Yik Yak chat app stirring up trouble

• Yik Yak creates an anonymous chat room of users connected by location


• Meant for colleges students, high schoolers have caught on, caused trouble


• Chicago schools report cyberbullying, and a California school reports a bomb scare


• The app is useful for more mature college students, app's co-founder says

(CNN) -- From Chicago, to Georgia, to Southern California, a new social media application is causing problems on middle school and high school campuses across the United States.

It's called Yik Yak, a location-based app that creates an anonymous social chat room where up to 500 nearby users connect through GPS tracking on their phones. Less than 4 months old, Yik Yak has "a couple hundred thousand users, mainly in Southeast/East coast campuses," its co-founder Brooks Buffington said.

Users are limited to 200 characters, and no pictures are allowed. If a post is "down voted" enough times by other users on the forum, the comment disappears. Tech experts are comparing the new Atlanta-based app to a cross between SnapChat and Twitter.

"The app was made for college-age users or above, for college campuses and to act as a virtual bulletin board, so it acts as local Twitter for their campus," Buffington told CNN.

Although the app is meant for users age 17 and older, younger users can still sign up, and that's where the issues have sprouted.

School administrators in Chicago said teens in some of their schools have used the free app for cyberbullying. Others have made anonymous bomb threats that have led to school lockdowns.

"Students were actually coming downstairs to talk to administration, and they were mentioning remarks posted and student names that were obvious, so of course that is going to impact you," Melvin Soto, assistant vice principal at Whitney Young High School, told CNN affiliate WLS.

Some students have compared it to a virtual bathroom wall where users post vitriol and hate.

"They ripped on someone for getting raped, and that's just so wrong. They said a whole lot of bad things about this girl," Whitney Young student Rachel Brown told WLS.

In southern California, a San Clemente High School resource officer told CNN a threatening Yik Yak post caused a bomb scare on campus.

"The school was placed on lockdown, we conducted a sweep utilizing our bomb squad and bomb-sniffing dogs and nothing suspicious was located on or near the campus," Orange County Sheriff's spokesman Jeff Hallock told CNN.

He added that the app is so new that some students hadn't even heard about it yet.

In Georgia, the principal of Webb Bridge Middle School in Fulton County wrote a cautionary letter to parents warning them about the "inflammatory [Yik Yak] app," encouraging them to talk to their children about the "dangers of social media." The school district has blocked the app from its network, but Principal Susan Opferman writes, students have found ways around that too.

"If used inappropriately, Yik Yak posts can be especially vicious and hurtful, since there is no way to trace their source, and can be disseminated widely," Opferman said in the letter.

These types of incidents have caused the app's developers to disable it in some areas. Buffington told CNN he doesn't want high school students using the app.

"One of the things we were planning to do is to essentially geo-sense every high school and middle school in America, so if they try to open the app in their school, it will say something like 'no, no no, looks like you are trying to open the app on a high school or middle school and this is only for college kids,' and it will disable it and the app won't work," Buffington told CNN.

"That will completely eliminate the problem we have been seeing, so we geo-sensed the entire city of Chicago until we get this fix up. We are working on getting third-party help to get the fix in place as soon as possible."

But cyberbullying expert Justin W. Patchin says that's just a short-term solution. He says teens will figure out a way around it.

"It is pretty impossible to limit it to the ages that the founders have intended," said Patchin, who is the co-director at the Cyberbullying Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. "When I signed up for the app, it said that you have to be 17 or above to sign in, and of course, there wasn't any way of them checking my age so anybody could sign up."

The app's developers defended their technology, saying it is used for good.

"With anonymity comes a lot of responsibility, and college kids have the maturity that it takes to handle those responsibilities," Buffington said. "One of my favorite use case stories is a freshman missed his flight for Christmas break, and he came back to campus and he posted on Yik Yak that the freshman dorms were closed, and so an upperclassman let him crash on his couch," Buffington said.

"Anonymity can be a really beautiful thing, and one of the reasons we made it anonymous is it gives people a blank slate to work from, so you're not judged on your race or sexuality or gender. On Yik Yak you are purely judged on content you create." Buffington said.

He added, "The longer that we are around on college campuses, the better it gets."

As more applications pop up and the environments of social networking sites change, Patchin says the emphasis should be on teaching younger generations about respect in online communities.

"It is more important to talk to the students about how to treat each other respectfully. Whether it is happening in an application like this or Facebook or on e-mail, the emphasis for us has always been on those behaviors because it is easier to teach that than to restrict that to particular technology."

CNN's Devon Sayers contributed to this report.

Church to give away AR-15

• Upstate New York church to give away an AR-15 rifle


• Giveaway is part of service honoring hunters and gun owners


• Pastor John Koletas: "Our country was built with the King James Bible and the gun"

New York (CNN) -- An upstate New York church is giving new meaning to the biblical passage, "My peace I give unto you."

In this case, it's a piece: an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Grace Baptist Church in Troy -- about two and half hours north of Manhattan -- is giving away the semi-automatic rifle as part of a special event honoring hunters and gun owners later this month. The church website entices gun lovers with the words "Win a Free AR-15" followed by the New Testament line.

The holder of the winning ticket will receive an AR-15 modified for sale in New York state.

"Does the Bible defend my right to keep and bear arms?" says a promotional flier on the church website.

In a letter to his congregation, Pastor John Koletas said: "Our country was built with the King James Bible and the gun."

The winner will be named during a March 23 service dedicated to "hunters and gun owners who have been so viciously attacked by the antichristian socialist media and antichristian socialist politicians the last few years."

New York Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, a Republican, will speak at the service.

McLaughlin told CNN that the event complied with New York gun laws. He said that he speaks regularly at events supporting Second Amendment rights.

While the church venue for such an event may be unusual, McLaughlin said many upstate New York pastors carry guns. They are law-abiding, church-going citizens, he said.

Michael Collins, pastor of Brunswick Baptist Church in Troy, somewhat agreed with the legislator.

"It is not something that we would do," he said, "but we have plenty of gun owners in the church, and it is our constitutional right to do so."

It is not uncommon for churches to host "outdoorsmen" events and give away guns, Collins said.

To qualify to win the AR-15, one has to be 18 or older, have a driver's license and be able to pass a background check to buy a gun, according to the pastor's letter.

The church reserves the right to disqualify anyone it deems of "questionable character" from winning the rifle, according to the letter.

Oakwood Trading Post, a local gun store, will conduct a background check on the winner before turning over the rifle, according to the store's owner, Brian Olesen.

The AR-15, valued at $700, was purchased by Grace Baptist and is being held at the gun store, Olesen said.

The semi-automatic rifle has a 10-round magazine capacity, and the trigger must be activated for every shot fired, Olesen said.

In 2013, a federal court ruled that a New York gun law restricting the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines was constitutional.

The law was passed after the mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school.

Armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six school staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, before taking his own life. Earlier, he had killed his mother inside their home.

Grace Baptist Church and Koletas did not return calls seeking comment.

Gates: The key to empowering women

Melinda French Gates meets with the Korogocho Mothers' Group in Nairobi, Kenya, in January, 2011.

• Melinda Gates: On International Women's Day, make every woman count--literally


• She says accurate data is crucial to assessing and meeting needs of women


• She says Gates, Clinton Foundations teaming for global review of women's status


• Gates: Data key to showing world leaders that empowering women makes difference

Editor's note: Melinda Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

(CNN) -- Some people think International Women's Day, which comes right in the middle of Women's History Month, is overdoing it. If "underdoing it" were a phrase, it's the one I would use. On most days in most months, most women and girls aren't able to raise their voices. Because no one knows the challenges they face, they're forced to face them on their own.

On International Women's Day, however, we make a point of hearing the voices of every woman and girl. Today, we make sure that every woman and every girl counts -- literally.

I'm talking about a project that combines two of my favorite topics: women's empowerment and data. The media sometimes call Bill and me "data nerds." I'm not sure they mean it as a compliment, but I wear it as a badge of pride anyway. Data is not boring. If you use it right, it tells the hidden stories of millions of women and girls.

That's why the Gates and Clinton Foundations are teaming up to conduct a global review of the status of women and girls everywhere. Where they're thriving -- and why. Where they're being held back -- and why. This initiative is called No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project.

The seed for this project was planted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women. That's where Hillary Clinton gave her famous speech declaring "women's rights are human rights." It's also where 189 countries came together to agree on an agenda for women's equality. Now, nearly 20 years later, it's time to check in to see whether we're meeting those goals.

My husband Bill and I used a trove of data to drive our decision making at Microsoft, and we brought that mentality to our work at the foundation, though the data is much harder to come by when it comes to development. It's troubling that it's possible to produce precise reports about software sales in Kansas, but we have only rough estimates of how many mothers die during childbirth every year.

Why is data an indispensible tool for improving the lives of women and girls? First, it helps us make the case to world leaders that empowering women isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing.

The data says that women spend 90 cents of every dollar they make on their children. They prioritize things like health care, nutritious food, and education. As a result, a child in a household where the mother controls the budget is 20% more likely to survive -- and much more likely to thrive.

Lupita Nyong'o: An extraordinary example

Healthier, more educated children today means a stronger workforce tomorrow. I've seen firsthand that this argument resonates with finance ministers -- even those who are otherwise skeptical about the need to invest in women and girls.

There's another reason data is so important. It helps us see where women and girls are being left behind, so we know where to target resources. For example, in the Indian state of Bihar, data showed that women were dying during childbirth at alarming rates and giving birth in hospitals at very low rates.

In response, health officials decided to encourage women to give birth in hospitals and to improve the quality of care in delivery rooms. Now, our partners in Bihar are collecting data every six months to monitor their progress and adjust their strategies as necessary to keep getting better results.

Above all, data is powerful because of the women behind it. We should never lose sight of the fact that every data point represents a mother, a daughter, or a sister. Every data point represents big dreams for the future.

On a recent trip to Tanzania, I met women who had pooled their savings. With their shared funds, they bought chickens so they could sell eggs for extra income.

When I asked them what they'd use the money for, they all said: their children's education. Their investments in their children were a monument to their hope for the future. All of these women could see a better life for their families -- and, as members of the savings circle, they could envision themselves helping create it.

On this International Women's Day, I hope you'll take the time to learn more about women who are working hard to raise their voices. Pick a topic you care about -- maternal mortality, women's economic participation, family planning -- and learn about the people whose lives it touches. As you read over the data, remember that the numbers you see tell the story of real women with real dreams.

It's up to us to make sure they count. And it's up to us to keep the spotlight on them all year long. If we do, then by next International Women's Day, we'll have even more reasons to celebrate.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion .

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Melinda Gates.

Five myths about the Ukraine crisis

Russia's President Vladimir Putin is a popular but polarizing figure who has dominated Russian politics for more than a decade. Click through to see some highlights of his career.

Putin serves as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the City Council in St. Petersburg from 1991 to 1994. Before becoming involved in politics, he served in the KGB, a Soviet-era spy agency, as an intelligence officer.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, right, shakes hands with Putin during a farewell ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow on December 31, 1999. Putin rose quickly through the political ranks, becoming the second democratically elected president of the Russian Federation in 2000.

President-elect Putin watches the tactical exercises of Russia's Northern Fleet in the Barentsevo Sea on April 6, 2000. He has been at the helm during a decade of Russian economic growth fueled by natural resources of gas and oil.

A Russian cadet snaps a picture with Putin in Moscow's Red Square on May 9, 2007, during an annual celebration of the end of World War II. Putin has pushed to modernize Russia's military.

Putin attends an inauguration ceremony for president-elect Dmitry Medvedev at Moscow's Kremlin on May 7, 2008. Putin was constitutionally obliged to stand down as president but stayed close to power, becoming prime minister.

Putin vacations outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia in 2009. Over the years he has earned a reputation as a "strongman," declaring a crackdown on Chechen militants a priority in his first presidential term.

President Barack Obama meets Prime Minister Putin at his home in Novo Ogaryovo, near Moscow, on July 7, 2009. Putin said Russia was pinning its hopes on Obama to revive ties with the United States.

A worker takes down a giant elections poster bearing a portrait of Putin on October 13, 2009, in Moscow. Putin's party tightened its grip on Russian politics with a sweeping victory in local elections, officials said, as the opposition alleged widespread fraud.

Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin ski together in Krasnaya Polyana, near the Black Sea resort of Sochi in southern Russia, on January 3, 2010.

Putin takes part in a judo training session at a sports complex in St. Petersburg, on December 22, 2010. The Russian leader holds a black belt in judo.

Putin receives a medical consultation during his visit to the Smolensk Regional Hospital on August 25, 2011. Putin said he hurt his shoulder during morning judo practice.

Putin speaks to supporters at a Moscow rally on February 23, 2012. He won the presidential election in March, with just under 65% of the vote. Former President Medvedev became his prime minister.

A topless protester shouts at Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, during their visit to the Hanover Industrial Fair in central Germany on April 8. Human rights groups say civil liberties and democratic freedoms have suffered during Putin's rule.

Putin addresses the media during his visit to Hanover on April 8.

Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, ended their nearly 30-year marriage, the state-run news agency reported on June 6.

Putin, center, poses for a photo with Russian Olympic athletes in Sochi, Russia, on February 24. Russia hosted the Olympic Games and won the most medals.

Putin, center, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, arrive to watch a military exercise at the Kirillovsky firing ground in Russia's Leningrad region on March 3.

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• Aaron Miller says even those with little knowledge of Ukraine should spot the myths we've heard


• He says Obama's foreign policy isn't to blame for what Putin did in Crimea


• Miller says this doesn't represent a new Cold War, nor is Putin equivalent to Hitler


• He says the outcome may be acceptable eventually but don't expect a Hollywood ending

Editor's note: Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- Ignorance really isn't bliss. But there are times when the lack of knowledge and expertise about a subject or place can actually serve to clear the mind and lead to some clarity and honesty in the debate on even the most complex matters.

I'm certainly no expert on Ukraine. I'm not sure before this crisis that I could even name all of the countries that share its borders. But watching the ticktock of the debate on the issue this past week, I'm stunned by the lack of perspective and breathlessness in the discussion.

Sadly, I've grown accustomed to the partisanship. It has become a permanent fixture of our analytical and policy landscape. But here are several things about the recent coverage and discussion on Ukraine that even my lack of expertise won't allow me to accept:

1. We're back in the Cold War

Clearly, none of the resets have worked with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whether it was President George W. Bush looking into his eyes and seeing his soul or Bob Gates finding a stone-cold killer there, Putin isn't Stalin, Khrushchev or Brezhnev. That's hardly a shocker. Nor are we still in that unique period when two superpowers with contrasting ideological systems under the threat of nuclear war clashed and fought by proxy from one end of the globe to the other.

There's no doubt that the United States and Russia have major differences. But the issue is no longer ideological. Russian capitalism is here to stay, state-controlled and monitored though it may be. And what ideology exists has more to do with asserting Russian national interests than anything Marx or Lenin would have recognized. And in at least one respect, that's too bad. At least during much of the Cold War, from the 1970s on, there were rules, do's and don'ts that prevented situations like Ukraine.

We'll continue to struggle with Putin, to be sure. But the world's too small, the Europeans too dependent on Russia, and the realities of global interdependence too deep to imagine hitting the rewind button and turning the planet into an arena of conflict and competition. Would it make for a good video game? Yes.

2. Putin is Hitler

Sen. Marco Rubio: Putin blatantly lied

Turmoil continues in Ukraine

OSCE monitors denied entry into Crimea

In the past week, I've heard people I admire and respect talk about Crimea as Munich and Putin as Hitler. Twain wrote that history doesn't repeat; it rhymes. But those rhythmic patterns aren't evident here, either.

When we can't think of intelligent parallels in analyzing nations who do things America cannot abide, it seems we're drawn irresistibly to the Hitler trope. The same thing happens with Iran. And while I don't for a moment condone the vicious Israel-baiting and hating of the mullahcracy in Tehran (and the anti-Semitism, too) to bring up Hitler not only trivializes the monstrosity of the evil and the magnitude of the crimes in his time, it imposes unrealistic challenges in ours.

The unique challenge of Hitler demanded that he be stopped and the Nazi regime destroyed.

We don't have to like the Putin government in Russia, or Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's in Iran, to recognize that the magnitude of the threat is different. To compare them to Hitler is to urge the United States into a game that we don't want to play and can't win.

As best I can figure, Putin is a clever and easily riled Russian nationalist who presides over what remains of an empire whose time has come and gone. He lives in reality, not in some megalomaniacal world. But he is prepared to assert Russia's interests in spheres where it matters, and to block the West's intrusion into those areas as best he can. Russia is his "ideology." And on Ukraine, history and proximity give him cards to play.

This man isn't a fanatic. Money, pleasure and power are too important to him. Any leader who is willing to be photographed shirtless on a horse, like some cover of Men's Health magazine, isn't going to shoot himself in the head or take cyanide in a bunker. This guy is way too hip (Russian style) and attached to the good life to be Hitler. And given Russia's own suffering at the hands of the Nazis, saying he is just makes matters worse.

3. It's all Obama's fault

President Barack Obama was never the catastrophic incompetent or Satan's finger on earth that his worst critics imagined nor the redeemer, savior, or great President that his most avid acolytes wanted. And yet the notion that Obama, through weak and feckless foreign policy, was responsible for Putin's move into Ukraine strains credulity to the breaking point.

This urban legend that because of Benghazi and the "red line" affair in Syria, Putin was compelled to do something in Ukraine that he wouldn't have done had Obama acted differently, is absurd. The administration's foreign policy has often resembled a blend between a Marx Brothers movie and the Three Stooges. But on this one the charge is absurd, as is the notion that somehow Obama could have stopped him.

When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956, there was no U.S. military response; ditto in 1968 when the Soviets put down Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Sometimes, geography really is destiny. Russia believed its vital interests in Ukraine were threatened and it had the means, will, and proximity to act on them. And it's about time we faced up to it.

4. Bombing Syria would have saved Ukraine

This notion that Obama's opponents have latched onto is, of course, unknowable. There are no rewind buttons in history. Counterfactuals are prime talking and debating points because they cannot be proven one way or the other. But to argue that launching cruise missiles at Syrian military targets somehow would have deterred Putin from acting on what he perceived to be a Russian vital interest, or emboldened the Europeans to stand tougher against him, really is off base.

Syria and Ukraine are like apples and oranges the President's detractors insist on putting in the same basket. Even if Obama thought the U.S. had vital interests that justified an attack on Syria, it is likely it would not have altered Putin's policy toward Ukraine. The country perceived to be in Russia's zone of influence and manipulation was drifting westward. And Putin was determined to stop it.

5. Ukraine can have a 'Hollywood' ending

Are there good guys and bad guys in the Ukraine-Russian drama? Sure there are. We have courageous Ukrainian patriots who died in the Maidan for the dignity and freedom they believed in; corrupt and ruthless government officials who were willing to use force against their own citizens; Russian provocateurs eager to stir up trouble; extremist Ukrainian nationalists who are hardly democrats; and a Russian strongman who hosted the Olympics one week and invaded the territory of a sovereign country the next.

I suspect that the Ukrainian Spring -- if that's what it is -- may turn out better than its Arab counterpart. But we have to be real. Ukraine may be fractious and troubled for some time to come.

Below the morality play there is intense factionalism; regional differences; scores to settle; Russian manipulation; and a tendency to avoid the kind of compromise that would lead to real power sharing and good governance.

We like Hollywood endings. But real democratization depends less on a friendly U.S. or EU hand than on the emergence of genuine leaders who are prepared to rise above factional affinities and see a vision for the country as a whole. It also depends on institutions that reflect popular will and some mechanism for accommodating differences peacefully without resorting to violence.

There are no easy or happy endings here. And we can only make matters worse, as Henry Kissinger suggested recently, by trying to turn the Ukraine crisis into a Russia vs. the West (or worse, the U.S.) tug-of-war.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Aaron David Miller.