New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.

For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.

The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.

The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.

The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.

"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.

Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.

The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.

Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.

Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.

"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.

The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.

A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Read More..

"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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As Self-Immolations Near 100, Some Tibetans Ask, Is It Worth It?

NEW DELHI — A crowd of Tibetans came here to India’s capital last week, bearing flags and political banners and a bittersweet admixture of hope and despair. A grim countdown was under way: The number of Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibet had reached 99, one short of an anguished milestone.

Yet as that milestone hung over the estimated 5,000 Tibetans who gathered in a small stadium, so did an uncertainty about whether the rest of the world was paying attention at all. In speeches, Tibetan leaders described the self-immolations as the desperate acts of a people left with no other way to draw global attention to Chinese policies in Tibet.

“What is forcing these self-immolations?” Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, asked in an interview. “There is no freedom of speech. There is no form of political protest allowed in Tibet.”

Billed as the Tibetan People’s Solidarity Campaign, the four-day gathering featured protests, marches, Buddhist prayer sessions and political speeches in an attempt to push Tibet back onto a crowded international agenda. If the Arab Spring has inspired hope among some Tibetans that political change is always possible, it has also offered a sobering reminder that no two situations are the same, nor will the international community respond in the same fashion.

“The world is paying attention, but not enough,” Mr. Sangay added. “There was a self-immolation in Tunisia which was labeled the catalyst for the Arab Spring. We’ve been committed to nonviolence for many decades. And how come we have been given less support than what we witnessed in the Arab world?”

Yet even as the self-immolations have become central to the Tibetan protest movement, a quiet debate has been under way among Tibetans who are anguished over the deaths of their young men and who question how the acts reconcile with Buddhist teachings. Again and again, speakers emphasized that the Tibetan movement remains nonviolent and that the people who have self-immolated harmed only themselves.

“None of them have tried to harm anybody else,” said Penpa Tsering, the speaker of the Tibetan Parliament, which is based in Dharamsala, the Indian city that is host to the exiled Tibetan government. “None of the 99 people have tried to harm any Chinese.”

The Tibetan self-immolations began in 2009 as protests against China’s rule in Tibetan regions of the country. At least 81 Tibetans have died after their acts, and nearly all the self-immolations have occurred inside Tibet, with news smuggled out via e-mail or through networks of advocacy groups.

The Chinese authorities have responded by taking a harder line. Last week, a Chinese court handed down stiff sentences to a Tibetan monk and his nephew on charges that they had urged eight people to set themselves on fire, according to Chinese state news media. The monk was given a suspended death sentence, usually equivalent to life in prison, and the authorities have made it clear that committing or encouraging the act will be treated as intentional homicide. (Mr. Sangay said that six others in a different area of Tibet were also given harsh sentences.)

The Chinese government has blamed the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, for inciting ordinary Tibetans to carry out self-immolations. Tibetans rebut the claim, saying the cause is Chinese repression.

“What are you left with?” Mr. Penpa asked. “The only thing you can do is sacrifice your life.”

With the Dalai Lama having ceded political control of the Tibetan government — and having encouraged the elections that elevated Mr. Sangay, a former lecturer at Harvard, to prime minister — the Tibetan movement is in flux. To some degree, last week’s events were part of continued efforts to establish Mr. Sangay and other democratically elected Tibetan members of Parliament as figures capable of rallying political support for a movement long dependent on the charisma and stature of the Dalai Lama. (He did not attend the gathering.)

For more than a half century, India has been the primary host of exiled Tibetans, and many of the people who flocked to New Delhi came from special Tibetan villages elsewhere in the country. Lobsang Thai, 28, who came from Mundgod, a Tibetan village in the Indian state of Karnataka, said the self-immolations reflected the desperate situation in Tibet. “I don’t think it is about right or wrong,” he said. “That is the only thing we can do without hurting other people. That’s the best way to get the world’s attention.”

Tenzin Losec, 42, who is from Mainpat, a Tibetan village in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, agreed. “This is very sad for us,” he said. “But people inside Tibet, they have no other way. They have no rights. Outside Tibet, we are trying to raise awareness around the world.”

Tibetan leaders were determined to portray the week’s events as evidence that the global community, especially India, supported their aspirations. Lawmakers and other political figures from India’s leading political parties appeared at different events, though the government’s top leaders stayed away.

Mr. Sangay and others want the United Nations to push China to improve conditions in Tibet and also to allow inspectors to tour the region. “The Chinese government should feel pressure to do something,” he said. “This is leading to a vicious cycle: hard-line policies, protests, repression, more hard-line policies, more protests, more repression.”

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Sony Teases ‘The Future’ of PlayStation in Short #PlayStation2013 Video

Sony‘s CEO, Kazuo Hirai, said he would let Microsoft “make the first move” when it came to releasing a next-generation game console, according to IGN’s Daniel Krupa. But now the official PlayStation blog is teasing viewers with a video entitled “See the Future,” with the #PlayStation2013 Twitter hashtag.

Whatever the future is, it’s apparently got something to do with Feb. 20, the date mentioned in the video. But when it gets here, what will it be like?

PlayStation2013 probably isn’t the actual name

Previous rumors have suggested the next PlayStation console won’t be called the PlayStation 4, because the number 4 is associated with death in Japanese culture. If Sony’s willing to break with its numbering scheme because of tradition, it may be unlikely to tag the actual new PlayStation console itself with the number 13, which is regarded as unlucky in the United States.

Much more powerful hardware

This one’s a given. Unlike in the PC and tablet gaming world, where hardware is regularly updated and improvements tend to be incremental, video game consoles tend to wait years to update before leaping ahead — if you don’t count the two smaller redesigns the PS3 has had over the years while keeping the same performance, anyway, or the introduction of the PlayStation Move controller.

The PlayStation 3‘s big performance draw was its ability to play games on an HDTV, with an upgrade to graphics realism to match. A report by Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett last year suggests that the new PlayStation console may be able to play 3D games (on a 3D HDTV, that is) in 1080p resolution, or regular games in 4096×2160. The latter would basically require a TV as sharp as Apple’s Retina Display.

Far fewer games?

The same report, however, suggests that — as Sony eventually did with the PlayStation 3 — the “PlayStation 4″ may not be able to play any games from the previous generation of consoles.

The PlayStation 3 debuted with the ability to run PlayStation 2 games, but this required it to have both of the PS2′s processor chips inside it. This console-within-a-console design helped push the PS3′s launch price up to $ 599, and Sony soon dropped one of the chips before abandoning them completely. Today’s PlayStation 3 consoles can only play the handful of PS2 games that have been re-released digitally (and are bought separately) on the PlayStation Network.

No place like Home

If the new PlayStation console can’t run PS3 games, that may mean the end of PlayStation Home, Sony’s virtual world and social gaming platform in the style of Second Life (but with Facebook-style games). IGN’s Andrew Goldfarb notes that Sony recently filed a trademark on “BigFest,” however, which it describes as an “online player networking” service in similar terms as PlayStation Home.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.

For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.

The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.

The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.

The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.

"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.

Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.

The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.

Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.

Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.

"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.

The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.

A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Read More..

Nasdaq rises one percent, Wall Street extends rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks hit five-year highs and the Nasdaq rose 1 percent on Friday, after jobs and manufacturing data showed the economy's sluggish recovery is still on track.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 135.05 points, or 0.97 percent, to 13,995.63. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 13.85 points, or 0.92 percent, to 1,511.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 31.27 points, or 1.00 percent, to 3,173.40.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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The Lede Blog: Vacation on Syria's Front Lines Goes Wrong for Russian Judge

Last Updated, Friday, 11:43 a.m. A Russian judge who decided to spend his vacation moonlighting as a war correspondent in Syria survived being shot in the face and arm this week in the Damascus suburb of Darayya, according to the Web news agency he writes for as a volunteer.

The shooting of the judge, Sergey Aleksandrovich Berezhnoy, was caught on video by the crew from the Abkhazian Network News Agency he was accompanying as it reported on a unit of the Syrian Army fighting rebel forces outside the capital. The ANNA video report shows him snapping photographs on a ruined street before the incident and includes graphic scenes from the emergency surgery in a Syrian military hospital that saved his life.

A video report from an Abkhazian news agency embedded with the Syrian Army outside Damascus showed a Russian judge.

In an interview with Voice of Russia on Thursday, Mr. Berezhnoy told the state broadcaster: “Now I feel fine. They are making a dressing. Of course I am coming back to Russia. But I want to keep working here until I finished everything I planned. What is going on in Syria hurts me. They are destroying a culture, destroying a civilization, destroying the flower of a nation. And it is very frightening. The whole world needs to fight for Syria.”

What exactly Mr. Berezhnoy, a 57-year-old deputy chairman of a provincial arbitration court in the Russian city of Belgorod, was doing on a Syrian front line on Monday remains unclear. His wife told reporters that her husband had traveled to Syria “on a charity mission,” Russia’s state news agency reported. His boss told a Russian news site that he knew Mr. Berezhnoy was on vacation but had no idea where he had gone until reports of his misadventure in Syria surfaced.

His boss tells Life News: “Sergei Alexandrovich was on holiday.”

— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) 31 Jan 13

An account of the shooting published on Monday by the blogger and Abkhaz news agency correspondent Marat Musin described the judge as a prize-winning prose stylist. Almost in passing, Mr. Musin also mentioned that Mr. Berezhnoy had fought, as a military intelligence officer, in the separatist wars that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. One of those conflicts was in Abkhazia, the breakaway Georgian republic now governed by Russia, Mr. Musin wrote.

Sergey Aleksandrovich who fought for five years as an intelligence officer in Abkhazia and in other hot spots of our vast Motherland did not utter a single groan. Surgery was made by a general, the head of the military hospital. The bullet will be extracted tonight or tomorrow morning.

Before the volunteer member of our agency and well-known writer was wounded, we drove to the front line in the vicinity of Sukaine mosque in Darayya. Sergey Berezhnoy is the winner of many literary prizes, namely for his military prose.

Mr. Musin went on to describe how the Russians embedded with the Syrian Army were forced to cross one “fire-swept street” after another as they attempted to make their way to safety. After a rebel sniper nearly shot the crew’s translator, Viktor Kuznetsov, in the head, Mr. Musin wrote:

The next to cross this street was Sergey. The first bullet did not stop him; neither did the second which hit his arm. He managed to run to the safety of a wall and stood up there.

I couldn’t understand why he was standing there instead of stealing into a hole. When we saw a stream of blood, we realized what had happened. The wounded Sergey Berezhnoy had to run across another fire-swept street. Then we were in a car to the hospital for tomography, x-ray and surgery.

To stifle his groans he tried to joke.

Please, light a candle for the miraculous survival of my friend.

Although most of the reports on the incident framed it as an example of the perils of “extreme tourism,” the reference to Mr. Berezhnoy’s past service in military intelligence got the attention of some reporters in Moscow, who were trying to puzzle out what he was doing in Syria.

Russian “volunteer” injured by sniper in Syria was intelligence officer who fought 5yrs in Abkhazia, Rosbalt reports. http://t.co/Wm8hs5zQ

— Ellen Barry (@EllenBarryNYT) 31 Jan 13

But after even state television mentioned his intelligence career, the judge himself denied that he was a spy in a blog post published on the ANNA Web site early Thursday, apparently written after he was discharged from a hospital in Damascus.

Russian shot in Syria blogs fm hospital: I took time off work as judge, “not military intel, not saboteur, not spy.” http://t.co/QPv9nA2H

— Ellen Barry (@EllenBarryNYT) 31 Jan 13

As The Moscow Times reported, Mr. Berezhnoy invoked a version of the domino theory to explain his motivation to bear witness to the Syrian struggle against rebels he characterized as sectarian, Islamist terrorists. If President Bashar al-Assad were to fall, he speculated, the instability would quickly ripple to the Russian Caucuses, then to the Volga region and the Urals, until all of “Mother Russia” would be “dismembered.”

Asked about Mr. Berezhnoy’s case at a briefing on Thursday, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, described him as a volunteer the government knew nothing about.

For min says berezhnoy was a volunteer but they are checking, he should receive necessary help.

— Ellen Barry (@EllenBarryNYT) 31 Jan 13

The dramatic video of the Russian judge being wounded and operated on drew attention to the work of the previously obscure news agency and raised questions about who its reporting is aimed at. Chief among those questions was why a tiny Georgian enclave attached to Russia’s Black Sea coast would set up a news agency that appears to be devoted almost entirely to coverage of Syria. Of more than 300 video reports posted on the ANNA YouTube channel in the past two years, all but a handful on Libya appear to be about the Syrian civil war, as seen from the government’s perspective.

What relationship, exactly, ANNA bears to Abkhazia is also unclear. According to the agency’s Web site, it was registered in July of 2011 in the Republic of Abkhazia. An online biography for Mr. Musin describes him as the news agency’s manager, a professor at Moscow University and the “deputy head of the Russian Committee for Solidarity with the Peoples of Syria and Libya.”

One theory, supported by the fact that several of the ANNA video reports are subtitled in English, is that the producers of the clips might be working in support of a Russian foreign policy aim, to cast the Syrian government’s battle with “terrorism” in a more positive light for viewers outside Russia. The news agency’s reports, which appear online under the motto “Truth Explaining Facts | Facts Supporting Truth,” could be part of an effort to make a better case for Mr. Assad’s government, and partly redress the imbalance in global public opinion that formed early in 2011, when images of peaceful protesters being shot at by the Syrian security forces flooded social networks.

A typical example is a video report from earlier this month on the fighting in Darayya that features an interview with a Syrian general explaining the struggle. The report begins with images of government soldiers mocking the rebel battle cry of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God Is Great.”

A recent video report, with English subtitles, on the Syrian military’s effort to regain control of a Damascus suburb.

Another video report, from last week, featured interviews with Syrian government soldiers who claimed that the rebels had placed mines in a mosque in the Damascus suburb, “trying to flame a sectarian war; but they will not manage to do so, because the Syrian people are one, while they are foreigners.”

A video report shot last week by a Russian news agency crew embedded with Syrian troops.

While the efforts of the Abkhaz news agency are in line with the Russian government’s support for the Assad government, the battle for Russian hearts and minds is not at all one-sided.

There are many Russian citizens in Syria — 30,000 was the estimate from the Russian embassy there last year, but it could be considerably more than that — in large part as a result of decades of intermarriage between Syrian men and Russian women.

Though Russia’s government has provided Mr. Assad with crucial political support, it is not clear that the Russians in Syria universally support that view — in fact, a deputy foreign minister said in December in an unscripted moment that he believed half the Russians in Syria hold opposition views. In many cases, this may be because they are women married to Syrian men who support the opposition. Moreover, in Syria there are a significant number of ethnic Circassians, a non-Slavic ethnic group that was driven out of the south of Russia by the czar’s armies, and many of them are critical of the Kremlin’s pro-Assad position.

Just last week, the Saudi satellite news channel Al Arabiya discovered (and translated into English) a propaganda video posted online by a rebel brigade in which a Russian-speaking woman declared her allegiance to the Free Syrian Army.

Video posted online by Syrian rebels featured a Russian-speaking woman declaring her support for the uprising.

Wearing a military uniform and holding a camera, the woman said: “I am a Russian citizen and am standing amongst members of the Free Syrian Army. Every person here has the right to fight back and defend himself and his family. Waiting for aid from the Russian government is pointless, and it’s completely idiotic to wait for the Syrian regime’s help as well.”

Her declaration concluded:

Both the Russian and Syrian people are peaceful and of good hearts, but the governments in both countries are aiming to destroy Syria. And a government like this will topple sooner or later.

On a personal level, I used to be a supporter of Bashar al-Assad, until I witnessed with my own eyes how his forces destroyed my neighborhood and killed my relatives. And the shabiha kidnapped girls from the streets and have done many unrighteous acts towards them. As such, we should not forgive them and I will continues to protect whatever is left for me here.

Nikolay Khalip contributed reporting.

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How I learned to stop worrying and love Twitter

Is anything more uniquely American than our free-wheeling, 140-character missives?

Twitter is dead, you guys. Writers used to send pithy tweets across cyberspace, borne on the golden wings of Hermes. Now, as T.S. Eliot would say, “Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless.” Twitter is so uncool, that even if we resurrected the spirits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and got them to tweet never-before-heard song lyrics from the grave, they would have like, 20 followers, tops. And most of them would be spambots. Do you know what else is dead? Rock and roll. When I put on the Dead Weather or Jay-Z, my parents inform me that music used to be all about free love and sharing ideas and now, “Will you turn off that crap you’re hurting my ears.” There is no cool left for me. I must survive on the vapors of Lady Gaga‘s strange perfume and the shiny white veneer of Kim Kardashian‘s teeth. But it’s okay, it’s not like I can tell the difference.

Hi. I’m a twenty-something journalist. And unlike my colleague Matt K. Lewis, I like Twitter.

SEE MORE: Introducing Vine: Twitter’s 6-second video-sharing app

Now, I can see where Matt is coming from. The popularity of Twitter used to befuddle me. When I was in college, I had a private account (rookie mistake) and only followed my friends. My feed read something like an episode of Girls, except with more substance-abuse problems. Twitter did seem kinda like high school, and, as Matt says, was more prison than vision (although to this day, I love a good nonsensical midnight Twitter ramble. And Horse E-Books.) But a couple years later, once I was a working journalist, I started following an increasingly diverse set of people. And another cool thing happened: The Arab Spring. Citizen activists in countries like Egypt, Libya, and Yemen successfully organized revolutionary protests through the social network, and all of a sudden, I stopped viewing Twitter as a place where people just talked about their hangovers. 

Since then, I have been tasked with tweeting from the official accounts of several media organizations — I’m kind of a professional tweeter. By the end of today, I (and my colleagues) will have written and sent out about 70 tweets for Mother Jones — tweets that are (hopefully) informative, spelled correctly, promote our content, match the tone of the publication, and don’t accidentally include cat gifs or naked pictures. If anything should make one despise Twitter, it’s being required to tweet all day long. But instead, it’s only made me more fond of the damn thing.

SEE MORE: 10 famous first tweets from the Pope, Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, and more

Every day, I get to hear from people, REAL LIVE PEOPLE, who are exercising their free speech rights about something my colleagues and I wrote with our free speech rights. How cool is that? What could be more American than a bunch of strangers conversing in real time about whether the Boy Scouts can constitutionally ban gay members, that great Local Natives album that just came out, and who is really the communist here? (Okay, fine. It’s me.) 

Another point in Twitter’s favor: Go to Facebook or (God forbid) the homepages of various news organizations, and you’re never going to easily or quickly find as many live updates of Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook school shooting, or the 2012 presidential election as you would on Twitter. It’s the go-to place for lightning-quick, easily searchable information. (By contrast, if you need a live update of which color mason jars you should have at your wedding someday, Pinterest has so got you covered.)  

SEE MORE: Why I love Twitter

And unlike journalists exhausted by the troll-y nature of the beast, I like the free-wheeling accessibility of Twitter. The quality of my interactions are mostly positive, probably because I tend to only follow people I would be interested in speaking with in the real world. And just like the real world, sometimes some crazy guy who smells like whiskey and is probably on PCP will try to flash me on the Metro. But that just makes it kind of exciting, right? 

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Want to Own a Hugh Hefner-Approved, Bunny-Worn Wedding Gown?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/01/2013 at 10:55 AM ET

Elayne Lodge

Hugh Hefner’s new bride Crystal Harris may have held on to her wedding dress in between their canceled first wedding and intimate second one, but now she’s ready to get rid of it — for a good cause, of course.

“I am auctioning my wedding dress with @charitybuzz to raise money for lymphoma in memory of Mary,” Harris tweeted Thursday, referring to Mary O’Connor, Hugh Hefner’s longtime secretary, who died Sunday.

In addition to the blush pink Romona Keveza gown Harris wore to get hitched to Hef on New Year’s Eve, she’s also put her satin Aruna Seth flats on the block.

You certainly can’t beat the dress for an interesting back story (or knock the charitable angle), so if the one thing your wedding is missing is a conversation-starting gown, you can bid at CharityBuzz for the next 10 days. Tell us: Would you wear a wedding dress from the Playboy Mansion?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: SEE WHO MADE OUR LIST OF 2012′S WEDDINGS OF THE YEAR!

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Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.

The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.

Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.

Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.

In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.

Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.

Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.

The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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