Ban on demanding Facebook passwords among new 2013 state laws

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Employers in California and Illinois will be prohibited from demanding access to workers’ password-protected social networking accounts and teachers in Oregon will be required to report suspected student bullies thanks to new laws taking effect in 2013.

In all, more than 400 measures were enacted at the state level during 2012 and will become law in the new year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

Some of the statutes, which deal with everything from consumer protection to gun control and healthcare, take effect at the stroke of midnight. Others will not kick in until later in the year.

The raft of measures includes a new abortion restriction in New Hampshire, public-employee pension reform in California and Alabama, same-sex marriage in Maryland, and a requirement that private insurers in Alaska cover autism in kids and young adults, NCSL said.

In New Hampshire, a rarely used form of late-term abortion will become illegal except to save the life of the mother – and even then only if two doctors from separate hospitals certify the procedure is medically necessary.

John Lynch, the state’s outgoing Democratic governor, had vetoed the measure, saying it would threaten the lives of women in rural areas. But the state’s Republican-controlled legislature later overrode him.

In California and Illinois, laws that take effect at 12:01 a.m. local time will make it illegal for bosses to request social networking passwords or non-public online account information from their employees or job applicants.

Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a similar measure into law earlier this month that took effect immediately. The Michigan law also penalizes educational institutions for dismissing or failing to admit a student who does not provide passwords and other account information used to access private internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

But workers and job seekers in all three states will still need to be careful what they post online: Employers may continue to use publicly available social networking information. So inappropriate pictures, tweets and other social media indiscretions can still come back to haunt them.

Gun violence – in places where it’s all too common, such as Chicago, and in places where it’s unexpected, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut – was big news in 2012. But only a handful of new state firearms laws are set to take effect in 2013.

In Michigan, the definition of a “pistol” under the law will now include any firearm less than 26 inches in length. The new definition encompasses some rifles with folding stocks and will make the weapons subject to the same restrictions as pistols.

In Illinois, certain guns currently regulated by state law, including paintball guns, will be excluded from the definition of a firearm and participants in military re-enactments will be exempt from some weapons laws.

Another big story in 2012 was the effort by lawmakers in a number of cash-strapped states to put their public employee pension funds on a sounder financial footing.

In California and Alabama, reforms designed to begin to address the unfunded liabilities of those retirement systems will take effect in 2013.

Among the other new laws on the books in 2013:

* In California, prison workers and peace officers will now be prohibited from having sex with inmates and prisoners in transport.

* In Illinois, sex offenders will be prohibited from distributing candy on Halloween, or playing Santa or the Easter Bunny.

* In Oregon, employers won’t be allowed to advertise a job vacancy if they won’t consider applicants who are currently out of work.

* In Kentucky, residents will be prohibited from releasing feral or wild hogs back into the wild and Illinois will ban the possession and sale of shark fins.

* And in Florida, the term “motor vehicle” will no longer apply to the specialized all-terrain vehicles with over-sized tires known as “swamp buggies” that are popular in some parts of the state.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Greg McCune and Nick Zieminski)

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Kardashian, West feel ‘blessed’ over baby news

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are feeling lucky about their first child together.

“It’s true,” the 32-year-old reality TV star said in a statement on her site Monday. “Kanye and I are expecting a baby. We feel so blessed and lucky and wish that in addition to both of our families, his mom and my dad could be here to celebrate this special time with us.”

Kardashian’s father, Robert Kardashian, died in 2003. West’s mother, Donda West, died in 2007.

Kardashian added in the blog post that she was “looking forward to great new beginnings in 2013 and to starting a family.”

The 35-year-old rapper revealed to a crowd of more than 5,000 in song form at a concert Sunday that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort’s Ovation Hall with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West’s mentor and best friend, Jay-Z.

The news instantly went viral online, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan tweeted about the news, including Kim’s sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: “Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!”

West told concertgoers to congratulate his “baby mom” and that this was the “most amazing thing.”

Representatives for West and Kardashian didn’t immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public with their relationship in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West’s Sunday-night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like “Good Life,” ”Jesus Walks” and “Clique” in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.

Kardashian is expected to spend New Year’s Eve at public appearance at a Las Vegas nightclub.

___

AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin . Follow Bianca Roach at http://twitter.com/B__Roach

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F.D.A. Approves Sirturo, a New Tuberculosis Drug

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that it had approved a new treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis that can be used as an alternative when other drugs fail.

The drug, to be called Sirturo, was discovered by scientists at Janssen, the pharmaceuticals unit of Johnson & Johnson, and is the first in a new class of drugs that aims to treat the drug-resistant strain of the disease.

Tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease that is transmitted through the air and usually affects the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body, including the brain and kidneys. It is considered one of the world’s most serious public health threats. Although rare in the United States, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is a growing problem elsewhere in the world, especially in poorer countries. About 12 million people worldwide had tuberculosis in 2011, according to Johnson & Johnson, and about 630,000 had multidrug-resistant TB.

A study in September in The Lancet found that almost 44 percent of patients with tuberculosis in countries like Russia, Peru and Thailand showed resistance to at least one second-line drug, or a medicine used after another drug had already failed.

Treating drug-resistant tuberculosis can take years and can cost 200 times as much as treating the ordinary form of the disease

“This is quite a milestone in the story of therapy for TB,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview. He said the approval was the first time in 40 years that the agency had approved a drug that attacked tuberculosis in a different way from the current treatments on the market. Sirturo works by inhibiting an enzyme needed by the tuberculosis bacteria to replicate and spread throughout the body.

Sirturo, also known as bedaquiline, would be used on top of the standard treatment, which is a combination of several drugs. Patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis often must be treated for 18 to 24 months.

Even as it announced the approval, however, the F.D.A. also issued some words of caution.

“Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis poses a serious health threat throughout the world, and Sirturo provides much-needed treatment for patients who have don’t have other therapeutic options available,” Edward Cox, director of the office of antimicrobial products in the F.D.A.’s center for drug evaluation and research, said in a statement. “However, because the drug also carries some significant risks, doctors should make sure they use it appropriately and only in patients who don’t have other treatment options.”

The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen opposed approval in a letter to the F.D.A. in mid-December, saying that the results of a limited clinical trial showed that patients using bedaquiline were five times as likely to die than those on the standard drug regimen to treat the disease.

“Given that bedaquiline belongs to an entirely new class of drugs, it is entirely feasible that death in some cases was due to some unmeasured toxicity of the drug,” the letter said.

Sirturo carries a so-called black box warning for patients and health care professionals that the drug can affect the heart’s electrical activity, which could lead to an abnormal and potentially fatal heart rhythm. The warning also notes deaths in patients treated with Sirturo. Nine patients who received Sirturo died compared with two patients who received a placebo. Five of the deaths in the Sirturo group and all of the deaths in the placebo arm seemed to be related to tuberculosis, but no consistent reason for the deaths in the remaining Sirturo-treated patients could be identified.

Doctors Without Borders and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, both active in the fight against tuberculosis and other global diseases, applauded the F.D.A.’s decision.

Jan Gheuens, interim director of the TB Program for the Gates Foundation, called it a “long-awaited event” and said the fight against TB had not benefited from new drugs in the way H.I.V. had. Beyond the benefits of the drug itself, he said the quick approval process could be a model for other drugs sorely needed in the developing world.

He also suggested, however, that more trials should be conducted to get a better understanding of the side effects that led to the black box warning.

The F.D.A. approved bedaquiline under an accelerated program that allows the agency to conditionally approve drugs that are viewed as filling unmet medical needs with less than the usual evidence that they work. The drug’s approval was based on studies that showed it killed bacteria more quickly than a control group taking the standard regimen, but it did not measure whether in the end patients actually fared better on bedaquiline. Johnson & Johnson will conduct larger clinical trials to investigate whether the drug performs as predicted.

In a statement responding to Public Citizen’s letter, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson said the company was committed to supporting appropriate use of Sirturo and would “work to ensure Sirturo is used only where treatment alternatives are not available.”

Dr. Stoffels said the hope was that other new tuberculosis drugs would also be approved that, when used in combination with bedaquiline, could shorten and simplify the current standard of treatment. “That is still a long time away,” he acknowledged, but “this is a first step in a new regimen for TB.”

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Big in 2012, but the Future Is Hazy for Bonds

The big story in the markets this year was not about stocks.

Americans sold off their stock mutual funds, the most popular way to invest in American companies, at the fastest clip since 2008, the year the financial crisis began. That occurred despite the fact that the stock market itself rose steadily; the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index ended the year up 13.4 percent.

Investors have been opting instead for the assumed safety of bonds. Money has been steadily flowing into mutual funds holding bonds of all sorts for the last four years, but the pace accelerated this year. The percentage of household investments in bonds shot up to 26 percent from 14 percent just five years ago, according to Morningstar.

Entering the new year, a growing number of professional investors are betting that the craze for bonds has gone too far, perhaps dangerously so, as has been evident in the headlines from the year-end reports from large investment firms. “Bond PAIN in 2013?” Wells Capital Management’s chief strategist asked. “Caution: Turn Ahead,” BlackRock analysts wrote. “The inflection year,” said Bank of America.

This is not the first time that analysts have forecast an end to the decades-long rally in bond values. But previously many of the voices predicting it were pessimists who believed that investors would sell off their bonds when they lost faith in the American government’s ability to pay back its bonds, forcing the government and many other bond issuers to pay higher interest rates. When interest rates rise, older bonds with lower interest rates are worth less.

While those previous forecasts have proved expensively wrong, this year the forecasters are being joined by many economic optimists who argue that a strengthening American economy is likely to make investors willing to embrace the risks involved in stocks, luring them out of bonds. The question, they say, is only how quickly it will happen.

“Mathematically, it’s next to impossible to get the kind of returns on bonds you’ve seen over the last few years,” said Kate Moore, the chief global equity strategist at Bank of America.

When the turn does ultimately come, it is likely to cause pain for at least some of the people who have been investing in bonds in recent years.

“You don’t want to be the last one out the door when the trends turn,” said Rebecca H. Patterson, the chief investment strategist at Bessemer Trust. “All good things come to an end and we want to make sure we’re in front of it.”

Most of the talk of investors shifting money from bonds into stocks relies first on the assumption that politicians in Washington are able to resolve the current impasse over the so-called fiscal cliff, the automatic spending cuts and tax increases that will go into effect if Congress and President Obama cannot come to an agreement, and the coming debate over the nation’s debt ceiling. If the political discord continues, it could renew investor attraction to the safety of bonds and put off any shift into stocks.

But a number of surveys suggest that professional investors are already starting to prepare for a change. Hedge funds polled by Bank of America said that they had more of their portfolio allocated to stocks than at any time since 2006.

All but one of the 13 bank strategists tracked by Birinyi Associates expects stock markets to rise in 2013. When 2012 began, the same strategists were predicting a downturn in share prices. Even among mutual fund investors, there are signs that the flows out of stocks and into bonds have been slowing down recently.

The preference for bonds has already been costly for retail investors. Over the last year, most types of American bonds have returned less than an investment in the S.&. P. 500. When inflation is factored in, the benchmark 10-year Treasury security is delivering negative returns.

But many investors are still rattled by the 2008 financial crisis and the turbulence in the stock markets since then, which have led to wild swings. Over the last five years, all major types of American bonds have done better than leading stock indexes.

The Federal Reserve has been engaged in an aggressive effort to buy bonds and drive down interest rates. The long term goal of that program is to encourage banks to lend money and to drive investors out of bonds. But in the meantime, falling interest rates have made bonds more attractive. The Fed has said it wants to keep rates low until 2015, though it could let them rise sooner if the economy picks up faster than expected. The 10-year Treasury hovered near 4 percent in recent years but has stayed below 2 percent for much of 2012.

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Republicans back off plan to trim Social Security

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans backed off a demand to trim spending on Social Security by changing the cost-of-living adjustment, a proposal Democrats say was a nonstarter in talks to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) included the provision to move to a “chained CPI” -- an alternative measure of inflation -- in his offer Saturday evening. It was, aides cautioned, not the only sticking point that held up talks Sunday, with just over a day left for lawmakers to act to prevent automatic spending cuts and tax hikes.

But soon after the idea became public, Republican senators began distancing themselves from it.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?

"I'm not a fan," said retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) as she left a closed-door meeting of the party caucus. "I don't think it should be part of it, and I think there are others who shared that view."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he supported the idea in theory, but that it should have never been offered as part of current talks, which are focused narrowly on tax rates.

Asked why his party leader made the proposal, McCain responded bluntly: “Damned if I know.”

“It’s a very bad, losing proposition,” McCain said. “What [Democrats] are saying now is, ‘Republicans want to preserve tax breaks for rich people and give up seniors’ Social Security.’ That’s the argument they’re using. Now whether it’s valid or not, it’s a winning argument. It should be off the table. And I think most Republicans believe it should be off the table.”

In the last offer he made to House Speaker John A. Boehner, President Obama had included the chained CPI as part of a larger deal that would have also included asking Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling for two years. But lawmakers now have all but written off the likelihood of that kind of large-scale “grand bargain.” Instead, they are working simply to prevent a year-end tax increase for nearly all Americans.

“I’ve supported chained CPI as part of a grand bargain, but this is no grand bargain,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Purported photo of new BlackBerry phone with QWERTY keyboard leaks

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“The Hobbit” keeps box office crown for third week

(Reuters) – The dwarfs and elves of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” prevailed at the North American box office again over the weekend, as its $ 32.9 million in ticket sales topped both the star-packed musical “Les Miserables” and the western “Django Unchained.”

Despite surging past “The Hobbit” on Christmas day with an $ 18.1 million opening, “Les Miz” managed only third place in U.S. and Canadian sales with $ 28 million as Christmas shoppers returned from the malls to boost Hollywood‘s box office, according to studio estimates.

“The Hobbit,” in its third week of release, has now grossed $ 222.7 million domestically, Warner Bros said.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” a western starring Jamie Fox as a slave turned bounty hunter, took second with an impressive $ 30.7 million.

Tom Cruise’s crime drama “Jack Reacher,” which features author Lee Child’s former military investigator solving a fatal sniper attack, landed in fifth with $ 14 million, outpaced by “Parental Guidance,” the Billy Crystal-Bette Midler as grandparents comedy which took in $ 14.8 million to nab fourth.

Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution for Fox, said the “Parental Guidance” performance was “just a tremendous result for our little engine that could.”

Backed by a musical score that made it a Broadway icon, “Les Miz” surged past “The Hobbit” on Christmas day, collecting $ 18.1 million to pass “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” with the biggest midweek opening day by a musical.

But it was not enough to conquer the “Hobbit” juggernaut, which scored its third straight box office weekend win.

Universal’s president for domestic distribution Nikki Rocco called the “Les Miz” $ 28 million take “phenomenal, especially considering we went into the weekend with $ 40 million,” an unexpectedly strong figure for its first few days in release.

“People really love this movie, which is even more rewarding and gratifying,” Rocco said.

“Les Miserables,” which stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, benefited from Oscar buzz and its star power, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com’s box office division, who said he wouldn’t be surprised to see the musical pass $ 200 million before it’s done.

That would put it among the Hollywood‘s Top 20 best-selling musicals. It would pass the 1972 film “Cabaret,” which grossed $ 191 million in box office sales adjusted for higher ticket prices, and put it close to “Camelot,” which sold $ 204.5 million in 1967, according to the web site the-numbers.com.

The most successful musical is “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which grossed more than $ 6.3 billion but has been re-released by Walt Disney nine times since its 1937 premiere, according to the site.

A rush of high-profile films in December is expected to push 2012 to a domestic box office record. The current record is $ 10.6 billion, set in 2009.

“Jack Reacher” debuted just days after the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting sparked new debate about the impact of movie violence. “Reacher” begins with a sniper killing a handful of seemingly random victims. A red-carpet premiere and a screening to promote the $ 60-million production were postponed after the December 14 Newtown tragedy.

Adult comedy “This is 40″ starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as a middle-aged couple was sixth with $ 13.2 million. The Judd Apatow $ 35 million film totaled $ 37 million after two weeks. The seventh spot went to Steven Spielberg’s historical film “Lincoln,” with $ 7.5 million for a $ 132 million domestic total.

Comedy “The Guilt Trip,” starring Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen as a mother and son on a cross-country drive, pulled in $ 6.7 million for eighth.

Also this week the latest James Bond hit “Skyfall” topped $ 1 billion in worldwide sales, despite falling out of the week’s top 10 films at the box office.

“The Hobbit” was distributed by Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros studio. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc released, “Jack Reacher” and “The Guilt Trip.” Comcast Corp’s Universal Studios released “Les Miserables” and “This is 40.” “Django Unchained” was released in the United States by the Weinstein Company.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Fabio Campana/European Pressphoto Agency

Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate, in 2007.

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103.

Her death was announced by Mayor Gianni Alemanno of Rome.

“I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene,” said Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia.

Scientists had virtually no idea how embryo cells built a latticework of intricate connections to other cells when Dr. Levi-Montalcini began studying chicken embryos in the bedroom of her house in Turin, Italy, during World War II. After years of obsessive study, much of it at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Viktor Hamburger, she found a protein that, when released by cells, attracted nerve growth from nearby developing cells.

In the early 1950s, she and Dr. Stanley Cohen, a biochemist also at Washington University, isolated and described the chemical, known as nerve growth factor — and in the process altered the study of cell growth and development. Scientists soon realized that the protein gave them a new way to study and understand disorders of neural growth, like cancer, or of degeneration, like Alzheimer’s disease, and to potentially develop therapies.

In the years after the discovery, Dr. Levi-Montalcini, Dr. Cohen and others described a large family of such growth-promoting agents, each of which worked to regulate the growth of specific cells. One, called epidermal growth factor and discovered by Dr. Cohen, plays a central role in breast cancer; in part by studying its behavior, scientists developed drugs to combat the abnormal growth.

In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini and Dr. Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.

Dr. Cohen, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Levi-Montalcini possessed a rare combination of intuition and passion, as well as biological knowledge. “She had this feeling for what was happening biologically,” he said. “She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was.”

One of four children, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, to Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire. In keeping with the Victorian customs of the time, Mr. Levi discouraged his three daughters from entering college, fearing that it would interfere with their lives as wives and mothers.

It was not a future that Rita wanted. She had decided to become a doctor and told her father so. “He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation,” she wrote in her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988). He also agreed to support her.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin medical school in 1936. Two years later, Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. She began her research anyway, setting up a small laboratory in her home to study chick embryos, inspired by the work of Dr. Hamburger, a prominent researcher in St. Louis who also worked with the embryos.

During World War II, the family fled Turin for the countryside, and in 1943 the invasion by Germany forced them to Florence. The family returned at the close of the war, in 1945, and Dr. Hamburger soon invited Dr. Levi-Montalcini to work for a year in his lab at Washington University.

She stayed on, becoming an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1958. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director. She retired from Washington University in 1977, becoming a guest professor and splitting her time between Rome and St. Louis.

Italy honored her in 2001 by making her a senator for life.

An elegant presence, confident and passionate, she was a sought-after speaker until late in life. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009.

She never married and had no children. In addition to her autobiography, she was the author or co-author of dozens of research studies and received numerous professional awards, including the National Medal of Science.

“It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain,” Dr. Levi-Montalcini wrote in her autobiography, “and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 30, 2012

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. It was 1938, not 1936.

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Media Decoder Blog: Among Top News Stories, a War Is Missing

Look closely at the end-of-the-year lists of 2012’s top news stories. What’s missing? The 11-year-old war in Afghanistan and American-led counterterrorism efforts around the world.

The Pew Research Center’s weekly polling on the public’s interest in news stories showed such a low level of interest that the overseas conflicts didn’t make the organization’s list of the year’s top 15 stories.

Nor did the Afghan war come up often when The Associated Press conducted its annual poll of editors and news directors in the United States. The only overseas stories voted to be the year’s top news stories involved Libya and Syria.

Yahoo’s list of the top news stories of the year also omitted the war, and so did a separate list of the top international news stories. Those lists were created by analyzing millions of searches by Yahoo users.

The absence of words like “Afghanistan” from year-end lists reflects both the national news media’s scant coverage of the war and the public’s disengagement with it.

“We are in a period where the American public is intensely focused on domestic economic concerns,” said Michael Dimock, the associate director for research at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “On top of this, the public is having a hard time staying focused on foreign engagements that have been ongoing for over a decade.”

The exceptions to what he called this “war fatigue” are mass killings of Americans in the war zone, “which continue to draw public focus for short periods of time,” he said.

No such occurrence registered on the radar this year. Thus, Pew found that spikes in public interest were higher around events like the Summer Olympics and President Obama’s embrace of gay marriage than around anything to do with the war. There were no significant spikes in interest around the secret American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

About 68,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan now that the troop surge ordered by the Obama administration in 2010 has ended. Combat troops are scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2014. For the time being the American presence is covered by a small band of reporters, predominantly in the country’s capital, Kabul.

Erin Burnett of CNN was one of the few American television anchors to take her nightly show to Afghanistan in 2012. She anchored from Kabul on Dec. 13 and told viewers that “America’s longest war is still not won.” Her reporting was cut short; the next day, the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., pre-empted all other programming on CNN.

The Associated Press poll of editors had already taken place; it was redone a few days later, and the massacre was ranked the top story of the year.

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Iran may be reconsidering position on Syria

TEHRAN — As rebel forces advance and longtime allies in Moscow distance themselves, Syria's most faithful friend is recalculating as well: Iranian officials and analysts say the Islamic Republic has launched a vigorous internal debate about how firmly it will continue to support Syrian President Bashar Assad.

On the surface, Iranian officials stick to the view that Assad remains in control, and they welcome his emissaries. In Friday sermons, clerics close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, accuse Israel and Western powers of plotting to bring Assad down.

But faced with the slow-motion collapse of Assad's regime, senior Iranian officials and clerics appear to be increasingly divided about how to respond. Under an Iranian peace plan unveiled this month, the Syrian president would remain in power through elections in 2014, although he could run again.

"The debate behind the curtains among experts and officials regarding the Syrian crisis is very hot," said an Iranian journalist with close ties to the office of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Staunch support for Bashar Assad's regime is costing the Islamic Republic of Iran a lot."

Shiite Muslim Iran faces increasing isolation if Assad is overthrown by predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels supported by Iran's regional rivals in the Persian Gulf. Iran would lose a key part of an anti-Israel alliance it has nurtured since the 1980s. And at a time when it faces tough international sanctions because of its nuclear program, Iran risks complicating its problems by being regarded as an obstacle on Syria.

Focusing the blame for the "Syria debacle" could also affect Iran's next presidential election, scheduled for June.

As the fighting approaches the two-year mark, the slaughter of Syrian civilians and Assad's slipping territorial control have prompted subtle shifts in Iran's position.

Its six-point peace plan appears aimed largely at shielding Assad in the short term, while opening the way for his departure. Although roundly rejected by the Syrian opposition, it offers a window into Iranian thinking about a conflict that officials here once believed that Assad would win.

"Compare the content of [special envoy] Lakhdar Brahimi's six-point plan with Iran's six-point plan, and you will find very similar phrases and sentences," said an Iranian Foreign Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Brahimi, backed by the United Nations and the Arab League, has proposed a transitional government including rebels and government officials who would serve until elections. It remains unclear what role, if any, Assad would have. Although Russia is distancing itself, it hasn't demanded Assad's departure. Washington says the Syrian president must go.

"Both sides should come to the negotiating table," said the Iranian Foreign Ministry official. "Iran is sure it can keep Bashar in power until a 2014 presidential election, and then keep the state structure in Syria intact, with or without him."

The possibility that Assad, a member of the Alawite minority, a small offshoot of Shiite Islam, could fall shakes decades of Iranian assumptions about how to pursue its goals in the Middle East.

Since the 1980s, Iran and Syria have armed the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, creating a united front against Israel and helping the two countries burnish their anti-Israeli credentials in the Muslim world.

When the Syrian uprising began in March 2011, it was largely a peaceful effort aimed at gaining greater democracy. But Assad met it with force, and over time the opposition developed into an armed insurrection with sectarian dimensions.

The battle is no longer about basic rights, but a struggle between Assad and the country's Sunni majority. Iran encouraged Assad to crush the resistance, not wishing to lose an important partner in the Arab world. It also was concerned about the rise of Syrian Sunnis who could fall under the influence of Turkey and Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf that are hostile to Iran.

Iran acknowledged sending Revolutionary Guard advisors to Syria, but then denied it. The Islamic Republic has been accused of arming Assad's security forces.

Among the consequences of the Syria conflict has been a crack in the anti-Israeli alliance. Hamas has broken with Damascus, and its relations with Iran have been strained by the fighting in Syria. Iran is also hard-pressed by economic sanctions over its nuclear program. Tension with the international community over its support for Assad could make it more difficult for Tehran to build the goodwill to cut a deal, if it chooses to do so.

Iran's military, religious and political elite are finding it hard to come to grips with the idea that their strategy of unconditionally backing Assad is no longer working. The realization that it was failing first came from academics and analysts working with the government, and has slowly permeated the halls of power.

"Unfortunately there is no other way to exit from this current crisis but the fall of President Bashar Assad," said Aziz Shahmohammadi, an analyst with close ties to the Foreign Ministry who has urged the Iranian leadership to prepare for the worst.

In addition to its peace plan, Tehran has explored talks with Syrian dissidents. The most prominent is Haytham Manna, who lives in Paris and represents the Damascus-based opposition umbrella group the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change. The group, which emphasizes peaceful change, has been tolerated by Assad.

Iran has talked with Manna about heading a government while Assad stays on as president until elections, said Hossian Royarvan, a state television analyst on Middle Eastern affairs.

"Manna … has taken trips to Tehran several times and talked with Iranian officials. He wants the structure of state to remain intact as he thinks the structure is in the national interest, but he believes Bashar should quit," said Royarvan. "So Iran is talking with him and trying to find a solution for Syria through dialogue. There is no military solution."

The anxiety has crept into Iranian media, where censors had permitted no criticism or negative stories about Assad until about two months ago. Pro-government and opposition papers have both started running articles that forecast the end of Assad's rule.

On Tuesday, the pro-government paper Etellaat, whose editor is selected by Khamenei, published a story saying that the U.S. and Russia had crafted a joint plan for a transitional government in Syria, which both countries have denied. It included a call by a senior Hamas leader for Assad to be removed from power.

"In the beginning we supported the Syrian government extensively and ignored the opposition and even called them terrorists. It has cost Iran a lot among the Muslims," Abbas Abdi, a leader of the hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in 1979, said in the reformist daily Etemad last weekend.

Abdi said he believed Iran's new peace plan could have made a difference if it had come earlier, but now it was too little, too late. He called his piece: "Feeling sorry for the lost opportunity in Syria."

Special correspondents Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Sandels from Beirut. Times staff writer Ned Parker in Beirut contributed to this report.

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