Kanye West's new single Paul McCartney

Kanye West with wife, Kim Kardashian

• The song boasts a spare arrangement


• Paul McCartney plays piano on the track, West's producer says

(CNN) -- Leave it to Kanye. The hip-hop mega star may have had the last word of 2014.

In the waning hours of the year, he released a new song that's sure to get folks talking. Just not for the reasons we've come to expect from Kanye West.

In place of his usual bombast, "Only One" boasts a spare arrangement. In it, an AutoTuned Kanye tenderly sings from the perspective of his late mother as she looks down from the heavens and addresses him.

"Hello my only one, just like the morning sun/ You'll keep on rising till the sky knows your name," the song's chorus goes.

In it, the mother says she talked to God who sent down angels for Kanye.

"You asked for one and you got two" -- a reference to his wife, Kim Kardashian, and their daughter, North.

The song ends with the refrain, "Tell Nori about me."

Nori is North's nickname.

Oh, did we mention, the single also features Paul McCartney.

Additional keys. Paul played the piano. Super classic

— MIKE DEAN! #MWA (@therealmikedean) January 1, 2015

"Paul played the piano," tweeted Mike Dean who produced the song.

The single is now available on iTunes.

Menzel botches 'Frozen' classic

Idina Menzel sang "Let It Go" in Times Square.

• She botched the high note during the song's climax


• Some came to her defense; others offered ridicule


• Still others blamed Adele Dazeem

Washington (CNN) -- Seriously, Twitter, Let. It. Go.

The usually pitch-perfect Idina Menzel had a slight stumble as she was belting out her siren song, "Let It Go," for the thousands gathered in Times Square for Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. And Twitter went all kinds of crazy.

Here's what happened.

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Ravens official faces sex charge

The senior security director for the Baltimore Ravens was charged with a fourth-degree sex offense.

• Sanders is charged with a fourth-degree sex offense


• His lawyer told the Baltimore Sun the charges are fabricated

(CNN) -- The Baltimore Ravens' top security guy has been charged with a sex offense that allegedly occurred December 14, online court records reveal.

The senior security director for the NFL team, Darren Sanders, was charged with a fourth-degree sex offense which is "not considered a sexually violent offense but sexual contact without consent of victim," according to the Maryland Attorney General's office definition.

The record did not go into details about the charges but the address listed for the defendant is that of the team's headquarters in Owings Mills, Maryland.

CNN was unable to reach Sanders' lawyer. But the lawyer, Andrew Alperstein, told the Baltimore Sun the charges were "totally fabricated."

Earlier this year, Sanders was mired in the infamous Ray Rice elevator beating scandal in which the football player was investigated for hitting his then-fiancée in an elevator of a New Jersey casino.

Sanders played a role in explaining how he, on the team's behalf, requested the casino's video footage of Janay Palmer being beaten in the elevator.

He said the casino officer would only describe the video to him, and he relayed the information to Ravens executives.

Sanders was publicly scrutinized for his lack of investigative effort when the media outlet, TMZ, obtained and released the video footage.

Sanders' court date is scheduled for February 9 in Maryland.

Girl arrested over chalk flowers

• Girl, 14, arrested and put into children's home for drawing flowers on wall at former protest site


• Court considering application from police that she be removed from father's care


• Girl's lawyer said move was "premature and disproportionate"

Hong Kong (CNN) -- A 14-year-old girl in Hong Kong could be removed from her father's care after she was arrested for drawing chalk flowers on a wall at one of the city's pro-democracy protest sites.

The girl was arrested in the early hours of December 23 at a staircase leading to the Central Government Offices in the city's Admiralty district and was detained by police for 17 hours, said Patricia Ho, the lawyer acting for the teen.

A judge ruled in a youth court on Monday that the girl should be sent to a children's home for 20 days until January 19. On Wednesday, local media reported the girl was released from the children's home on bail.

Now: teen drew flowers with chalk on the wall. Lots of police officers are detaining her & others. #UmbrellaMovement http://ift.tt/1AdWdRd

— Fr_ncisco (@funkcisco) December 22, 2014

The wall, known as the "Lennon Wall," was once covered with colorful Post-it notes and messages of support for the recent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. When the protests were cleared, the notes were removed as well.

Protestors started placing notes on the wall as a show of defiance after police used tear gas on demonstrators at the start of the protest, which lead to a two-month occupation of the main road outside the Central Government Office.

The wall was named after the late Beatles star John Lennon and contained messages of support for the protests and references to his song "Imagine."

'An innocent political prisoner'

Ho said the move was "premature and disproportionate."

"It wasn't an application by the Social Welfare Department as it usually would be," she said. "Police threw in a bunch of facts they obtained about the family in a very superficial manner."

The Goddess of Democracy (left image), erected by student protesters in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. The photo on the right shows a wooden statue of an umbrella man, created by an art graduate student who calls himself Milk. He told CNN he did not intend to link the piece with the Tiananmen symbol.

Since the umbrella was used to shield protesters from the tear gas and pepper spray deployed by police, it has become a ubiquitous sight in the protests, and given the movement its symbol. Here, the fabric of dozens of broken umbrellas have been stitched together to form a canopy.

Long an emblem of suffrage movements internationally, the yellow ribbons have been adopted by Hong Kong's protesters as a symbol of democratic aspiration. There are thousands tied on fences throughout Hong Kong.

An image of an umbrella made up of yellow ribbons is laid out on the ground near the central government offices. The sign reads: "We can't live without civic nominations."

The barrier separating the main road is lined with bright umbrellas.

A student protester speaks into a microphone in front of a "democracy wall" filled with notes supporting the pro-democracy protest. The notes are protected from the rain with plastic wrap.

Post-it messages filled with sketches and messages cover a wall next to a stairway in the Admiralty district in Hong Kong. Some of them are words of hope, and others denounce the Hong Kong's top official, the chief executive.

A couple walk past a banner of a man carrying a yellow umbrella, which has come to symbolize the protest.

The art of Hong Kong's protest

The art of Hong Kong's protest

Meanwhile, the court is considering an application by Hong Kong police that she be removed from the care of her father who, according to Ho, is seriously hearing impaired and cannot understand the case.

Art bursts from Hong Kong protests

The move has angered activists; student activist group Scholarism have set up a petition protesting the court ruling and some protestors have started drawing on the road as a protest outside the children's home in Tuen Mun, where the teenager is being held.

Gary Tsang, who participated in Hong Kong's pro-democracy street occupations, told CNN the teen was "an innocent political prisoner" and the use of the law in this case was "obviously politically motivated."

"The government fears young people as they thinks young people have nothing to lose," he said.

Another protestor, Anson Chui, told CNN the police have lost their common sense and said there would be more similar arrests.

"Most (people)... know that we cannot really cause any damage on the wall by drawing with chalk," he said. "It is just an excuse used by the police to make us fear. Especially when the court said they are taking away the girl from her father."

"Chalk-girl"drew this,detained 17hrs in police station&sent to Children's Home to wait for her next trial til mid-Jan http://ift.tt/1yabW5q

— Amberbrella (@Amberbrella) December 31, 2014

The move comes after police also made an application for a care or protection order for a teenage boy who was arrested during the clearance of another protest site in Mong Kok earlier this month. The court file said the boy's parents failed to exercise proper guardianship over him.

The court dates for both teenagers will take place in January.

Continued resistance

A small protest camp outside the Legislative Council still remains and there is a small police presence on the site. Police officers are guarding Lennon Wall and remove all notes posted to it at the end of each day.

New Year's Eve countdown events at popular shopping districts such as Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui were canceled because of fears that protestors would attempt to hijack the events.

Since the protest sites were cleared, demonstrators have resorted to other forms of protest such as the so-called "shopping revolution," which involves protestors blocking the sidewalks and flooding shopping districts every night with yellow umbrellas.

Hong Kong Police have not responded to requests for comment.

Gov. commutes last 4 death sentences

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a potential 2016 presidential contender, called off his state's last four planned executions Wednesday after lawmakers there abolished the death penalty.

• Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley commuted his state's only four remaining death sentences Wednesday


• O'Malley's move comes after the state legislature abolished the death penalty


• O'Malley is just days away from leaving office and is considering a 2016 Democratic presidential bid

Washington (CNN) -- Outgoing Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley took the state's last four inmates off death row Wednesday, commuting their sentences to life in prison without parole in one of his final acts in office.

The move comes as the Democrat considers a run for president -- a long-shot bid that many Democrats only expect to gain steam if Hillary Clinton opts not to run.

O'Malley's office announced the move in a release Wednesday morning, noting that the state's legislature had abolished the death penalty with a law that took effect in May 2013 and that the state's courts and attorney general have questioned whether the state has legal authority to carry out death sentences that were already imposed.

"In the final analysis, there is one truth that stands between and before all of us," O'Malley said in a statement. "That truth is this -- few of us would ever wish for our children or grandchildren to kill another human being or to take part in the killing of another human being. The legislature has expressed this truth by abolishing the death penalty in Maryland."

The four inmates whose sentences were commuted are Vernon Lee Evans Jr. and Anthony Grandison Sr., who were convicted of the 1983 contract killing of two witnesses scheduled to testify in a federal drug trial; Heath William Burch, convicted of killing an elderly neighbor couple in 1995; and Jody Lee Miles, convicted of robbing and shooting a theater manager in 1997.

O'Malley said in the statement that he'd met with the families of the victims of the four convicted killers whose sentences he commuted, and said they would suffer through "the additional torment of an un-ending legal process."

"In my judgment, leaving these death sentences in place does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland -- present or future," O'Malley said.

"Gubernatorial inaction -- at this point in the legal process -- would, in my judgment, needlessly and callously subject survivors, and the people of Maryland, to the ordeal of an endless appeals process, with unpredictable twists and turns, and without any hope of finality or closure," he said.

Anatomy of air crash investigation

Indonesian soldiers carry a coffin containing a victim of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 upon arrival at an air force base in Surabaya, Indonesia, on Wednesday, December 31. Indonesia's national search and rescue agency confirmed that the debris found is from that flight, the airline said Tuesday.

Indonesian soldiers carry coffins of crash victims on December 31.

Relatives of passengers pray together inside a holding room at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya on December 31.

Indonesian navy divers inspect their gear in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, before a search operation December 31.

Indonesian Air Force personnel on Tuesday, December 30, show debris, including a suitcase, that was found floating near the site where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 disappeared on Sunday.

Debris floats in the Java Sea on December 30. Flight QZ8501 was carrying 155 passengers and seven crew members.

A member of the Indonesian Navy monitors a radar screen during a search operation over the waters near Bangka Island, Indonesia, on December 30.

A piece of debris floats in the Java Sea on December 30.

Family members of missing passengers react at an airport in Surabaya, Indonesia, after watching news reports on December 30.

Debris floats in the Java Sea on December 30.

Relatives of the flight's pilot, Captain Iriyanto, gather at his house in Surabaya on December 30. Second from right is his wife, Rr. Widiya Sukati Putri.

Indonesian Air Force personnel scan the sea from plane windows on December 30.

A member of an Indonesian search and rescue team gestures as the team is ferried out to a ship to conduct search operations on December 30.

Relatives of missing passengers comfort each other December 30 at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya.

Relatives gather at Juanda International Airport as they wait for news on December 30.

An Indonesian search and rescue team prepares for a search on December 30.

An Indonesian military airman looks out the window of an airplane during a search over the waters of Karimata Strait on Monday, December 29.

Indonesian Army personnel read a map during a search operation on December 29.

Members of Indonesia's Marine Police pray before a search operation on December 29.

Military personnel perform a search operation on Sunday, December 28.

Sunu Widyatmoko, CEO of Indonesia AirAsia, announces December 28 that the flight lost contact with air traffic control.

Members of the Indonesian Regional Disaster Management Agency walk at a beach as they search for the missing plane on December 28.

Jiang Hui, whose relatives were on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, watches the news about the missing AirAsia flight at his house in Beijing on December 28. Flight 370 went missing on March 8 and has yet to be found.

An official from Indonesia's national search and rescue agency points to the position where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 went missing.

The aircraft went missing as it flew over the Java Sea between the islands of Belitung and Borneo, according to Indonesian authorities. It was bound for Singapore.

An official checks a map of Indonesia at Juanda International Airport.

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• Experts: First priority is to recover bodies and return them to families


• Location of debris and bodies are carefully logged and mapped


• Data recorders are key pieces of evidence


• Salvage operations have been used for plane crashes that were deeper than Java Sea

(CNN) -- The investigation into how AirAsia Flight QZ8501 ended up at the bottom of the Java Sea, involves recovering the bodies, accessing the flight data recorders, and meticulously mapping where debris is found to reconstruct its path.

An Indonesian search and rescue official told CNN that he thinks material detected by sonar equipment in the water is from AirAsia Flight QZ8501.

So what happens next?

Priorities

The first priority is to recover the bodies and return them to their loved ones, Indonesian authorities say. Helicopters are lowering divers to bring back bodies and debris from the surface of the water.

Ocean layers searched for AirAsia debris

How submersibles can help AirAsia

What could pilots do to avoid storm?

'Airplane is on the bottom of the Java Sea'

The bodies give clues about what happened on the flight, based on where they're found and their condition. For example, sea water in their lungs would suggest that the people on board may have been conscious when the plane struck the sea.

There is particular attention to the location of the bodies and various debris.

READ: Who are passengers?

David Soucie, a former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector and analyst for CNN, likens it to "peeling an onion apart and then putting that onion back together from the inside out."

Investigators map the debris found on the surface of the water. Then they have to look for other pieces in the next level of sea for more clues, he said.

"So you might go down 50 feet or so, to see if there's any floating debris there. And you keep going down and mapping it as it goes. You see how the drift went and how the pieces of the plane moved."

During the investigation of Air France Flight 447, more than 150,000 images of the plane's wreckage site in the Atlantic Ocean were taken.

It was important to "mosaic them together" to give investigators a comprehensive view of the wreckage site, said David Gallo, who co-led that search after the French jet crashed in 2009.

READ: The 15 who missed Flight QZ8501

Data recorders

The key to understanding what happened is likely contained in the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, commonly known as black boxes.

If they are recovered, Indonesian authorities will designate which agency should open and download the information.

The black boxes, which are actually orange, are located in the tail for Airbus 320-200s.

The cockpit voice recorder collects audio from the pilots' microphones and various channels.

"It picks up other sounds like clicks, things going wrong, thuds, hail. You can hear that on the windshield," said Mary Schiavo, a lawyer and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Acoustic experts can comb through the audio to try to determine the meaning of every click and sound.

The data recorder holds hundreds of pieces of data such as airspeed, altitude, whether the plane's nose was up or down and which direction it was headed. All that data would print out on long sheets, almost like EKGs, that authorities would use to piece together a timeline of the flight.

Sonar detects QZ8501 wreckage on sea floor

Is air travel in Asia growing too quickly?

The faces of AirAsia flight 8501

Because the AirAsia plane was only six years old, its data recorder is fairly modern and would contain lots of parameters, Schiavo said.

Challenges in the search

Although the plane is in much shallower waters than where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is believed to have fallen, search crews face challenges. Nature certainly isn't helping.

"The problem that the search team is now facing is the monsoon season," said Eric van Sebille, oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"This plane couldn't have gone down in a worse time of year. There's big winds, choppy waves. These shallow seas are known for complicated waves. It's really difficult to work in."

This could put search and recovery crews at risk and decrease visibility. They're also working under a deadline as the plane's pingers, or underwater locator beacons, only last for about 30 days.

Salvage operation

Salvage operations to lift the wreckage are complicated, but the process has been done before in places deeper than the bottom of the Java Sea, which is about 140 feet (43 meters) down.

The U.S. Navy salvaged pieces of TWA Flight 800, which crashed off New York in 1996, from depths of 115 to 130 feet. In 1998, Canadian officials lifted pieces of Swiss Air Flight 111 from the depths of 180 feet, off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Underwater vehicles, designed for deep water salvage operations, can descend as deep as 20,000 feet. They could retrieve smaller items such as the flight data recorder.

Since they can only carry up to 4,000 pounds, larger pieces, such as the fuselage would have to be attached to a cable and pulled to the surface by a crane on a ship. This was done for recovering remnants of the fuselage of Air France Flight 447.

CNN's Laura Smith-Spark, Ashley Fantz and Randi Kaye contributed to this report.