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Malnutrition grows among Syrian children as poverty, lack of heath care take toll
• KAB ELIAS, Lebanon (AP) -- Trapped in her northern Syrian village by fighting, Mervat watched her newborn baby progressively shrink. Her daughter's dark eyes seemed to grow bigger as her face grew more skeletal. Finally, Mervat escaped to neighboring Lebanon, and a nurse told her the girl was starving.
• The news devastated her. "They had to hold me when they told me. I wept," the 31-year-old mother said, speaking in the rickety, informal tent camp where she now lives with her husband in the eastern Lebanese town of Kab Elias.
• Her daughter Shurouk has been undergoing treatment the past three months and remains a wispy thing. The 9-month-old weighs 7 pounds (3.2 kilos) -- though she's become more smiley and gregarious. Mervat spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name, fearing problems for her family in Syria.
• Her case underscored how dramatically Syrian society has unraveled from a conflict that this weekend enters its fourth year. Such stark starvation was once rare in Syria, where President Bashar Assad's autocratic state ran a health system that provided nearly free care.
• That system, along with most other state institutions, has been shattered in many parts of the country where the fighting between Assad's forces and the rebels trying to overthrow him is raging hardest. The war has killed more than 140,000 people and has driven nearly a third of the population of 23 million from their homes -- including 4.2 million who remain inside Syria and 2.5 million who have fled into neighboring countries. Nearly half those displaced by the war are children.
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Russia's propaganda campaign against Ukraine goes full tilt as media freedom withers
• MOSCOW (AP) -- This is Ukraine today, at least as seen by most Russian news media: the government is run by anti-Semitic fascists, people killed in protests were shot by opposition snipers and the West is behind it all.
• And the room to disagree with that portrayal is getting smaller by the week.
• With Crimea set to hold a referendum Sunday on whether to merge with Russia, the push to demonize Ukraine's leadership has reached fever pitch. Authorities in Ukraine have responded by blocking Russian TV channels.
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