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

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"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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Letter From Washington: A Rocky Road to Reforming Immigration

WASHINGTON — Immigration reform is having a “Kumbaya” moment, with support from the White House, a bipartisan contingent in Congress, business and labor.

The Republicans are petrified after their dismal showing among the fastest-growing slices of the electorate, Hispanics and Asians; President Barack Obama wants to reward the loyalty of those voters. Business and labor, as well as many politicians, want to fix a totally dysfunctional system. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, 5 percent of the work force. Many of these people live in fear of discovery, while jobs go unfilled in some areas.

Hold the Champagne. When it comes to immigration laws, the concept is always easier than the reality. Change failed to happen six years ago, despite the push from the high-powered coalition led by President George W. Bush and Senators John McCain and Edward M. Kennedy. The dynamics are more favorable today. Still, the same obstacles persist; the powerful countervailing considerations include these issues:

A predicament on citizenship There’s a fairly broad consensus for ending the illegal status of the undocumented. The White House, Hispanic groups and most Senate supporters insist that any overhaul must lead to a pathway to citizenship.

That approach, however, faces great resistance. Some lawmakers demand that any move toward citizenship must come second to solving the border-security problem, at a minimum. For some, this is a political cover; under the Obama administration, resources for border security have been increased sharply, including the use of drones. And deportations of undocumented immigrants are at a record high.

A border-security trigger is realistic if it includes quantifiable goals, like the number of new Border Patrol agents, the amount of resources allocated and the new technologies utilized. It isn’t reasonable if it requires meeting an amorphous standard like “operational control” of a border that is always changing.

Hispanic groups assert that the real motive for such demands is to unreasonably stretch out any possibility of granting citizenship.

“There would be a backlash if citizenship is delayed for 15 or 20 years,” warns Gary M. Segura, a Stanford University professor and co-founder of Latino Decisions, the leading research organization on Hispanic public opinion.

The future of immigration policy Equally contentious is the question of future flows of immigrants. One proposal would link the number of legal immigrants to economic conditions: More would be let in when times are good, fewer in tougher times. That sounds easier than it is. There will be clashes over how great a priority should be given to those with high-tech skills or to agriculture workers or to family reunification. Small businesses will rebel against any costly verification plan.

Most independent studies show that immigration is a decided economic plus, bringing in revenue and increasing productivity and innovation.

Yet the arguments of the populist right may resonate more as the debate heats up. NumbersUSA, a leading anti-immigration group, is reviving charges that an immigration overhaul would drive down wages for middle- and low- income workers. Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who authored anti-immigration measures in several states and the Republican Party’s platform position on the issue last summer, charges that taxpayers would be hit with $2.6 trillion in added food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid, which are government health care programs, and in welfare costs. That estimate is refuted by reliable studies; it still cuts.

The House Republican leadership J. Dennis Hastert, a former Republican speaker of the House, decreed that any bill must command majority support among majority party members. Last month, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, waived the rule twice to pass measures, one avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff and another providing aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The speaker, along with most party leaders, understands his party’s serious difficulties with Hispanic voters and fears making matters worse by blocking an overhaul. Two of the most virulent anti-immigration Republicans in the House, Lamar Smith of Texas and Steve King of Iowa, no longer hold important committee chairmanships.

Yet with anti-immigration sentiment still running high among many Republican rank-and-file voters, it’s tough to imagine a majority of the party’s House members backing a comprehensive bill, even if, as is certain, the Senate goes first. Mr. Boehner’s only option might be to let a bill pass primarily with Democratic votes.

To do that, he would need the support of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, and the whip, Kevin McCarthy; there’s no shrewder politician than Mr. McCarthy, who is always attuned to the party’s base. He’s also from California, where, since Governor Pete Wilson played the anti-immigration card in 1994, the Democrats completely dominate politics.

The lack of a skilled deal maker The successful, if flawed, passage of Mr. Obama’s health care measure probably wouldn’t have been possible without the savvy hand of Rahm Emanuel, who was the White House chief of staff. Congressional Democrats and some outside advocates see no Emanuel counterpart in the current White House; privately, some say they would like the White House to enlist a special envoy — perhaps Henry G. Cisneros, former housing secretary and former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, or Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader — to shepherd legislation.

Egos and tensions already are surfacing among supporters of an overhaul; Republicans don’t trust the White House, and some Democrats worry that Marco Rubio, the ambitious young Republican senator from Florida, will look for a reason to peel off as he comes under pressure from his party’s right wing. There is no senator today who possesses Mr. Kennedy’s skill for navigating these shoals.

It’s still a slightly better bet that a big immigration bill will be enacted in this Congress. Getting there will be ugly, and the measure will seem to die more than once as it battles these cross-pressures.

Read More..

Kuwaiti gets five years for insulting ruler

KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to five years in prison on Sunday for insulting the emir on Twitter, a rights lawyer and news websites said, in the latest prosecution for criticism of authorities via social media in the Gulf Arab state.

The court gave Kuwaiti Mohammad Eid al-Ajmi the maximum sentence for the comments, news websites al-Rai and alaan.cc reported.

In recent months Kuwait has penalized several Twitter users for criticizing the emir, who is described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.

“We call on the government to expand freedoms and adhere to the international (human rights) conventions it has signed,” said lawyer Mohammad al-Humaidi, director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, commenting on the case.

Courts in Kuwait generally do not comment to the media.

Amnesty International said in November Kuwait had increased restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.

It urged Kuwait to ensure protection for users of social media, whether they supported or opposed the government, as long as they did not incite racial hatred or violence.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the internet. Twitter is extremely popular in the country of 3.7 million.

In January, a court sentenced two men in separate cases to jail time for insulting the emir on Twitter.

In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform.

The recent Twitter cases have been carried out under the state security law and penal code. Last year Kuwait passed new legislation aimed at regulating social media.

Public demonstrations and debates about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, but Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass unrest that unseated four heads of Arab states in 2011.

But tensions intensified between authorities and opposition groups last year ahead of a parliamentary election deemed unfair by opposition politicians and activists.

The opposition movement said new voting rules introduced by Sheikh Sabah by emergency decree in October would skew the December 1 election in favor of pro-government candidates. The emir said the old voting system was flawed and that his changes were constitutional and necessary for Kuwait’s “security and stability”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy, Writing by Sylvia Westall; editing by Sami Aboudi and Andrew Roche)

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Justin Timberlake Kicks Off Super Bowl Weekend By Returning to the Stage

By Maggie Coughlan

02/03/2013 at 02:30 PM EST

Justin Timberlake is bringing music back in a major way.

The singer – who says he'll release a new album this year – marked his return to the stage at DirecTV's Super Saturday Night event in New Orleans.

And for those lucky enough to attend, Timberlake, 32, performed his single "Suit & Tie" with Jay-Z.

Paul McCartney and wife Nancy Shevell, Nashville's Hayden Panettiere, Sofia Vergara, David Arquette, Kate Upton, Will Ferrell, Aaron Paul and more were just a few of the A-listers enjoying the show.

John Legend and fiancé Chrissy Teigen posed for photos with Jay-Z and Timbaland and showed them off on Twitter.

Questlove of The Roots also shared his two cents on Timberlake's return by posting on Instagram. "Dude is KILLLIINNNNGGG it," he wrote, sharing a photo of Timberlake at the mic.

But Timberlake wasn't the only one to take the stage – Katy Perry, The Fray performed and Questlove, Jersey Shore's Paul "Pauly D" DelVecchio and Tom Cruise's son, Connor, all played deejay sets.

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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..

"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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Marxist Group Claims Attack on U.S. Embassy in Turkey

ISTANBUL — A Marxist group with a history of political violence in Turkey claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bombing at the American Embassy in Ankara the day before, releasing a statement calling the United States “the murderer of the peoples of the world.”

The statement, which also denounced American foreign policy, was released by the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, and a translation was distributed by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors the communications of extremist groups. The message, which was posted on a Web site that has previously carried statements from the group, condemned Turkey’s policy of supporting Syrian rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

After conducting DNA tests, the Turkish authorities on Saturday identified the man who detonated himself at the embassy, killing himself and a Turkish embassy guard, as Ecevit Sanli, 40, also known as Alisan Sanli. Mr. Sanli was a convicted terrorist who had twice attacked government facilities in Istanbul but was released from prison under an amnesty program. Earlier Saturday, officials in the Black Sea town of Ordu said he was a resident.

The Ankara police said they had detained three people thought to have helped Mr. Sanli and had found a handgun linked to the militant group. They also released security footage from the embassy in which Mr. Sanli was shown pretending to be a courier.

The statement by the group included two photographs of Mr. Sanli. In one, he is holding an assault rifle, and a banner bearing the hammer-and-sickle symbol of communism is behind him.

The attack, coming in the wake of the attack on an American diplomatic mission y in Benghazi, Libya, by Islamic extremists in September, initially raised fears that it was the work of jihadists. That the bomber has ties to a relatively minor Marxist group is likely to challenge assumptions about the nature of international terrorism and the risks to American interests abroad. American officials, however, have not confirmed the identity of the attacker or a motive, and the United States plans to investigate.

In a statement on Saturday, Ordu officials said Mr. Sanli spent five years in prison after being arrested in 1997 for attacking a military hostel and police station in Istanbul. He was released in 2001 under an amnesty program for inmates with medical conditions, the statement said. Mr. Sanli reportedly had Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a brain disorder caused by malnutrition that he acquired during a jailhouse hunger strike.

The authorities said Mr. Sanli lobbed a hand grenade during Friday’s attack just before detonating his explosives-packed vest, suggesting that there were actually two explosions.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Mr. Sanli had fled to Germany after being released from prison, and returned to Turkey illegally only a few days before the attack by taking a boat from a Greek island across the Aegean.

The group has struck American and other Western targets in Turkey before, including during the gulf war in the early 1990s, and in its statement, the group condemned NATO’s recent deployment of Patriot missile batteries in southern Turkey to protect against cross-border strikes from Syria.

In a report published several days before the bombing, Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned that the country’s support of Syrian rebels was rallying Turkey’s extreme left.

“The country’s political landscape still bears vestiges of violent leftist movements from the 1970s, as well as deeply anti-American ultranationalism,” he wrote.

In the weeks before the attack, Turkish security forces arrested dozens of people thought to be members of the group, though human rights activists say those arrested have no links to terrorism.

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Twitter, Washington Post targeted by hackers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Social media giant Twitter is among the latest U.S. companies to acknowledge that it is among a growing list of victims of Internet security attacks, saying that hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users. And now, The Washington Post is joining the chorus, saying that it discovered that it was the target of a sophisticated cyberattack in 2011.

Twitter said a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as ‘a very small percentage of our users.”

Nonetheless, the company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The online attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. media and technology companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both American newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

On Friday, The Washington Post disclosed in an article published on its website that it was the target of a sophisticated cyberattack, which was discovered in 2011. The company’s spokeswoman, Kris Coratti, didn’t offer any details including the duration of the attack or the origins. But according to sources that the paper quoted, who it said spoke on condition of anonymity, the intruders gained access as early as 2008 or 2009.

The cyberattack was first reported by an independent cybersecurity blog on Friday.

“Like other companies in the news recently, we face cybersecurity threats,” Coratti was quoted as saying. “We have a number of security measures in place to guard against cyberattacks on an ongoing basis.”

According to Coratti’s comments made to the newspaper, the company worked with security company Mandiant to “detect, investigate and remediate the situation promptly at the end of 2011.”

Coratti couldn’t be reached immediately for comment by The Associated Press.

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

“Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security,” the Chinese Defense Ministry recently said. “The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities.”

Twitter’s director of information security, Bob Lord, said in the blog that the attack “was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident.”

“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked,” Lord said. “For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.”

One expert said that the Twitter hack probably happened after an employee’s home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers “a toehold” in Twitter’s internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company’s system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users’ passwords.

The relatively small number of users affected suggested either that attackers weren’t on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company’s servers, Soltani said.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hacking might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist’s movements.

“More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service,” Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist’s emails.

___

AP reporters Anne D’Innocenzio in New York, Raphael Satter in London and Didi Tang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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