Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.

The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.

Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.

Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.

In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.

Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.

Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.

The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Cardinal Mahony relieved of duties over handling of abuse

In a move unprecedented in the American Catholic Church, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Thursday that he had relieved his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children decades ago.

Gomez also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcement came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil," Gomez wrote in a letter addressed to "My brothers and sisters in Christ."

The release of the records and the rebuke of the two central figures in L.A.'s molestation scandal signaled a clear desire by Gomez to define the sexual abuse crisis as a problem of a different era — and a different archbishop.

"I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused has been the saddest experience I've had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011," Gomez wrote.

The public censure of Mahony, whose quarter-century at the helm of America's largest archdiocese made him one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church, was unparalleled, experts said.

"This is very unusual and shows really how seriously they're taking this. To tell a cardinal he can't do confirmations, can't do things in public, that's extraordinary," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and Georgetown University fellow.

An archdiocese spokesman, Tod Tamberg, said that beyond canceling his confirmation schedule, Mahony's day-to-day life as a retired priest would be largely unchanged. He resides at a North Hollywood parish, and Tamberg said he would remain a "priest in good standing." He can continue to celebrate Mass and will be eligible to vote for pope until he turns 80 two years from now, Tamberg said.

The move further stained the legacy of Mahony, a tireless advocate for Latinos and undocumented immigrants whose reputation has been marred over the last decade by revelations about his treatment of sex abuse allegations.

Before Gomez's announcement, Mahony had weathered three grand jury investigations and numerous calls for his resignation. He stayed in office until the Vatican's mandatory retirement age of 75. No criminal charges have been filed against Mahony or anyone in the church hierarchy.

Terrence McKiernan, president of bishopaccountability.org, said that in a religious institution that values saving face and protecting its own, Gomez's decision to publicly criticize an elder statesman of the church and his top aide was striking.

"Even when Cardinal [Bernard] Law was removed in Boston, which was arguably for the same offenses, this kind of gesture was not made," he said.

Law left office in 2002 amid mounting outrage over his transfer of pedophile priests from parish to parish, but the church presented his departure as of his own accord and he was later given a highly coveted Vatican job in Rome.

Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien of Phoenix relinquished some of his authority in a deal with prosecutors to avoid criminal charges for his handling of abuse cases, but he kept his title and many of his duties. A Kansas City bishop convicted last year of failing to report child abuse retained his position.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and Dominican priest who has testified across the nation as an expert witness in clergy sex abuse cases, said the Vatican would have "absolutely" been consulted on a decision of this magnitude.

"This is momentous, there is no question," he said. "For something like this to happen to a cardinal.... The way they treat cardinals is as if they're one step below God."

Gomez's decision capped a two-week period in which the publication of 25-year-old files fueled a new round of condemnation of the L.A. archdiocese. The files of 14 clerics accused of abuse became public in a court case last Monday. They laid out in Mahony and Curry's own words how the church hierarchy had plotted to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

To stave off investigations, Mahony and Curry gave priests they knew had abused children out-of-state assignments and kept them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities.

Mahony and Curry both issued apologies, with the cardinal saying he had not realized the extent of harm done to children until he met with victims during civil litigation. "I am sorry," he said.

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Chinese Court Issues Severe Sentences in Tibetan Self-Immolations

BEIJING – A court in southwest China gave severe prison sentences to two Tibetans who court officials said were guilty of urging eight people to self-immolate, three of whom had died, according to a report on Thursday by Xinhua, the state news agency.

One Tibetan, Lorang Konchok, 40, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, which often means the convict will eventually get a lifetime prison sentence. His nephew, Lorang Tsering, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Xinhua report said the older Tibetan was also being stripped of his “political rights” for life, while the other man would have his stripped for three years.

The sentencing took place in Aba Prefecture of Sichuan Province, an area at the heart of the recent wave of self-immolations by Tibetans. Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009 to protest Chinese rule in Tibetan regions, which lie in western China but which many Tibetans say should be granted independence or true autonomy.

At least 81 died following their acts, according to International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group based in London. Few other nations have been confronted by such a large wave of self-immolations as political protest.

Chinese officials have sentenced Tibetans before to prison sentences for what courts have said were their roles in promoting self-immolations, but the most recent sentences were among the harshest. There now appears to be a concentrated effort to rein in the self-immolations, which gathered pace in late 2012, by criminalizing both the act itself and making it a crime to help or encourage people to commit it.

On Dec. 3, a newspaper in a Tibetan area of Gansu Province published an editorial that said China’s supreme court, prosecution agency and Ministry of Public Security had issued “guidelines” that said “the act of self-immolation by Tibetans is a crime.” The guidelines said that assisting or encouraging self-immolations was considered intentional homicide, and that those who committed self-immolation were also criminals and punishable by law if they “have caused severe damage,” according to the newspaper.

The Xinhua report on Thursay said the two monks “incited and coerced” eight people to self-immolate; three committed the act and died last year, and the others “willfully” abandoned their plans after the police “intervened.”

The Chinese government has blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetans, for encouraging the self-immolations, even though the Dalai Lama has not made any explicit statements in support of the acts. Tibetans have said in interviews that the self-immolations are genuine self-expressions of political anger and frustration at Chinese oppression and are not the result of plots hatched by senior monks or other Tibetan leaders.

The two monks sentenced in Aba, which Tibetans called Ngaba, were detained in August 2012, according to a report last December by Xinhua. Both monks are from Kirti Monastery, which was a site central to the earliest self-immolations.

That Xinhua report said Lorang Konchock became involved in promoting self-immolations after being contacted by a “Tibetan independence organization” tied to the Dalai Lama. Xinhua said the contact took place after February 2009, when a young monk from Kirti named Tapey set fire to himself outside the monastery. Tapey did not die, but the second Tibetan to commit the act, Phuntsog, also from Kirti, killed himself in March 2011.

After Phuntsog’s death, a court sentenced three monks to long prison sentences, in what were the first legal punishments handed out in relation to the self-immolations. Two monks were found guilty of involvement in Phuntsog’s self-immolation and one, an uncle of Phuntsog’s, was found guilty of refusing to turn his body over to the police at the time.

The Tibetans who have self-immolated have come from a variety of backgrounds. They have included men and women, young and old, clergy and laypeople. So far this year, at least three Tibetans have self-immolated, all men. The second one, Tsering, who killed himself in Ngaba Prefecture on Jan. 18, was survived by a wife and two children.

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Nintendo chief rules out price cuts for Wii U

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo‘s president Thursday ruled out price cuts for its new Wii U home console as a way to boost sales, vowing to become profitable again in its core businesses as smartphones and tablets increasingly threaten specialized game machines.

Satoru Iwata, speaking at a Tokyo hotel to investors and reporters a day after earnings were released, acknowledged the sales momentum for the Wii U, as well as the 3DS hand-held game machine, had run out of steam during the key year-end shopping season, especially in the U.S.

But he said no price cuts were in the works. Price cuts are common in the gaming industry to woo buyers, but the move can backfire by trimming revenue. The Wii U now sells for about $ 300 in the U.S. and 25,000 yen in Japan.

“We are already offering it at a good price,” he said.

Iwata said he expects operating profit of more than 100 billion yen in the 12 months ending March 2014, promising that as “a commitment.”

But he acknowledged more work was needed to have consumers understand the Wii U, which went on sale globally late last year, as well as producing more game software to draw buyers.

All game machines have suffered in recent years from the advent of smartphones and other mobile devices that have become more sophisticated and offer games and other forms of entertainment.

Nintendo returned to net profit for the April-December period of 2012 from deep losses the previous year, but that was due to a perk from a weaker yen, which helps Japanese exporters such as Nintendo.

Its operating result, which removes currency fluctuations, was a loss of 5.86 billion yen ($ 64 million), and Nintendo expects that to swell to a 20 billion yen ($ 220 million) loss for the full business year ending March 2013 as sales of its game consoles fall short of expectations.

Iwata said Nintendo is preparing more game software, including those developed in-house, for the end of this year.

Kyoto-based Nintendo, which makes Super Mario and Pokemon games, lowered its full year sales forecast Wednesday to 670 billion yen ($ 7.4 billion) from 810 billion yen ($ 8.9 billion). It also said it was going to sell fewer Wii U consoles for the fiscal year through March than its previous projection. The Wii U has a touch-screen tablet controller called GamePad and a TV-watching feature called TVii.

The company forecasts it will sell 4 million Wii U consoles for the current fiscal year, ending March 31, down from its earlier estimate of 5.5 million units. The Wii U, which went on sale late last year, was the first major new game console to arrive in stores in years.

Nintendo, also behind the Donkey Kong and Zelda games, lowered its full year sales forecast for Wii U game software units to 16 million from 24 million.

Iwata said last year holiday sales quickly dissipated in the U.S. and some European nations, including Great Britain, the key market. He said the U.S. home console sales were the worst for Nintendo in nearly a decade.

He said Nintendo needs hit games to push console sales, and the company remains confident Wii U will prove more popular with time.

“The chicken-and-game problem has not been solved,” he said of the need for both game software and machine hardware.

“I feel a deep sense of responsibility for not being able to produce results for our year-end business,” said Iwata.

He declined to say what he would do if the company failed to attain the promised operating profits.

Nintendo sank into a loss the previous fiscal year largely because of price cuts for its hand-held 3DS game machine, which shows three-dimensional imagery without special glasses. That machine is also struggling in most global markets.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s famed game designer, said what was missing were games for the Wii U that made its appeal clear. The progress in smartphones has also posed a challenge for Nintendo, he said.

“People have to try it to see it is fun,” Miyamoto said of Wii U.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Zooey Deschanel's Night Out with Roasted Octopus in West Hollywood

Caught in the Act

01/31/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Zooey Deschanel

Donato Sardella/WireImage

From New Girl to cover girl!

On Monday night, friends and guests of Zooey Deschanel celebrated the actress's Glamour cover at the new eatery RivaBella in West Hollywood.

In the restaurant's "wine cave" private dining room, guests enjoyed signature Bella Bellinis made with Belvedere vodka, housemade peach puree, peach bitters and Mionetto Prosecco.

Hosted by Cindi Leive, the magazine's editor-in-chief, the soiree featured dishes like roasted octopus salad with potatoes, Taggiasche olives and salsa verde, and beef tenderloin tagliata with arugula.

Deschanel's New Girl costars Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris were also in attendance.

– Jennifer Garcia

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Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.

All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.

Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.

"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.

"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.

"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.

But some are pretty interesting.

Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.

That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.

Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:

—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.

—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.

—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.

—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.

—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.

—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.

Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.

"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Trial begins for Moreno Valley school board member Mike Rios

The young woman on the witness stand said Mike Rios approached her on the street with a school district business card and a job opportunity: He wanted her "to gather girls and sell them," she said.

Identified in court only as Valery, she testified Wednesday that she and others worked as prostitutes for Rios, a member of the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education.

Valery's testimony came on the opening day of Rios' trial in Riverside County Superior Court. He faces 35 felony charges, including rape, pandering and pimping involving six females, two of them underage.

Valery, 21, with long black hair and bangs covering her forehead, bit her lip between questions. In addition to working as a prostitute for Rios, she said, she helped recruit other young women for him.

"He told me we had to get the best-looking girls so we could get more money for them," Valery said.

Prosecutors allege that Rios ran a prostitution ring out of his Moreno Valley home in 2011 and 2012. In opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Brusselback told the jury: "This is a case about greed. This is a case about money. This is a case about power."

Rios was "constantly trying to recruit new, young talent," Brusselback said.

Rios' attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael J. Micallef, told jurors that Rios ran a business involving women stripping, dancing and performing for money but that it "had nothing to do with sex."

The women were free to do whatever they wanted and what they did besides stripping and dancing "wasn't necessarily known to Mr. Rios," Micallef said. Networking with women and growing his business was "the capitalist way," Micallef said.

Rios, 42, was arrested in February on attempted murder charges after he allegedly shot at two people near his home. He was released on bail but was arrested again in April on suspicion of rape, pimping and using his position on the school board to recruit would-be prostitutes.

He was released on bail again and has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in both cases.

While searching Rios' home after the alleged shooting, investigators found numerous cellphones and several condoms in the glove box of the Mercedes-Benz in his garage, testified Paul Grotefend, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy.

Prosecutors say Rios recruited women, took provocative photos of them in his home and posted the photos in online advertisements. He allegedly established a cellphone number solely for the prostitution work, drove the women to various locations to have sex and split the money they earned.

It is alleged that three adult women worked for him as prostitutes and that he attempted to recruit another adult woman and two minors.

On Wednesday, prosecutors showed jurors online advertisements with erotic photos of Valery in lingerie that she said were taken in Rios' bedroom.

Some of the ads read: "Sexy hot beautiful Latina babe Here 4 U."

Valery testified that Rios, on numerous occasions, picked her up from her home in downtown Los Angeles and brought her to his house. He bought her condoms before she met clients, she testified.

When Valery stopped communicating with Rios, he sent her text messages telling her how many missed calls there were on the cellphone he set up for prostitution, she said.

"He assumed every call that came in was a guaranteed customer," she said.

Rios is accused of raping two women, one of whom was intoxicated.

After both arrests last year, Rios returned to the five-member school board.

Though the other school board members passed a resolution calling for Rios to resign, he refused, said board Vice President Tracey B. Vackar. The board cannot remove Rios unless he is convicted, Vackar said.

Rios continues to come to board meetings, Vackar said, and even attended a board study session Tuesday night after a court appearance. Though there was disappointment after he did not resign, Rios has been treated with respect at meetings and "has not been disruptive," Vackar said.

The trial is expected to continue Thursday. The case involving the attempted murder charges — which is separate from the current case — is pending trial, with the next court date scheduled for February.

Rios, wearing a blue suit, was quiet in court Wednesday, sitting next to his attorney with his hands folded.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Myanmar Police Used Phosphorus on Protesters, Lawyers Say

BANGKOK — A group of lawyers investigating a violent crackdown in Myanmar that left Buddhist monks and villagers with serious burns has concluded that police used white phosphorus, a munition normally reserved for warfare, to disperse protesters.

The suppression in November of a protest outside a controversial copper mine in central Myanmar shocked the Burmese public after images of critically injured monks circulated across the country. It also gave rise to fears that the civilian government of President Thein Sein, which came to power in 2011, was using the same repressive methods as the military governments that preceded it.

Burmese attorneys together with an American human rights lawyer gathered evidence at the site of the protest, including a metal canister that protesters said was fired by the police. The canister was brought to a private laboratory in Bangkok, where a technician determined that residue inside it contained high levels of phosphorus. Access to the canister and a copy of the laboratory report were provided to a reporter.

“We are confident that they used a munition that contained phosphorus,” said U Thein Than Oo, the head of the legal committee of the Upper Burma Lawyers Network, which helped conduct the investigation. “They wanted to warn the entire population not to protest. They wanted to intimidate the people.”

White Phosphorus has many uses in war – as a smoke screen or incendiary weapon - but is rarely if ever used by police forces.

Reached on Wednesday, Zaw Htay, a director in the office of President Thein Sein, declined to comment on what kind of weapon was used. “I can’t say. I can’t answer,” he said.

John Hart, a senior researcher at the Chemical Weapons Program of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said by e-mail that although white phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon under a 1993 international convention, it is banned from uses that “cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of the chemical.”

One of the monks injured at the protest, U Tikhanyana, 64, has burns over 40 percent of his body and was flown to Bangkok by the government because Myanmar does not have the facilities to treat such a serious case.

Two months after the crackdown Mr. Tikhanyana remains in intensive care. In an interview on Wednesday in his hospital room, Mr. Tikhanyana described the moment that the police came to disperse the crowds in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 29.

“I saw a fireball beside me and I started to burn,” he said. “I was rolling on the ground to try to put it out.”

Dr. Chatchai Pruksapong, a burn specialist treating Mr. Tikhanyana, said it appeared that the monk was seared with something “severely flammable.”

Mr. Tikhanyana’s wounds are similar to those he sees with soldiers injured by bomb blasts in Thailand’s southern insurgency.

“Tear gas would definitely not cause this kind of deep wound,” Dr. Chatchai said.

Myanmar government officials were initially quoted in the local news media as saying that police had thrown “smoke bombs” at protesters.

The canister found at the protest site appeared to have “smoke” stenciled on it and looks similar in appearance to smoke hand grenades once manufactured by the United States, said a security expert and former colonel in a European army who wanted to remain anonymous because he has dealings in Myanmar. Such smoke grenades emit burning particles within a radius of about 17 meters, he said.

Roger Normand, the American human rights lawyer who helped investigate the crackdown, said a report from the lawyers would be released “in the next few days.”

Mr. Normand arranged to have the canister brought to the Bangkok laboratory, which is run by ALS, an Australian company that specializes in testing samples for their chemical content.

In an interview, Mr. Normand said it was “unheard of” for “highly volatile and dangerous weapons” to be used by police. “This raises serious questions about who in the military chain of command could have given the order to use these weapons.”

The report prepared by Mr. Normand and the Burmese lawyers has been submitted to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and opposition leader, who was appointed by the government soon after the crackdown to lead a separate, official commission of inquiry. The precise mandate of the commission is unclear, as is the timing of the release of the commission’s findings.

The government initially announced the commission would report its work on Dec. 31 but that was delayed by a month. It may be further delayed because Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is currently on a five-day visit to South Korea.

The controversy over the copper mine centers on the government’s attempt to relocate villagers in order to expand the mine, which is co-owned by a Chinese company and the Burmese military. The government ordered the dispersal of protesters after several months of intermittent demonstrations. The controversy received widespread coverage in the Myanmar media partly because land rights have become a major issue as the country opens up to the world.

But it is a measure of the villagers’ resolve that even after the violent crackdown they say they are refusing to back down. Aye Net, a villager who has helped lead the protest movement, said by telephone Wednesday that villagers were calling for “justice for all those wounded in the crackdown.”

“And we still want the total abolition of the project,” she said.

Wai Moe in Yangon and Poypiti Amatatham in Bangkok contributed reporting.

Wai Moe contributed reporting from Yangon and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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RIM to debut new BlackBerry smartphones in a heavily hyped unveiling

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Following several delays and much anticipation, the new BlackBerry smartphones will be unveiled this morning in New York.

Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), the company behind the once dominant smartphones, is holding a splashy event in Manhattan to usher in the new devices, which were originally due for release last year.

The debut is expected to showcase the device as well as provide key launch details.

That will likely include its release date, which is expected in the next four to six weeks, the phone’s features and how much it will cost.

The company says the new BlackBerry will be released first in a touchscreen version, while a keypad alternative will follow in the weeks or months afterward.

The new phone launch is RIM’s attempt to regain its position in the highly competitive North American and European smartphone markets, which are now dominated by iPhone and Android devices.

While the first hurdles to overcome are the opinions of tech analysts and investor reaction, the true measure of success — actual sales of the phones — is still weeks away.

The BlackBerry has dramatically lost marketshare in recent years after a series of blunders.

Several network outages left customers without the use of the smartphones they had come to rely on, while the BlackBerry’s hardware hasn’t received a significant upgrade in years.

RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins has already offered a glimpse of some features on the new devices. They include BlackBerry Balance technology, which allows one phone to operate as both a business and personal device entirely separate from each other.

The new BlackBerry will also let users seamlessly shift between the phone’s applications like they’re flipping between pages on a desk.

In the coming weeks, RIM will launch an advertising blitz to promote the phones, including aggressive social media campaigning, which includes plugs from celebrities on their Twitter accounts, and a 30-second advertisement on the Super Bowl, the most watched television program of the year.

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Charlize Theron Relaxes With a Girls' Dinner in West Hollywood

Caught in the Act

01/30/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Charlize Theron shared dinner with a girlfriend at Tortilla Republic in West Hollywood on Monday.

Wearing a black blouse, blue jeans and high heels – while sporting her new short dark hair style – the Snow White and the Huntsman actress and her friend ordered up huarache hongos flatbread, housemade guacamole and jalapeño Margaritas.

Theron – who is mom to son Jackson – seemed to be enjoying her down time.

"She was relaxed and in a good mood," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

– Jennifer Garcia

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