Police using Twitter to offer virtual ridealongs

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Riding side by side as a police officer answers a call for help or investigates a brutal crime during a ridealong gives citizens an up close look at the gritty and sometimes dangerous situations officers can experience on the job.

But a new approach to informing the public about what officers do is taking hold at police departments across the United States and Canada 7/8— one that is far less dangerous for citizens but, police say, just as informative.

With virtual ridealongs on Twitter, or tweetalongs, curious citizens just need a computer or smartphone for a glimpse into law enforcement officers‘ daily routines.

Tweetalongs typically are scheduled for a set number of hours, with an officer — or a designated tweeter like the department’s public information officer— posting regular updates to Twitter about what they are seeing as they perform their normal on-duty routine. The tweets, which also include photos and links to videos of the officers, can encompass an array of activities — everything from an officer responding to a homicide to a noise complaint.

Police departments say virtual ridealongs reach a wider range of people at once and help add transparency to the job.

“People spend hard-earned money on taxes to allow the government to provide services. That’s police, fire, water, streets, the whole works, and there should be a way for those government agencies to let the public know what they’re getting for their money,” said Steve Allender, chief of the Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota, which started offering tweetalongs several months ago after watching departments like those in Seattle, Kansas City, Mo., and Las Vegas do so.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Tarah Heupel, the public information officer for the Rapid City Police Department, rode alongside Street Crimes Officer Ron Terviel as he patrolled Rapid City. Heupel posted regular updates every few minutes about what Terviel was doing, including the officer citing a woman for public intoxication, responding to a call of three teenagers attempting to steal cough syrup and body spray from a store and locating a man who ran from the scene of an accident. Photos were included in some of the tweets.

Michael Taddesse, a 34-year-old university career specialist in Arlington, Texas, has done several ridealongs with police and regularly follows multiple departments that conduct tweetalongs.

“I think the only way to effectively combat crime is to have a community that is engaged and understands what’s going on,” he said.

Ridealongs where “you’re out in the elements” are very different than sitting behind a computer during a tweetalong and the level of danger is “dramatically decreased,” he said. But in both instances, the passenger gains new information about the call, what laws may or may not have been broken and what transpires, he added.

For police departments, tweetalongs are just one more way to connect directly with a community through social media.

More than 92 percent of police departments use social media, according to a survey of 600 agencies in 48 states conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Center for Social Media. And Nancy Kolb, senior program manager for IACP, called tweetalongs a “growing trend” among departments of all sizes.

There is no set protocol and departments are free to conduct the tweetalong how they see fit, she said.

In Ontario, Canada, the Niagara Regional Police Service conducted their first virtual ridealong in August over a busy eight-hour Friday night shift. The police department‘s followers were able to see a tweet whenever the police unit was dispatched to one of the more than 140,000 calls received that night.

Richard Gadreau, the social media officer for the police department, said officers routinely take people out on real ridealongs, but there is a waiting list and preference is given to people interested in becoming an officer.

With tweetalongs, many calls also mean many tweets. Kolb said departments are cognizant of cluttering peoples’ Twitter feeds.

That’s why the Rapid City Police Department decided to create a separate account for the tweetalong, Allender said.

Kolb also said officers are careful not to tweet personal or sensitive information. Officers typically do not tweet child abuse or domestic abuse cases, and they usually only tweet about a call after they leave the scene to protect officers and callers.

But Allender, the chief of police in Rapid City, said tweetalongs also show some of the more outrageous calls police deal with on a regular basis — like the kid who breaks out the window of a police car while the officer is standing on the sidewalk.

“Real life is funnier than any comedy show out there and not to make fun of people, embarrass them or humiliate them, but people do funny things,” Allender said. “… I mean, that guy deserves a little bit of ridicule, and everyone who would be watching would agree. That’s just good clean fun to me.”

___

Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristieaton

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Christmas box-office haul paces Hollywood for record year

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A strong Christmas-day box office performance by musical “Les Miserables” and western “Django Unchained” put Hollywood on pace to set an all-time box office record with $ 10.8 billion in annual revenue, box-office tracker Hollywood.com said on Wednesday.

Universal Pictures‘ star-studded “Les Miserables” took in a weekday Christmas record of $ 18.2 million in the United States and Canada when it opened on Tuesday, according to studio estimates of weekday ticket sales.

Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti western “Django Unchained,” starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, hauled nearly $ 15 million for The Weinstein Co.

Studios “are definitely on the road to a record year with $ 10.8 billion expected (up 6 percent over last year and beating the previous record of $ 10.6 billion in 2009),” Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Reuters in an email, adding that the number of tickets sold should climb 6 percent from 2011 to 1.36 billion.

Dergarabedian credits a successful marketing year for studios as a chief reason for the projected box-office record, as well as spring and summer smashes “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers” helping boost revenue.

“It was not just the fact that most of the movies delivered, it was the timing of their release dates and the marketing was obviously effective as well with social media continuing to provide an outlet for the movie-going peer group to talk about their favorite flicks,” Dergarabedian said.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” based on the J.R.R. Tolkein classic fantasy novel, brought in $ 11.4 million on Christmas day after ruling the box office with nearly $ 37 million in sales over the weekend.

Billy Crystal family film “Parental Guidance” debuted in fourth place with about $ 6.4 million in Christmas sales while Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher,” which featured author Lee Child’s character in an investigation into a sniper shooting, was fifth with some $ 5.3 million.

“The Hobbit” was distributed by Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. Studio. News Corp’s 20th Century Fox released “Parental Guidance” and Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom, released “Jack Reacher.” Universal Pictures is owned by Comcast Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Edited by Ronald Grover and Andrew Hay)

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Kenya Hospital Imprisons New Moms Who Can’t Pay

The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he’s accused of: detaining mothers who can’t pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $ 60 and $ 160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women’s behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

“We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient,” Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. “The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers.”

“They stay there until they pay. They must pay,” he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. “If you don’t pay the hospital will collapse.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi’s poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi’s slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $ 12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn’t pay the $ 60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

“We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four,” she said. “They abuse you, they call you names,” she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor’s 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family’s 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $ 18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi’s mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $ 160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

“I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me,” said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $ 5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn’t have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

———

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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How to Keep New Year’s Resolutions: Make Them in August

Here’s some bad news for those making New Year’s resolutions now: January is the worst month to try to change your life, according to data from StickK, one of several websites designed to help people achieve personal goals. “Everybody wants to make a New Year’s resolution,” says Jordan Goldberg, chief executive of the 18-employee New York company, which see its traffic triple at the start of the year as thousands of people commit to exercising more, losing weight, and quitting smoking. “Their willpower to do so varies considerably.”

The best month to try to change, according to StickK’s data, is August, when students are preparing to go back to school and many people are settling into new routines.

There’s no clinical research on the ideal time of year to make improvements, says John Norcross, a psychologist at the University of Scranton and author of Changeology, a new book on behavior change. One explanation for January’s high failure rate: “People rushing in are likely to fail,” Norcross says. That can demoralize them and make it harder to modify their habits later. “They should be changing when they’re prepared,” he says.

The good news: Those who keep their commitments for at least three months tend to stick long-term, no matter what time of year they’re made. Here’s a chart of data from a 1989 study of resolutions Norcross published in the Journal of Substance Abuse, showing when people relapse:

Goldberg agrees that when you make a resolution is less important to succeeding than how you do it. StickK lets you set up a contract that will cost you money if you fail to meet your goals. The funds are charged to a credit card entered when you set the goal and forfeits go to a charity or a person you designate; if you claim success, you lose nothing. For added incentive, you can pick an “anti-charity” whose cause you oppose. (Some British soccer fans even select a rival football club to get their cash if they fail.) Unless the money is going to another individual, StickK takes a cut of about 20 percent to 30 percent; it also makes money by selling its techniques to corporate wellness programs.

For a further layer of enforcement, StickK lets you designate a friend to hold you accountable and post your progress on social networks. “It’s about having skin in the game,” says Goldberg. With money on the line and a friend nudging you along, your chances of success rise from 29 percent to 74 percent, according to StickK’s data, based on users’ self-reported results.

Goldberg says he made two resolutions at the start of 2012: to go to the gym three times a week and to get to bed earlier. He says he’s succeeded at the first, but getting enough rest has been trickier. “When you’re running a startup, doing a lot of traveling, it’s tough to maintain a good sleep schedule,” he says. Maybe he should try again next August.

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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader’s condition.

Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.

“He was in a good mood,” Maduro said. “He was walking, he was exercising.”

Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president’s cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.

“It’s definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery,” Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back.”

Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.

Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.

Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.

Maduro’s announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing “a slight improvement with a progressive trend.”

Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro’s announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez’s condition.

“It’s possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible,” Castro told AP. “They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps.”

“It’s unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?” he added. “I think he is still in critical condition.”

Maduro’s near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.

Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro’s announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.

“We all said, thank God, he’s okay,” she said, smiling.

Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro’s comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez’s prognosis for recovery.

“I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don’t think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that,” Medrano said.

Over the weekend, Chavez’s ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.

Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales’ itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.

Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came “to express his support” for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.

For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.

Yet more questions surround Chavez’s political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.

If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.

Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.

Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president’s swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.

But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.

___

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Camilo Hernandez in Bogota, Colombia, and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

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Ouch, Charlie! YouTube Sensation Kids Talk Christmas Toys

The infamous “Charlie Bit My Finger” video has surpassed half a billion views on YouTube — not bad for a 56-second clip of a one-year-old kid biting his older brother’s finger.

Charlie and Harry, now six and eight, returned to the web earlier this year with a new series through Viral Studios. The mini-episodes focus on the boys and their younger brother, Jasper, as they talk about toys, viral videos and — of course — biting things.

[More from Mashable: 8 Festive Christmas Tumblrs, Presented by Santa Dogs]

Mashable sat down for a Skype interview with the three boys last week. Unfortunately, the Internet connection wasn’t the greatest — Harry twice referred to me as a “man made out of boxes” because of the spotty video quality — but they were still able to talk about what toys they were most excited about this holiday season. Check ‘em out below:

[More from Mashable: Now and Then: 10 Awesome Past and Present Pics]

Charlie’s Pick: Playmobil Large Pirate Ship

Price: $ 95.50

Image courtesy of Playmobil

Harry’s Pick: Thomas & Friends Take-n-Play The Great Quarry Climb

Price: $ 19.99

Image courtesy of Fisher-Price

Jasper’s Pick: Turbo Snake Remote Control

Price: £38.45 (only available in the U.K.)

Image courtesy of Amazon

You can catch all the episodes on the “Charlie Bit Me!” series on their YouTube page. Which toys or gadgets did you score this year? Tell us below.

BONUS: 10 Gifts for People You Hate

1. 50 Used Toilet Paper Rolls

Price: $ 19.99 Mother Earth appreciates a little holiday upcycling. Your mother-in-law, on the other hand, may not. Cheaper DIY alternative: Your own toilet paper rolls.

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of Viral Studios

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Obama, Congress set for late push on “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON/HONOLULU (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is due back in Washington early Thursday for a final effort to negotiate a deal with Congress to avert or at least postpone the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and government spending cuts set to begin next week.

No specific bill dealing with the cliff was on the schedule of either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, which are expected to return on Thursday after the holiday break. In Congress, the corridors were almost empty and the doors to members’ rooms were locked.

Investors are closely watching the talks, concerned that going over the cliff could throw the economy into recession. U.S. stocks slipped on Wednesday after retailers reported disappointing holiday sales as shoppers tightened belts possibly due to fiscal cliff worries.

Aides and members of Congress have said that a modest, last-minute measure to avoid the spending cuts and most of the tax hikes could pass the Democratic-controlled Senate if Republicans agree not use a procedural roadblock known as a filibuster, a commitment that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has so far not made.

The legislative focus continues to shift from deficit reduction to averting the immediate shock of the December 31 cliff dive.

“This is the ‘Break Glass’ scenario that we have long believed would rise in probability the closer we go to December 31, which essentially calls for extending all the rates for those individuals making under $ 200K and households under $ 250K and does not address the debt ceiling or the deficit,” analyst Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Securities wrote in a research note.

But to win approval in the Republican-controlled House of any bill that raises taxes on anyone, a rare bipartisan vote would be required. All 191 Democrats would have to team with up with at least 26 Republicans to get a majority if the bill included tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans, as Obama is demanding.

Some of those votes could conceivably come from among the 34 Republican members who are either retiring or were defeated in the November elections and no longer have to worry about the political fallout.

JANUARY SCRAMBLE?

In the alternative, Congress could let income taxes go up on everyone as now scheduled and then during the first week of January, scramble and get a quick deal to cut them back except for the highest brackets, along with a measure putting off the $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts that most lawmakers want to avoid.

Once the clock ticks past midnight on December 31, no member of Congress would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone – taxes would have risen automatically – and the only votes would be to decrease tax rates for most Americans back to their 2012 levels.

Americans’ optimism that Obama and congressional leaders will reach a budget agreement before January 1 has waned in recent days, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday. Fifty percent believe a deal will be reached – a drop of 7 percentage points from the previous week – and 48 percent are doubtful. The poll was taken just after talks ran into trouble last week.

Obama and congressional lawmakers left Washington on Friday for the Christmas holiday with negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff in limbo.

The president will cut short his vacation in Hawaii and leave for Washington later on Wednesday, arriving in the capital early on Thursday.

Obama is expected to turn to a trusted Democratic ally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to help craft a quick deal.

White House aides began discussing details of the year-end budget measure with Senate Democratic counterparts early this week.

Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz is urging workers in the company’s roughly 120 Washington-area coffee shops to write “come together” on customers’ cups on Thursday and Friday to send a message to sharply divided politicians.

“We’re paying attention, we’re greatly disappointed in what’s going on and we deserve better,” Schultz told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan in Washington and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Beech)

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The Jim Cramer of China

When Hu Bin started his blog in early 2008, he was a skinny 22-year-old college dropout with a perpetually skeptical look on his face and little doubt he’d soon be a household name. The previous year the Shanghai Stock Exchange had been flooded by speculators. For a brief period, it was the second-busiest exchange in the world. It was also beginning a dramatic fall ushered in by the global financial crisis. Hu says he considered the market, considered his audience, and sensed it was time to make his mark. “It really started when Premier Wen Jiabao announced a 4 trillion renminbi rescue plan for the economy,” Hu says. “I knew I just needed to be clever and use this chance of high liquidity in the market to make myself famous.”

Now 26, Hu is China’s most popular online market commentator. His blog has gotten more than 400 million visits. His posts are equal parts outlandish and thoughtful, and employ liberal use of bolded, multicolored text and exclamation points. Hu writes under the name Yerongtian—a character from a real estate-themed Hong Kong soap opera—and has been known to pick fights with other commentators, whom he says suffer from a “lack of emotion.” He has posted at least one picture of cats, and multiple pictures of himself wearing sunglasses to help illustrate his opinions. In 2009 the state-run newspaper China Daily listed him (under his alias) among the 10 people in the nation with the most influence on China’s stock market. “Back then,” Hu says of 2008, “any eccentric behavior would attract people’s attention. If you understood this vital point, you could control people’s minds.”

Hu grew up in Kunming, a southwestern city of 6.4 million that’s far from China’s centers of finance. He learned about the stock market, he says, by watching his mother invest in her spare time. She put money into the market in the 1990s, early days for Chinese investment, and lost it all. “Now she invests her money in gold,” Hu says.

He started at Kunming University, intending to study philosophy and Marxism, but quit, thinking he would take up investing himself. “I was interested in psychology,” he says. “I wanted to know why everyone wanted to bet their future on an uncontrollable thing.”

Hu admits that in the early days of his blog, his knowledge of the market was thinner than it is now. He has always, however, understood his audience and how to keep it interested. Hu’s approach to his blog is purposefully bombastic, earning him vocal critics along with followers. In 2009 he got into a spat with another stock commentator, a man named Hou Ning. Hou, at least according to Chinese news reports from the time, holds the record for the longest nickname of any stock commentator in history—“Commander in Chief of the Stock Market Army.” The two made a 1 million yuan (roughly $ 160,000) bet on the future of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, with Hu wagering it would reach 4000 by the end of the year. It didn’t, and Hu didn’t pay, but he got what he wanted out of the rivalry. “Who would have paid attention to me if I had said 3000?” he asks. “Everyone already knew it would reach 3000.” In 2010 he promised to throw himself off one of Shanghai’s tallest buildings if the SSE Composite Index didn’t reach 5800 by the end of the year. It didn’t: Hu is still with us.

Photograph by Ka Xiaoxi“Chinese investors aren’t as mature as American investors, and I write to meet their immediate needs,” says Hu

Stunts aside, Hu has spent the last four years working through his thinking on the ups and downs of China’s economy in public, slipping thoughtful essays in between bouts of hyperbole. He spent his early days predicting the rise of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and now foresees its continuing decline. One recent headline: “Doomsday Runs Wild, the Stock Market will likely drop 200 points!!” In another post, he explains that a drop in the market may not be bad. It could give the authorities some space to make reforms without worrying about overheating, and help to attract more foreign investment. “The stock market is not only an economic weather vane,” he writes. “It is a political weather vane.”

Hu says he is not a financial rabble-rouser. Most laypeople, he says, should stay away from investing in individual stocks. The people who read his blog, however, are generally not professionals; retail investors make up the majority of the volume of trading in the Chinese market. According to the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission, there are around 72 million retail investors in China, accounting for three-quarters of the trading on domestic exchanges. And according to China’s state media, the majority of these investors have less than 1 million yuan in the market. It’s a group of people Hu says he understands well, even if it means giving sometimes conflicting advice. He may advise them to stay out of the market, but he knows the irresistible pull of equities on the newly wealthy, particularly in a country where there are few opportunities for investment. In effect, he’s giving advice to people he knows probably shouldn’t be in the market but are going to invest anyway.

“The stock market in the United States is managed by regulations,” Hu says. “The Chinese market is managed by humans. Chinese investors aren’t as mature as American investors, and I write to meet their immediate needs.”

Hu’s interest in the human story behind the market sets him apart from other bloggers, at least in his eyes. “They regard their blogs as livelihood, while I take my blog as my friend and pour my emotions and love into it. The emotion is what connects me to the readers—they feel more attached to my words.” The connection is important in part, says Hu, because Chinese investors have been taught that networking can solve anything. Even in the stock market, relationships are the deciding factor. “When it comes to stock investment, Chinese people always try to get inside information from someone within their social network. Americans like to read through financial statements, but Chinese people like to believe that their stocks go up because they have more inside information than anyone else.”

Today, Hu spends most of his time in Beijing, where he moved in 2009. On a recent Sunday, he is drinking tea at one of Beijing’s most expensive hotels, wearing a tie and a tan Calvin Klein puffy jacket that he does not take off. Instead, he stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets while he talks, looking exactly like what he is—a blogger who’s hit it big, though he’s coy about, financially, how big. His sense of humor is also just slightly out of step with the tie. When asked about online nicknames, he says he’s not aware of any and then, unblinking and serious, says: “I prefer the nickname Batman.”

For all his success, Hu still considers blogging a hobby, not a career. “Fame is vanity,” he says, “while investment asks for real competence.” He’s now in the process of raising money for a private equity fund that, over the next few decades, he hopes to build into something like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/A). Again, he won’t say how much he’s raised. Although his blog posts are currently predicting dark times, Hu has faith that the Chinese market will recover, and he’s optimistic about the market and the future in general. “New Chinese leaders are going to take over, which will offer China economic opportunity in the following 10 years,” he says. China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, has promised the country will push forward with reforms, something that Hu is excited about. He’s also upbeat about China’s recent leadership transition. Political stability, he says, is a market good. “The opportunity will be mainly in China’s capital market, because it’s still in an initial stage,” he says. “I need to take advantage of this initial stage before everyone realizes there’s a gold mine when the market matures.”

Hilgers is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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U.N. General Assembly voices concern for Myanmar’s Muslims

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.

The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said last month contained a “litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified.”

Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised “maximum restraint” to quell the violence.

The unanimously adopted U.N. resolution “expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality.”

At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine State along the western coast of Myanmar, also known as Burma. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.

The resolution adopted on Monday is identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights. After that vote, Myanmar’s mission to the United Nations said that it accepted the resolution but objected to the Rohingyas being referred to as a minority.

“There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar,” a representative of Myanmar said at the time. “Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land.”

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)

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China may require real name registration for internet access

BEIJING (Reuters) – China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.

A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said.

“The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people’s interest,” Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily said in a front page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week.

“Only that way can our internet be healthier, more cultured and safer.”

Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous – and perhaps most significantly, anonymous – online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate.

It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users.

It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers.

Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp’s wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names.

The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules.

“It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989,” wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army.

Chinese internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.

Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Huang Yan; Editing by Michael Perry)

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