Lawyers in Ohio football rape case want trial moved

(Reuters) – Attorneys for two Ohio teenage football players accused of raping a 16-year-old student have asked that the trial be moved because potential witnesses are afraid to come forward in defense of the boys, one of the lawyers said on Monday.

Walter Madison, the attorney for one of the accused rapists, Ma’lik Richmon, said social media efforts to bring the alleged rape into the national spotlight have led to an atmosphere of intimidation and coercion.

“This has a chilling effect on witnesses who could come forward to be part of this process so my client can get a fair and full proceeding,” he told Reuters. “So, we’re left without the opportunity to make our case. That’s pretty serious.”

Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old fellow student at a party last August.

The two students are set to be tried as juveniles in February in Steubenville, a city of 19,000 about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh.

Madison said his client’s mother has had to change her cell phone number multiple times due to threats and harassment.

Last week, the online activist group Anonymous made public a picture allegedly of the rape victim, being carried by her wrists and ankles by two young men, and of a video that showed several other young men joking about an alleged assault.

Madison said that Richmond is not seen in the video.

A county sheriff under fire for how he has handled the high school rape investigation faced down a crowd of protestors on Saturday and said no new charges will be brought against anyone involved in the case.

Activists say there had been a cover-up by local officials to protect the integrity of the high school’s football program.

Meanwhile, a petition to the White House calling for the two rape suspects to be tried as adults reached 25,000 signatures Monday, the threshold required to receive a response from the Obama Administration.

Moving the case to the adult court system would allow for a jury trial and a more severe penalty, the petition says.

“This is a serious offense and this needs to be an example for everyone that this type of behavior should not, and will not be tolerated in our society,” it says.

The petition, created December 25, more than doubled its number of supporters overnight. It had 11,000 signatures on Sunday.

It was submitted to the White House through its online petition website, We The People. Now that it has the required 25,000 signatures, the Obama Administration will give an official statement at some point in the future. The petition has no legal impact.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Andrew Hay)

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First ET Interview: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the hardest-working men in Hollywood today. Following his star turns in Looper, The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush and Inception, he also had a key role in Lincoln, just completed a turn in the director's chair for Don Jon's Addiction, and was just cast in the growing company of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Video: What If 'Looper' Stars Could Time Travel?

Now, we're flashing back to the fall of 1995, when "Joey" was a very precocious young man working on a brand-new sitcom called Third Rock From the Sun.

Video: JGL Predicts His First Golden Globe

Watch the video as the fresh-faced, 14-year-old star talks about his "hormonal" alien character, Tommy Solomon, and the "eccentricity" of the show's writing.

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Hillary Clinton 'thrilled to be back' at work

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is "thrilled to be back" at work after a month-long absence due to illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain. But she says she is looking forward to leaving the job as America's top diplomat and taking a break for at least "a little while."

In her first public appearance since returning to the State Department earlier this week, Clinton told reporters on Wednesday she had "the most extraordinary experience" as secretary of state and wants to wrap up unresolved issues before she goes.

AFP/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton today at the State Department

She said she would not use the word "retirement" to describe her future plans but rather called it "stepping off the very fast track for a little while."

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4 smartphones with standout features

These days, smartphones are almost all drawing from the same bag of tricks, and it can be hard to tell one from the next. If the average smartphone will do all the basic things you want it to, what does it take to be special? Here are four smartphones with unusual features that really make them stand out.

Nokia Lumia 920

Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)

The good: This phone forges new Windows Phone ground with wireless-charging support and a highly sensitive screen you can use with gloves. Moreover, Nokia helps fill in Windows Phone OS gaps with a few missing features.

The bad: A thick, heavy build and slippery finish for some colors make the Lumia 920 harder to hold and carry, and the phone’s overhyped camera doesn’t have enough settings.

The cost: $99.99

The bottom line: Nokia’s Lumia 920 is heavy and thick, but if you want the most powerful, feature-rich Windows Phone smartphone available, this is it.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)

The good: Oodles of screen real estate make this terrific for videos, games, and reading, and its improved stylus aids productivity. A blazing quad-core processor, a great camera and strong battery life round out the advantages of this Android 4.1 phone.

The bad: The huge display makes it unwieldy to carry, and hiccups in the S Pen stylus and apps can slow you down. The pricey Note 2 isn’t a suitable tablet replacement across all categories.

The cost: $149.99 to $309.99

The bottom line: Samsung delivers a powerful, boundary-pushing device that gets a lot right. Yet its complicated features and high price raise questions about its purpose.

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD

Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)

The good: This Droid (Verizon) offers fast performance, a big, eye-popping screen and luxurious design. It also has great call quality, lots of storage, 4G data speeds, and unbeatable battery life.

The bad: The major weakness is a camera that produces subpar images. The phone is filled with Verizon bloatware as well.

The cost: $149.99 to $299.99

The bottom line: Motorola’s fast, stylish Droid Razr Maxx HD offers outstanding battery life, but its camera captures unimpressive images.

Samsung Galaxy Beam

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5 (Very good)

The good: An integrated pico projector, as well as a dual-core processor, 720p video capture and a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen.

The bad: The projection software needs some work, the 5-megapixel camera sometimes blurs indoor shots, and the Beam is thicker and heavier than many phones.

The cost: $474.49 to $839.99

The bottom line: Despite weak software, the Galaxy Beam’s bright projector pushes boundaries, and strong smartphone features make it a worthy standalone device.

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Scott Israel is sworn in as Broward sheriff

As several thousand people looked on inside the Faith Center of Sunrise, new Broward Sheriff Scott Israel was introduced at Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony to a standing ovation.

It’s one of the most powerful elected post in the county, overseeing about 5,500 employees and a $670 million budget.

The BSO Honor Guard and a pipe and drum corps led the procession on stage. Israel’s triplets, 16-year-old Blair, Blake and Brett, led the “Pledge of Allegiance.’’

Israel, a Democrat, takes the reins from form Sheriff Al Lamberti, a Republican, who served in the post since first being appointed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist in 2007. Lambert won over challenger Israel in 2008, but in the most recent election, Israel handily ousted the incumbent. Lamberti has not said what his future plans include.

Even before taking office, Israel set to work changing things at BSO. In December, his transition team sent emails to 28 high-ranking employees telling them they would be out once Israel took over. Many top officials had already announced they would be leaving, including BSO spokesman Jim Leljedal, attorney Judith Levine and Undersheriff Tom Wheeler. Emails from Israel’s transition team to BSO show that Israel has sought information about every aspect of the agency, including budget forecasts, contracts for everything from garbage collection to lobbying, statistics about the race of employees and even about the protocol for military casket arrivals.

Beyond staff changes, it is not yet clear how Israel, a 56-year-old former Fort Lauderdale police captain and North Bay Village police chief — will change BSO.

But Israel’s senior command staff includes many who played key roles in his campaign, including his new general counsel, Ron Gunzburger, son of County Commissioner Sue Gunzburger, and Lisa Castillo, who worked on Israel’s campaign. The name of her husband, Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo, is also being bandied about as having a role in the Israel administration.

Israel, his wife Susan and their teenage triplets live in Parkland.

Miami Herald staff writer Amy Sherman contributed to this report.

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Disney joins JAKKS, LA billionaire to bring toys to life

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney toys are sold around the world. Now, children can find them in the cloud as well.

The media giant is teaming up with toy company JAKKS Pacific and Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles’ wealthiest person, on a new line of toys – with a nifty technological twist designed to link the goodies that kids lug home from the store with Disney’s stable of well-known animated characters.

“DreamPlay“, developed by Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks company, and JAKKS works via an app that can be downloaded on Apple Inc devices like the iPad, or smartphones and tablets running Google Inc Android software. When a device’s camera is trained on any toy specifically designed to work with DreamPlay, it triggers one of thousands of preset animations that appear on the device’s screen and seem to be unfolding in the real world.

With viewers’ eyes locked on the tablet or smartphone screen, fairies appear to glide in and out of buildings, animated critters start playing musical instruments, mythical characters prance on a toy piano’s keyboard.

Disney, which licensed its characters to DreamPlay, and its partners hope that children will take to the new approach, which is intended to extend and expand the life of the toy. But it remains to be seen if the concept will prove to be more than a novelty, and be able to arrest a child’s infamously short attention span.

The three will demo their concept on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but Reuters got a sneak peak at the technology on Monday.

In a showroom in the 20th floor of a Santa Monica, Calif. building, visitors to JAKKS’ demonstration are treated to an animated version of Sebastian – the red Jamaican crab from Disney’s “Little Mermaid” movie – who pops up onscreen on an iPad seconds after the tablet’s camera is trained on a real-life set of toy bongo drums.

The animated crab pounces on the drums and proceeds to bang out a calypso song onscreen, with both Sebastian and the physical drum set appearing together as if the two shared the same cartoon.

REAL, VIRTUAL INTERACTION

DreamPlay allows not just Sebastian, but also Tinker Bell and a host of other well-loved Disney characters to “interact” virtually with specially made toys via image-recognition software. The software was developed by Soon-Shiong, a former cancer surgeon who created drugs to fight diabetes and breast cancer and then sold the companies that produced them for $ 8.6 billion.

Soon-Shiong teamed with JAKKS, a $ 678 million-a-year toy maker and licensee of toys based on the Princess line of dolls, Marvel action figures and other Disney toys, among others.

The technology works via the “cloud” – images and video clips stored on remote servers that are streamed to kids’ mobiles when the app recognizes a particular item.

“It’s a tremendous way to combine great technology and Disney’s magical story telling to extend the time a child can play with a toy,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s consumer products unit. “Kids find out that playing with their toy doesn’t end when they get it home.”

Since taking over in 2011, Chapek has repositioned Disney’s consumer product unit to expand its use of technology with its toys. DreamPlay is the first of what Chapek says are other products that will twin technology with familiar Disney toys, although he won’t name them.

Down the road, Disney may explore new business models, including selling subscriptions to content created specifically to be used with a particular toy, said Chapek.

The market is hardly certain for a product that requires a child to hold up a phone or tablet, and peer through it to play with a toy that’s stationary. Will children want to see Rapunzel endlessly dancing on the keys of a piano or Rosetta, a fairy from Disney’s “Tinker Bell” movies, fly in and out of a cottage?

“The technology may be great, but no one has proven to me yet that a kid will sit in front of an iPhone or iPad instead of playing with a toy that’s right in front of him,” said Sean McGowan, a toy analyst with Needham & Co who downgraded JAKKS to hold in September along with other toy companies, and then downgraded JAKKS to underperform in October.

JAKKS intends to begin selling DreamPlay versions of toys from the Disney Princess line in October. It will then expand its offerings next year, with international sales starting in 2014, said Stephen Berman, JAKKS President and CEO.

DreamPlay toys will be “a couple of dollars” costlier than the regular version, he says.

Target stores and Toys R Us are among the U.S. retailers who will carry the DreamPlay line, Berman says. Top-Toy, the giant Nordic retailer, has also signed on, while Beijing Hualian Group, which operates supermarkets and department stores across China, is coming onboard as well.

“Kids don’t own iPhones or iPads but they all know how to use them,” says Berman. “Kids have so much more imagination than we do. Imagine recording a bunch of the videos and giving the kid an iPad to play with them on a trip to see the grandparents.”

JAKKS will ramp up marketing for the DreamPlay line, said Berman. DreamPlay toys will be prominently displayed at all the partner-retailers, he added, and shoppers will be encouraged to use their smartphones to view them.

Those that aim smartphones at a boxed Tinker Bell, for instance, may get a start as the fairy from “Peter Pan” literally soars out of the box, leaving an empty package behind.

“Technology can help people live better, work better, play better,” said Soon-Shiong as he showed off the line of toys. “This is the way they will play better.”

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Edited By Edwin Chan)

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Kathie Lee and Hoda Give Up Drinking Wine

Say goodbye to Tuesday, Booze Day! Co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb announced on the final hour of TODAY that they will be giving up drinking wine on their show for an entire month! Can they do it?!

The women are so dedicated to their New Year's resolutions that they've put a clock up on their website to track how long they go without drinking on a show that starts at 10 a.m. They enjoyed their last glass of wine on Monday's TODAY.

Kotb and Gifford are known for their mid-morning cocktails, with even Saturday Night Live alums Kristen Wiig and Jenny Slate imitating the co-hosts.

Place your bets below on how long Gifford, 59, and Kotb, 48, can go without their booze. Will they make it to Wines-day?

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Village 'bomb mom' out of hospital, set to be arraigned

Morgan Gliedman -- the Dalton-grad doctor's daughter allegedly caught with explosives and shotguns in her Greenwich Village apartment -- left St. Luke's Medical Center in custody this morning and is due to be arraigned sometime today.

It will be the first post-arrest -- and post-partum -- appearance for the pretty Gliedman, 27, who had been busted two Saturdays ago, along with her sweetheart, Aaron Greene, 31, the son of a prominent architectural restorer.

Gliedman was on the brink of giving birth to her daughter by Greene at the time, and had been hospitalized since delivering the baby by Cesarean section.

Morgan Gliedman

Gliedman has lawyered up while in her hospital bed -- hiring noted criminal defense attorney Gerald Shargel, who is expected to spring her on bail after the arraignment.

Her baby daddy, Greene, remains in Rikers on the same felony explosives and weapons possession charges -- for allegedly possessing seven grams of HMTD -- a highly volatile white powder, along with a 12-gauge shotgun, a Ruger shotgun and 60 shotgun shells.

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Norwegian Cruise Line to go public

In a long expected move, Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line Tuesday announced plans to take the company public.

The company has registered an initial public offering of 23,529,412 ordinary shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The shares will be traded on the NASDAQ; no price has set been set.

The third largest ocean-going cruise line, Norwegian Cruise Line has 11 ships with itineraries in North America (including Alaska and Hawaii), the Caribbean, Bermuda, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. Genting Hong Kong - a subsidiary of Genting Group, a gambling and resort conglomerate that purchased the land currently occupied by The Miami Herald in 2010 for $236 million - owns 50 percent of the cruise line in a partnership with private equity firms Apollo Management and TPG.

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BCS ticket prices falling (but so is the number of available seats)

Procrastination pays.

For those fans who waited until the last minute to buy tickets to Monday night’s national championship football game in South Florida, now’s the time to buy.

Ticket prices have fallen by about half since Dec. 1, when the University of Alabama clinched its spot in the title game. The average price is about $1,500 as of Monday morning, with the cheapest seats costing $865, according to the ticket-tracking services SeatGeek and TiqIQ.

But there are only about 2,200 to 3,000 tickets available from third-party brokers right now. So though the price could fall more, this is probably the best time to buy.

“We always see this: Prices are highest on the day of an announcement for the latest concert or a national title game,” said Will Flaherty, SeatGeek’s communications director for the ticket-tracking firm.

“Fans think: ‘Oh no, I need to act quickly and get the best price for my tickets.’ But that’s often one of the worst times to buy,” he said. “Ticket prices tend to fall when you get closer to game time.”’

Assuming a buyer times his purchase properly, Flaherty said tickets could go for as low as $700 (a little more than double the face value of the cheapest wholesale tickets). He said that the average overall ticket price for this event is about $1,700 — the most-expensive event since the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami.

“I’d recommend buying from online retailers who have some sort of guarantee that you will receive legit tickets and not fakes (safest way),” Chris Matcovich, TiqIQ’s data and communications director, said in an email.

“There maybe good deals on Craigslist and amongst scalpers outside the stadium, but doing that you run the risk of losing hundreds of dollars if the ticket is a fake,” he wrote. “If people do decide to buy from people outside the stadium, one way to protect yourself from buying fakes is by asking the seller to walk to the gate with you to make sure you get in.”

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