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turn toward Moscow in November descended into violence Sunday when demonstrators, angered by the passage of repressive laws intended to stifle the protest, marched on official buildings.
• For days protesters hurled fire bombs and stones at police, which retaliated with stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. The Wednesday deaths of two protesters -- the first fatalities in more than two months of protests -- fueled fears of more violence.
• Police on Wednesday tore down barricades and chased the protesters down the hill from official buildings, but demonstrators later set hundreds of tires ablaze and regained their positions under plumes of heavy smoke helped by the wind blowing in the police direction.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- A sharply divided government task force that reviewed the National Security Agency's surveillance program for four months has urged President Barack Obama to shut down the agency's bulk collection of phone data and purge its massive inventory of millions of Americans' calling records, The Associated Press has learned.
• The recommendation from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to abandon the NSA's phone surveillance was even more sweeping than a similar proposal from another panel of experts. That panel, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, advised Obama in December to restrict phone surveillance to limited court-ordered sweeps.
• The oversight board's new 234-page report -- a copy of which was obtained by the AP -- contained several strong dissents from two members of the five-member board -- former Bush administration national security lawyers who recommended that the government retain its broad phone surveillance authority. The board disclosed key parts of its report to Obama earlier this month before he unveiled his plans during a speech last week to the nation.
• In that speech, Obama said the bulk phone collection program would continue for the time being. He directed the Justice Department and intelligence officials to find ways to end the government's control over the phone data. And he narrowed the NSA's bulk collection by insisting on close supervision by a secret federal intelligence court and reducing the wide chain of calls that the NSA may track. Phone

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