Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 1-6

6 Chicago Tribune Section 1 Tuesday, January 31, 2017 Obama dips into Chicago ward politics from Obama comes a little more than a month after she joined the City Council's Progressive Reform Caucus, whose members often oppose Emanuel's initiatives. The mayor continues to try to rebuild support among African-Americans 14 months after the court-ordered release of a police dashboard camera video showing an officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald. "Michelle and I have known Sophia many years as a leader dedicated to improving her community," Obama said in a statement released Monday by King's campaign. "Over the years, Sophia has worked to make neighborhood schools and communities better. Sophia is the type of leader Chicago and the 4th Ward need." The Obamas' Kenwood home is in the 4th Ward, and King and her husband, Alan King, are friends of the Obamas.

King said she was "humbled" by Obama's endorsement, which she characterized as the result of her involvement in community issues "long before I became alderman." She also said she has the 4th Ward, where the Obamas' NANCY STONECHICAGO TRIBUNE Kenwood home is located. Aid. Sophia King represents the support of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a former 4th Ward alderman, and state Sen. Kwame Raoul, who holds the General Assembly seat Obama once occupied. Livingston, however, tried to cast Obama's endorsement as a sign of weakness for King.

"I don't think they would have this kind of blitzkrieg going if they were totally confident in their candidate," Livingston said. Peoria man killed in Yemen firefight 4 other service members hurt during terror raid Associated Press WASHINGTON -The Defense Department announced Monday that the Navy sailor killed during a raid on an al-Qaida base in Yemen was from Peoria Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens died Jan. 28 of wounds sustained during the raid. The Pentagon said Owens, 36, was assigned to an East Coast-based Special Warfare unit. Owens' death is the first known U.S.

military combat casualty since President Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20. "My deepest thoughts and humblest prayers are with the family of this fallen service member," Trump said when Owens' death became known. Three other service members were wounded Sunday during the fire-fight with al-Qaida militants. The raid left nearly 30 others dead, including an estimated 14 militants.

A fourth U.S. service member was injured when a military aircraft assisting in the mission nearby had a "hard landing." Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis issued a statement Monday praising Owens for his service. "Ryan gave his full measure for our nation, and in performing his duty, he upheld the noblest standard of military service," he said. "The United States would not long exist were it not for the selfless commitment of such warriors." Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has exploited the chaos of Yemen's civil war, seizing territory in the south and east when it began in 2014. A Saudi Arabian-led military coalition has been helping government forces battle the rebels.

Former president endorses alderman in special election By Hal Dardick Chicago Tribune Former President Barack Obama on Monday got involved in Chicago ward politics by endorsing Aid. Sophia King, 4th, in next month's special election a move a couple of her opponents tried to portray as a sign of weakness and meddling by the powers that be. The endorsement from the former leader of the free world comes just 10 days after Obama's last day in office and as King soon enters the final month of campaigning for the Feb. 28 election with a strong fund-raising advantage. Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed King to her post in April after the resignation of Will Burns, a former Obama aide.

She is being challenged by three attorneys Ebony Lucas, Gerald Scott McCarthy and Mar-cellus Moore Jr. as well as activist Gregory Seal Livingston. King's endorsement Landscape Team faces thorny issues in building presidential center By Blair Kamin Chicago Tribune The Obama Foundation on Monday named a team of landscape architects for the Obama Presidential Center, to be led by the designer of Chicago's 606 trail and Maggie Daley Park. Michael Van Valken-burgh Associates, based in New York, will head the team, which will include two Chicago landscape design firms: Site Design Group, headed by Ernie Wong, and Living Habitats, whose president is Heidi Natura The landscape architects will work with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects of New York, whom selected for Obama library And McCarthy maintained that despite all of King's support, she's politically vulnerable. "They should have stayed out of it and let the people decide," he said.

"If we get a high turnout, yes, she can be beat." Attempts to reach Lucas and Moore were not successful. The eventual winner of the special election will serve out the remaining two years of the term Burns left to work for Airbnb. worsen traffic congestion on other streets and isolate neighborhoods around the center. The center, which is expected to cost at least $500 million, is to be built in the park's northwest corner along Stony Island Avenue. Its principal features will be archives and a museum devoted to the Obama presidency.

To select the landscape architects, the foundation requested proposals from several firms around the country, a foundation spokeswoman said. In addition to The 606, which encompasses an elevated trail and chain of parks on Chicago's Northwest Side, and Maggie Daley Park, a children-oriented venue next to Millennium Park, Van Valkenburgh's Chicago projects include a future park at the Musically app concerns some parents It's not the first time Obama has gotten involved in local politics in the past year. In March, he endorsed Juliana Stratton over then-Illinois Rep. Ken Dunkin, of Chicago, in last year's Democratic primary. In that state legislative race, Obama cut a TV ad for Stratton, who went on to win the primary and the general election.

hdardickchicagotribune.com Twitter ReporterHal under-construction One Bennett Park residential tower in Streeterville. The landscape architect's best-known recent project is New York's Brooklyn Bridge Park. Wong's Site Design Group has designed Chinatown's Ping Tom Park along the Chicago River and the Henry Palmisano Park in Bridgeport, which turned an old quarry and landfill into a naturalistic landscape. The firm is a certified minority business enterprise. Living Habitats is a certified women-owned business enterprise composed of landscape architects, designers and ecologists.

Blair Kamin is a Tribune critic. bkaminchicagotribune.com Twitter BlairKamin spondent belonged to a 24-year-old man, Deputy Chief Roy Bethge said. He said the department wasn't able to bring charges against the suspect for reasons he couldn't disclose. The village hasn't had any other trouble with the app, he said. The Musically spokesperson said the company encourages parents and users to report bad behavior, and it has filters to block inappropriate content The specter of predators is the kind of nightmare that haunts parents whose children are on social media, but Sameer Hinduja, a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University and co -director of the Cy-berbullying Research Center, said it's a mistake to focus solely on potential threats.

He said Musically does not have the reputation of being an especially troublesome app, and that most people appear to use it designers NANCY STONETRIBUNE 2014 Michael Van Valkenburgh's firm also designed Maggie Daley Park and The 606. former President Barack Obama last year selected as the architects for his presidential center. "This highly skilled and diverse team stood out in their commitment to creating accessible public spaces that honor their environment, community and "Then they'll come out and do a live performance to show us what they're doing. It's active and creative and fun. I really like that about the app." Schools have picked up on the app too.

Jen Smith, technology coach at South Middle School in Arlington Heights, assembled a Musically compilation of lip-syncing teachers to welcome students when the school year began. She said the video delighted the kids, particularly when teachers broke into the app's signature hand gestures. Smith said the experience gave the staff a new view into students' virtual lives. "It just opened up a lot of conversations with teachers about what kids are doing digitally, how they're putting themselves out there and how that changes how they interact with each other," she said. Kid-centric apps are governed by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.

Attorney Mercedes Tunstall, a privacy law expert at the Washington, D.C., office of Pillsbury Win-throp Shaw Pittman, said the act requires parental permission before a child younger than 13 can post personal data; a way for parents to monitor the account; and protection for the confidentiality, security and integrity of a child's information. Simply writing a young-er-than-13 ban into the terms of service "is not good enough, especially if you have knowledge that (underage) children are using it," she said. Unlike social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat, Musically does not ask users their age when history," David Simas, the foundation's chief executive officer, said in a statement. Landscape issues represent a significant, potentially controversial challenge for the presidential center, which will be built in the Frederick Law Olm-sted-designed Jackson Park. Heavily trafficked roads slice through the park, undercutting Olmsted's vision of a serene pleasure ground.

Last week, the Tribune reported that the foundation has floated the idea of closing a stretch of one of those roads, Cornell Drive, to create a campuslike zone between the presidential center and the nearby Museum of Science and Industry. But some community leaders reacted negatively to the idea, saying it would they sign up. Would-be lip-syncers can create an account with nothing more than an email address or a cellphone number. A Musical. ly spokesperson told the Tribune that COPPA does not apply to the app because it is directed at a general audience.

Despite Zhu's comments in London, the spokesperson said the company doesn't know how old its users are. Roy Smith, who runs a service called PrivacyCheq that helps companies meet COPPA regulations, said some apps don't ask about age because they don't want to know; if they can claim they lack "actual knowledge" of underage users, they are technically compliant with the law. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general can go after a company for violating the act, but that rarely happens, Smith said. An FTC spokeswoman declined to address whether Musically is in compliance with COPPA and said the agency can't comment on whether it's investigating specific companies. 'Second job' Musically advises parents to monitor their kids' activity and set their accounts to private, which allows only approved "fans" to view a user's videos (the setting defaults to public).

Some parents said they hadn't bargained on the need for such close supervision. "I feel like sometimes it's a second job," said Winnet-ka resident Sarah Boulos, who regularly blocks fans she doesn't know from ac ABEL URIBECHICAGO TRIBUNE Sicily Leone, 10, and her sister, Anacapri, 6, sit with their mom, Natalie Leone, at home in Lockport. Sicily loves to sing along to songs and upload them into the Musical. ly app. App, from Page 7 problematic in other ways too.

In an appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt London last month, CEO Alex Zhu acknowledged that "a lot of users, especially top users, they're under 13." That's a violation of the app's terms of use, and potentially puts Musically in conflict with federal child privacy law. But Zhu said that as far as he knows, parents monitor their underage children's activities on the app. He added that the company will delete an account at a parent's request. "Of course there will be risk," he said. "The point is not '(We) don't need connectivity; let's kill all the new social media The point is we have to manage the risk and solve the problem." Positive experience For many users or "musers," in the app's parlance Musically is a positive experience.

Lock-port resident Natalie Leone, whose 10-year-old daughter, Sicily, is a devoted mus-er, said it reminds her of how she entertained herself when she was a child. "I remember staring in the mirror and dancing and singing to myself," she said. "I see (Musically) as a hand-held mirror." Alicia Osborne, of Schaumburg, said the app has given her 9-year-old daughter, Eden Kusiak, a boost of confidence and a new way to be social with her pals. "When her girlfriends come over they'll make Osborne said. responsibly.

He said it can teach ldds practical skills ranging from video editing to building a following. "I would say Musically and similar apps are contributing to digital literacy," he said. "In 2017, we need kids to be highly digitally literate." That leaves parents such as Kevin Irvine, of Chicago, in a tough spot. He said while he recognizes the positive side of Musically, he remains uneasy about its capabilities: During an interview he and his 11-year-old daughter, Dominika Tamley, gave the Tribune, he was surprised to learn she didn't know the identities of most of her 18 fans. "I'm figuring this stuff out on the fly," he said.

"I'm trying to strike a balance between allowing her to try new things and protecting her and making sure she's safe." jkeilmantribpub.com Twitter JohnKeilman cessing her daughter Mad-die's account. "They're just not ready for it at age 10." Steve Georgy, of Crystal Lake, said he deleted Musically from his 10-year-old daughter's iPad three months ago after watching a streaming video in which a young girl was bombarded with sexual requests (comments and emojis scroll across the screen during a live stream). He relented after ensuring that only his daughter's friends had access to her videos a move that culled her fan base from 300 to 36 and dedicating himself to keeping an even closer watch over her account "It opened up my eyes quite a bit," he said. Buffalo Grove police encountered a malicious use of the app last year when someone posing as a child communicated with a 9-year-old girl via Musically and enticed her to send nude photos. The phone used by the girl's corre.