___

HOW IT WORKS

Every sexual assault allegation must be investigated by a service like the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, sometimes called the Army's felony-level detectives. Each service has an equivalent unit.

It is up to the suspect's commander -- based on advice provided by a military lawyer -- whether to press charges and bring a suspect to trial. The commander has alternatives to court martial, including "non-judicial" punishment, such as issuing a letter of reprimand, and non-punitive actions. Under Article 60 of the code, the commander also has sole discretion to dismiss any case by setting aside a guilty finding.

For example, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy, was found guilty by a military panel in November 2012 of charges of abusive sexual contact and aggravated sexual assault. Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal from the service, but Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, reviewed the case and overturned the jury's verdict of guilty because he said later he found Wilkerson more believable than the complainant.

HOW IT STARTED

The Uniform Code of Military Justice is a federal law signed by President Harry Truman on May 5, 1950, and was designed for a reorganized and expanded post-World War II defense establishment. The code underwent major revisions in 1968 and 1983.

The code applies to all personnel in the armed forces. When an alleged crime is committed by a military member in a civilian setting, jurisdiction rests with local civilian law enforcement authorities but is sometimes transferred to the military system.

WHY IT MATTERS

Military leaders see a commander's authority to administer justice as critical to ensuring discipline and cohesion within the ranks of his or her unit. But many in Congress believe that in the case of sexual offenses that would be a felony in the civilian justice system, the decision on whether to take the case to trial should be taken out of the chain of command and placed in the hands of experienced military trial counsels. Some have said commanders might show favoritism or use other factors than the law to decide whether a case should proceed.

HOW CRIMES ARE REPORTED

In the case of sexual offenses, a victim has numerous options for seeking justice outside the chain of command. The victim can register a complaint with a member of the military police or, if the alleged crime happened off a military base, to civilian law enforcement, or can call 911. He or she also could make a complaint to the Pentagon's inspector general or to a military or civilian sexual assault response office or a hospital staff.

Shai Piron, who is also a rabbi, could not get past the first sentence of his address, on a proposed law against smuggling cell phones into Israel's prisons, before beginning to chuckle. ( http://r.reuters.com/rac68t )

"Mr. Chairman, distinguished Parliament, the aim of this legislation is to deal with a serious phenomenon - the penetration of prohibited objects into prisons," he said during a late night session on Monday broadcast on the official Knesset TV channel.

He briefly recovered but broke down again over the perceived sexual innuendo when the word "penetration" came up in the text for a second time. Legislators in the hall joined in the giggling.

Struggling to continue, Piron wiped tears from his eyes, took a sip of water - and finally went back to his seat, unable to read on.

He later explained to reporters that he had been caught off-guard by the phrasing in the speech, which he delivered at the last minute after a cabinet colleague was called away.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Woodson signed a one-year contract with the Raiders on Tuesday to return to his original team after leaving seven years ago for Green Bay as a free agent.

The move will be widely popular with Raiders fans, many of whom staked out the team's facility on Tuesday to greet Woodson on his visit and urge him to sign with the team.

They got their wish a few hours after he arrived when the team announced his signing. Agent Carl Poston said Woodson's deal includes a $700,000 signing bonus and could be worth as much as $4.3 million in 2013.

Woodson, the fourth overall pick in the 1998 draft by Oakland, returns to a vastly different franchise than the one he left following his eighth season with the team in 2005. Owner Al Davis died in October 2011 and the team is now run by Davis' son, Mark. Kicker Sebastian Janikowski is the only player left from Woodson's eight years in Oakland that included three straight AFC West titles and a trip to the Super Bowl following the 2002 season.

The Raiders haven't had a winning season or a playoff berth since, adding to the fans' desire to bring back Woodson and a connection to past successes.

The 36-year-old was released by the Green Bay Packers in a salary-cutting move Feb. 15, with two years remaining on his contract. He had said he wanted to join a contender and visited with San Francisco and Denver but ended up signing with a rebuilding Raiders team coming off a 4-12 season.

Woodson, the 1997 Heisman Trophy winner at Michigan, is an accomplished cornerback and safety who will bring veteran leadership to Oakland's secondary. The Raiders have a void at free safety after letting Michael Huff go in the offseason and also would like Woodson to tutor first-round cornerback D.J. Hayden.

Woodson, an eight-time Pro Bowler and 2009 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, missed nine games during the regular season for Green Bay last year because of a broken right collarbone.

He spent seven seasons with the Packers, helping them win the Super Bowl following the 2010 season. He has 55 career interceptions, 17 sacks, 24 forced fumbles and 11 interception returns for touchdowns in 206 career games.

Woodson is very familiar with Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie, who worked in the front office in Green Bay for all but one of his years with the Packers.

Late in his first season with the Raiders, McKenzie talked about the difficult situation he inherited with the Raiders compared to the one his former boss Ted Thompson got in Green Bay.

"His rookie year he was able to get Charles Woodson. I would have liked to have done that," McKenzie said in November.

McKenzie got his man but it remains to be seen how much Woodson has left.

___

AP Sports Writer Larry Lage contributed to this report.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - British boy band One Direction has swept the inaugural awards recognizing the most popular people in social media globally, coming top in four out of 10 categories at a star-studded ceremony in Singapore.

One Direction was named most popular music group, most popular UK musicians, most popular in the UK, and most popular in west Europe, at the Social Star Awards, but did not show up to collect their prizes, sending their thanks by videolink.

Canadian pop star Justin Bieber won the award for best solo artist, Selena Gomez for most popular actor, Ellen DeGeneres for top TV show, and Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo for most popular sports star.

The awards highlight viral sensations and people who garner the most social media attention globally based on data from Singapore-based Starcount that tracks the social media activity of 1.7 billion people across 11 social media networks.

American actress Jessica Alba and "Entourage" star Jeremy Piven hosted Thursday night's ceremony that ended a 24-hour marathon of 288 online awards awarded in categories ranging from best finance brand to top Indonesia actor.

"It is all about the most popular people on the planet ... Everyday we are sharing, liking, viewing, tweeting and what our awards show does is celebrate the superstars of social media," Starcount CEO Paul Morrison told reporters ahead of the awards.

Many of the award winners were absent from the prize giving but the void was filled with live performances by South Korean rapper Psy, American singer Carly Rae Jepsen, SkyBlu from electronic dance duo LMFAO, and U.S. rockers Aerosmith.

R&B singer-songwriter Eric Benet hailed the impact of social media.

"If you plan on being relevant and have a sustainable career in this day and age social media is about as important as TV was ... in the 1950s," he told Reuters television.

"Way back in the '90s when I started back in the music industry we would have to rely on our PR department and our record label but now in this day and age we, the artist, can take command of our career. It's awesome."

(Reporting by Patrick Johnston, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Some brought thank you cards. First-grader Crisily (KRIS'-ih-lee) Dixon was eager to see a gym teacher and for a chance to say goodbye for the school year.

Her grandmother Cheryle Dixon said the girl was not at the Plaza Towers Elementary when the tornado struck, killing seven students. Her father had picked her up an hour earlier when he learned of the severity of the storm.

Dixon says the girl's face "just turned pale" when she saw photos of the damage.

She says Crisily shed a lot of tears. Thursday's event was held at a school that was not damaged.

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc unveiled technology to boost security for its users, following a spate of attacks on accounts of prominent media outlets including the Associated Press, the Financial Times and The Onion.

The micro blogging site, which transmits some 400 million messages a day, said on Wednesday that it had begun rolling out an optional "login verification" service to thwart hackers seeking to hijack accounts with stolen passwords.

Security experts welcomed the move as a positive step toward securing a service that is widely used by consumers, political activists, advertisers and news outlets around the globe to quickly exchange information.

Twitter had come under fire over the past year for failing to offer such an option, which is known as two-factor authentication, amid a surge in breaches of high-profile accounts. That criticism intensified in April after a fake tweet about a non-existent White House explosion sent from the Associated Press account briefly roiled U.S. financial markets.

"It's been a long time coming," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer of White Hat Security. "It's not going to solve all problem, but it's a step in the right direction."

When users log in to Twitter via a web browser, they must confirm their identity by entering a six-digit code that Twitter delivers to their smartphones. To access the service through applications for PCs and smartphones, users must use an automatically generated temporary password for each of the programs.

Twitter described the offering in a blog post, reminding users that they still need to use strong passwords to keep accounts secure.

The approach is similar to security tools previously introduced by other Internet services from companies including Facebook Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp.

"This would have made the AP hack and other hacks against Twitter more difficult to accomplish," said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cyber security firm Taia Global Inc.

Yet he added that hackers looking to break into corporate accounts will still be able to do so if they can take control of PCs or smartphones running applications authorized to use the service.

"Two-factor authentication isn't perfect," Carr said. "If you own the machine, it really doesn't matter."

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

So the prosecutor preparing them to testify against the father they said molested them borrowed a dog named Jeeter.

"It was a last ditch effort to try to build rapport with my kids, who are terribly shy," said Kelly Dempsey, the twins' mother. "The prosecutor had no idea how to get through to them. ... He just believed down to the depths of his soul the girls had been wronged and he wanted so badly to find justice for them."

In Seattle 10 years ago, Jeeter became the first professionally trained dog to help a child testify, experts said. Dogs have been used with thousands of victims and witnesses since.

Today, there are 41 courthouse dogs working in 19 states and several more being considered, but some challenges are working their way through the courts, driven by attorneys who claim the dogs are distractions or sympathy magnets. So far, all lower courts have upheld the use of dogs.

In 2003, Jeeter was going to drug court once a week with King County deputy prosecutor Ellen O'Neill-Stephens. The rest of the week, Jeeter belonged to her son Sean, 21, who has cerebral palsy.

When her colleague asked to borrow Jeeter for the twins, the bonding was instant.

"Because of Jeeter and having him there, I don't ever think about 'Oh, it was scary walking in and seeing our dad after a while,'" said Erin, now a high school sophomore. "I don't remember the bad, I only remember Jeeter. I think we escaped so much more normal than really we should have from such a bad situation because of Jeeter."

The AP normally doesn't use names or photos of molestation victims, but the girls are allowing their first names and photos to be used because they want dogs to be available in courts. Their mother has a different last name.

Jeeter shadowed the girls. "I remember sitting in the chair. Between questions, he'd put his head in my lap and cuddle a little. One time (during a practice court session), he came into the room dressed as Zorro," Erin said.

When there were questions about anatomy, the girls used Jeeter.

"A good dog provides decreased anxiety for any victim, be it a child, adult or elderly. If it gives them the opportunity to focus and find their voice, how is that bad?" Dempsey asked.

There were no objections to Jeeter in the twins' case, and demand for a dog was so high that in 2004, the district attorney's office got a full-time service dog, Ellie.

Jeeter and Ellie were trained by Canine Companions for Independence, headquartered in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.

CCI has trained about 230 "facility dogs," including courthouse dogs and those working at burn centers, hospices or schools. The dogs are mostly Labrador or golden retrievers or mixes, said Jeanine Konopelski, CCI's national director of marketing.

Five years ago, O'Neill-Stephens was so sure that victims and witnesses would benefit from a good dog in court that she founded Courthouse Dogs Foundation in honor of her son. She retired in 2011 to devote full-time to it.

O'Neill-Stephens and Courthouse Dogs Foundation Executive Director Celeste Walsen are also helping set up programs in Canada, Chile and Finland, and to standardize the training for courthouse dogs.

The next challenge to the dogs is scheduled mid-May in Washington state's Supreme Court.

The case involves a man convicted of burglarizing a Seattle apartment in 2008. Because the victim had the mental skills of a child, he was allowed to use Ellie when he testified.

An appeals court upheld the use of the dog, so attorney Jan Trasen with the Washington Appellate Project took the case to the higher court.

Trasen contends there is no precedent for using a dog in court. The state says it's covered by a law that allows vulnerable witnesses to hold a Teddy bear or doll.

Trasen said you can't compare the two, because "those items are all inanimate objects. They don't move. They don't look you in the eye. They don't respond to the human voice. ... I have a dog, I love dogs. It's actually for that very reason, I know how well people respond to them."

A ruling is pending in a similar case argued before an appellate court in New York.

Jurors in the twins' case were unable to reach a verdict, so a mistrial was declared. Before a second trial could begin, the girls' father pleaded guilty to third- and fourth-degree assault.

"He didn't end up serving any time. He was held accountable in a way that other people deemed appropriate. But he was removed from the girls' lives, so really, I couldn't ask for anything better," Dempsey said.

In November, 2004, as the trial finished, the twins signed up to raise a puppy with CCI to thank O'Neill-Stephens and Jeeter. They got Alou and took him to puppy classes, helped socialize him and taught him commands.

"We felt empowered because we could help somebody the way Jeeter helped us," Dempsey said.

Alou was nearly 2 when he left for advanced training and placement, but nine months later the family got a call asking if they wanted Alou back. He was unable to take commands from a variety of handlers.

"It's like he'd never been gone," Jordan said. "Mom opened the door and he came bounding out and jumped in the car and loved us."

"I think he was meant to be a service dog to Erin and Jordan," Dempsey said.

He's 9 now and sleeps a lot. "But even today, he will seek out somebody feeling bad in the family and curl up at their feet," she said.

___

Online:

www.courthousedogs.org

http://www.cci.org

We have two children. One is away at college and the other starting high school. When I talk to my husband about wanting to do things, he says I should have done them when I was younger. But I married him before I was even an adult!

Is it wrong to want to go out and do things I never got to do when I was a teenager? It makes me question whether or not I want to be married to him anymore. I still love him, but I have changed.

Jake insists we don't need counseling and I just need to get over it and accept that this is my life. What if I don't want to regret what I have never had a chance to do? -- WANTS MORE OUT WEST

DEAR WANTS MORE: I'm sorry, but you can't relive your lost teenage years.

I wish you had been more specific about what it is you want to do. If it's go out and have some fun, perhaps some of your girlfriends would like to go with you. Instead of sitting home, you and Jake could socialize with other couples. If you're into sports, why not join a women's sports team? If you're not, how about a book club? You don't have to sit around and vegetate.

You also didn't mention whether you completed high school. If you didn't receive a diploma, you would be well-served to work on earning your GED, which could widen your horizons and opportunities considerably.

DEAR ABBY: I have two daughters, 11 and 14. They fight over many things, but what gets to me is the way they fight over what television shows to watch.

My younger daughter has nightmares if she watches even mildly dramatic cop/lawyer-type shows. However, my older daughter loves them.

At home, I'd have one kid watch TV in one room and the other in the other room. However, when they're at the sitter's house, which has only one TV, they call me at work and fight over the phone over who watches what. They both accuse me of favoring the other.

How do I deal with this fairly without upsetting them? And how do I keep my younger daughter from having nightmares? -- DOING MY BEST IN KENTUCKY

DEAR DOING: Because your younger daughter has nightmares after viewing shows that create anxiety, she shouldn't be forced to do it. When they are at their sitter's, they should alternate days when each has control of the remote control. When your older girl has it, the younger one should be encouraged to read a book of her choosing and/or listen to music. When the younger one gets to do the choosing, the older one should do the same.

DEAR ABBY: Christmas and birthday gifts I will never use have accumulated around my house. I'd like to have a yard sale, but many of the items came from close friends and family. I feel guilty getting rid of them because the people who gave them to me obviously meant well. Would selling them be wrong?

One gift was from my mother. I live at home, so she will notice if I stick it in the garage sale. I can't let this extra stuff sit around. It's taking up space and I need the money for a very expensive college. But I'm afraid of people finding out that I don't want their presents. What should I do? -- DOWNSIZING IN NEW YORK

DEAR DOWNSIZING: Selling the items would not be wrong. Once a gift is given, it is yours to do with as you please. If you offer them for sale online, it will be less obvious and cause fewer hurt feelings.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

For everything you need to know about wedding planning, order "How to Have a Lovely Wedding." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Wedding Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

The now nineteen-year-old Wilson recently spoke to a TED audience about his design for a small, modular fission reactor that is both less expensive and much safer to operate than today's nuclear reactors.

Its assembly-line construction, 30-year fuel life and low usage cost make Wilson's reactor an ideal source of electricity for both developing nations and space explorers, according to the young scientist.

To get an idea of how today's nuclear reactors work, Wilson first explained to his listeners at TED how electricity is produced using a steam turbine. In a steam turbine system, water boils and turns to steam, which turns the turbine and creates electricity.

Nuclear fission, Wilson said, is really just a fancy tool for getting the water in a steam turbine system to boil quickly and steadily.

Today's nuclear power plants produce steam for their turbines using pressurized-water reactors or big pots of water under high pressure which are heated up with help from uranium dioxide fuel rods encased in zirconium. These rods control and maintain the nuclear fission reaction.

When nuclear power was first used to heat water in a turbine system, it was a big advancement in existing technology. But Wilson said his idea for a redesign stemmed from the suspicion that it wasn't really the best way to do it.

"Is fission kind of played out, or is there something left to innovate here?" Wilson said he asked himself. "And I realized that I had hit upon something that I think has this huge potential to change the world."

Instead of finding a new way to boil water, Wilson's compact, molten salt reactor found a way to heat up gas. That is, really heat it up.

Wilson's fission reactor operates at 600 to 700 degrees Celsius. And because the laws of thermodynamics say that high temperatures lead to high efficiencies, this reactor is 45 to 50 percent efficient.

Traditional steam turbine systems are only 30 to 35 percent efficient because their reactors run at low temperatures of about 200 to 300 degrees Celsius.

And Wilson's reactor isn't just hot, it's also powerful. Despite its small size, the reactor generates between 50 and 100 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 homes, according to Wilson.

Another innovative component of Wilson's take onis its source of fuel. The molten salt reactor runs off of "down-blended weapons pits." In other words, all the highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium collecting dust since the Cold War could be put to use for peaceful purposes.

And unlike traditional nuclear power plants, Wilson's miniature power plants would be buried below ground, making them a boon for security advocates.

According to Wilson, his reactor only needs to be refueled every 30 years, compared to the 18-month fuel cycle of most power plants. This means they can be sealed up underground for a long time, decreasing the risk of proliferation.

Wilson's reactor is also less prone to proliferation because it doesn't operate at high pressure like today's pressurized-water reactors or use ceramic control rods, which release hydrogen when heated and lead to explosions during , like the one at Fukushima in 2011.

In the event of an accident in one of Wilson's reactors, the fuel from the core would drain into a "sub-critical" setting- or tank- underneath the reactor, which neutralizes the reaction. The worst that could happen, according to Wilson, is that the reactor is destroyed.

"But we're not going to contaminate large quantities of land," said Wilson. "So I really think that in the, say, 20 years it's going to take us to get fusion and make fusion a reality, this could be the source of energy that provides carbon-free electricity."

Wilson said his idea could help combat climate change, bring affordable power to the developing world and .

"There's something really poetic about using nuclear power to propel us to the stars," Wilson said, "Because the stars are giant fusion reactors. They're giant nuclear cauldrons in the sky ... there's something poetic about perfecting nuclear fission and using it as a future source of innovative energy."

This story was provided by , a sister site to LiveScience. Email or follow her. Follow us , onor on.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - When a racist pitcher beans Jackie Robinson in the head in the new movie about the first black man to play major league baseball, Sherrill Duesterhaus wants everybody in the theater to know it's a lie.

Duesterhaus' father, Fritz Ostermueller, threw the pitch, but it did not hit Robinson in the head and there is no evidence he uttered, "You don't belong here and you never will," as shown in "42," the Warner Bros. Pictures film that opened in April.

"I respect Jackie Robinson, his story is so inspiring and it's good that it is out there, but not at the expense of someone's good name," said Duesterhaus, 66, of Joplin, Missouri.

Duesterhaus said she had been warned by a friend that the film was unflattering to her father, who died of cancer at age 50 when she was 11 years old.

But the scene in which he taunts Robinson and throws at his head was still a shock, she said.

"It just took my breath away," Duesterhaus said. "I thought, 'All these people are sitting here believing this and it didn't happen.' It broke my heart."

She said her father was a "kind and loving man" and neither she nor her mother can recall him talking badly about Robinson or any black player.

Duesterhaus produced an article from a Pittsburgh newspaper in 1947 in which her father said Robinson crowded the plate, making pitching to him difficult. Ostermueller played for the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time.

"I told my wife the night before I pitched that I might have trouble with Robinson - that one of my pitches would hit him, if he didn't move back," Ostermueller said in the article.

"I knew, too, some people would say it was intentional. It wasn't at all, but in his first trip to the plate I hit him. After that, he moved back a couple of inches and showed me some respect."

TRUTH 'WENT SOUTH'

The pitch early in the 1947 season - Robinson's rookie year - sailed toward his head but he deflected it with his arm before falling to the ground, according to several accounts.

Robinson's teammates on the Brooklyn Dodgers yelled at Ostermueller, but no fight broke out on the field as shown in the movie.

A Warner Bros. spokesman, Paul McGuire, had no comment in response to questions about the film and Duesterhaus' concerns.

She said the movie contained other errors, such as showing Ostermueller as a right-handed pitcher, when he threw left-handed.

"I enjoyed the movie," Duesterhaus said, "up until the truth went south."

Jonathan Eig, author of the 2007 book "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season," said Robinson took verbal abuse from some players but there is no indication Ostermueller wanted to drive him out of baseball or threw at him because he was breaking the game's color barrier.

"I was surprised they chose that moment to dramatize the issue and picked Ostermueller of all people to be the villain," Eig said. "Even as I was watching the movie, I wondered if any of Ostermueller's kids will see this and what they would think."

Eig said Robinson was known to lean into pitches and swing wildly, making him vulnerable to getting hit.

Robinson was hit by more pitches than all but one other National League batter in 1947, and led the league in that category in 1948, according to baseball-reference.com.

Robert Butler, a former film critic for the Kansas City Star who now has an online movie review site, said the movie unnecessarily tainted Ostermueller's reputation.

"In my opinion, it's the result of bad research, laziness or outright malice," Butler said. "It would have been the easiest thing in the world to give (Ostermueller) a different name in the film. That said, anyone who goes to movies looking for true history is fighting a losing battle."

(Editing by David Bailey and Xavier Briand)