. And it is just so important to let these survivors know that they're not any less of a person. You don't love them any less. And that to pretend like it never happened, or to pretend like rape doesn't exist or that it only happens in the wrong parts of town – you're doing that survivor a disservice."

The kidnapping is not the final chapter of Smart's story. She is now married, and working as an advocate on children's issues. Smart says writing the book was a healing experience that helped her realize how far she has come. "All of us have the potential inside us to reach so much further and grow so much more than any of us think we can," she notes.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/11/232110407/elizabeth-smart-my-faith-and-my-story?ft=1&f=1033
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