ST. LOUIS — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon issued an urgent plea for calm Monday as prosecutors prepared to announce whether a grand jury has indicted Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager sparked days of turbulent protests.

While Nixon (D) said he didn’t know what the grand jury has decided, he expressed the fervent hope that “regardless of the decision, people on all sides will show tolerance and mutual respect.’’ Saying he had visited on Monday with Ferguson residents, Nixon said “It’s understandable that they, like the rest of us, are on edge waiting for the decision.’’

But the governor made clear that acts of violence will not be tolerated. “We are making sure that the necessary resources are on hand to protect lives, to protect property and to protect free speech, he said at a news conference, adding that he has deployed the Missouri National Guard to provide security at police stations, fire houses and utility substations.

St. Louis County executive Charlie Dooley issued a similar plea for protesters to remain peaceful. “I want people to think with their heads and not their emotions,’’ he said. “I do not want people in this community to think they have to barricade their doors or take up arms. We are not that kind of community.’’

The strongly worded statements spoke to the growing concern in a community that has been bracing for protests if Wilson does not face charges in the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, which triggered a frank conversation about race and police interaction with African Americans.

The decision will be announced Monday night, the county prosecutor’s office said. The office gave no details about what the grand jury has decided. Brown’s family has been notified of the announcement but has not been told about the grand jury’s decision, family attorney Benjamin Crump said.

The grand jury’s decision is the latest turn in a case marked in the national consciousness by the stunning images of clashes between protesters and police wearing riot gear and deploying tear gas in the days after Brown’s death. Details of the grand jury’s deliberations have leaked out in recent weeks, angering the Brown family and protesters who saw it as a signal that no charges would be filed.

Although a parallel federal civil rights investigation of the shooting is continuing, federal investigators have all but concluded that they do not have a case against Wilson, law enforcement officials have said. Federal investigators are also conducting a broader probe of the Ferguson Police Department.

If Wilson is not charged, government officials have discussed emergency plans in the event of a violent reaction, while protest and community leaders have mapped out their response in hopes of avoiding the unrest that exploded after Brown was killed.

In an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday, President Obama called for calm.

“Well, I think, first and foremost, keep protests peaceful,” he said. “You know, this is a country that allows everybody to express their views, allows them to peacefully assemble to protest actions that they think are unjust. But using any event as an excuse for violence is contrary to rule of law and contrary to who we are.”

About a week after Tara Elonis persuaded a judge to issue a protective order against her estranged husband, Anthony, her soon-to-be ex had this to say:

“Fold up your PFA [protection-from-abuse order] and put it in your pocket

Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?”

Anthony Elonis didn’t deliver the message in person, by phone or in a note. Instead, he posted it on his Facebook page, for all to see, in a prose style reminiscent of the violent, misogynistic lyrics of rap artists he admired.

In its first examination of the limits of free speech on social media, the Supreme Court will consider next week whether, as a jury concluded, Elonis’s postings constituted a “true threat” to his wife and others.

The issue is whether Elonis should be prosecuted for what he says was simply blowing off steam — “therapeutic efforts to address traumatic events,” as his brief to the court says — because what matters is not his intent but whether any reasonable person targeted in the rants would regard them as menacing warnings.

Parties on both sides of the groundbreaking case are asking the court to consider the unique qualities of social media. In this rapidly evolving realm of communication, only the occasional emoticon may signal whether a writer is engaging in satire or black humor, exercising poetic license, or delivering the kind of grim warnings that have presaged school shootings and other acts of mass violence.

Elonis, who has served prison time for his Facebook posts, and some of his supporters say the court must look beyond incendiary content to discern the writer’s intent.

“Internet users may give vent to emotions on which they have no intention of acting, memorializing expressions of momentary anger or exasperation that once were communicated face-to-face among friends and dissipated harmlessly,” said a brief filed on Elonis’s behalf by the Student Press Law Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the writers organization PEN.

Domestic violence experts, on the other hand, say social media has become a powerful tool for dispensing threats.

Victims of domestic abuse, according to a brief filed by the National Network to End Domestic Violence, “have experienced real-life terror caused by increasingly graphic and public posts to Facebook and other social media sites — terror that is exacerbated precisely because abusers now harness the power of technology, ‘enabling them to reach their victims’ everyday lives at the click of a mouse or the touch of a screen.’”

The case carries wide First Amendment implications for free-speech rights and artistic expression. Briefs laden with the f-word and vulgar references to the female anatomy attempt to provide a crash course on Eminem and Wu-Tang Clan for the justices, whose tastes lean more toward Wagner and Puccini, and illuminate what some scholars say are the misunderstood storytelling attributes of rap.

It is a thoroughly modern case for justices who even eschew e-mail communications with one another but are increasingly called upon to decide issues centered on evolving technology. Last term alone, they decided cases involving cellphone privacy, software patents and cloud-based Internet streaming video.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the government, offered a basic primer on social media in his brief to the court. “Facebook ‘friends,’ ” he explained, “generally will have access to each other’s posts and will also see each other’s new content as part of a live newsfeed.”

A number of people watched Elonis’s news feed with growing alarm during a two-month period in 2010. His wife had left with their two children, and Elonis, then 27 and working at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom amusement park in Allentown, Pa., grew increasingly despondent and angry.

He was fired after co-workers interpreted one of his Facebook postings as a threat to them. He responded: “Someone once told me that I was a firecracker. Nah, I’m a nuclear bomb and Dorney Park just f—-- with the timer.”

Elonis’s lawyer in the Supreme Court case, Washington attorney John P. Elwood, noted for the court that the posting was “followed by an emoticon of a face with its tongue sticking out to indicate ‘jest.’ ”

In other postings, Elonis suggested that his son dress as “Matricide” for Halloween, with his wife’s “head on a stick” as a prop. He pondered making a name for himself by shooting up an elementary school and noted that there were so many nearby to choose from — “hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a kindergarten class.”

That brought a visit from an FBI agent, and the prolific Elonis later recalled that with this posting:

“Little Agent Lady stood so close

Took all the strength I had not to turn the b—-

ghost

Pull my knife, flick my wrist, and slit her throat”

There was much more. But Elwood’s brief noted that Elonis created a rapper-sounding pseudonym — “Tone Dougie,” a combination of his first and middle names — for his screeds and sprinkled the postings with references to his “art” and First Amendment speech rights.

True, the language of the posts was violent, the brief notes, but the same is true of his hero Eminem, who frequently rapped about violent fantasies involving his ex-wife.

Tone Dougie posted explicit disclaimers about his “fictitious lyrics” and, according to his brief, made clear that they did “not reflect the views, values, or beliefs of Anthony Elonis the person.”

Some courts require prosecutors to show that a defendant intends to make good on warnings in order to obtain a conviction for communicating “any threat to injure the person of another.”

But most do not, and the judge in Elonis’s case instructed jurors that the government had to prove only that a reasonable person would view the postings as “a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily injury or take the life of an individual.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia upheld Elonis’s conviction, and he served more than three years of a 44-month sentence before his release from prison.

The Supreme Court has never given a clear answer as to whether intent must be proved. In a 1969 case, the court ruled in favor of a war protester charged with threatening President Lyndon B. Johnson: “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”

The court in a brief order said it was clear from laughter both from the speaker and his audience at the antiwar rally that the words were not a true threat.

Elwood said in an interview that one of the things that makes this case important is that there is no way in social media to pick up the “cues and signals” that would indicate whether a speaker is serious or joking, threatening or hyperbolic.

He pointed to the Supreme Court’s language in a 2002 decision about Virginia’s law against cross-burning. The court said constitutionally unprotected “true threats” encompass “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit . . . unlawful violence.”

Verrilli argued in his brief that this language means only that such statements are a “type” of true threat, not the only type.

“A bomb threat that appears to be serious is equally harmful regardless of the speaker’s private state of mind,” Verrilli wrote, adding: “Juries are fully capable of distinguishing between metaphorical expression of strong emotions and statements that have the clear sinister meaning of a threat.”

In Elonis’s case, Verrilli pointed out, the jury acquitted him of threatening his amusement park co-workers while finding that the threats against his wife, schoolchildren and the FBI agent were serious.

A brief filed by the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida and two rap-music scholars, Erik Nielson at the University of Richmond and Charis E. Kubrin of the University of California at Irvine, advises the court that intent is especially important when considering rap.

Some of the images for which Elonis was prosecuted, Nielson said in an interview, are no different from the ones that have won Eminem 13 Grammys.

But the government says the very popularity of rap music shows there is no reason to think that using the reasonable-listener standard would inhibit speech or artistic expression.

“If rap music has thrived . . . a true-threats standard that does not require proof of subjective intent can hardly be thought to chill the speech that petitioner highlights,” Verrilli wrote.

“Eminem’s lyrics, Bob Dylan’s music and other examples cited by petitioner do not involve factual backdrops even remotely analogous” to Elonis’s, he said.

Elonis v. U.S. is scheduled for oral arguments Dec. 1.

WASHINGTON -- Yet another detailed investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, has refuted claims that there was a coverup or that officials didn't do all they could at the time to save the four Americans killed that night.

The latest findings, released Friday, come from the declassified two-year investigation of the House Intelligence Committee, which conducted an exhaustive probe into the incident, including claims that the White House cooked up phony talking points for then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

The report did find that the State Department was unable to protect the facility in eastern Libya where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed, but also contradicts many of the charges leveled at the Obama administration in the days and years following the attacks.

Among its findings, the report says CIA personnel responded not just well, but heroically; that there was no "stand down" order, as some critics have claimed; there was no intimidation of witnesses by superiors; there was no intelligence failure prior to the attack; and that a "mixed group" of individuals, including some linked to al Qaeda, participated in the attack.

But perhaps the most significant conclusion is its finding that Rice's talking points -- a key focus of the Benghazi Select Committee empaneled by House Speaker John Boehner -- were not part of an attempt to conceal the severity of the incident.

According to the report, early intelligence that the attacks were sparked by an Internet video was "not accurate," but not intentionally so. And the report holds that the process that produced Rice's now-infamous talking points was flawed, resulting in errors rather than deliberate lies. Indeed, the report determined that the CIA had not sorted out the conflicting intelligence until two days after Rice appeared on television claiming the attacks stemmed from a protest.

In a joint statement accompanying the release of the report, Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), said its probe was extensive:

"For over two years, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence exhaustively investigated the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi Libya. We spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 Committee events and hearings. We conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials from Benghazi and Tripoli as well as eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night. Based on the testimony and the documents we reviewed, we concluded that all the CIA officers in Benghazi were heroes. Their actions saved lives."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the Intelligence Committee and the Benghazi Select Committee, said in a statement that the new document should finally close the door on the conspiracy chatter.

"It's my hope that this report will put to rest many of the questions that have been asked and answered yet again, and that the Benghazi Select Committee will accept these findings and instead focus its attention on the State Department's progress in securing our facilities around the world and standing up our fast response capabilities," Schiff said.

So far the Benghazi Select Committee, led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has held one hearing focusing on the issue of securing diplomatic facilities.

The House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the State Department's independent review board have all come to similar conclusions, even before the House launched its Benghazi panel.

Four weeks into UVA's 2012 school year, 18-year-old Jackie was crushing it at college. A chatty, straight-A achiever from a rural Virginia town, she'd initially been intimidated by UVA's aura of preppy success, where throngs of toned, tanned and overwhelmingly blond students fanned across a landscape of neoclassical brick buildings, hurrying to classes, clubs, sports, internships, part-time jobs, volunteer work and parties; Jackie's orientation leader had warned her that UVA students' schedules were so packed that "no one has time to date – people just hook up." But despite her reservations, Jackie had flung herself into campus life, attending events, joining clubs, making friends and, now, being asked on an actual date. She and Drew had met while working lifeguard shifts together at the university pool, and Jackie had been floored by Drew's invitation to dinner, followed by a "date function" at his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi. The "upper tier" frat had a reputation of tremendous wealth, and its imposingly large house overlooked a vast manicured field, giving "Phi Psi" the undisputed best real estate along UVA's fraternity row known as Rugby Road.

Now, climbing the frat-house stairs with Drew, Jackie felt excited. Drew ushered Jackie into a bedroom, shutting the door behind them. The room was pitch-black inside. Jackie blindly turned toward Drew, uttering his name. At that same moment, she says, she detected movement in the room – and felt someone bump into her. Jackie began to scream.

"Shut up," she heard a man's voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table. There was a heavy person on top of her, spreading open her thighs, and another person kneeling on her hair, hands pinning down her arms, sharp shards digging into her back, and excited male voices rising all around her. When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. The men surrounding her began to laugh. For a hopeful moment Jackie wondered if this wasn't some collegiate prank. Perhaps at any second someone would flick on the lights and they'd return to the party.

"Grab its motherfucking leg," she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped.

She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more – her date, Drew, and another man – gave instruction and encouragement. She remembers how the spectators swigged beers, and how they called each other nicknames like Armpit and Blanket. She remembers the men's heft and their sour reek of alcohol mixed with the pungency of marijuana. Most of all, Jackie remembers the pain and the pounding that went on and on.

As the last man sank onto her, Jackie was startled to recognize him: He attended her tiny anthropology discussion group. He looked like he was going to cry or puke as he told the crowd he couldn't get it up. "Pussy!" the other men jeered. "What, she's not hot enough for you?" Then they egged him on: "Don't you want to be a brother?" "We all had to do it, so you do, too." Someone handed her classmate a beer bottle. Jackie stared at the young man, silently begging him not to go through with it. And as he shoved the bottle into her, Jackie fell into a stupor, mentally untethering from the brutal tableau, her mind leaving behind the bleeding body under assault on the floor.

Two years later, Jackie, now a third-year, is worried about what might happen to her once this article comes out. Greek life is huge at UVA, with nearly one-third of undergrads belonging to a fraternity or sorority, so Jackie fears the backlash could be big – a "shitshow" predicted by her now-former friend Randall, who, citing his loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed. But her concerns go beyond taking on her alleged assailants and their fraternity. Lots of people have discouraged her from sharing her story, Jackie tells me with a pained look, including the trusted UVA dean to whom Jackie reported her gang-rape allegations more than a year ago. On this deeply loyal campus, even some of Jackie's closest friends see her going public as tantamount to betrayal.

The first weeks of freshman year are when students are most vulnerable to sexual assault

Studies have shown that fraternity men are three times as likely to commit rape, and a spate of recent high-profile cases illustrates the dangers that can lurk at frat parties, like a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee frat accused of using color-coded hand stamps as a signal to roofie their guests, and this fall's suspension of Brown University's chapter of Phi Kappa Psi – of all fraternities – after a partygoer tested positive for the date-rape drug GHB.

Frats are often the sole option for an underage drinker looking to party, since bars are off-limits, sororities are dry and first-year students don't get many invites to apartment soirees. Instead, the kids crowd the walkways of the big, anonymous frat houses, vying for entry.

Most of that hooking up is consensual. But against that backdrop, as psychologist David Lisak discovered, lurk undetected predators. Lisak's 2002 groundbreaking study of more than 1,800 college men found that roughly nine out of 10 rapes are committed by serial offenders, who are responsible for an astonishing average of six rapes each. None of the offenders in Lisak's study had ever been reported. Lisak's findings upended general presumptions about campus sexual assault: It implied that most incidents are not bumbling, he-said-she-said miscommunications, but rather deliberate crimes by serial sex offenders.

UVA is one of only 12 schools under a sweeping investigation known as "compliance review": a proactive probe launched by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights itself, triggered by concerns about deep-rooted issues. "They are targeted efforts to go after very serious concerns," says Office of Civil Rights assistant secretary Catherine Lhamon. "We don't open compliance reviews unless we have something that we think merits it."

CHICAGO — A large study of gay brothers adds to evidence that genes influence men’s chances of being homosexual, but the results aren’t strong enough to prove it.

Some scientists believe several genes might affect sexual orientation. Researchers who led the new study of nearly 800 gay brothers say their results bolster previous evidence pointing to genes on the X chromosome.

They also found evidence of influence from a gene or genes on a different chromosome. But the study doesn’t identify which of hundreds of genes located in either place might be involved.

Smaller studies seeking genetic links to homosexuality have had mixed results.

The new evidence “is not proof but it’s a pretty good indication” that genes on the two chromosomes have some influence over sexual orientation, said Dr. Alan Sanders, the lead author. He studies behavioral genetics at NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute in Evanston, Illinois.

Experts not involved in the study were more skeptical.

Neil Risch, a genetics expert at the University of California, San Francisco, said the data are statistically too weak to demonstrate any genetic link. Risch was involved in a smaller study that found no link between male homosexuality and chromosome X.

Dr. Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School, called the new study “intriguing but not in any way conclusive.”

The work was published Monday by the journal Psychological Medicine. The National Institutes of Health paid for the research.

The researchers say they found potential links to male homosexuality in a portion of chromosome X and on chromosome 8, based on an analysis of genetic material in blood or saliva samples from participants.

Chromosome X is one of two human sex chromosomes; the other is chromosome Y, present only in men.

The study authors note that animal research suggests a gene located in one region of chromosome X may contribute to some sexual behavior; it’s one of the same regions cited in the new study.

Specific causes of homosexuality are unknown. Some scientists think social, cultural, family and biological factors are involved, while some religious groups consider it an immoral choice.

Study participant Dr. Chad Zawitz, a Chicago physician, called the research “a giant step forward” toward answering scientific questions about homosexuality and helping reduce the stigma gays often face.

Being gay “is sort of like having certain eye color or skin color — it’s just who you are,” Zawitz said. “Most heterosexuals I know didn’t choose to be heterosexual. It’s puzzling to me why people don’t understand.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An agency of the U.S. Justice Department is gathering data from thousands of cell phones, including both criminal suspects and innocent Americans, by using fake communications towers on airplanes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The program run by the U.S. Marshals Service began operations in 2007 and uses Cessna planes flying from at least five major airports and covering most of the U.S. population, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the operations.

The planes use devices made by Boeing Co that mimic the cell phone towers used by major telecommunications companies and trick mobile phones into revealing their unique registration data, the report said.

The devices, nicknamed "dirtboxes," can collect information from tens of thousands of cell phones in a single flight, which occur on a regular basis, according to those with knowledge of the program, the Journal said.

It said a Justice Department official would not confirm or deny the existence of such a program, saying such discussion would allow criminal suspects or foreign powers to determine U.S. surveillance abilities, but that department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval.

The program is similar to one used by the National Security Agency which collects the phone records of millions of Americans in order to find a single person or a handful of people.

The Journal cited the people familiar with the program as saying that the device used in the program decides which phones belong to suspects and "lets go" of non-suspect phones.

Although it can interrupt calls on some phones, authorities have made software changes to make sure it doesn't interrupt anyone calling the 911 emergency number for help, one person familiar with the matter said, the Journal reported.

It also bypasses telephone companies, allowing authorities to locate suspects directly, people with knowledge of the program said.

The Journal quoted Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, as calling it "a dragnet surveillance program. It's inexcusable and it's likely, to the extent judges are authorizing it, they have no idea of the scale of it."

The newspaper said it was unknown what steps are being taken to ensure data collected on innocent people is not kept for future perusal by authorities.