Danny Puff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A cousin of the late Emmett Till wonders if Lil Wayne understands just how damaging it was when he rapped a vulgar reference to the black U.S. teen whose death in 1955 became a significant moment in the civil rights movement.

Airickca Gordon-Taylor says Till's family would like an apology from Lil Wayne for the brief but disturbing lyric on Future's "Karate Chop" remix. But more than that, she'd like the platinum-selling New Orleans rapper to understand how his comparison of a sex act to the 14-year-old Chicago native's torture death in Mississippi is hurtful to the black community.

"It was a heinous murder," Gordon-Taylor said in a phone interview Thursday from Chicago. "He was brutally beaten and tortured, and he was shot, wrapped in barbed wire and tossed in the Tallahatchie River. The images that we're fortunate to have (of his open casket) that 'Jet' published, they demonstrate the ugliness of racism. So to compare a woman's anatomy the gateway of life to the ugly face of death, it just destroyed me. And then I had to call the elders in my family and explain to them before they heard it from some another source."

The Future remix with Weezy guesting was leaked on the internet over the weekend. Epic Records said Wednesday it regretted the unauthorized remix version and that it was employing "great efforts" to pull it down. The brief reference just seven words will be stricken from the song when it's officially released later.

The rapper made a crude reference to rough sex and used an obscenity. He indicated he wanted to do as much damage as had been done to Till.

Gordon-Taylor says Epic Chairman and CEO LA Reid personally reached out to her on a conference call Wednesday evening that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson to explain and apologize. Jackson said in a phone interview Thursday that Reid said on the call that Future and Lil Wayne were cooperative.

"Once he got the point he realized this was beyond the zone and he immediately pulled it," Jackson said. "And he talked with both artists, who agreed."

Weezy has made no comment, nor has he addressed the issue on his Twitter account. Gordon-Taylor says there's been no attempt to apologize so far.

Till was in Mississippi visiting family when he was killed for allegedly flirting with a white woman. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River. Two white men, including the woman's husband, were acquitted of the killing by an all-white jury.

Till's body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation in the U.S. Bob Dylan even wrote a song about it: "The Death of Emmett Till."

Gordon-Taylor, founding director of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation, said Lil Wayne's lyric was devastating to her family. Simeon Wright, Till's cousin who shared a bed with his relative the night he was taken by the killers, heard the lyric for the first time Wednesday night.

"And he said the Ku Klux Klan would be very proud of Lil Wayne," Gordon-Taylor said. "And as tough a man as he is, I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes. It just demonstrates to our family just how lost are our youth."

Both Gordon-Taylor and Jackson believe the 30-year-old rapper could help with that problem if he chose. Jackson has met Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, before and said, "I respect his art."

Jackson says the issue of a negative portrayal of the black community comes up from time to time, citing The Rolling Stones' "Some Girls," for instance: "We just felt they could make their point without grossly insulting people."

Music also has the power to uplift, he noted. Harry Belafonte opened eyes to conditions in Africa and the Caribbean, for instance. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" helped Americans see the war in Vietnam in a new light. And Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" helped clear the way for a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We want artists who have considerable power to use their power to uplift and redirect," Jackson said. "It's not a matter of free speech, it's also speech that matters. ... These artists have culturally transforming power. Either they hurt or they help."

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HEBER CITY, Utah (AP) U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz flew home from Washington last week, leaving behind a capital baffled by Republicans like him in Congress: those who stubbornly refuse to compromise with President Barack Obama, a tactic that some see as damaging the GOP brand and pushing the nation repeatedly to the brink of fiscal chaos.

Back in his Utah district, Chaffetz drove to the Dairy Keen and barely had bitten into a bacon cheeseburger before a diner begged him to stop Obama's health care overhaul.

"It's the stupidest plan in the world," said Phoebe Eason, 69, leaning over her booth to complain about a clause that forces her husband, a podiatrist, to pay more for medical devices.

"I'm doing everything I can to repeal it or take out these sections," Chaffetz reassured her. Minutes later, he headed to a town hall where some constituents asked why the president hadn't yet been impeached.

To understand why the nation may remain politically gridlocked for the next two years, talk to people in a place like Heber City, a conservative farming and ranching hub nestled beneath the imposing peaks of the Wasatch mountains. Many voters here, and in conservative communities across the country, still want to do whatever it takes to stop Obama, despite his solid re-election in November, and the politicians they elect are listening.

In his State of the Union address this week, Obama laid out an ambitious agenda that includes gun control, raising the minimum wage, allowing most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country to become citizens and raising tax revenue to help cut the deficit.

But the president has acknowledged it will be difficult to get those proposals through a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

"The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they're really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies," Obama said in an interview with The New Republic magazine last month.

Analysts differ on whether gerrymandering the practice of drawing district lines so your party can pick up more seats fully explains why Obama handily won re-election in November, even as Republicans lost only a handful of seats in the House. One thing is clear: Compromise is a dirty word for many of the Republicans remaining in the House.

A Pew poll last month found that 36 percent of GOP voters would look favorably on a politician who compromises, compared with 59 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independent voters.

Virtually all House Republicans come from districts that voted against Obama in November. And in many states, primary voters have punished Republicans they see as too eager to cut deals with Democrats.

That's how Chaffetz, 45, won his seat in 2008. He challenged a 12-term Republican congressman who angered the party's base by backing an immigration overhaul that included granting citizenship to many illegal immigrants. Two years later, Utah Republican primary voters also pushed out Sen. Robert Bennett, replacing him with a tea party-supported candidate who is now the state's junior senator.

Though he has worked with Democrats on some bills, Chaffetz has refused to budge on some of the biggest issues in Washington. In 2011, he voted against raising the debt ceiling, arguing Congress and Obama weren't reining in entitlement spending. Most economists said that if the limit hadn't been raised it would have triggered a global depression. Last month, Chaffetz voted against the so-called fiscal cliff deal because it involved raising levies on those making more than $450,000 annually. Taxes would have risen on all income levels had the deal not passed.

Chaffetz also voted against aid for victims of Superstorm Sandy, saying the bill was larded with pork. He did vote to delay another debt ceiling confrontation until May, but said he won't budge on automatic spending cuts scheduled to kick in next month or on his opposition to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"The perception inside the Beltway is dramatically different than in hometown America," Chaffetz said. "Most people in my district believe we've compromised too much."

Chaffetz's district stretches from the southern Salt Lake City suburbs and Provo, home to Brigham Young University, to the high valleys of Wasatch County. Nearly half of the county's 23,000 residents live in this town. Once an overlooked rural community far from the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, it has recently seen an influx of more liberal-minded residents drawn by its proximity to storied ski resorts like nearby Park City. In Utah, this place is almost a swing county. Nonetheless, it voted 3-1 for Romney in November.

Here's how things look from Heber City: Obama hiked taxes while pushing through his health care reform. Then he got another round during the fiscal cliff negotiations. Now he's making a third attempt during the latest debt ceiling standoff. Meanwhile, the federal budget has been trimmed, but only slightly. The debt is still huge. Republicans are folding at every turn.

"I'm sick of Republicans not sticking to their principles," said Tina Peterson, 45, who works at a resort in nearby Park City. She recently moved her family here from Arizona after the recession destroyed their construction business. A new arrival in Utah "I'm a Christian but not LDS" she sees Obama as the unbending force in Washington, not her own party.

"His ideology is what it is and he can stick to it," Peterson said. "We do the same and we get demonized."

Not everyone here wants to just say no.

"There's no sense in falling on our sword and throwing a wrench just to destroy things," said Aaron Gabrielson, chairman of the Wasatch County Republican Party. Still, he added: "It doesn't seem like compromise has gotten us very far."

Jaren Davis, 53, a Republican Salt Lake City real estate developer who owns a second home here, sat in Chick's Cafe on Main Street and bemoaned polarization in politics.

"Both sides, right and left, with 24-hour news, they just need to get more fanatical to get on TV," said Davis, who unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the state Legislature. He noted that partisans have to cater to their extreme wing to win a primary the same as winning the general election in this deeply red state.

Chaffetz held his town hall in a county education building. He began by giving a presentation on the weight of the federal debt. Voters asked about the value of the dollar, how to keep the federal government from converting more of the state's land to protected wilderness and the use of drones in the U.S. They also voiced their frustration about the president.

"Have you not found anything to impeach the president of the United States?" asked Jeff Riddle, 34, an attorney. "Losing a drone to Iran? Killing Americans with drones? Infringing on Second Amendment rights?"

Chaffetz asked for patience. He said the best course was to allow congressional investigations into possible administration wrongdoing, like the Fast and the Furious gun-running program, to continue.

"What is it going to take to make the change in Washington?" asked retired commercial airline pilot Robert Wren, 74. "Are we going to have to have a minor revolution of the people? Are we going to have to wait until the next election?"

Chaffetz said the problem is that Republicans haven't communicated well with voters. Later, asked if he ever felt pressure to back down, he acknowledged occasional disagreements with GOP leadership on whether to subpoena the White House.

"I don't know if we have stood up for ourselves as much as we should," he said.

Wren said he was pleased with his congressman's unflinching stance. "He's representing his constituents."

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is donating 100,000 euros ($134,600) on behalf of UEFA to help rehabilitate Afghans who have lost limbs, mostly landmine victims, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday.

It is the second time that the Real Madrid and Portugal forward - who has featured a record seven times in the uefa.com user's poll for Team of the Year - has contributed to the ICRC's network of seven orthopedic centers in Afghanistan, it said.

"For me it's a great honor to be able to help others, and it makes me extremely happy to do so," said Ronaldo, who is to present the check before kick-off in Madrid on Wednesday night ahead of the Champion's League match against his former team Manchester United.

On behalf of UEFA, he donated a similar amount in 2008 to the ICRC, which has helped more than 90,000 mine victims and other disabled people in the war-torn country since 1988.

Argentina and Barcelona striker Lionel Messi, who won his fourth successive Ballon d'Or last month, edging out Ronaldo, as well as Xavi Hernandez and Carles Puyol have also donated their UEFA awards to the ICRC program.

($1 = 0.7427 euros)

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Paul Casciato)

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BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Diego Maradona's girlfriend Victoria Ojeda has given birth to a boy called Diego Fernando and the Argentine soccer great is now expected to travel back to Buenos Aires to meet his son.

"He's a Diego, with a big head and lots of hair," Alfredo Cahe, Maradona's long-time doctor, told reporters outside the Buenos Aires clinic where Ojeda gave birth late on Wednesday.

"My feeling is that Diego's going to show up at any moment."

Maradona, 52, is working in Dubai and Ojeda's lawyer Jorge Auruccio said he did not know if he would be flying home to Argentina to meet Diego Fernando, who weighed 3.2 kilograms (seven pounds).

The pregnancy triggered angry exchanges on social media networks between Ojeda, 35, Maradona's ex-wife Claudia Villafane and his daughters Dalma and Giannina.

In the 1980s, during his days at Serie A club Napoli in Italy, Maradona fathered another son, called Diego Jr, who he said was born following a relationship that lasted a day.

Maradona, considered one of the most gifted soccer players in history, took up his current post as honorary sports ambassador in Dubai in September, less than two months after being sacked by the United Arab Emirates club Al Wasl.

(Reporting by Luis Ampuero; Writing by Helen Popper, editing by Mark Meadows)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lady Gaga canceled the remainder of her "Born This Way Ball" concert tour to undergo hip surgery, promoters Live Nation said on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old singer announced she was suffering from an inflammation of the joints on Tuesday, but the tour operator said Gaga's injuries were more serious than she realized.

"After additional tests this morning to review the severity of the issue, it has been determined that Lady Gaga has a labral tear of the right hip," Live Nation said in a statement.

"She will need surgery to repair the problem, followed by strict downtime to recover. This, unfortunately, will force her to cancel the tour so she can heal," it added.

Gaga has been on the road for two years, traveling across six continents.

On Tuesday, she postponed four U.S. shows saying she was suffering from synovitis that left her temporarily unable to walk. Synovitis is an inflammation of the joints that sometimes follows a sprain, strain or injury.

According to her website, the singer was due to play another 20 dates in the United States.

Live Nation said ticket holders would have their money refunded, starting on Thursday.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (AP) Court documents show fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner gathered information on a women's basketball coach and her fiance before he apparently killed them earlier this month.

The Orange County Register reported Thursday that Irvine police believe Dorner researched 28-year-old Monica Quan and her boyfriend 27-year-old Keith Lawrence. The records also say Dorner may have had documents containing information about Quan and her family.

Police tied Dorner to the slayings after reading a manifesto he wrote in which he sought revenge against those he believed ended his law enforcement career. Quan's father represented Dorner during a disciplinary hearing.

Dorner was found dead inside a burned-out cabin earlier this week after a shootout with authorities. He is also suspected of killing two law enforcement officers.

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(Reuters) - Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have gone into the wine business, helping to produce a rose called Miraval from their French estate and putting their names on the label, wine website Decanter.com reported.

The movie star couple have been working with French winemaker Marc Perrin starting with the 2012 harvest, the website said. The Miraval wine will be on the market in March, and white wines will begin arriving by the end of this summer.

"They ... want to ensure they are making the best Provence wines they can," Perrin told Britain-based Decanter.com. on Wednesday.

"They were present at the blending sessions this year, and are relooking at everything from the installations in the winery - where we have already switched to stainless steel tanks - to reworking the labels across the range of wines," he added.

The back label of the Miraval wine carries the names Jolie-Pitt and Perrin.

Pitt and Jolie began renting Chateau Miraval in Correns, southern France, about four years ago and later bought the property, which has about 148 acres of vines.

The Miraval wine was formerly called Pink Floyd because the British rock band recorded their 1979 album "The Wall" in a studio on the estate, Decanter.com said.

Pitt last year unveiled a high-end collection of furniture that he helped create with designer Frank Pollaro. He has also worked with architects to create affordable quality housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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NEW YORK (AP) Nearing 1 billion views on YouTube, "Sesame Street" is headed for Justin Bieber territory.

The children's program is closing in on the kind of rarified digital milestone usually reserved for the likes of pop stars and cat videos. "Sesame Street" will soon pass 1 billion views on YouTube and it's celebrating the mark with a campaign to put itself over the hump.

"Sesame Street" on Thursday will post a video featuring the character Telly Monster, urging viewers to click the show past the final 20 million views and unlock a "top secret video." Naturally, for the nonprofit children's series, it's a teaching moment, too. Don't be surprised if Count von Count shows up to ponder such a big number.

For "Sesame Street," the milestone a first on YouTube for a nonprofit or U.S. children's media outlet reflects the increasingly multimedia nature of kid entertainment. Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are now about as likely to be watched on an iPad, phone or laptop as they are on PBS.

"We have this theory that if we get content on multiple platforms and devices, it gives kids and families a chance to reinforce and experience the curriculum multiple times," says Terry Fitzpatrick, executive vice president of content and distribution for Sesame Workshop, who emphasizes videos are best co-viewed with child and parent. "It blows me away to think about how popular and strong a platform (YouTube) has become for us."

"Sesame Street," a mainstay on PBS since 1970, launched its YouTube channel in 2006, but has continually expanded its mindfulness of online and mobile viewers.

Sesame Workshop last year integrated its digital media group into its TV production, so that digital and interactive elements are considered from the start of an idea. Its most popular video is "Elmo's Song," which has been watched nearly 86 million times since being uploaded in 2009. More recently, another PBS hit, "Downton Abbey," was parodied in "Upside Downton Abbey," a video where British muppets have trouble drinking tea and eating crumpets because, well, they're upside down.

Caitlin Hendrickson, strategic partner manager for YouTube's educational realm, YouTube EDU, says that education is one of the fastest growing content categories on the Google Inc.-owned site. "Sesame Street" reaching 1 billion views, she said in a statement, "is proof of their outstanding leadership in this space and their creative use of YouTube."

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor, writer and comedian Steve Martin has become a dad for the first time at age 67 - and managed to keep it secret from the media for more than a month.

Martin and his second wife, Anne Stringfield, 41, "are new parents and recently welcomed a child," a spokeswoman for the actor said on Wednesday.

The spokeswoman gave no details, including the sex of the child or the date of birth. But the New York Post cited unidentified sources as saying the baby arrived in December.

The multi-talented Martin, whose career as a writer and performer dates back more than 45 years, has played a father in movies such as "Parenthood," Cheaper by the Dozen," and "Father of the Bride."

Martin, who has hosted the Oscars ceremony three times, married Stringfield, a former writer at the New Yorker magazine, in 2007. His eight-year marriage to British actress Victoria Tennant ended in divorce in 1994.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey: Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index opened lower on Thursday, with declines in BlackBerry and energy shares offsetting a rise in Barrick Gold Corp after the miner reported quarterly results.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index was down 24.74 points, or 0.19 percent, at 12,750.54 shortly after the open.

(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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