Federal officials will not pursue civil rights violations or other charges against the boot camp guards implicated in the death of a 14-year-old

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Federal officials will not pursue civil rights violations or other charges against the boot camp guards implicated in the death of a 14-year-old who was hit and kicked by the guards while a nurse looked on, the boy’s relatives and their attorney said Friday.Ben Crump, an attorney for the parents of the teen, Martin Lee Anderson, said they were told of the decision during a meeting with representatives of the U.S. Justice Department. The family’s supporters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Tallahassee during that meeting.

Anderson died Jan. 6, 2006, a day after being hit and kicked by the guards. A videotape of the 30-minute incident attracted national attention and led to the closure of Florida’s boot camps for juvenile offenders. Anderson had just been assigned to the camp after he was caught trespassing at a school, which violated his probation on another charge.
A state court jury acquitted the guards and the nurse of manslaughter on Oct. 12, 2007. Federal authorities then began investigating whether the boy’s civil rights were violated.

The Justice Department said in a news release Friday that investigators did not have enough evidence to pursue criminal charges.

The video showed the seven men punching Anderson and using knee strikes against him. It also showed them pushing ammonia capsules into his nose and dragging his limp body around the camp’s yard. The nurse did not appear to intervene in any way during the incident.A coroner initially ruled that Anderson died because of a fatal hemorrhage related to a previously undiagnosed case of sickle cell anemia trait. Protests of that ruling inspired then-Gov. Jeb Bush to order an independent prosecutor to look into the case.

A subsequent autopsy determined that guards killed Anderson by depriving him of oxygen when they pushed the ammonia tablets into his nose and covered his mouth.

The acquittal in the state’s manslaughter case came after a two-week trial in Panama City. Jurors said they agreed with the contention of the guards’ attorneys that the men were employing widely accepted boot camp tactics and that the death was caused by the sickle cell trait.The family also filed civil lawsuits against the state and Bay County that ultimately resulted in a $7.4 million settlement. (AP)

LILY Allen doesn’t plan to return to music for five years

LILY Allen doesn’t plan to return to music for five years.The Not Fair singer is getting ready to take a planned hiatus and insists it will be a long time before she releases another album.“I’m not making another album for a bit,” she said. “Maybe in five years.”The 24-year-old pop star has decided to step away from the music business because she doesn’t want to go on tour because she is considering starting a family.“It’s a really big commitment to do an album these days,” she said. “People don’t buy music anymore, they download it and want their content for free — the thing that makes you your money is touring and I don’t really want to tie myself down to being on the road for three years. I’ve got a boyfriend and I’ve got a house and I’d quite like to have children soon. So it doesn’t really work into those plans.“It’s not retiring. I’m just doing a different job for a bit. I’m having a career change. I just want to stay in London for a while. It’s not a particularly healthy lifestyle being on the road.”

Lily who is dating builder Sam Cooper has also revealed she intends to start her own charity as well as the record company and fashion label she has planned.“I’m setting up a record label and a music charity and website and I’m also doing a vintage clothes shop with my sister, it’s amazing stuff that would be really expensive but we’re renting it out for a fraction of the price, so girls can come and get dressed up for a night out and have a laugh!” she said.Lily announced at the end of last year she was taking a break from the music business.“I’m just going to concentrate on doing some behind the scenes sort of stuff,” she said at the time. “My last concert is in March. That’s the last thing I’ve got planned.”

From Twitter to advertising treasure

The Twitter phenomenon, in which anybody can tell his or her followers anything — in 140 characters or less — now has a payoff that can go beyond the thrill of self-publishing.A handful of companies are offering to pay Twitterers to gain access to their followers — so they can send them Tweets containing ads. The more followers you have, the more money you make.Dr. Drew Pinsky cut a deal with one such company, Ad.ly, of Beverly Hills, California, which describes itself as “an instream advertising platform that connects top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands.”Pinsky is a television and radio personality, an internist and an addiction specialist, but Ad.ly considers him a publisher.The lone advertisement that Ad.ly sent to Pinsky’s 1.5 million Twitter followers was for the NBC program “Community,” a comedy about a lawyer who has lost his license and is trying to get his life together at a community college. Chevy Chase and Joel McHale star.

“I’m delighted to support the show; Joel McHale is a friend of mine,” Pinsky said.”If someone wants to offer me some money to talk about something that I feel strongly about on Twitter — and I don’t feel it’s diminishing in any way my messages — I don’t see why not,” he said.But Pinsky said he was not sure he would do it again. “It’s treacherous,” he told CNN in a telephone interview. “I don’t want people to think I’m exploiting my followers.”Concern about a possible backlash from those followers has led him to reject suggestions for other ads, Pinsky said. “It’s something I would only do very, very occasionally and really has to be something that I already feel I would support.”He cited advertisements about vaccinations or certain screening programs as possibly acceptable, but said even then he would be concerned about turning off his followers. “On the one hand, I have got to send my kids to college; on the other hand, I don’t want to damage my relationship with my audience,” said the father of teenage triplets.

CEO Sean Rad, 23, founded the company that sold Pinsky on the idea in May. “We were basically looking at Twitter early on and we’ve watched it grow from this place where people were kind of playing with content creation to this very powerful platform where people are using Twitter as their main platform for content creation and content discovery,” he told CNN in a telephone interview.”We view every Tweet as valuable content,” he said. “It takes time and thought to produce. Everywhere else, where you generate content you get compensated. Same for a lot of these celebrities on Twitter. Their time is money, yet they’re not getting compensated. We’re answering a demand we saw with all these publishers.”All he needs to monetize Twitter posts is to match the publisher with an advertiser and everybody wins, Rad said. “The advertiser gets as close as possible to an audience and that publisher gets compensated.”

The company launched its service in late September, and Rad said it has already signed up eight of the approximately 50 individual twitterers who have more than 1 million followers.In addition to Dr. Drew, Ad.ly’s clients include Kim Kardashian, Nicole Richie and Joel McHale, he said.But it’s not just for celebrities. “We have thousands of mid-tier and top-tier publishers; we’re growing rapidly,” he said. Anyone can sign on and, depending on how many followers they have, start approving ads and earning income, he said.Advertisers include Universal Pictures, Dell, Maserati, Hilton Hotels and “a bunch” of other national brands, he said.Though Pinsky said he did not know how much his one deal netted him, and Rad would not divulge it, the tech entrepreneur did say a single Tweet could net the publisher a sum in the five figures.

Rad downplayed Pinsky’s concern that his followers could feel exploited. “If I’m Dr. Drew and getting paid for activity on Twitter, I’m going to take it more seriously,” he said. “So the audience gains because, when you pay somebody to do something, they typically do a better job — higher quality content. The artist now can justify the time on Twitter.”Each publisher is limited to one Tweeted advertisement per day, he said.Rad said Ad.ly’s model — or Ad.ly itself — could help Twitter cash in on its own success. He said his company’s model would be one way for Twitter to monetize. “Obviously, an acquisition from Twitter would be awesome,” he said.

But that wouldn’t be the only way. “I would pay for a premium stream that had no ads in it,” said Francine Hardaway, a marketing specialist and partner in Stealthmode Partners.”Maybe that’s Twitter’s own monetization model,” she said in a posting on scobleizer.com, a blog. “And I also like content providers to be paid. But the more indirectly the better.”Twitter Director of Media Partnerships Chloe Sladden told CNN in an e-mail, “We generally aren’t commenting on our monetization plans at the moment.”