Danny Puff

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A computer hacker was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.

Andrew Auernheimer, 27, had been convicted in November by a Newark, New Jersey, jury of one count of conspiracy to access AT&T Inc servers without permission, and one count of identity theft.

The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark was at the high end of the 33- to 41-month range that the U.S. Department of Justice had sought.

Prosecutors had said prison time would help deter hackers from invading the privacy of innocent people on the Internet.

Among those affected by Auernheimer's activities were ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein, prosecutors said.

"When it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was trying to make the Internet more secure, and that all he did was walk in through an unlocked door," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. "The jury didn't buy it, and neither did the court in imposing sentence."

Auernheimer had sought probation. His lawyer had argued that no passwords were hacked, and that a long prison term was unjustified given that the government recently sought six months for a defendant in a case involving "far more intrusive facts."

The lawyer, Tor Ekeland, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. He has said his client would appeal.

Ekeland is also a lawyer for Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters Corp who was suspended with pay on Friday.

Keys was indicted last week in California on federal charges of aiding the Anonymous hacking collective by giving a hacker access to Tribune Co computer systems in December 2010.

The alleged events occurred before Keys began working at the website Reuters.com. Ekeland on Friday said Keys "maintains his innocence" and "looks forward to contesting these baseless charges.

INTERNET TROLL

Prosecutors called Auernheimer a "well-known computer hacker and internet 'troll,'" who with co-defendant Daniel Spitler and the group Goatse Security tried to disrupt online content and services.

The two men were accused of using an "account slurper" designed to match email addresses with identifiers for iPad users, and of conducting a "brute force" attack to extract data about those users, who accessed the Internet through the AT&T servers.

This stolen information was then provided to the website Gawker, which published an article naming well-known people whose emails had been compromised, prosecutors said.

Spitler pleaded guilty in June 2011 to the same charges for which Auernheimer was convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.

Gawker was not charged in the case. In its original article, Gawker said Goatse obtained its data through a script on AT&T's website that was accessible to anyone on the Internet. Gawker also said in the article that it established the authenticity of the data through two people listed among the names. A Gawker spokesman on Monday declined to elaborate.

AT&T has partnered with Apple in the United States to provide wireless service on the iPad. After the hacking, it shut off the feature that allowed email addresses to be obtained.

The case is U.S. v. Auernheimer, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 11-00470.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow and Alden Bentley)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Troubled star Lindsay Lohan arrived late for Monday's start of her trial on charges of reckless driving and lying to police over a June car crash, after she flew to Los Angeles from New York overnight.

Lohan, wearing a white and pink pants suit, turned up in court more than 45 minutes late after a morning dash from Los Angeles International Airport to the courthouse following a private jet flight from New York.

A bystander threw glitter at her as she walked into court through a phalanx of photographers and camera crews.

Lohan, 26, has pleaded not guilty to reckless driving, obstructing police, and lying to police when she said she was not behind the wheel when her Porsche sports car smashed into a truck on June 8, 2012, in Santa Monica, California.

The actress, who is still on probation for a 2011 conviction for stealing a necklace, faces the prospect of being sent to jail if she is convicted on the latest charges, or if she is deemed to have violated the terms of her probation.

The three misdemeanor charges each carry potential jail terms ranging from three months to a year. But even if Lohan is not convicted, the judge has the power to sentence her to jail for more than 200 days if he determines the actress violated her probation in the 2011 jewelry case.

Monday's trial went ahead after the failure of weeks of behind the scenes negotiations over a possible plea bargain for the "Mean Girls" actress, who has been to jail for brief periods and entered rehabilitation for drinking and drug problems multiple times since 2007.

Lohan's new attorney, Mark Heller, told reporters earlier this month that Lohan had started a new round of psychotherapy and wanted to give inspirational speeches to school kids in a bid to turn her life around.

However, it's not clear if either of those projects have gotten underway. Lohan has spent much of the three months since being charged over the Santa Monica car crash in New York, where she has been photographed at nightclubs, concerts, and fashion and charity events.

Lohan's once promising Hollywood career has been seriously damaged by her numerous legal troubles. A comeback performance as late screen legend Elizabeth Taylor in the TV movie "Liz & Dick" in November was largely panned by critics.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Beech)

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By David Beasley

ATLANTA (Reuters) - An Atlanta woman who says basketball legend Michael Jordan is the father of her 16-year-old son has dropped her paternity suit against him.

Pamela Smith, 48, filed a paternity suit against Jordan last month seeking child support. Jordan denies he is the father of the child and has also filed a counterclaim seeking sanctions against Smith for making false claims.

Smith acknowledged in a previous divorce proceeding that her now ex-husband is the father of the child, according to Jordan's lawyers.

The case has not been settled, Smith's attorney, Randy Kessler, told Reuters on Monday. His client has voluntarily dismissed the case "without prejudice" which means she can re-file it later if she chooses, Kessler added.

"She began this case without an attorney and did her best to file what she believed to be a legally appropriate case," Kessler said.

"She then hired our firm just before the first court appearance. Ms. Smith has relied on our advice and determined that dismissal at this time, without prejudice, is in her son's best interests," he said.

Jordan, 50, is widely hailed as the best basketball player of all time and was a member of six NBA championship teams with the Chicago Bulls. He is majority owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats team.

John Mayoue, Jordan's attorney, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on the case.

Last week, Smith asked a Georgia court to force Jordan to submit to a DNA test to prove or disprove whether he is the father.

"My son has the right to know who his father is," Smith told reporters after the hearing. "He has had an issue with it over the years."

(Editing by David Adams and Andrew Hay)

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By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - The FBI believes it has identified the thieves who stole 13 artworks from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 in the costliest art theft in U.S. history and asked for anyone who had seen the paintings to contact the bureau.

On the 23rd anniversary of the theft, which stands as one of the most prominent unsolved crimes in modern Boston, officials said that their top priority was recovering the $500 million in missing art, which includes Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee" and Edouard Manet's "Chez Tortoni."

The holes in the Gardner museum's collection are prominent, in part because the empty frames that once held the paintings remain, empty, on the gallery walls due to a quirk in the will of the museum's founder.

FBI officials said they believed the artworks were offered for sale in Connecticut and Philadelphia in the years after the heist and said they suspect much of the art could still be in the northeastern United States.

"It's likely that over the years, someone - a friend, a neighbor or relative - has seen the art hanging on a wall, placed above a mantle or stored in an attic," Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, told a Monday press conference.

"We want that person to call us."

The museum reiterated its offer of a $5 million reward for information that leads directly to the return of all the art.

Law enforcement officials said they could offer immunity from prosecution to anyone who comes forward to surrender the paintings. Any prosecution would focus on charges of possession or trafficking in stolen property, since the statute of limitations on prosecuting the original theft has expired.

"Immunity is available, it's a very strong possibility," said U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, noting that the artwork could be in the possession of people who were unaware it had been stolen.

THIEVES IDENTIFIED, FBI SAYS

DesLauriers said the bureau had identified the suspected thieves, who he described as members of a criminal organization with a presence in the mid-Atlantic states and New England. He said the FBI did not want to release the identities of its suspects because that could compromise its investigation.

The FBI called on anyone who had seen any of the missing art - which also includes works by Vermeer and Degas - to report it. (https://tips.fbi.gov)

On the night of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers arrived at the private museum's front door, and a security guard let them in. The thieves allegedly overpowered both guards, who were found duct-taped to chairs in the museum's basement the next morning.

The 13 stolen artworks included paintings, drawings, sculpture and a beaker. The FBI posted a Web site on Monday with photos and descriptions of the stolen works. (http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/march/reward-offered-for-return-of-stolen-gardner-museum-artwork)

Thieves rarely succeed in selling well-known stolen art for anything near its worth, said Robert Wittman, a former FBI agency who today works as a private art security and recover expert.

That is because artwork is easily identified as stolen and serious collectors and dealers look into a work's origin before buying it.

"People who steal these types of paintings, they never monetize them," Wittman said. Usually they are common criminals, they are involved in many areas of criminal activity - car theft, gun-running, and they don't realize that the painting world is a whole different situation."

Because of the difficulty of selling stolen art, there is a risk that the paintings taken from the Gardner museum have been destroyed or damaged, Wittman said.

"Once you cut it out of the frame and things get rolled up ... things deteriorate pretty quickly," Wittman said.

The Gardner Museum was founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner, an art collector who died in 1924. Her will contained very specific conditions on the running of the museum, including the arrangement of her collection and free admission to anyone named Isabella, a practice that continues today.

The FBI solved Boston's other long-running crime mystery in June 2011 when it found accused mobster James "Whitey" Bulger hiding in a seaside California community. Bulger, who is accused of committing or ordering 19 murders, was arrested on a tip that came in after the FBI launched a publicity campaign aimed at tracking him down. He had been on the run since 1994.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Leslie Adler, Gary Hill and Andrew Hay)

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NEW YORK (AP) Rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars wanted the announcement for their latest studio album to be out of this world. And that's where the album's first single debuted.

"Up in the Air" was sent to the International Space Station for an exclusive listening Monday. It will be released Tuesday on Earth.

The new album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," will be available May 21.

A compact disc containing the song was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 1. The band got to watch the rocket blast into space.

"It was amazing to feel it take off," frontman Jared Leto said in a recent interview. "The noise and the brightness was overwhelming, and you're still a mile away."

Leto said the challenge of sending a song into space paled in comparison to being sued for $30 million by EMI when the band was working on "This Is War," released in 2009, which sold over 500,000 copies. The band also launched an aggressive world tour to promote the CD.

"The last album was about closure. There was a battle and a war that we fought. This one is a new beginning," the 41-year-old singer-actor said.

The new single "has to do with getting to a point in your life where you're ready to let go of the past, embrace change and become more of who you really are," Leto said.

The lawsuit was eventually resolved, and the band has continued working with EMI. Leto said the out-of-this-world debut for the new album was fitting after the enormous weight of the lawsuit was lifted, although sending a CD into space was no easy task.

"Most worthy things are not easy to get done. I think a lot of great things have a tremendous amount of challenge, a tremendous amount of difficulty, and I think this was one of those things," he said.

Leto said he wrote and recorded more than 70 songs before determining the final 12 for the new album.

"My songs must feel like discarded lovers because I'm continuously abandoning time," he said. "But that feels better than being sued."

EMI sued the band in 2008 for breach of contract.

"That $30 million lawsuit in that battle was very real. It wasn't a headline. It was something we thought about every single moment of the day that was there, weighing on us. And not just the fact that we would lose and owe a corporation $30 million, but we would have our creative lives stamped out," Leto said.

Their documentary, "Artifact," chronicles the production of the band's third album.

"The film is highly critical of the record business, but I'm not anti-record label, at all. I'm anti-greed. I'm anti-corruption," Leto said. "I'm pro-artist. I believe that everybody can win. You don't have to steal from one another to do it, or to treat one another unfairly."

"Artifact" won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and was recently shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

While things are back to normal, Leto feels the "cuts are still fresh."

"I think they're healing. But they're definitely not healed yet. It takes some time. The good news is that there's an entirely new group that's running things. It's essentially a new record company," Leto said.

The band, which also includes Shannon Leto and Tomo Milicivic, will begin a world tour in June to support the new album.

Meanwhile, Leto will return to the big screen this year, starring opposite Matthew McConaughey in the AIDS drama, "Dallas Buyers Club."

"I hadn't made a film for five years, and this role came along to play a transsexual in a film about the birth of this horrible plague. I wasn't looking to make a film, or to take five years off, either," Leto said.

A conversation between astronaut Tom Marshburn from the International Space Station and Leto will be available on both the band's and NASA's websites.

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Online:

http://www.thirtysecondstomars.com

http://www.nasa.gov/

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John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://www.twitter.com/jacarucci

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LONDON (AP) British investigators have found hundreds more potential phone-hacking victims of Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid, a victim's lawyer said Monday.

Lawyer Hugh Tomlinson made the announcement at Britain's High Court during legal arguments related to the lawsuits against News of the World publisher News International. Tomlinson did not go into much detail, but hundreds of extra victims could translate into millions of extra damages for the UK newspaper company.

The phone hacking scandal has greatly damaged the reputation of the British tabloid press, which has been found to have hacked into the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, crime victims and others. Murdoch's company has already paid millions of pounds in settlements, and a national outcry forced British politicians to promise action to make the medial more responsible.

At a court hearing Monday, a lawyer said journalists at The Sun newspaper another Murdoch title harvested data from a lawmaker's stolen phone.

Lawyer David Sherborne said parliamentarian Siobhain McDonagh has accepted substantial but undisclosed damages from the newspaper after her cellphone was stolen from a parked car in 2010. Her text messages had later been accessed by The Sun, Sherborne said.

News International lawyer Dinah Rose acknowledged that The Sun was guilty of "serious misuse of her private information."

The revelations of new victims came only hours after British politicians announced they struck a last-minute deal over press regulation, unveiling a new code meant to curb the worst abuses of the country's scandal-tarred media.

The code follows days of heated debate over how to implement the recommendations of Lord Justice Brian Leveson, who held an inquiry that aimed to clean up a newspaper industry plunged into crisis by revelations of widespread phone hacking.

Victims' groups have lobbied for an independent watchdog whose powers are enshrined in law but media groups have said that threatens press freedom.

The deal struck early Monday appears to be a complicated compromise.

"I think we have got an agreement which protects the freedom of the press, that is incredibly important in a democracy, but also protects the rights of people not to have their lives turned upside down," senior opposition leader Harriet Harman told broadcaster ITV.

Unlike the U.K.'s widely discredited Press Complaints Commission, which barely bothered to investigate allegations of phone hacking before the scandal broke, the new regulator being proposed by politicians would be independent of the media and would have the power to force newspapers to print prominent apologies.

Submitting to the regulatory regime would be optional, but media groups staying outside the system could risk substantial fines if they get stories wrong.

And rather than being established through a new press law, which advocates of Britain's media have described as unacceptable, the regulatory body would be created through a Royal Charter, a kind of executive order whose history stretches back to medieval times. Adding to the complexity, a law would be passed to prevent ministers from tweaking the system after the fact.

Harman acknowledged that the charter was "quite a sort of complex and old-fashioned thing" but said it "kind of more or less ... has got legal basis."

Victims' group Hacked Off said Monday it believes the deal will go a long way toward preserving press freedom and protecting the public from fresh abuses. The groups said it remained concerned about how newspaper groups would be cajoled into joining.

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MADRID (Reuters) - Alfredo Di Stefano may have kicked a ball about with Argentine compatriot Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected Pope Francis I last week, when they were growing up around the same time in Buenos Aires, the Real Madrid great has said.

Di Stefano, who is just over 10 years older than the 76-year-old Bergoglio, wrote in his regular column in sports daily Marca on Monday that the pair had gone to the same school and lived close to each other in the Argentine capital.

"As you can imagine his election filled me with enormous joy," Di Stefano wrote.

"The Pope was probably one of those kids with whom I played football in the street," he added.

"In the neighborhood we put together proper matches with everyone against everyone until it got dark.

"You'll have to ask him because at that time I was the famous one, from when I was very small, as I belonged to the River Plate youth academy, everyone knew me."

Di Stefano is widely considered one of the greatest players of all time and helped to turn Real Madrid, the La Liga club he joined in 1953, into one of the world's leading sides.

One of Pope Francis's predecessors, John Paul II, who died in 2005, was a goalkeeper in his youth.

(Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by Clare Fallon)

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HONG KONG (AP) Michelle Yeoh is happy to be honored with the "Excellence in Asian Cinema Award" but says she hopes there's no hidden message.

She asked, "I hope it's not their way of telling me that I need to retire?"

The star of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and last year's Aung San Suu Kyi biopic "The Lady" is being honored at the Asian Film Awards on Monday night.

Speaking to reporters a day earlier, Yeoh said she's happy to receive the award where her career started, in Hong Kong.

And while she acknowledged she's long heard rumors of a "Crouching Tiger" sequel, she says she's yet to see a script or other plans on the project. The 2000 original was directed by Ang Lee and won four Academy Awards.

The recent reports have attached kung fu star Donnie Yen to the unconfirmed sequel, and Yeoh said she's a fan and would welcome the opportunity to work with him if a project is developed.

The Hong Kong film festival's opener Sunday was "Ip Man: the Final Fight," the latest film about martial arts master Ip Man. Lead actor Anthony Wong and actress Zhou Chou Chou were among stars walking the red carpet.

Veteran Hong Kong directors Johnnie To and Ronny Yu are also premiering works at the festival, which features "Infernal Affairs" director Andrew Lau.

The festival closes in April with the Iranian film "Closed Curtain," which is fresh off a win for best script at the Berlin Film Festival.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Japanese architect Toyo Ito, whose buildings have been praised for their fluid beauty and balance between the physical and virtual world, has won the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the prize's jury announced Sunday.

The 71-year-old architect joins such masters as Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano and Wang Su in receiving the honor that's been called architecture's Nobel Prize. Ito, the sixth Japanese architect to receive the prize, was recognized for the libraries, houses, theaters, offices and other buildings he has designed in Japan and beyond.

He accepted the honor by saying that whenever he's done designing a building, he becomes "painfully aware of my own inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project."

"Therefore, I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works," he said in a statement.

"Toyo Ito's architecture has improved the quality of both public and private spaces," said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who served on the Pritzker Prize jury.

"It has inspired many architects, critics and members of the general public alike. Along with all others involved with the Pritzker Prize, I am very pleased that he has received the award," Breyer said in a statement.

Some of Ito's notable creations include the curvaceous Municipal Funeral Hall in Gifu, Japan; the transparent Sendai Mediatheque library in Miyagi, Japan; the arch-filled Tama Art University Library in suburban Tokyo; the spiral White O residence in Marbella, Chile; and the angular 2002 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London.

"His buildings are complex, yet his high degree of synthesis means that his works attain a level of calmness, which ultimately allows the inhabitants to freely develop their life and activities in them," said Chilean architect and Pritzker Prize jury member Alejandro Aravena.

Ito began his career at Kiyonori Kikutake & Associates after he graduated from Tokyo University in 1965. He founded his own architecture firm in 1971. His works have been exhibited in museums in the United States, England, Denmark, Italy, Chile and numerous cities in Japan.

Ito will receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion at the formal Pritzker ceremony May 29 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation, the Pritzker Prize was established in 1979 by the late entrepreneur Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy, to honor "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."

The Pritzker family founded the prize because of its involvement with developing Hyatt Hotel properties around the world and because architecture was not included in the Nobel Prizes. The Pritzker selection process is modeled after the Nobels.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang/.

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Natalie Maines is starting out nervous on stage, almost 10 years to the day that the Dixie Chicks spitfire slammed then-President George W. Bush and forever changed the fate and fortunes of the country superstars.

On this night she barely speaks between songs.

Her hair slicks up in a punkish pompadour. She looks slimmer than when the Dixie Chicks began a hiatus in 2007 that may never end. The crowd at the South by Southwest music festival to hear Maines perform her solo debut "Mother" for only the second time is a healthy size, but it is also far from a packed house.

"We missed you, Natalie!" one fan hollers.

Maines smiles but doesn't banter back.

"I ask myself, 'Why is that? What are you doing, girl?'" Maines told The Associated Press the next morning at a downtown Austin hotel. "I think right now I have so much to remember. This is the most guitar I've ever had to play."

Now 38 and a solo artist for the first time in her career, Maines is candid about the past and guarded about the future. Ask whether the Dixie Chicks will ever record new music again, she curls in her chair with tense energy and declines to predict.

"I think I thought time would heal and that I would come around. But just like the song says, I'm still waiting," said Maines, pulling a lyric from the band's defiant 2006 smash single "Not Ready to Make Nice."

Fellow Chicks Emily Erwin and Martie Maguire don't needle her to reunite in the studio, Maines said, but she acknowledges that choosing the solo project "Mother" as her first album since 2006 may not have been their first choice. "I'm pretty sure they would rather I be making a Dixie Chicks record, but they would never say that, thank God," Maines said.

Now rehash her takedown of then-President Bush in 2003 and well, on second thought, don't bother.

Maines does that herself.

"Good thing I'm not a told ya so kind of person or I might point out that 10 years ago today I said GWB was full of bull and I was right," she tweeted on March 10, three days before her first South by Southwest performance.

When the Texas-born Maines told a London crowd at the start of the Iraq invasion she was ashamed to be from the same state as Bush, the Dixie Chicks became pariahs of the country music industry that vaulted them to stardom. Radio stations blackballed the Dixie Chicks from playlists and legions of fans turned their backs.

The Dixie Chicks stayed firm during the backlash, and released "Taking the Long Way" in 2006 that won five Grammys and was a best-seller despite being largely ignored by country radio. Maines now refers to the group as "tainted" but is still open to performing live with the Dixie Chicks, and two shows are scheduled in Canada this summer.

Those concerts will be a different sound than "Mother." The album is Maines putting her take on covers that span from Pink Floyd (the album title borrows from "The Wall"), Eddie Vedder's "Without You" and Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over."

Guitar virtuoso Ben Harper produced the album and performed with Maines at SXSW for a lively show that skewed far more on the side of rock and Americana than the bluegrass and country combination of the Dixie Chicks. Maines first played at the 2,700-seat Moody Theater that is the home studio for Austin City Limits a big and tough venue to fill at SXSW, given the 2,200 other artists all vying for attention.

Maines doesn't expect to win back fans that Dixie Chicks lost, and isn't sure who will embrace her different sound now.

"I like what the three of us had together," Maines said of the Dixie Chicks. "I did what was required. It felt like my job. I felt like a businesswoman in the industry I was in. I feel like I accepted that and waved that country flag but always felt like I was holding on to who I was, and we were still considered rebellious in the Top 40 country market. But it was news to me that people thought I was something I wasn't.

"The cat just feels out of the bag now," Maines said. "I'm not sure I can go back to that."

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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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