LOS ANGELES: A Missouri woman was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committedsuicide.

Lori Drew, 49, of suburban St. Louis, who allegedly helped create a MySpace account in the name of someone who did not exist to convince Megan Meier she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, was charged with conspiracy and fraudulently gaining access to someone elsescomputer.

Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006, allegedly after receiving a dozen or more cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off withouther.

Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the caseheart-rending.

“The Internet is a world unto itself,” he said. “People must know how far they can go before they must stop. They exploited a young girls weaknesses. Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, shes responsible for heractions.”

Drew was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on thegirl.

Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages toMegan.

Dean Steward, a lawyer representing Drew in the federal case, said a legal challenge to the charges was being planned. He characterized them as unusual andpuzzling.

“We thought when prosecutors in St. Louis looked at the case and all the facts, it was clear no criminal acts occurred,” Stewardsaid.

A man who opened the door at the Drew family home in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, on Thursday said the family had nocomment.

Megans mother, Tina Meier, said she believed media reports and public outrage helped move the case forward forprosecution.

“Im thrilled that this woman is going to face charges that she has needed to face since the day we found out what was going on, and since the day she decided to be a part of this entire ridiculous stunt,” shesaid.

Megans father, Ron Meier, 38, said he began to cry “tears of joy” when he heard of the indictment. The parents are now separated, which Tina Meier has said stemmed in part from the circumstances of their daughtersdeath.

Tina Meier has acknowledged Megan was too young to have a MySpace account under the Web sites guidelines, but she said she had been able to closely monitor the account. Meiers family has also acknowledged that Megan was also sending mean messages before herdeath.

Megan was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression, her family has said. Meier has said Drew knew Megan was onmedication.

MySpace issued a statement saying it “does not tolerate cyberbullying” and was cooperating fully withauthorities.

The U.S. attorney, Thomas OBrien, said this was the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case. It has been used in the past to addresshacking.

“This was a tragedy that did not have to happen,” OBriensaid.

Both the girl and MySpace are named as victims in the case, hesaid.

Rebecca Lonergan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of Southern California, said use of the federal cyber crime statute may be open tochallenge.

Lonergan, who used the statute in the past to file charges in computer hacking and trademark theft cases, said the crimes covered by the law involve obtaining information from a computer, not sending messages out to harasssomeone.

“Here it is the flow of information away from the computer,” she said. “Its a very creative, aggressive use of the statute. But they may have a legally tough time meeting theelements.”

She said, however, that because “a very bad harm was done,” the courts may grant somelatitude.

MySpace is a subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media, which is owned by News Corp. The indictment noted that MySpace computer servers are located in Los AngelesCounty.

Due to juvenile privacy rules, the U.S. attorneys office said, the indictment refers to the girl asMTM.

FBI agents in St. Louis and Los Angeles investigated the case, Hernandezsaid.

Each of the four counts carries a maximum possible penalty of five years inprison.

Federal officials said Drew will be arraigned in St. Louis and moved to Los Angeles for trial. Her lawyer, however, said Drew did not have to surrender in Missouri but would be arraigned in early June in LosAngeles.

The indictment says MySpace members agree to abide by terms of service that include, among other things, not promoting information they know to be false or misleading; soliciting personal information from anyone under age 18 and not using information gathered from the Web site to “harass, abuse or harm otherpeople.”

BOSTON: Reebok International and its corporate parent, Adidas Group, an Olympic sponsor, are dropping plans for a hospitality facility to host athletes, guests and journalists at the Beijing Games because of logistical demands made by the Chinesegovernment.

Reebok, which has a major marketing campaign built around Yao Ming, the Chinese basketball star and Reebok endorser, also said there was now only a slim chance that the brand would be able to host a public event with Yao in Beijing, as the company had initially planned, said Josie Stevens, Reeboks director of global publicrelations.

The company is considering other options, including holding an event in Houston. Yao, the center for the Houston Rockets, has been getting physical therapy there since an injury thisyear.

“It was proving a challenge on the ground in terms of getting all the logistics and practicalities being asked of us,” said Stevens, who declined to provide details. “It was a difficultdecision.”

Reebok typically has a hospitality facility at the Olympics to play host to about 100 people daily. The company, which is outfitting 250 athletes, initially planned to share a facility with Adidas at a local school, but neither company will be going ahead with theplans.

These logistical difficulties, along with controversy over human rights issues in China, also led Reebok to decide against making these athletes available for news conferences or one-on-one interviews during the Olympics. Instead, Reebok plans to hire a video news service to have a mobile film crew interview athletes and distribute programming to mediaorganizations.

“As a brand,” Stevens said, “we didnt want to put our athletes in the position when being interviewed of having to explain their personal views on the human rights issue, and we also didnt want to act as a censoreither.”

Adidas said Wednesday that Reebok had not yet decided about sponsorship activities during the Olympics. “Reebok, which is not an official partner to the Olympic Games, is still planning its brand activities,” said an Adidas spokeswoman, Anne Putz, according to Bloomberg News.

Don Hinchey, a spokesman for Bonham Group, a sports and entertainment marketing firm in Denver, said everyone involved in the Olympics was on “pins and needles” about how to conduct business in Beijing with more stringent restrictions than ever before in Olympic history for journalists, athletes and businesses sponsoring theGames.

BOSTON: Reebok International and its corporate parent, Adidas Group, an Olympic sponsor, are dropping plans for a hospitality facility to host athletes, guests and journalists at the Beijing Games because of logistical demands made by the Chinesegovernment.

Reebok, which has a major marketing campaign built around Yao Ming, the Chinese basketball star and Reebok endorser, also said there was now only a slim chance that the brand would be able to host a public event with Yao in Beijing, as the company had initially planned, said Josie Stevens, Reeboks director of global publicrelations.

The company is considering other options, including holding an event in Houston. Yao, the center for the Houston Rockets, has been getting physical therapy there since an injury thisyear.

“It was proving a challenge on the ground in terms of getting all the logistics and practicalities being asked of us,” said Stevens, who declined to provide details. “It was a difficultdecision.”

Reebok typically has a hospitality facility at the Olympics to play host to about 100 people daily. The company, which is outfitting 250 athletes, initially planned to share a facility with Adidas at a local school, but neither company will be going ahead with theplans.

These logistical difficulties, along with controversy over human rights issues in China, also led Reebok to decide against making these athletes available for news conferences or one-on-one interviews during the Olympics. Instead, Reebok plans to hire a video news service to have a mobile film crew interview athletes and distribute programming to mediaorganizations.

“As a brand,” Stevens said, “we didnt want to put our athletes in the position when being interviewed of having to explain their personal views on the human rights issue, and we also didnt want to act as a censoreither.”

Adidas said Wednesday that Reebok had not yet decided about sponsorship activities during the Olympics. “Reebok, which is not an official partner to the Olympic Games, is still planning its brand activities,” said an Adidas spokeswoman, Anne Putz, according to Bloomberg News.

Don Hinchey, a spokesman for Bonham Group, a sports and entertainment marketing firm in Denver, said everyone involved in the Olympics was on “pins and needles” about how to conduct business in Beijing with more stringent restrictions than ever before in Olympic history for journalists, athletes and businesses sponsoring theGames.

Jerry Yang began his biggest public presentation since becoming chief executive of Yahoo with something of an apology.

“Im guessing that a lot of you are here today to see what the new look and new face of Yahoo is all about,” he told an audience of some 1,500 technology enthusiasts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. “Well, Im sorry to disappoint you. Its still the same old face. Ive been around since the beginning.”

Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, was picked last summer to run the company in part to end a string of disappointments for Yahoo shareholders. Before his keynote speech was over, Yang had offered the audience and shareholders a glimpse of what may one day be the new face of Yahoo ? a revamped set of online services that company executives hope will help turn around Yahoos fortunes.

But it was only a glimpse. Yang displayed a prototype version of Yahoos popular e-mail software that had been transformed into a powerful communications hub.

It could, for example, tap into social networks to give higher priority to messages coming from senders with close ties to their recipients.

And it could use other developers programs to help organize a dinner for a group of people.

Yang said other Yahoo services would be similarly overhauled to open them to the rest of the Web and to run outside applications. Such a strategy has successfully been embraced by Facebook and others. The goal, Yang said, is to turn Yahoo into a primary online “starting point” for consumers.

Analysts have been waiting for changes at Yahoo, and they have questioned whether Yang can lead Yahoos transformation quickly enough before competitors gain more ground and before investors become restless.

“Maybe its too generous, but I would give them six to nine months to prove that these initiatives are having an impact,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup.

Successfully transforming the Yahoo portal is only one of the challenges facing Yahoo. It must also revitalize its advertising business and find a way to compete more effectively with Google in Internet search, a vital source of revenue. But the portal changes are a critical element of the companys strategy to hold on to its large audience.

“It would have been unimaginable five years ago to think that Yahoos total audience would decline,” Mahaney said. “It is not unimaginable now.”

Yahoos audience it still growing. But its lead in important areas has eroded. With 136 million people in the United States visiting its sites in November, Yahoo remains the most popular property on the Web, according to comScore, a company that tracks Internet traffic. Yet Google surpasses Yahoo in search by an ever-growing margin. And in just a year, Google has managed to narrow Yahoos overall lead in Internet traffic from 22 million visitors to fewer than five million.

Google has also made inroads against MyYahoo with a rival personalized home page service called iGoogle. Sites like Facebook and MySpace, meanwhile, have amassed huge audiences.

Traditional portals like Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have long sought to keep users captive by offering them an array of information, communications tools and online shopping. But lately, their grip on consumers has been loosened as a new generation of users increasingly rely on search engines to find their way on the Web and spend more time on social networks. Yahoo said its transformation is all about remaining relevant in this new environment.

“We need to become more social, and we need to become more open,” said Jeff Weiner, who as executive vice president for the network division is leading the effort to retool Yahoos sites and services. “There is a huge opportunity to become more relevant to people.”

Weiner, 37, a prot?g? of the Yahoo chairman and former chief executive Terry Semel, said that to be an effective starting point, Yahoo needs to offer all the basic tools that users rely on routinely ? including e-mail and instant messaging, search, news and maps. But it also has to become a place that helps users discover and connect to interesting content and services around the Web.

The effort to open Yahoo to the rest of the Web has already started. In the fall of 2006, the company brought in Liz Lufkin, a veteran of Web news operations at The San Francisco Chronicle and USA Today.

Twice a day, Lufkin, senior director for front page content programming, oversees a meeting where editors and producers from all parts of Yahoo contribute ideas and content for the “today module.”

MILAN: Stories of cellphones helping people in developing countries abound - some of them highlighted by the industry, in an effort to polish its image, and others by usersthemselves.

There are the women in Bangladesh and other countries who invest in a phone and then rent it to fellow villagers, making money for themselves while providing a key service for others. There are the fishermen in India who have increased their earnings by calling from their boats to various ports to see where their catch can get them the mostmoney.

But what about countries with advanced economies? Might cellphones have a nontraditional role there? Could cellphones help young people in the inner cities of San Francisco, Chicago, New York or London deal with fears about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, forexample?

Yes, according to a report commissioned by the Vodafone Group Foundation and the United Nations Foundation that looked at ways in which nongovernmental organizations use cellphones. The Vodafone Group Foundation, which finances disaster relief and preparedness projects, and the UN Foundation, created in 1998 with a $1 billion donation by Ted Turner, have collaborated on several communications-related projects in thepast.

The report, presented recently in Washington, London and Brussels, profiles 11 organizations that have used cellphone technology to accomplish their missions, which ranged from sex education to dispersing emergency food to stopping fights between elephants andfarmers.

The report looked at 560 nongovernmental organizations and found that 86 percent of the people questioned use cellular technology in their work, with those in Africa and Asia more likely to use cellular networks than their colleagues in areas with traditional telecommunications infrastructure. Ninety-nine percent of the people surveyed said cellular technology had a positive effect on their work, with 95 percent citing time saving as the key benefit. Three-quarters of those surveyed said an important advantage of cellphones was that they made it possible to connect with people previously difficult or impossible toreach.

Cellphone coverage is working its way to the farthest corners of the globe - 80 percent of the worlds population now lives within range of a cellular network - but it was in San Francisco, just up the road from where Apple designed the iPhone, that a small organization found a way to use cellphones to inform inner-city youths about the perils of unprotectedsex.

This audience was hard to reach, according to Deborah Levine, executive director of Internet Sexuality Information Services, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California. So the group developed Sex Info, a service that lets people request information by anonymous textmessage.

For the price of a regular text message, users can ask questions and get immediate automated responses to queries. The responses include the names and addresses of clinics where people can be tested for sexually transmitted diseases and get counseling. More specific questions are answered by trained experts. The group publicized Sex Info in San Francisco beginning in April 2006, but a request by text message can be made from anywhere in the United States. A campaign to promote the services has just begun in Washington and it is scheduled to expand to Toronto thisyear.

In the first three months of this year, almost 4,500 requests for information were made to the service, according toLevine.

“Young people dont always know who they can talk to and - like this - they can get that information on their phone, which they are using all the time anyway,” Levine said. “In most cases there is no cost for the users since many have unlimited text messaging plans with their mobile phonecompany.”

Levine said that the program was the first of its kind in the United States but that it was preceded by a similar program in London begun in 2002 by the Brook Advisory Center, a British charity. Brooks service, which receives an average of about 100 text message queries per month, responds to questions about contraception, pregnancy and sexually transmitteddiseases.