By NEW YORK (AP)
The alleged beating of Rihanna has inspired an online public service announcement about dating violence.
A new video by the teen organization DoSomething.org features actors recreating the pop star’s grim, highly publicized confrontation with her boyfriend, singer Chris Brown.
A young man and woman re-enact details from a Los Angeles police affidavit alleging that on Feb. 8, Brown punched, bit and choked Rihanna until she nearly lost consciousness.
A narrator describes the scene in a deadpan voice.
“We didn’t want to be overdramatic,” said Nancy Lublin, chief executive officer of DoSomething.org. “Our goal was not to shoot a Lifetime TV movie. … There was no need to sensationalize things. It was bad enough.”
The brief clip can be viewed on YouTube. It closes with the statistic that one in three teenagers is abused in a relationship, and promotes free bracelets – one blue, two black – that spread awareness about dating abuse.
Lublin said the goal is to make people think and change their behavior. The organization used white actors on purpose to shift the conversation away from the celebrity singers.
“The public is very focused right now on Chris and Rihanna,” she said. “I think people need to realize that this is an issue that goes beyond those particular people, and it affects everybody of every race. And so we wanted this to not be an exact re-enactment. We wanted instead to say: Could this be you?”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More